"Our problem today
is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external ... So much
of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau:
'Improved means to an unimproved end'."
Methinks this would exercise their
minds as much as mathe-
matics. If I wished a boy to know
something about the arts
and sciences, for instance, I would
not pursue the common
course, which is merely to send him
into the neighborhood
of some professor, where anything is
professed and practised
but the art of life; to survey the
world through a telescope
or a microscope, and never with his
natural eye; to study
chemistry, and not learn how his
bread is made, or mechanics,
and not learn how it is earned; to
discover new satellites to
Neptune, and not detect the motes in
his eyes, or to what
vagabond he is a satellite himself;
or to be devoured by the
monsters that swarm all around him,
while contemplating
the monsters in a drop of vinegar.
Which would have ad-
vanced the most at the end of a
month, the boy who had
made his own jackknife from the ore
which he had dug and
smelted, reading as much as would be
necessary for this or
the boy who had attended the
lectures on metallurgy at
the Institute in the meanwhile, and
had received a Rodgers
penknife from his father? Which
would be most likely to
cut his fingers? . . . To my
astonishment I was informed
on leaving college that I had
studied navigation! why, if
I had taken one turn down the harbor
I should have known
more about it. Even the poor student
studies and is taught
only political economy, while that
economy of living which
is synonymous with philosophy is not
even sincerely pro-
fessed in our colleges. The
consequence is, that while he
is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and
Say, he runs his
father in debt irretrievably.
As with our colleges, so with a
hundred "modern im-
provements;' 7 there is an illusion
about them; there is not
always a positive advance. The devil
goes on exacting com-
pound interest to the last for his
early share and numerous
succeeding investments in them. Our
inventions are wont to
be pretty toys, which distract our
attention from serious
things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end,
an end which it was already but too
easy to arrive at; as
WALDEN 47
railroads lead to Boston or New
York. We are in great
haste to construct a magnetic
telegraph from Maine to
Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may
be, have nothing im-
portant to communicate.
Either is in such a predicament as
the man who was earnest to be
introduced to a distinguished
deaf woman, but when he was
presented, and one end of her
ear trumpet was put into his hand,
had nothing to say. As
if the main object were to talk fast
and not to talk sensibly,
We are eager to tunnel under the
Atlantic and bring the Old
World some weeks nearer to the New;
but perchance the first
news that will leak through into the
broad, flapping American
ear will be that the Princess
Adelaide has the whooping
cough. After all, the man whose
horse trots a mile a minute
does not carry the most important
messages; he is not an
evangelist, nor does he come round
eating locusts and wild
honey. I doubt if Flying Childers
ever carried a peck of corn
to mill.
One says to me, **I wonder that you
do not lay up money;
you love to travel ; you might take
the cars and go to Fitch-
burg to-day and see the
country." But I am wiser than that.
I have learned that the swiftest
traveller is he that goes afoot.
I say to my friend, Suppose we try
who will get there first.
The distance is thirty miles; the
fare ninety cents. That is
almost a day's wages. I remember
when wages were sixty
cents a day for laborers on this
very road. Well, I start now
on foot, and get there before night;
I have travelled at
that rate by the week together. You
will in the meanwhile
have earned your fare, and arrive
there sometime to-morrow,
or possibly this evening, if you are
lucky enough to get a
job in season. Instead of going to
Fitchburg, you will be
working here the greater part of the
day. And so, if the
railroad reached round the world, I
think that I should keep
ahead of you; and as for seeing the
country and getting ex-
perience of that kind, I should have
to cut your acquaintance
altogether.
Such is the universal
law !
- Henry David Thoreau
/from Economy, Walden or Life
in the Woods/
ምንም አስተያየቶች የሉም:
አስተያየት ይለጥፉ