HIGHER LAWS |
AS I CAME home through the woods with my
string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a
glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange
thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and
devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness
which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the
pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound,
with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I
might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The
wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself,
and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named,
spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank
and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less
than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still
recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and
spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this
employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance
with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with
which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance.
Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in
the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature
themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in
the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who
approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself
to them. The traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the
head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls
of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller learns things at
second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most
interested when science reports what those men already know
practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or
account of human experience.
They mistake who assert that the
Yankee has few amusements, because he has not so many public
holidays, and men and boys do not play so many games as they do in
England, for here the more primitive but solitary amusements of
hunting, fishing, and the like have not yet given place to the
former. Almost every New England boy among my contemporaries
shouldered a fowling-piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; and
his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, like the preserves
of an English nobleman, but were more boundless even than those of a
savage. No wonder, then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the
common. But already a change is taking place, owing, not to an
increased humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps
the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals hunted, not
excepting the Humane Society.
Moreover, when at the pond, I
wished sometimes to add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually
fished from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did.
Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it was all factitious,
and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing
only now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my
gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less humane than
others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much affected. I
did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit. As for
fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was
that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds.
But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer
way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer
attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only,
I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the
objection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt if
equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when some
of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they
should let them hunt, I have answered, yes- remembering that it was
one of the best parts of my education- make them hunters, though
sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that
they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any
vegetable wilderness- hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus far I
am of the opinion of Chaucer's nun, who
"yave
not of the text a pulled hen
That saith that hunters ben not holy
men."
There is a period in the history of the
individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the "best men,-
as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has
never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been
sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who
were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it.
No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly
murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he
does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you,
mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual
philanthropic distinctions.
Such is oftenest the young man's
introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He
goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he
has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper
objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and
fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this
respect. In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight.
Such a one might make a good shepherd's dog, but is far from being
the Good Shepherd. I have been surprised to consider that the only
obvious employment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like
business, which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a
whole half-day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or children
of the town, with just one exception, was fishing. Commonly they did
not think that they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless
they got a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of
seeing the pond all the while. They might go there a thousand times
before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave
their purpose pure; but no doubt such a clarifying process would be
going on all the while. The Governor and his Council faintly remember
the pond, for they went a-fishing there when they were boys; but now
they are too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it
no more forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven at last. If the
legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of books
to be used there; but they know nothing about the book of hooks with
which to angle for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for a
bait. Thus, even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes
through the hunter stage of development.
I have found
repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish without falling a
little in self-respect. I have tried it again and again. I have skill
at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which
revives from time to time, but always when I have done I feel that it
would have been better if I had not fished. I think that I do not
mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet so are the first streaks of
morning. There is unquestionably this instinct in me which belongs to
the lower orders of creation; yet with every year I am less a
fisherman, though without more humanity or even wisdom; at present I
am no fisherman at all. But I see that if I were to live in a
wilderness I should again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in
earnest. Beside, there is something essentially unclean about this
diet and all flesh, and I began to see where housework commences, and
whence the endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and
respectable appearance each day, to keep the house sweet and free
from all ill odors and sights. Having been my own butcher and
scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the dishes were
served up, I can speak from an unusually complete experience. The
practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness;
and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my
fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was
insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A
little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less
trouble and filth. Like many of my contemporaries, I had rarely for
many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, etc.; not so much
because of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because
they were not agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to animal
food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared
more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though
I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I believe
that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or
poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined
to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind. It is a
significant fact, stated by entomologists- I find it in Kirby and
Spence- that "some insects in their perfect state, though
furnished with organs of feeding, make no use of them"; and they
lay it down as "a general rule, that almost all insects in this
state eat much less than in that of larvae. The voracious caterpillar
when transformed into a butterfly... and the gluttonous maggot when
become a fly" content themselves with a drop or two of honey or
some other sweet liquid. The abdomen under the wings of the butterfly
stir represents the larva. This is the tidbit which tempts his
insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and
there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or
imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them.
It is hard to
provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the
imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body;
they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be
done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our
appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra
condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. It is not worth the
while to live by rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught
preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of
animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by
others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if
gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly
suggests what change is to be made. It may be vain to ask why the
imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied
that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous
animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on
other animals; but this is a miserable way- as any one who will go to
snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn- and he will be
regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine
himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own
practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of
the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating
animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each
other when they came in contact with the more civilized.
If
one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius,
which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even
insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more
resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection
which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments
and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it
misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no
one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these
were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the
night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a
fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more
starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your
congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The
greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We
easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the
highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are
never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life
is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning
or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow
which I have clutched.
Yet, for my part, I was never unusually
squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if
it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the
same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater's heaven.
I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of
drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man;
wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a
morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of
tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be
intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and
Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who
does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? I have
found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long
continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But
to tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less particular
in these respects. I carry less religion to the table, ask no
blessing; not because I am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to
confess, because, however much it is to be regretted, with years I
have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these questions are
entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. My practice is
"nowhere," my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from
regarding myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved
refers when it says, that "he who has true faith in the
Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists," that is, is
not bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even
in their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has
remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege to "the time of
distress."
Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible
satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no share? I have
been thrilled to think that I owed a mental perception to the
commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the
palate, that some berries which I had eaten on a hillside had fed my
genius. "The soul not being mistress of herself," says
Thseng-tseu, "one looks, and one does not see; one listens, and
one does not hear; one eats, and one does not know the savor of
food." He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never
be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go
to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an
alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth
defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is
neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual
savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our
animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that
possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles, muskrats, and
other such savage tidbits, the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly
made of a calf's foot, or for sardines from over the sea, and they
are even. He goes to the mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot. The
wonder is how they, how you and I, can live this slimy, beastly life,
eating and drinking.
Our whole life is startlingly moral.
There is never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. Goodness
is the only investment that never fails. In the music of the harp
which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which
thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer for the Universe's
Insurance Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is
all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last grows
indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are
forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr for
some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate who does
not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the charming
moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way off, is
heard as music, a proud, sweet satire on the meanness of our
lives.
We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in
proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual,
and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in
life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it,
but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain
health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day I
picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and
tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor
distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means
than temperance and purity. "That in which men differ from brute
beasts," says Mencius, "is a thing very inconsiderable; the
common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully."
Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to
purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go
to seek him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over
the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the
Ved to be indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet
the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and
function of the body, and transmute what ill form is the grossest
sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which,
when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are
continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of
man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are
but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when
the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our
impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal
is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established.
Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the
inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are
such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to
beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very
life is our disgrace.
"How
happy's he who hath due place assigned
To his beasts and
disafforested his mind!
Can use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev'ry
beast,
And is not ass himself to all the rest!
Else man not
only is the herd of swine,
But he's those devils too which did
incline
Them to a headlong rage, and made them worse."
All sensuality
is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same
whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are
but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of
these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can
neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is attacked at
one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. If you would be
chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know
if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue,
but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which
we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth
ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish
habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one
who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes
without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the
sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is
hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that
you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny
yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many
systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the
reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to
the performance of rites merely.
I hesitate to say these
things, but it is not because of the subject- I care not how obscene
my words are- but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my
impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form of
sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we
cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In
earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken
of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo
lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how
to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like,
elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by
calling these things trifles.
Every man is the builder of a
temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely
his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all
sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood
and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features,
any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.
John Farmer sat at
his door one September evening, after a hard day's work, his mind
still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed, he sat down
to re-create his intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and
some of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not attended
to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a
flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of
his work; but the burden of his thought was, that though this kept
running in his head, and he found himself planning and contriving it
against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more
than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But
the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different
sphere from that he worked in, and suggested work for certain
faculties which slumbered in him. They gently did away with the
street, and the village, and the state in which he lived. A voice
said to him- Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life,
when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars
twinkle over other fields than these.- But how to come out of this
condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of
was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his
body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing
respect.
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