1863
LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE
by Henry David Thoreau
AT A LYCEUM, not long since, I felt that the lecturer had chosen a
theme too foreign to himself, and so failed to interest me as much as
he might have done. He described things not in or near to his heart,
but toward his extremities and superficies. There was, in this sense,
no truly central or centralizing thought in the lecture. I would have
had him deal with his privatest experience, as the poet does. The
greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what
I thought, and attended to my answer. I am surprised, as well as
delighted, when this happens, it is such a rare use he would make of
me, as if he were acquainted with the tool. Commonly, if men want
anything of me, it is only to know how many acres I make of their
land- since I am a surveyor- or, at most, what trivial news I have
burdened myself with. They never will go to law for my meat; they
prefer the shell. A man once came a considerable distance to ask me to
lecture on Slavery; but on conversing with him, I found that he and
his clique expected seven eighths of the lecture to be theirs, and
only one eighth mine; so I declined. I take it for granted, when I am
invited to lecture anywhere- for I have had a little experience in
that business- that there is a desire to hear what I think on some
subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country- and not
that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will
assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong
dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and
I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all
precedent.
So now I would say something similar to you, my readers. Since you
are my readers, and I have not been much of a traveller, I will not
talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I
can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and
retain all the criticism.
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.
This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am
awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It
interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see
mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I
cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly
ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in
the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. If
a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple
for life, or seared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted
chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for business! I think that
there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to
philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.
There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the
outskirts of our town, who is going to build a bank-wall under the
hill along the edge of his meadow. The powers have put this into his
head to keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three
weeks digging there with him. The result will be that he will
perhaps get some more money to board, and leave for his heirs to spend
foolishly. If I do this, most will commend me as an industrious and
hard-working man; but if I choose to devote myself to certain labors
which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be
inclined to look on me as an idler. Nevertheless, as I do not need the
police of meaningless labor to regulate me, and do not see anything
absolutely praiseworthy in this fellow's undertaking any more than in
many an enterprise of our own or foreign governments, however amusing
it may be to him or them, I prefer to finish my education at a
different school.
If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he
is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole
day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald
before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising
citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them
down!
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in
throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely
that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily
employed now. For instance: just after sunrise, one summer morning,
I noticed one of my neighbors walking beside his team, which was
slowly drawing a heavy hewn stone swung under the axle, surrounded by
an atmosphere of industry- his day's work begun- his brow commenced to
sweat- a reproach to all sluggards and idlers- pausing abreast the
shoulders of his oxen, and half turning round with a flourish of his
merciful whip, while they gained their length on him. And I thought,
Such is the labor which the American Congress exists to protect-
honest, manly toil- honest as the day is long- that makes his bread
taste sweet, and keeps society sweet- which all men respect and have
consecrated; one of the sacred band, doing the needful but irksome
drudgery. Indeed, I felt a slight reproach, because I observed this
from a window, and was not abroad and stirring about a similar
business. The day went by, and at evening I passed the yard of another
neighbor, who keeps many servants, and spends much money foolishly,
while he adds nothing to the common stock, and there I saw the stone
of the morning lying beside a whimsical structure intended to adorn
this Lord Timothy Dexter's premises, and the dignity forthwith
departed from the teamster's labor, in my eyes. In my opinion, the sun
was made to light worthier toil than this. I may add that his employer
has since run off, in debt to a good part of the town, and, after
passing through Chancery, has settled somewhere else, there to
become once more a patron of the arts.
The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead
downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to
have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the
wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.
If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular,
which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the
community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to
render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State
does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet
laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of
royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another<
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poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my
own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most
satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should
do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I
observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer
commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most
correct. I once invented a rule for measuring cord-wood, and tried
to introduce it in Boston; but the measurer there told me that the
sellers did not wish to have their wood measured correctly- that he
was already too accurate for them, and therefore they commonly got
their wood measured in Charlestown before crossing the bridge.
The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get "a
good job," but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a
pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so
well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends,
as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do
not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for
love of it.
It is remarkable that there are few men so well employed, so much to
their minds, but that a little money or fame would commonly buy them
off from their present pursuit. I see advertisements for active young
men, as if activity were the whole of a young man's capital. Yet I
have been surprised when one has with confidence proposed to me, a
grown man, to embark in some enterprise of his, as if I had absolutely
nothing to do, my life having been a complete failure hitherto. What a
doubtful compliment this to pay me! As if he had met me half-way
across the ocean beating up against the wind, but bound nowhere, and
proposed to me to go along with him! If I did, what do you think the
underwriters would say? No, no! I am not without employment at this
stage of the voyage. To tell the truth, I saw an advertisement for
able-bodied seamen, when I was a boy, sauntering in my native port,
and as soon as I came of age I embarked.
The community has no bribe that will tempt a wise man. You may raise
money enough to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough
to hire a man who is minding his own business. An efficient and
valuable man does what he can, whether the community pay him for it or
not. The inefficient offer their inefficiency to the highest bidder,
and are forever expecting to be put into office. One would suppose
that they were rarely disappointed.
Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I
feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still
very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a
livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent
serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to
me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am
successful. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased,
the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should
sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to
do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living
for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess
of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious,
and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than
he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All
great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must
sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its
boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by
loving. But as it is said of the merchants that ninety-seven in a
hundred fail, so the life of men generally, tried by this standard, is
a failure, and bankruptcy may be surely prophesied.
Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be
born, but to be still-born, rather. To be supported by the charity
of friends, or a government pension- provided you continue to breathe-
by whatever fine synonyms you describe these relations, is to go
into the almshouse. On Sundays the poor debtor goes to church to
take an account of stock, and finds, of course, that his outgoes
have been greater than his income. In the Catholic Church, especially,
they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think
to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the
fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.
As for the comparative demand which men make on life, it is an
important difference between two, that the one is satisfied with a
level success, that his marks can all be hit by point-blank shots, but
the other, however low and unsuccessful his life may be, constantly
elevates his aim, though at a very slight angle to the horizon. I
should much rather be the last man- though, as the Orientals say,
"Greatness doth not approach him who is forever looking down; and
all those who are looking high are growing poor."
It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered
written on the subject of getting a living; how to make getting a
living not merely holiest and honorable, but altogether inviting and
glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not. One
would think, from looking at literature, that this question had
never disturbed a solitary individual's musings. Is it that men are
too much disgusted with their experience to speak of it? The lesson of
value which money teaches, which the Author of the Universe has
taken so much pains to teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether.
As for the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of all
classes are about it, even reformers, so called- whether they inherit,
or earn, or steal it. I think that Society has done nothing for us
in this respect, or at least has undone what she has done. Cold and
hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those methods which men
have adopted and advise to ward them off.
The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one
be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other
men?- if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle? Does
Wisdom work in a tread-mill? or does she teach how to succeed by her
example? Is there any such thing as wisdom not applied to life? Is she
merely the miller who grinds the finest logic? It is pertinent to
ask if Plato got his living in a better way or more successfully
than his contemporaries- or did he succumb to the difficulties of life
like other men? Did he seem to prevail over some of them merely by
indifference, or by assuming grand airs? or find it easier to live,
because his aunt remembered him in her will? The ways in which most
men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a
shirking of the real business of life- chiefly because they do not
know, but partly because they do not mean, any better. r />
The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely
of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation
to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are
ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of
others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that
is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the
immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The
philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the
dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting,
stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. If I
could command the wealth of all the worlds by lifting my finger, I
would not pay such a price for it. Even Mahomet knew that God did
not make this world in jest. It makes God to be a moneyed gentleman
who scatters a handful of pennies in order to see mankind scramble for
them. The world's raffle! A subsistence in the domains of Nature a
thing to be raffled for! What a comment, what a satire, on our
institutions! The conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself
upon a tree. And have all the precepts in all the Bibles taught men
only this? and is the last and most admirable invention of the human
race only an improved muck-rake? Is this the ground on which Orientals
and Occidentals meet? Did God direct us so to get our living,
digging where we never planted- and He would, perchance, reward us
with lumps of gold?
God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and
raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same in
God's coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like
the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting
that the world has seen. I did not know that mankind was suffering for
want of old. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very
malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold gild a great
surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler
as his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it
make whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the
loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever
checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me
that you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard.
The way of transgressors may be hard in many respects. The humblest
observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of
the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same
same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets
what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle,
and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly
proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.
After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one
evening, I had in my mind's eye, all night, the numerous valleys, with
their streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred feet
deep, and half a dozen feet across, as close as they can be dug, and
partly filled with water- the locality to which men furiously rush
to probe for their fortunes- uncertain where they shall break
ground- not knowing but the gold is under their camp itself- sometimes
digging one hundred and sixty feet before they strike the vein, or
then missing it by a foot- turned into demons, and regardless of each
others' rights, in their thirst for riches- whole valleys, for
thirty miles, suddenly honeycombed by the pits of the miners, so
that even hundreds are drowned in them- standing in water, and covered
with mud and clay, they work night and day, dying of exposure and
disease. Having read this, and partly forgotten it, I was thinking,
accidentally, of my own unsatisfactory life, doing as others do; and