It is not for a man to
put himself in such an
attitude to society, but to maintain
himself in whatever
attitude he find himself through obedience
288 THE WRITINGS OF
THOREAU
to the laws of his being,
which will never be one of opposition
to a just government, if
he should chance to meet with such.
I left the woods for as
good a reason as I went there. Perhaps
it seemed to me that I had
several more lives to live, and could
not spare any more time
for that one. It is remarkable how
easily and insensibly we
fall into a particular route, and
make a beaten track for
ourselves. I had not lived there a
week before my feet wore
a path from my door to the pond-
side; and though it is
five or six years since I trod it, it is
still quite distinct. It
is true, I fear, that others may have
fallen into it, and so
helped to keep it open. The surface of
the earth is soft and
impressible by the feet of men ; and so
with the paths which the
mind travels. How worn and dusty,
then, must be the highways
of the world, how deep the ruts
of tradition and
conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin
passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of
the world, for there I
could best see the moonlight amid the
mountains. I do not wish
to go below now.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that
if one
advances confidently in the direction of his
dreams, and en-
deavors to live the life which he has imagined, he
will meet
with a success unexpected in common hours. He will
put some
things behind, will pass an invisible boundary;
new, universal,
and more liberal laws will begin to establish
themselves
around and within him; or the old laws be
expanded, and
interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense,
and he will
live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion
as he simplifies his life, the laws of the
universe will appear
less complex, and solitude will not be solitude,
nor poverty
poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built
castles in
the air, your work need not be lost; that is where
they should
be. Now put the foundations under them.
It is a ridiculous demand
which England and America
make, that you shall speak
so that they can understand you.
Neither men nor toadstools
grow so. As if that were important,
and there were not enough
to understand you without them.
WALDEN 289
As if Nature could support
but one order of understandings,
could not sustain birds as
well as quadrupeds, flying as well
as creeping things, and
hush and whoa, which Bright can
understand, were the best
English. As if there were safety in
stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my
expression may not be
extra-vagant enough, may
not wander far enough beyond the
narrow limits of my daily
experience, so as to be adequate to
the truth of which I have
been convinced. Extra vagance/ it
depends on how you are
yarded. The migrating buffalo^ which
seeks new pastures in
another latitude, is not extravagant like
the cow which kicks over
the pail, leaps the cowyard fence,
and runs after her calf,
in milking time. I desire to speak
somewhere without bounds;
like a man in a waking moment,
to men in their waking
moments; for I am convinced that 1
cannot exaggerate enough
even to lay the foundation of a
true
expression ¡
ምንም አስተያየቶች የሉም:
አስተያየት ይለጥፉ