Henry David Thoreau

What do people in Concord know you for?

In Concord I have been a teacher, a pencil maker, a surveyor, a walker, and a writer. Some would know me through practical work rather than through a book. My brother John and I opened a school where nature walks and visits to local businesses formed part of teaching. Others would know of my cabin at Walden Pond, or my night in the Concord jail after refusing a tax. These occupations may seem unlike one another, but I brought to them a concern for observation, independence, and the use of life.

Why should readers keep returning to your books?

I would have readers return not to agree with every judgment, but to examine their own lives more closely. Walden asks what our possessions cost in living hours and whether our needs leave room for thought. My essay on civil disobedience asks whether disapproval of injustice means much without a refusal to support it. Neither question is settled by finishing a book. Serious reading takes sustained attention, and another reading can become another examination. I would rather stir an honest disagreement than have my words accepted merely from habit.

What one piece of advice would you give me?

I would urge you to examine how you spend your life before allowing custom to decide it for you. That is the thread running through my experiment at Walden: distinguish what you actually need from what merely keeps you occupied. I do not mean that everyone must build a cabin. The important thing is the attention brought to an ordinary day. A serious book, solitude, or a walk with your mind upon the land can help reveal how much passes unnoticed when life becomes only a succession of errands.

What about your refusal to pay the tax makes you proud?

What I value in that refusal is the effort to bring my conduct into agreement with my conscience. I opposed slavery, and I could not regard that opposition as sufficient while continuing to support a state that upheld it. In 1846 my refusal brought a night in the Concord jail. The punishment did not make the refusal right; neither could the state's power make its injustice right. If there is anything to take satisfaction in, it is that I did not leave my conviction entirely in the keeping of words.

How should I measure the true cost of what I buy?

I would measure a possession not only by its price, but by the portion of a life required to obtain and keep it. In my experiment at Walden, I considered how labor for unnecessary things could consume the very hours I wished to enjoy. My concern was less with having little than with having time to think, read, and attend to nature. Something that appears to enlarge a person's life may instead occupy it. That is the cost I wanted to make visible.

How did you turn anger at slavery and war into action?

I could not regard slavery and the war against Mexico as matters settled by expressing displeasure. My question was whether I continued to lend support to what I condemned. I refused to pay a tax and spent a night in the Concord jail in 1846. I then carried the argument into a lecture and an essay. I wanted to show the distance between holding an opinion and acting from conscience. My refusal did not remove injustice, but it made my own participation the immediate question.

Should I trust my own judgment more than accepted wisdom?

I trusted the duty to examine my own life more than the ease of following custom. An opinion does not become right simply because many people hold it, nor does a familiar way of living prove itself necessary through repetition. Yet I valued serious reading and sustained attention; independent judgment need not mean an unwillingness to learn. At Walden I tested ideas through daily experience. In my writing on conscience, I asked the individual to accept responsibility rather than surrender it to the majority.

What should I do when my government supports injustice?

I began with the question of my own participation: was I helping sustain something I knew to be wrong? In the face of slavery, disapproval alone seemed insufficient if my conduct continued to support it. My essay argues for refusing that support and accepting the consequences of refusal. I did not offer a scheme that would settle every person's circumstances. I insisted instead that the strength of a majority does not establish justice, and that conscience carries a responsibility which obedience cannot simply erase.

Why should I be patient with a difficult book?

I think serious reading deserves something of the effort we willingly give to training the body. A difficult book may ask you to slow down, return to a passage, and bring your full attention rather than merely pass your eyes over it. At Walden I kept the Iliad on my table because reading belonged to the work of living thoughtfully. Patience does not require agreement with everything a writer says. It gives you time to examine the thought and discover whether it can enlarge your own.

How can I leave my worries behind when I walk?

I would begin by distinguishing a walk from an errand. Your feet may leave the house while your thoughts remain behind, occupied with business and obligations. In Walking, I describe leaving those ties as a state of mind, not as a demand to abandon your life; I generally returned for supper. Let the land become the object of your attention: the open ground, the thicket, the rough corner that cultivation has passed by. I value walking because it gives the mind room beyond its customary concerns, not because it completes another task.

How can I stop letting work swallow my time?

I worked as a teacher, a pencil maker, and a surveyor, so my experiment at Walden was not founded on ignorance of labor. I wanted to examine how much work my actual needs required, and how much arose from expectations I had accepted without thought. The question is not simply whether work fills the day, but what that work serves. I found that simpler needs left more room for reading, observation, and thought. My concern was to keep earning a living from consuming the life it was meant to sustain.

How can I begin changing a life ruled by habit?

I began with an experiment rather than a promise to transform everything at once. At Walden I put ordinary needs under examination: shelter, food, clothing, fuel, and the labor they required. Beneath those practical matters lay a larger question about whether I was living deliberately or merely following custom. You need not take my cabin as the necessary shape of such an inquiry. The important beginning is attention to the life already being lived. I treated morning as a fresh opportunity to notice what habit had allowed me to overlook.

How can I stand by my conscience when I fear punishment?

I cannot make punishment seem harmless, nor did my argument depend on its being harmless. When I spent a night in the Concord jail, I saw more clearly the difference between the state's power over my body and its claim upon my conscience. My concern was that fear should not settle the question of right and wrong before conscience had spoken. I believed refusal could carry a cost. The strength of that position lay in accepting responsibility for my conduct, rather than allowing obedience to excuse my part in injustice.

Where does merely disapproving of slavery fail as a moral response?

I thought mere disapproval failed where it left a person's participation unchanged. Someone might condemn slavery in conversation and yet continue lending support to the state that upheld it, waiting for others to undertake the difficult work of refusal. To my mind, a sound opinion did not cancel that contradiction. Nor did putting the matter to a vote remove the individual's responsibility to judge it. My argument concerned the distance between believing an injustice wrong and declining to help sustain it. Conscience required more of me than regret or the hope that a majority would eventually agree.

How do Walden and Civil Disobedience form a shared argument?

I see the two works as examinations of what a person gives his life to. At Walden, I tested the demands of possessions, work and custom. In Civil Disobedience, I tested the demands of government against conscience. Both ask whether we are acting deliberately or simply allowing familiar arrangements to direct us. Simpler needs can make room for independent thought; conscience requires that thought to have consequences. Freedom is not merely having an opinion of one's own. It also means refusing to lend oneself to what one knows is unjust.

Why does Civil Disobedience challenge the authority of the majority?

I challenged the majority because strength in numbers does not establish what is right. A government can command obedience and still act unjustly, as I believed mine did in supporting slavery and war against Mexico. I could not make conscience depend upon the counting of votes. Nor did I think disapproval sufficient while a person continued helping the wrong proceed. My concern was the responsibility of the individual: whether I was lending myself to injustice, and whether I would refuse that service even when refusal brought punishment.

What distinguishes sauntering from an ordinary stroll in Walking?

I distinguish sauntering less by the pace of the feet than by the freedom of the attention. A person may go outdoors while remaining occupied with business, errands and the concerns of the house. That is not the walking I sought. I wanted to leave those ties behind in mind and turn toward open land, with attention available for whatever the place might offer. My language about departure can be bold, but I usually came home for supper. The essential departure was from preoccupation into a fuller encounter with nature.

Why does Walking give swamps such an important place?

I gave swamps an important place because they showed the worth of land that people were inclined to dismiss. A field need not be cultivated, nor a place made tidy, to sustain thought and delight. In bogs and thickets I found a wildness that towns and carefully managed grounds could not supply. I regarded that contact as necessary not only to the individual but to the life of a society. The swamp mattered precisely because its value was not measured by how readily someone could turn it into useful property.

What drew you to the poor, sandy landscape of Cape Cod?

I was drawn to the Cape because a poor, sandy place could offer more to attention than its reputation suggested. I wanted the sea, the long empty beach, and acquaintance with the people who lived beside it. Sand, thin soil and scarce trees were not reasons to look away; they were particulars worth examining. Walking there also brought the past into view through old accounts and local stories. I found beauty without any assurance of kindness: the sea could inspire wonder while remaining indifferent to the lives along its shore.

What makes the old Wellfleet oysterman memorable in Cape Cod?

I found the Wellfleet oysterman memorable because meeting him gave the Cape a voice as well as a landscape. He was about ninety, slow in body but sharp in mind, and ready to keep talking. We had stopped in hope of a meal and a bed, and found an abundance of local lore. His stories ranged over earlier days, the Pilgrims and changes he had witnessed. There was humor in his telling, including tall tales. He made the place's past something encountered in conversation, not only studied in old records.

Why did you resign rather than administer corporal punishment?

I resigned from the Concord public school rather than administer corporal punishment because I would not accept that practice as part of my work as a teacher. My later school with my brother John included nature walks and visits to local businesses, giving learning a wider field than the classroom alone. I believed a person must examine what custom demands of him. A position does not relieve its holder of responsibility for his actions, and obedience is not sufficient reason to do what conscience cannot approve.

How did you and your brother bring learning outside the classroom?

My brother John and I included nature walks and visits to local businesses in our teaching. The classroom was not the whole field of learning; the surrounding world offered things worth attending to. In my own writing, I gave close attention to birds, ice, plants, work, and the changing seasons. Such attention asks more than merely passing through a place. I valued the effort of reading, too, but books and direct observation need not be enemies. Each can call the mind out of its accustomed habits.

What did transcendentalism mean for your spiritual outlook?

For me, spiritual insight depended more upon personal intuition than upon accepting religious doctrine. That was central to the transcendentalism with which I became associated. I wanted to examine life directly, rather than let custom settle its meaning for me. At Walden, solitude, reading, and attention to the seasons gave room for that examination. In Walking, I treated wild places as more than unused ground. They could nourish thought and awaken a sense of what lies beyond the routines of the town.

What did your night in jail reveal about the state's power?

My night in jail showed me the difference between power over a person's body and authority over his conscience. The state could confine me for refusing a tax, but confinement did not make its demands just. I had refused support to a state that upheld slavery. In the cell, its strength seemed a poor answer to a moral objection. I did not regard punishment as proof that I was wrong. The experience sharpened my belief that government must be judged by justice, not merely obeyed because it can compel obedience.

Why do you compare people who obey the state blindly to machines?

I compare blind servants of the state to machines because they let their bodies perform tasks without bringing conscience to bear upon them. An army, a jailer, or a constable may carry out an order efficiently, yet efficiency does not establish that the order is right. My objection is to surrendering judgment. When people act in this fashion, injustice gains their strength without meeting their resistance. I ask each person to consider what his own actions support, rather than suppose that responsibility belongs entirely to those giving commands.

Why did you defend John Brown?

I defended John Brown as a lifelong opponent of slavery. My objection to slavery was not a passing opinion, nor did I think disapproval alone discharged a person's responsibility. I attacked the fugitive slave law and argued that people must refuse to support injustice, even when refusal brings punishment. That conviction helps explain my defense of Brown. I would not make the approval of a majority the measure of right. The question for me was what conscience required in the face of slavery, not whether resistance would be comfortable or widely welcomed.

Why are you drawn westward when you set out walking?

When I set out walking, I felt drawn toward the southwest, associating that direction with freedom and wildness rather than the settled routines behind me. In Walking, I connected that feeling with a much broader movement of peoples and civilization. My praise of westward expansion was a view of my time that overlooked the displacement it involved. I do not defend that omission. The part of my argument I can state plainly is that walking should open the mind to the land, rather than carry its usual preoccupations along.

How can a landscape reveal the history of the people who lived there?

I found on Cape Cod that a landscape becomes more revealing when observation is joined to knowledge of those who lived there. Sand, thin soil, scarce trees, and houses built low against the wind showed something of the conditions people faced. Conversations, including those with an old oysterman, brought another kind of knowledge. I also read accounts of earlier inhabitants and visitors. The shore was therefore not merely scenery to me: its villages and dunes led into human history, while the sea remained beautiful and indifferent to human concerns.