Walking - Part 3 of 3
"The depth of his perception found likeness of law throughout Nature,
and I know not any genius who so swiftly inferred universal law from the
single fact." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
When looking over a list of men’s names in a foreign
language, as of military officers or of authors who have written on a particular
subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The name
Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than
a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and Russians
are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been named by the
child’s rigmarole?Iery-wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan. I see in
my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each the
herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own dialect. The names
of men are of course as cheap and meaningless as Bose and Tray,
the names of dogs.
Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy
if men were named merely in the gross as they are known. It would be necessary
only to know the genus, and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual.
We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army
had a name of his own—because we have not supposed that he had a character
of his own. At present our only true names are nick-names. I knew a boy
who from his peculiar energy was called "Buster" by his playmates, and
this rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some travellers tell us that
an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was
his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit.
It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned
neither name nor fame.
I will not allow mere names to make distinctions
for me, but still see men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot
make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains
in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage
in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see
that my neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William, or Edwin, takes
it off with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when asleep or in anger,
or aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by
some of his kin at such a time, his original wild name in some jaw-breaking
or else melodious tongue.
Here is this vast, savage, howling Mother of ours,
Nature lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children,
as the leopard,—and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society—to
that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort
of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility,
a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.
In society, in the best institutions of men it is
easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children,
we are already little men. Give mea culture which imports much muck from
the meadows, and deepens the soil, not that which trusts to heating manures,
and improved implements and modes of culture only.
Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of,
would grow faster both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting
up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance.
There may be an excess even of informing light.
Niepce,(1) a Frenchman, discovered
"actinism," that power in the sun’s rays which produces a chemical effect;
that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues of metal "are all
alike destructively acted upon during the hours of sunshine, and but for
provisions of nature no less wonderful, would soon perish under the delicate
touch of the most subtile of the agencies of the universe." But he observed
"that those bodies which underwent this change during the day-light possessed
the power of restoring themselves to their original conditions during the
hours of night, when this excitment was no longer influencing them." Hence
it has been inferred that "The hours of darkness are as necessary to the
inorganic creation, as we know night and sleep are to the organic kingdom."
Not even does the moon shine every night, but gives place to darkness.
I would not have every man nor every part of a man
cultivated, any more than I would have very acre of earth cultivated; part
will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only
serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future,
by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.
There are other letters for the child to learn than
those which Cadmus (2) invented.
The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knowledge?Gramatica
parda—tawny grammar—a kind of mother wit derived from that same leopard
to which I have referred.
We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge.(3) It is said
that Knowledge is power; and the like. Methinks there is equal need of
a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful
Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense; for what is most of our
boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which
robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge
is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long
years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers,—for what are the
libraries of science but files of newspapers?—a man accumulates a myriad
facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his
life he saunters abroad into the great Fields of thought, he as it were
goes to grass like a horse, and leaves all his harness behind in the stable.
I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes—Go
to grass. You have eaten hay long enough. The Spring has come with its
green crop. The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the
end of May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow
in the barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently the Society
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.
A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful,
while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless beside
being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with, he who knows nothing about
a subject, and what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing,—or
he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire
to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant.
The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.
I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite
than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency
of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that there are more
things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is
the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot
know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely
and with impunity in the face of the sun: [original text in Greek]
"You will not perceive that as perceiving a particular thing," say the
Chaldean Oracles.(4)
There is something servile in the habit of seeking
after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for
our convenience, but a sucessful life knows no law. It
is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where
we did not know before that we were bound. Live free, Child of the Mist
(5)—and with respect to knowledge we are all
children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty
to live is superior to all the laws both of heaven and earth, by virtue
of his relation to the Law-maker. "That is active duty," says the Vishnu
Purana,(6) "which is not for
our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation; all other duty
is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge, is only the cleverness
of an artist."
It is remarkable how few events or crises there are
in our histories; how little exercised we have been in our minds; how few
experiences we have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace
and rankly, though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity,—though
it be with struggle through long dark muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It
would be well if all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this
trivial comedy or farce. Christ, Dante, Bunyan,(7)
and others, appear to have been exercised in their minds more than we;—they
were subjected to a kind of culture such as our district schools and colleges
do not contemplate. Even Mahomet,(8)
though Christians may scream at his name, had a good deal more to live
for, aye and to die for than they have commonly.
When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one,
as perchance he is walking on a railroad, then indeed the cars go by without
his hearing them. But soon, by some inexorable law our life goes by and
the cars return.?
"Gentle breeze that wanderest unseen,
And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms
Traveller of the windy glens,
Why hast thou left my ear so soon?"
While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them
to Society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to
Nature men appear to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts,
lower than the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the
case of the animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape
there is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world
Kosmos [original text in Greek] Beauty—or Order, but we do not
see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious philological
fact.
For my part, I feel, that with regard to Nature,
I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world, into which I
make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance
to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper.(9)
Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will o¡¯ the
wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor fire-fly has
shown me the cause-way to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal
that we have never seen one of her features. The Walker in the familiar
fields which stretch around my native town, sometimes finds himself in
another land than is described in their owners¡¯ deeds, As it were in some
far away field on the confines of the actual Concord, where her jurisdiction
ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested.
These farms which I have myself surveyed, these bounds which I have set
up appear dimly still as through a mist; but they have no chemistry to
fix them; they fade from the surface of the glass; and the picture which
the painter painted stands out dimly from beneath. The world with which
we are commonly acquainted leaves no trace, and it will have no anniversary.
I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon.
I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine-wood.
Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble
hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining
family had seated there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown
to me; to whom the Sun was servant; who had not gone into society in the
village; who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure ground,
beyond through the wood, in Spaulding’s cranberry meadow. The pines furnished
them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; the
trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed
hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons
and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer’s cart path which leads
directly through their hall does not in the least put them out,—as the
muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They
never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbor,—notwithstanding
that I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing
can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms is simply a lichen.
I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of
the trees. They are of no politics. There was no
noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning.(10)
Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest
imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance
was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one
without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots and
excrescences embayed.
But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade
irrevocably out of my mind even now that I speak and endeavor to recall
them, and recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort
to recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their cohabitancy.
If it were not for such families as this I think I should move out of Concord.
We are accustomed to say in New England that few
and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for
them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man
from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste,—sold to feed
unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a
twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us.
In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the
landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal
or autumnal migration, but looking up, we are unable to detect the substance
of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned
to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and
Cochin (11) China grandeur. Those
gra-a-ate thoughts—those gra-a-ate men—you hear of.
We hug the earth—how rarely we mount! Methinks we
might elevate ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree at least.
I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine on
the top of a hill, and though I got well pitched I was well payed for it,
for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before,—so
much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot
of the tree for three score years and ten, and yet I certainly should never
have seen them. But, above all, I discovered around me,—it was near the
end of June, on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and
delicate red cone-like blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking
heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the topmost spire, and
showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court
week—and to farmers and lumber dealers, and wood-choppers and hunters,
and not one had ever seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star
dropped down! Tell of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops
of columns as perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature
has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward
the heavens, above men’s heads and unobserved by them. We see only the
flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed
their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer for
ages, as well over the heads of Nature’s red children, as of her white
ones. Yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them.
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present.
He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life
in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every
barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds
us that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits
of thought. His philosophy comes down to a more recent
time than ours. There is something suggested by it not in Plato
(12) nor the New Testament. It is a newer testament—the
Gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up
early, and kept up early, and to be where he is, is to be in season, in
the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of
the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world—healthiness
as of a spring burst forth—a new fountain of the Muses,(13)
to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave
laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since last
he heard that note?
The merit of this bird’s strain is in its freedom
from all plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter,
but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful
dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden side-walk on a Sunday—or
perchance a watcher in the house of mourning—I hear a cockerel crow far
or near, I think to myself there is one of us well at any rate, and with
a sudden gush return to my senses.
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November.
I was walking in a meadow the source of a small brook, when the sun at
last, just before setting, after a cold grey day, reached a clear stratum
in the horizon, and the softest brightest morning sun-light fell on the
dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon, and on
the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the hill-side, while our shadows stretched
long over the meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams.
It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and
the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a
paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary
phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and
ever an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest
child that walked there, it was more glorious still.
The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house
is visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities,
and perchance, as it has never set before,—where there is but a solitary
marsh hawk to have his wings guilded by it, or only a musquash looks out
from his cabin, and there is some little black-veined brook in the midst
of the marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying
stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass
and leaves, so softly and serenely bright—I thought I had never bathed
in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it.
The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary
of elysium,(14) and the sun on
our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman, driving us home at evening.
So we saunter toward the Holy Land; till one day
the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance
shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great
awakening light, so warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn.
Notes
1. Niepce, Joseph Nicéphore
(1765?1833) French chemist, made first photograph - back
2. In Greek mythology, Cadmus introduced
the alphabet to Greece - back
3. organization founded in Boston
in 1829 - back
4. character in a novel by Sir
Walter Scott - back
5. fragments of a poem said to
have been written by Persian prophet Zoroaster - back
6. Indian Sanskrit scripture -
back
7. John Bunyan (1628-1688) English
author of The Pilgrim's Progress - back
8. Mohammed or Muhammed (570-632)
Arab prophet who founded Islam -
back
9. 17th century maurauders who
hid in the bogs between England and Scotland - back
10. "Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin", Matthew 6-28 - back
11. Shanghai is in China, but Cochin
is in India - back
12. Plato (427?-347 B.C.) Greek
philosopher - back
13. in Greek mythology, goddesses
who preside over the arts and sciences - back
14. in Greek mythology, home of
the good after death - back
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