Henry David Thoreau's Walden and Reading

A recent reading of Walden by Henry David Thoreau has given me much to ponder. I will not attempt to encapsulate the entire work in a single blog entry. Instead, I may post several pieces on particular points that interested me.

Contained within Walden is the subpart titled “Reading”. I think that this segment is often overlooked, as it does not focus upon humanity’s relation to nature, a favorite point among those who enjoy discussing Thoreau.

In this section, Thoreau engages in a relatively strong, I would even describe it as scathing, attack upon folks for their reading habits. If the great American essayist were alive today, he would surely be labeled as the dreaded ”book snob”.

Thoreau decries spending ones life reading what he describes as “Little Things”.

He writes,

“I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.  “

From a personal point of view, but without engaging in the judgment of others, I am with Thoreau so far. I mostly try to avoid so-called easy reading. I do so mostly because I find such “light reading” to be boring.

Later, such easy reading, along with those who engage in it, are judged in harsher terms,

"We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.”

Personally, I feel that labeling folks who engage in an activity less seriously than I do as “feeble intellects” is not the best path to a comprehensive and balanced view of the world. Everyone finds substance in life in different places. If I am quick to judge an individual who engages in such reading, I may also be quick to overlook the fact that the person has developed artistic abilities that I have disused, or has developed other skills or virtues that I have neglected. For instance, a person who spends several hours a day listening to and studying classical music might be inclined to look down upon me as someone who is wasting time that could be spent exploring that particular art form. One needs to be very careful before being too critical concerning the intellectual and artistic pursuits of others. Everyone is different and exhibits varying strengths and weaknesses.

On the other hand, I find the above advice personally agreeable. As reading goes, it has been my lifelong, number one hobby. Thus, I look to books to challenge me. I want to mainly stick with “the best of literature,” and I wish to become acquainted with varying and diverse points of view as well as come to know both the wisdom and, I will add, folly contained in great books.

Thoreau spends several pages extolling the wisdom of the ages that can be discovered in books. He concludes that words can be life changing. They can open new vistas to us and make us better people. He believes that certain forms of wisdom are universal and, of course, can be accessed by reading great books.

The essayist goes on,

“It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. “

There is a widely discussed intellectual kinship between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau. Emerson heavily influenced Thoreau and both shared many common views. On the subject of books and great authors, however, I find that, at least in this essay, Thoreau is less suspicious and cautious about assimilating the thoughts and opinions of great authors. My commentary on Emerson’s view of books in the American Scholar is here. In that work Emerson seems to be making the case that one should be very wary of the “life changing” aspects of books. He is highly critical of accepting the ideas of even great intellects.

In contrast, Thoreau gives a lot of credit here to history’s esteemed writers and thinkers. Thoreau is right on the money in his assessment that issues such as life, death, the origins of ourselves and the universe, etc. have been tackled by many who have gone before us. Even if one reads very skeptically, there is a treasure trove of insightful, useful and just plain fascinating observations to discover. For those who have only dipped a toe into the water of such deep reading, I join Thoreau in encouraging a very deep plunge.

Thoreau devotes many more words and pages to both the issue of “easy reading” as well as to extolling the virtues of great and enlightening books. This segment is but one scrumptious, albeit slightly bitter, dish included in the feast that is Walden. Those very curious about this segment can easily find it in the work’s table of contents and read it in isolation. However, it very nicely fits into and complements the remainder of this great work.

Some Thoughts On The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The American Scholar by Ralph Waldo Emerson was a speech given at Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1837. It has become a vital edition to the author’s canon. The work is an exploration of Emerson’s view upon an ideal thinker. Like much of Emerson’s work, it consists of stirring prose, it is thought provoking and it peers into all sorts of aspects of the human condition.

I have been pondering just one of several main points that Emerson makes here. That is, what should the relationship be between the modern scholar and the books and the thoughts of humankind’s great intellects of the past. Emerson’s view is not all positive.

 “Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. Hence the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not as related to nature and the human constitution, but as making a sort of Third Estate with the world and soul. Hence the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bibliomaniacs of all degrees. This is bad; this is worse than it seems. Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world of value is the active soul,—the soul, free, sovereign, active. “

I think that it first bears noting what Emerson’s argument is not parallel one to the currently popular anti-intellectual, anti-reading sentiment that I often hear that disparages books and deep thinking in general. Emerson certainly respects books, knowledge and learning as “the best of things”. He is, however, highly critical as to how folks employ it.

Of course, in certain ways there is something to this point. I have known people who are too easily seduced by ideas. For instance, the person who reads a book on Buddhism and consequentially becomes a Buddhist for six months until they move on to some other philosophy, is not all that farfetched based upon my observations of certain individuals. I sense that Emerson is talking about more than this form of intellectual silliness however.

As I pointed out in my commentary on Self Reliance here, Emerson can be, and is in The American Scholar, maddeningly unspecific. Where does the line between inspiration, which he advocates, and acceptance of ideas, which he excoriates, exist? If I read an author, reject most of his or her ideas, but agree with a few of his or her ideas and consequentially embrace that small fraction of ideas, is this the “bad” that Emerson is referring to? If not, at what point do I become a dreaded ‘bookworm?” What if I modify an author’s ideas and make them my own? Emerson gives few clues as to exactly what he is talking about.

Emerson’s argument does fit very neatly into what is one of the main themes of his worldview. That is, that the individual needs to reject external sources of belief in favor of ideas that are self -formulated. Though most famously laid out in the appropriately tilted Self Reliance, this is a concept that appears over and over again in Emerson’s writings.

Later, in this speech, the consequences of a mind not forming its own ideas are laid out,

“On the other part, instead of being its [the mind] own seer, let it receive always from another mind its truth, though it were in torrents of light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self-recovery; and a fatal disservice is done. “

I have argued before that Emerson sometimes has a great idea that he takes too far. Some of the above rhetoric, especially the blanket statement about the negative connotation of “accepting views” seems to smack of this tendency. On the other hand, though I do not always agree with him, I respect Emerson’s tenacious insistence upon an individual’s intellectual independence. Ironically, I suppose such admiration coupled with disagreement is exactly what Emerson is arguing for here.

On a side note, I must comment that bibliomaniac is one of the most fun words that I have come across in a very long time. The Oxford Dictionary defines the word as someone who has a passionate enthusiasm for collecting and possessing books. Emerson seems to be using a slightly different definition here. I think that it is safe to say that quite a lot of my friends and readers fit the Oxford definition!

With all of this said, a measured reading of this prose yields some very sensible conclusions. If we accept ideas too uncritically, we will be taken in by all sorts of questionable and contradictory beliefs and philosophies. When taken in moderation, Emerson’s exhortations would actually do many folks a lot of good. Though I often quibble with his ideas, I can generally agree with this thinker’s very famous counsel to “Trust Thyself”!

More commentary on Emerson:

Nature

Self Reliance

Nature - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I like it when thinkers try to devise a theory of everything. Never mind whether or not I find the belief system to be valid or not, I just love to explore these little models of the Universe that great minds attempt to create.

In his essay Nature, Ralph Waldo Emerson sets out to create a new theology. He declares that it is time for modern man to break from the ideas of the past and formulate their own philosophies.

“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry  and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? “

Emerson next sets out to paint a picture of the ALL. At times his view is cryptic and difficult to envision. However, he ultimately creates the outlines of a coherent thought system. As per this Wikipedia entry, Nature put the philosophy known as Transcendentalism on the map.

Though at times murky as to his exact meaning, Emerson describes a world where spirituality is of prime importance.  Spirit flowing through people actually creates the external world. The matter that we see around us is a creation of the human mind and soul. People were once greater, but have somewhat lost touch with spirituality and nature, and have thus been diminished in relation to the world around us.

'Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was permeated and dissolved by spirit. He filled nature with his overflowing currents him sprang the sun and moon; from man, the sun; from woman, the moon. The laws of his mind, the periods of his actions externized themselves into day and night, into the year and the seasons. But, having made for himself this huge shell, his waters retired; he no longer fills the veins and veinlets; he is shrunk to a drop.” 

Reading this work, one is struck by how exuberant Emerson was about creation. The man absolutely loved existence. Virtue and good are woven into the fabric of reality.

“The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. “

Emerson devotes pages upon pages to the redemptive and sublime connection between people and nature. He criticizes science as well as the old religions as unnaturally separating humankind from the spiritual and natural. There are implications that the worship of a patriarchal God as opposed to appreciating the wonders of the natural world has stifled our existence. He eventually concludes that once humans have freed their thoughts from such rigid beliefs, that people will achieve amazing influence over their environment and a paradise on Earth will be achieved.

All this philosophizing is accomplished with prose that is often soaring as well as poetic. The above passages are just a few examples.

This is the first work that I have read by Emerson; however, I have read Walt Whitman extensively. Any reader of both will clearly see just how much Emerson was an influence upon the great American Poet. I highly recommend Emerson for the Whitman fan and vice a versa.

I cannot say that I agree with much of Emerson’s nuts and bolts view of the world. However, his enthusiasm and optimism about life, as well as the world around us, is inspiring and contagious. For those readers who, like myself, love exploring the “big ideas”, this is a must read.