Student Name:________________________________ Date:________________Period:__________
TRANSCENDANTALISM STUDENT PACKET
Check
when
done!
Points
possible
Assignment
1
Transcendental Cover Page for Packet (Be Creative!)
5
2
Into the Mind of Emerson SGQs
(Comprehension & Analysis)
24
3
Pith & Profundity Emerson (15 Quotes)
15
4
Illustrated Emerson Quote
10
5
Into the Mind of Thoreau SGQs
(Comprehension & Analysis)
16
6
Pith & Profundity Thoreau (10 Quotes)
10
7
Thoreau Away Your Alarm Clocks (3 pages)
30
8
Transcendental Packet Active Reading
(Evidence of Active Reading & Annotation)
20
TOTAL
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
Points
earned
130
1
HOLT CHAPTER 2: AMERICAN ROMANTICISM p.179-206
INTO THE MIND OF EMERSON…from the Essays and The Oversoul
Thoughtfully craft responses to each of the following questions on a SEPARATE PIECE OF PAPER TYPED.
Use concrete evidence from the essays to fully develop your answers. Label the answers with the title at
the top of this page and include in your Transcendentalism Packet.
1. What would be Emerson’s reaction if you gave him an expensive gold ring for his birthday? Justify your
answer with evidence from his essay on gifts. What do you think he would consider a more appropriate gift
(from you)? Gifts
2. According to his essay “Manners,” what are two qualities of an Emerson “gentleman”? Manners
3. In his essay “Nature,” Emerson says that our attitude toward the stars would change if they appeared only
once every thousand years. What point is Emerson trying to make about nature? Nature
4. Emerson wrote in his essay “Nature” that “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” What does he mean
in this statement and how does it demonstrate Emerson’s Romantic beliefs? Nature
5. “To speak truly,” Emerson says, “few adult persons can see nature.” Emerson sees children as having the
advantage over adults when it comes to experiencing nature directly. Do you agree with Emerson? What
do people seem to lose as they grow older? Nature
6. According to Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance,” when is a person relieved and happy? Who or what should
every person trust? Self-Reliance
7. What is the opposite or “aversion” of self-reliance? According to Emerson what must a person be? SelfReliance
8. One of Emerson’s most celebrated lines is “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” What
does that quotable comment mean? Give an example from your own experience or “current affairs: that
clearly illustrates this idea. Self-Reliance
9. Why is it often true that “to be great is to be misunderstood”? Provide a thoughtful example to illustrate
your opinion. Self-Reliance
10. In his essay, “Character,” Emerson defines immorality in very simple terms. What is immorality in his eyes?
Character
11. What do you think of Emerson’s definition of friendship? Explain the notion that “a friend is a sane man
who exercises not my ingenuity, but me”. Friendship
12. How does transcendentalism fit and conflict with most organized religions? Include specific examples that
point out similarities and differences. The Oversoul
PITH & PROFUNDITY: From the essays of Emerson, pull out a minimum of 15 pithy pronouncements
(you must include at least one from each of the seven essays) that you would like to preserve long
after you turn in the old lit book. Be sure that the excerpt can stand alone as a pearl of wisdom, a
gem of knowledge, a dialectical diamond, an elegant emerald…you get the picture. Note the source
must follow each quote in some consistent format. Choose your favorite Emerson quote and
illustrate or color your own mental landscape however you see fit…any attempt to beautify would
please the old master…(that’s Ralph, not me).
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
2
INTO THE MIND OF THOREAU…from Walden
Thoughtfully craft responses to each of the following questions on a SEPARATE PIECE OF PAPER TYPED.
Use concrete evidence from the essays to fully develop your answers. Label the answers with the title at
the top of this page and include in your Transcendentalism Packet.
1. For what purpose did Thoreau go to Walden?
2. How does Thoreau answer the question implied in the title, “Where I Lived and What I Lived For”?
3. What does Thoreau mean when he says “Simplify, simplify, simplify”? Do you think he has a valid point
here? Provide specific examples in your response.
4. What arguments does Thoreau present in “Solitude” to demonstrate that he is not lonely in his isolated
situation? What kind of space does he suggest really isolates human beings?
5. In his “Conclusion” what does Thoreau say he learned in his experiment?
6. What do you think is the lesson of the fable of the apple wood table at the conclusion of Walden?
7. What do you think Thoreau means in his final paragraph by the words, “Only that day dawns to which we
are awake”?
8. Find at least two passages from the essays that you think pertain to life today. Describe the situations or the
people each quotation might apply to or appeal to.
PITH & PROFUNDITY: From the excerpts of Walden, pull out a minimum of ten pithy pronouncements
to add to your quote collection. The source must follow each quote in some consistent format.
THOREAU AWAY YOUR ALARM CLOCKS
When Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond, he said, “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 I
had not lived.” He went on (in a particularly powerful phrase) to state, “I wanted to live deep and suck out all
the marrow of life…” In a fashion inspired by Thoreau’s stay at Walden, consider how you would “live
deliberately” if given the opportunity to spend one year of life in utter control of your existence. Begin the year
after high school graduation. You may not enroll in a school (though you may audit or sit in on classes if you
wish) or take full-time employment (though you may decide to try your hand at various part-time jobs or
volunteer in order to gain experience). You will be supplied with the money necessary to finance your year
(some of you will spend a fortune; others will simplify…), and no obligations will be placed upon you. The only
requirement is that you make the most of this time, using it to learn what life has to teach in whatever corner of
the globe you find yourself (finding yourself may be a transcendental bonus as well…). Think about this
carefully; ask yourself some hard questions; consider what you would like to see, do, learn, and experience in
order to become fully and transcendentally ALIVE! When you are ready to write, describe your fabulous
plan and its potential for personal benefit. You may use Thoreauisms if you find them appropriate.
Because this grand design will encompass a most unique year of existence, I expect some thoroughness and
enthusiasm in your writing. There is, of course, no set length, but you must let yourself go on a ways…Right
on? Ride on…
Type your description and include original title and assignment title. Include your typed response in your
Transcendentalism Packet.
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
3
AMERICAN ROMANTICISM & TRANSCENDENTALISM
RALPH WALDO EMERSON & HENRY DAVID THOREAU p.179-206
CHARACTERISTIC OF AMERICAN ROMANTICISM
Ø Values feeling and intuition over reason
Ø Places faith in inner experience and the power of the
imagination
Ø Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks
unspoiled nature
Ø Prefers youthful innocence to education
sophistication
Ø Champion individual freedom and the worth of the
individual
Ø
Ø
Ø
Ø
Ø
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AMERICAN ROMANTIC HERO
Ø Youthful or possesses youthful qualities
Ø Innocent and pure of purpose
Ø Possesses a sense of individual honor
Ø
Ø
Reflects on nature’s beauty as path to spiritual/moral
development
Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and
distrusts progress
Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the
supernatural realm and the inner working of the
imagination
Sees poetry as the highest expression of the
imagination
Finds inspiration in myth, legend and folklore
Knowledgeable about people & life based on deep,
intuitive understanding
Loves nature and quests for higher truth in the
natural world
TRANSCENDENTAL VIEW OF THE WORLD
Ø Everything in the world is a reflection of the Divine Soul.
Ø Everything in the natural world is a doorway to the spiritual or ideal world.
Ø People can use their intuition to behold God’s spirit revealed in nature or in their own souls.
Ø Self-reliance and individualism must outweigh external authority and blind conformity to custom and tradition.
Ø Spontaneous feelings and intuitions are superior to deliberate intellectualism and rationality.
FAST FACTS: Philosophical Views & Social Influences
Ø Romanticism celebrates feelings over reason, imagination over science, and nature over civilization.
Ø Romantics champion freedom and the development of the individual spirit.
Ø Romantic writers called the Transcendentalists believe that everything in the physical world is a reflection of the Divine Soul.
Ø The Dark Romantics were writers who explored the conflict between good and evil, the effects of guilt and sin, and the
destructive underside of appearances.
Ø Reform movements began for women’s right, child labor, temperance, and the abolition of slavery involving many Americans
in social activism
Ø Utopian planners attempt to turn idealized visions of human potential into practical realities.
TRANSCENDENTALISM:
The basic assumption of transcendentalism refers to the idea that in determining the ultimate reality of God, the
universe, the self, and the other important matters, one must transcend, or go beyond, every day human experiences in
the physical world, thus allowing the intuition to become the means for a conscious union between the individual
psyche and the Oversoul, life-force, prime mover, God…
DEFINITIONS:
Transcend-- to rise above or go beyond; overpass; exceed.
Transcendental-- being beyond ordinary or common experience, thought, or belief; supernatural.
Transcendentalism-- a philosophy emphasizing the intuitive and spiritual above the empirical.
BASIC PREMISES:
1. An individual is the spiritual center of the universe—and in an individual we can find the clue to nature, history, and
ultimately, the cosmos itself. It is not a rejection of the existence of God, but prefers to explain the individual and the world in
terms of that individual.
2. The structure of the universe literally duplicates the structure of the individual self—all knowledge, therefore, begins with
self-knowledge. This is similar to Aristotle’s dictum “know thyself.”
3. Nature is a living mystery, full of signs. Nature is symbolic and evolutionary. Nature is a symbol of self.
4. Individual virtue and happiness rely on self-realization which depends entirely on the blending of two opposing forces:
a. The self-transcending tendency—a desire to embrace the world, to know and become one with the world.
b. The self-asserting tendency—the desire to withdraw, remain unique and separate.
5. The ideal condition is an ability to combine the two opposing tendencies—reason and understanding—into a beautiful, selfactualized human.
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
4
ESSAYS BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1803-1882
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) “I gain my point, gain all points,” said Emerson, “whenever I can reach the
young man with any statement that teaches him his own worth.” As lecturer and writer, Emerson inspired
generations of the young, teaching them to search for greatness within themselves. Although he was a notably shy
man, his presence on the lecture platform was remarkable. It was from the dull, the ordinary, and the mediocre that
Emerson rescued his listeners. He said, “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction
that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion…The
power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know
until he has tried…Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” Emerson continued in a now famous essay
Self Reliance, “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think…it is easy in the world to live after the
world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
Emerson called on all who would listen to respond from the very depths of their natures to every different situation.
He condemned systems of thought which forced men into intellectual conformity. His championship of inconsistency
has led some critics to call him a shallow thinker, but they overlook the fact that Emerson was not seeking to
formulate a precisely logical system. Instead he sought to arouse men to their own capacities and to make each man
recognize that there was within himself something of God.
Emerson was a major American poet, philosopher and center of the American Transcendental movement. As an
essayist Emerson was a master of style. He encouraged American scholars to break free of European influences and
create a new American culture.
Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Most of his ancestors were clergymen as was his father. He was
educated in Boston and Harvard, like his father, and graduated in 1821. In 1825 he began to study at the Harvard
Divinity School and next year he was licensed to preach by the Middlesex Association of Ministers. In 1829 Emerson
married Ellen Louisa Tucker, who died in 1831 from consumption. Emerson became sole pastor at the Second
Unitarian Church of Boston in 1830. Three years later he had a crisis of faith, finding that he "was not interested" in the
rite of Communion. Emerson's controversial views caused his resignation. In 1835 Emerson married Lydia Jackson and
settled with her at the east end of the village of Concord, where he then spent the rest of his life.
Emerson's first book, Nature, a collection of essays, appeared when he was 33. Emerson emphasized individualism
and rejected traditional authority. He also believed that people should try to live a simple life in harmony with nature
and with others. His lectures 'The American Scholar' (1837) and 'Address at Divinity College' (1838) challenged the
Harvard intelligentsia and warned about a lifeless Christian tradition. Harvard ostracized him for many years, but his
message attracted young disciples, who joined the informal Transcendental Club (established in 1836).
Gifts
1 It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay, and
ought to go into chancery, and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency, which involves in some sort all the
population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year, and other times, in bestowing
gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the
choosing. If, at any time, it comes into my head, that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to
give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud
assertion that a ray of beauty out values all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat
stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a work-house. Nature does not cocker us: we
are children, not pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet
these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we love flattery,
even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted.
Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed? Fruits are
acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attached to them. If
a man should send to me to come a hundred miles to visit him, and should set before me a basket of fine summer
fruit, I should think there was some proportion between the labor and the reward.
2 For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day, and one is glad when an imperative leaves him
no option, since if the man at the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether you could procure him a
paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a man eat bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is
always a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal
dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at
great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the office of punishing him. I can think of
many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies. Next to things of necessity, the rule for a gift, which one of my
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
5
friends prescribed, is, that we might convey to some person that which properly belonged to his character, and was
easily associated with him in thought. But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part barbarous. Rings
and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me.
Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and
shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores
society in so far to its primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an
index of his merit. But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something, which does not
represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a false
state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of blackmail…
3 He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are
unbecoming. Some violence, I think, is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry
when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not
supported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and
see that I love his commodity, and not him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me,
correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All
his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and
wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts.
This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not
at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, I rather sympathize
with the beneficiary, than with the anger of my lord Timon. For, the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is
continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off without injury
and heart-burning, from one who has had the ill luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business, this of being
served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I so admire
in the Buddhist, who never thanks, and who says, "Do not flatter your benefactors." …
4 I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must
not affect to prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. There are persons, from whom we
always expect fairy tokens; let us not cease to expect them. This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal
rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold. The best of hospitality and of generosity is also not
in the will, but in fate. I find that I am not much to you; you do not need me; you do not feel me; then am I thrust out
of doors, though you proffer me house and lands. No services are of any value, but only likeness. When I have
attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick, — no more. They eat your service like
apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.
from Manners
The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any
manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions. Beyond this fact of truth and real force,
the word denotes good-nature or benevolence: manhood first, and then gentleness. The popular notion certainly
adds a condition of ease and fortune; but that is a natural result of personal force and love, that they should possess
and dispense the goods of the world…
Nature
1 To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read
and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from
those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made
transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the
streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe
and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every
night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
2 The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects
make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance.
Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never
became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much
as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
3 When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the
integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
6
wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of
some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them
owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon, which no man has, but he whose eye can integrate all the
parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.
4 To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial
seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of
nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of
infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the
presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, -- he is my creature, and
maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and
season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the
mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning
piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight,
under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect
exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at
what period so ever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a
decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a
thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no
disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, -- my head
bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The
name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or
servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find
something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant
line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature…
5 The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and
the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the
storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought
or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.
6 Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both.
It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the
same scene, which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with
melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the heat of his own
fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear
friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.
from Self-Reliance
1 …There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is
suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no
kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to
him to till. The power, which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor
does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him,
and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where
one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that
divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be
faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has
put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a
deliverance, which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.
2 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the
society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves
childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their
heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. These are the voices, which we hear in solitude,
but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world…The virtue in most requests is conformity. Self-reliance
is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
3 Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by
the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own
mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world…
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
7
4 A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With
consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak
what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it
contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be
misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo,
and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood…
Character
1 There is this eternal advantage to morals, that, in the question between truth and goodness, the moral cause of the
world lies behind all else in the mind. It was for good; it is to good, that all works. Surely it is not to prove or show the
truth of things, - that sounds a little cold and scholastic, - no, it is for benefit, that all subsists. As we say in our modern
politics, catching at last the language of morals, that the object of the State is the greatest good of the greatest
number, - so, the reason we must give for the existence of the world is, that it is for the benefit of all being.
2 Moral implies freedom and will. The will constitutes the man. He has his life in Nature, like a beast: but choice is born
in him ; here is he that chooses ; here is the Declaration of Independence, the July Fourth of zoology and astronomy.
He chooses, as the rest of the creation does not. But will, pure and perceiving is not willfulness. When a man, through
stubbornness, insists to do this or that, something absurd or whimsical, only because he will, he is weak; he blows
with his lips against the tempest, he claims the incoming ocean with his cane. It were an unspeakable calamity if any
one should think he had the right to impose a private will on others. That is the part of a striker, an assassin. All
violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power but the absence of power.
3 Moral is the direction of the will on universal ends. He is immoral who is acting to any private end. He is moral, - we
say it with Marcus Aurelius and with Kant, -whose aim or motive may become a universal rule, binding on all
intelligent beings; and with Vauvenargues, the mercenary sacrifice of the public good to a private interest is the
eternal stamp of vice."
4 All the virtues are special directions of this motive; justice is the application of this good of the whole to the affairs of
each one ; courage is contempt of danger in the determination to see this good of the whole enacted ; love is delight
in the preference of that benefit redounding to another over the securing of our own share; humility is a sentiment of
our insignificance when the benefit of the universe is considered.
5 If from these external statements we seek to come a little nearer to the fact, our first experiences in moral as in
intellectual nature force us to discriminate a universal mind, identical in all men. Certain biases, talents, executive
skills, are special to each individual; but the high, contemplative, all-commanding vision, the sense of Right and
Wrong, is alike in all. Its attributes are self-existence, eternity, intuition and command. It is the mind of the mind. We
belong to it, not it to us. It is in all men, and constitutes them men. In bad men it is dormant…it exists underneath
whatever vices and errors. We can only mark, one by one, the perfections, which it combines in every act. It admits of
no appeal, looks to no superior essence. It is the reason of things.
from Friendship
1 …We over-estimate the conscience of our friend. His goodness seems better than our goodness, his nature finer, his
temptations less. Every thing that is his, — his name, his form, his dress, books, and instruments, — fancy enhances.
Our own thought sounds new and larger from his mouth…
2 Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, half knows
that she is not verily that which he worships; and in the golden hour of friendship, we are surprised with shades of
suspicion and unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he shines, and afterwards worship
the form to which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not respect men as it respects
itself…
3 A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a
man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second
thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one
chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank,
that being permitted to speak truth, as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At
the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by
compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds…But
to most of us society shows not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To stand in true relations with men in a false
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age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not? We can seldom go erect. Almost every man we meet requires some civility, —
requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not
to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my
ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entertainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend,
therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with
equal evidence to my own, behold now the semblance of my being, in all its height, variety, and curiosity, reiterated
in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
from The Over-Soul
1 …We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE…
2 All goes to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like
the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is
not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they
lie, — an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed. From within or from behind, a light shines through
us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. A man is the facade of a temple wherein
all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not,
as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he
is, would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is
genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love…
3 Let man, then, learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with
him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there. But if he would know what the
great God speaketh, he must 'go into his closet and shut the door,' as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest
to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the accents of other men's devotion. Even
their prayers are hurtful to him, until he have made his own. Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers.
Whenever the appeal is made — no matter how indirectly — to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that
religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping thought to him never counts his company…
4 I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the
great soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which
change and pass. More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I become public and human in
my regards and actions. So come I to live in thoughts, and act with energies, which are immortal. Thus revering the
soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that "its beauty is immense," man will come to see that the world is the
perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he will learn that there is no
profane history; that all history is sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. He will
weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is
base and frivolous in his life, and be content with all places and with any service he can render. He will calmly front
the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath already the whole future in the
bottom of the heart.
from WALDEN BY HENRY DAVID THOREAU 1817-1862
Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, on a farm outside of Concord, Massachusetts. He was the third of four
children born to an average family that claimed little social recognition. Although his grandfather had been successful, his
own father lost most of his inheritance. He finally became a pencil manufacturer, a business that adequately provided for
the family. A bright and eager child, Thoreau was educated first at Concord Academy and then at Harvard.
Thoreau's education at Harvard trained him to become a lawyer, a minister, a businessman, or a teacher; however, none of
these professions appealed to him for long. He tried for a while to teach in Concord, but found that he was against any
system that allowed corporal punishment and prevented an individual from growing creatively. As a result, he resigned and
opened his own private school with his brother John. In 1841, the school was closed, due to John's poor health. Although
Thoreau's teaching career was over, he never stopped teaching himself. He acquired a great knowledge of literature from
Greece, Germany, and Elizabethan England; he also gained a working knowledge of Hindu classics. Because of his interest in
literature, Thoreau met Ralph Waldo Emerson, who had just come to Concord from Boston. While Emerson inspired
Thoreau, Thoreau impressed Emerson. The two became fast friends, to the degree that Thoreau moved to Emerson's
household and became his handyman. He lived there from 1841 to 1843.
During the early 1840's, Thoreau experienced two great losses. In 1839, he met and fell in love with the only love of his life,
Ellen Sewall. When he proposed to her, Ellen's father, a Unitarian minister, forbid his daughter to marry Thoreau, whom he
considered to be a radical. Thoreau was crushed when she married another man in 1844. He never saw Ellen again after her
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
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marriage, and he never had another romantic relationship with a woman. Equally as devastating to Thoreau was the loss of
his brother John in 1842. Since John's ill health had forced Thoreau to close the private school where he taught, he accepted
a position in 1943 as a tutor on Staten Island, near New York City. There he began to write, however, he missed New
England and returned within the year.
Thoreau worked regularly and with commitment on a journal that he maintained until the end of his life. Although he
preferred writing to any career, whenever he needed money he earned it by making pencils or surveying land. Since he was
easily satisfied with the barest essentials of life, he never felt compelled to seek a regular career for himself in order to amass
a fortune. He helped Emerson to edit the Transcendentalists' magazine, The Dial; he also helped his friend in the
publication of his early works. Despite the great regard Thoreau had for Emerson, he managed to remain independent in his
thought and action. When Emerson made attempts to introduce Thoreau to high-society, Thoreau made no effort to join in.
Thoreau believed in simplicity and living a non-cluttered existence. As early as 1840, before his two-year stay with Emerson,
Thoreau entertained the idea of living alone in a serene setting in Nature. In 1845, he borrowed an axe and set out for
Walden Pond to live on a piece of land owned by Emerson. He built himself a small cabin in which to live and cultivated land
to grow vegetables for his meals. During his stay at Walden Pond, he closely observed Nature and her many creatures and
plants. He would also walk into Concord in order to make comparisons to his life in the wild to the more civilized existence
of town living. In his journal, he kept a daily record of all of his observations and musings. He used this journal as the basis of
his book, Walden.
Thoreau strongly believed in the individual. As a result, he became actively involved with the anti-slavery movement. His
stance as an active Abolitionist brought him some limelight in the political sphere. He also became known for his opposition
to any form of institutionalization and his belief that no individual, no matter his color or his status in life, should be
sacrificed for the sake of society. Thoreau published a pamphlet on "Civil Disobedience," voicing his opposition to the
government's oppression over individuals.
Consumed with tuberculosis, Thoreau died on May 6, 1862, at Concord. His death, at the age of forty-five, went largely
unnoticed, with merely a handful of literary personalities paying tribute to him. Even Emerson did not do Thoreau justice,
for he took much undue credit for Thoreau's work. In actuality, Thoreau remained virtually an unknown writer for at least
half a century after his death. In the early twentieth century, however, he became recognized as an author, and Walden
became a popular book. Today this masterpiece of non-fiction is acknowledged as a classic piece of American literature.
from Where I Lived and What I Lived For
1 …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 practice 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."
2 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. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its
boundary
3 forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with
all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and
overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless
expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for
them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast.
Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride
thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is
a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to
tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
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heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the
railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an
Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over
them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some
have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man
that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the
cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for
every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get
up again.
from Solitude
4 ...Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the
house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight
ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving
northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to
keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its
protection. In one heavy thunder-shower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the pond, making a very
conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches
wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and
beholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of the harmless
sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be
nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such -- This whole earth which
we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the
breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the
Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which
separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two
minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the
post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where
men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to
issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures,
but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar....
from Conclusion
5 …I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live,
and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular
route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door
to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may
have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men;
and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how
deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and
on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below
now.
6 I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and
endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will
put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish
themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense,
and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the
universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If
you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations
under them…
7 Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the
ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a
man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let
every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.
8 Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep
pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
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hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak.
Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any
reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of
blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above,
as if the former were not?...
9 The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the
parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry
land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its
freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug
which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer’s kitchen for sixty
years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts -- from an egg deposited in the living tree many years
earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks,
hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened
by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many
concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and
living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb -- heard perchance
gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board -- may unexpectedly
come forth from amidst society’s most trivial and hand selled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!
10 I do not say that John or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of
time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we
are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
ENOCHS JUNIOR CURRICULUM—CCS RI 1, 2, 6 Adapted from HOLT Literature & Language Fifth Course
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