Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a noted American writer, philosopher, and essayist. His 1854 book, Walden,
explores
his experiment in living a simplified life in the woods as a way to
explore his inner self. He lived in the woods for two years. This
passage reflects upon his selection of a place to live and why he wanted
to live simply.-------------------------
We must
learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but
by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our
soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the
unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious
endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or
to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far
more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life,
even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated
and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry
information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this
might be done.
I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I
could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life,
living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it
was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow
of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that
was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a
corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be
mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish
its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by
experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next
excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty
about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat
hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God
and enjoy him forever."
Still we live meanly, like ants; though
the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies
we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and
our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable
wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has
hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he
may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity,
simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a
hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep
your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of
civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and
thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he
would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by
dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds.
Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat
but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in
proportion.
