The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
Thoreau's Politics of the Upright Man
Author(s): Richard Drinnon
Source: The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Autumn, 1962), pp. 126-138
Published by: The Massachusetts Review, Inc.
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THOREAU'S
POLITICS
OF THE
UPRIGHT MAN
RICHARD DRINNON
as to an enchanted
I hie me to Greece
then proved himself
in
and
declared
his
Journal
Thoreau
ground,"
as good as his word in his lecture on "The Rights & Duties of the
to Government."
There was not a major
Individual
in relation
of anarchism on whom Thoreau
figure in the classical background
did not draw upon in some way. Though he may have been unaware
of Zeno's
strictures against Plato's omnicompetent
state, he as
use
his
of paradox,
honored
Stoic
for
his
the
individualism,
suredly
in transcendent
universal
laws, certainly his
perhaps his belief
observed with delight,
high, play low," Thoreau
serenity?"play
all the same with the Stoic." He read
"rain, sleet, or snow?it's
as an
Ovid with pleasure, used a quotation from theMetamorphoses
on
his
and
Merrimack
and
for
Week
the
Concord
Rivers,
epigraph
must have been well aware of Ovid's nostalgia
for a time when
there was no state and "everyone of his own will kept faith and did
the right." But he found the most dramatic presentation
of liber
of Sophocles.
tarian views in the Antigone
In this great drama of
rebellion the central conflict was between the spirited Antigone
and
a not unkind man who had just ascended
the
her uncle Creon,
a little already by his power, blinded
throne of Thebes. Corrupted
more than a little by bureaucratic
definitions of right and wrong,
reasons of state as justification
for his
and advancing
specious
forbade the burial of the dead traitor Polynices.
actions, Creon
Driven by love for her slain brother and more by her awareness of
the unambiguous
commands of the gods to bury the dead, Antigone
defied Creon's order. When
she was brought before the king, she
avowed
her
defiance:
proudly
"In
imagination
these to me, nor
For it was not Zeus who proclaimed
it was not they
Justice who dwells with the gods below;
these laws among men. Nor did I think
who established
were so strong, as, being a mortal,
that your proclamations
to be able to transcend the unwritten and immovable
laws
but
of the gods. For not something now and yesterday,
forever these live, and no one knows from what time they
appeared. I was not about to pay the penalty of violating
of any man.1
these to the gods, fearing the presumption
1
Thoreau's
139-40,
may
translations
prose
sturdy
with Gilbert
be compared
in
the Week,
Writings
verse
rhyming
Murray's
126
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I,
(1906),
translation
THOREAU'S POLITICS OF THE UPRIGHT MAN
the
lecture on the individual and the state, which became
as
later
and
Government"
to
Civil
first
"Resistance
essay printed
echoed An
Thoreau
under the famous title "Civil Disobedience,"
that "it costs me less in
lines in his admission
tigone's magnificent
to the State than it
every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience
that "they only can force
would to obey" and in his declaration
me who obey a higher
law than I." Like Sophocles'
heroine,
Thoreau made quite clear his rejection of the Periclean
argument
of the individual must be
of Creon that the highest responsibility
of a
to the state and his rejection of the later Platonic
assumption
man
laws
of
the
of
and
laws
the
the
between
pleasing harmony
a
was
his
in
belief
natural
Thoreau's
kernel
of
The
politics
gods.
or higher law; for the formulation of his essay on this subject, his
to the Greek tragedian was considerable.
indebtedness
Yet no single work provided Thoreau with his key concept.2 In
law still covered Massa
his day the doctrine of a fundamental
chusetts like a ground fog. It had survived the classical period, had
the eternal law of Aquinas,
the anti-papal
fundamental
become
and Locke,
had
law of Wycliffe,
and, through Calvin, Milton,
to furnish the colonists with their indis
flowed across the Atlantic
pensable "Word of God." The more secular emphasis of the eight
eenth century on the "unalienable Rights" possessed
by every in
little difference
in end result?
dividual in a state of nature made
In his
of Antigone
Allen
(London:
in the introduction,
Sophocles
of Greek
& Unwin,
seemed
37-38.
1941),
to have created
As Murray
remarked
the ideal virgin martyr
tragedy almost in spite of his intention; it is highly improbable
an anarchist
set out to create
Yet
she demonstrated
heroine.
unfor
a specific
of the possible
instance
gettably
gap between
justice and state law
and
owes
to those
are
the final
the
individual
laws which
responsibility
above
and beyond
of this world.
sense Antigone
the Cr?ons
In this ultimate
was
an anarchist
reason
heroine?with
Nevinson
this out
pointed
Henry
in Freedom
years ago in an essay on "An Anarchist
(London:
Play," Essays
209-14.
1911),
Duckworth,
2
to the careful
Thoreau:
researches
of Ethel
Thanks
The Quest
Seybold,
and
Yale
the Classics
(New Haven:
Press,
16, 17, 24,
1951),
University
at Harvard
that Thoreau
read the Antigone
and probably
66, 75, we know
once at the time he was working
on the dan
twice thereafter,
up his lecture
and once
in the 1850's. Unfortunately
Miss
gers of civil obedience
Seybold
overstates
her case by making
the Antigone
for one
"probably
responsible
section
of Thoreau's
and pubHc
whole
From
it must
thought
expression.
come his concept
have
of the divine
to the civil
law as superior
law, of hu
man
than
I say "unfortunately,"
her
because
right as greater
right."
legal
overstatement
some
has allowed
to dismiss
students
her valid
with
points
was merely
fatuous
an "involuntary
that Thoreau
rather
pronouncements
a "romanticist"
that he was
all this means.
by nature?whatever
classicist,"
That Thoreau
could find plenty
of "romance"
in the revels
of the great god
the mysticism
and the naturalness
of Orpheus,
of Homer
seems
clear
Pan,
one major
to me.
In any event,
for "Civil Disobedience"
was
inspiration
first presented
441 B.C., well
about
in advance
of ?tienne
Sophocles'
work,
sur la Servitude
de Bo?tie's
Discourse
in 1577 and
Voluntaire,
published
as the earliest
source
L. Tinker,
New
York
suggested
important
by Edward
Times
Book Review,
1942.
29 March
that he
127
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RICHARD DRINNON
at least in doctrine, for all along men had thought
little difference
it natural for a higher law to be the basis for legislation.
In nine
the existence
Massachusetts
of a fundamental,
teenth-century
and Garrison,
higher law was accepted by radicals such as Alcott
as
such
liberals
William
and
Ellery Channing,
by
by conservatives
such as Justice Joseph Story. These older countrymen
of Thoreau
were joined by Emerson, whose essay on "Politics," published five
had a more direct influence
years before "Civil Disobedience,"
on the young rebel. To be sure, Emerson
the crass
approached
of
Kent
in
Chancellor
law"
Toryism
by attach
discussing
"higher
ing it to the power of property. But Emerson was usually much
his worst he could sound like an early incarnation of
better?at
his lines on wealth and property would
Bruce Barton?than
sug
gest; most of "Politics" was on the higher ground of a radical Jef
fersonianism:
Hence
the less government we have the better?the
fewer
laws and the less confided power. The antidote
to this
abuse of formal government
is the influence of private
the appearance
character, the growth of the Individual...
of the wise man; of whom
the existing government
is, it
must be owned, but a shabby imitation....
To educate
the wise man the State exists, and with the appearance
of
the wise man the State expires. The appearance
of char
acter makes
the State unnecessary.
The wise man is the
State.3
Emerson
even averred
that "good men must
not obey
the laws too
well."
The similarity of Emerson's
point of view and even his language
to Thoreau's must be clear to anyone who has
carefully read "Civil
Disobedience."
where
he
did
he
when
could
Living
did, Thoreau
hardly have escaped the doctrine of a higher law. It was hardly
that all the most notable American
fortuitous
an
individualist
archists?Josiah
Ezra Heywood,
William
B. Greene,
Warren,
Joshua K. Ingalls, Stephen Pearl Andrews,
Lysander
Spooner, and
Tucker?came
from Thoreau's
home
state of Massa
Benjamin
chusetts and were his contemporaries.
the development
of
Tying
to native traditions and conditions,
American
anarchism
Tucker
uttered only a little white exaggeration when he claimed that he and
his fellow anarchists were "simply unterrified
Jeffersonian
demo
crats."4
3
The Complete
Modern
(New York:
Essays
431.
Library,
1940),
4
in Rudolf
Pioneers
Rocker,
Freedom
of American
Quoted
(Los Angeles:
Rocker
Publications
150. A more
recent
Committee,
1949),
and helpful
anarchism
is James
J. Martin,
Men
study of early American
the
against
Illinois:
State
Adrian
Allen
(DeKalb,
The
native Ameri
Associates,
1953).
128
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THOREAU'S POLITICS OF THE UPRIGHT MAN
once re
the doctrine of higher law, as Benjamin Wright
anarchism.
to
leads
True, but this
marked,
logically
philosophical
the warning note that the logic
without
truth can be misleading
covenants can lead to
has to be followed out to the end. Half-way
in a
for instance, believed
something very different. John Cotton,
came
on
the
Massa
down
the
side
and
of
higher law, yet
authority
believed no less in a higher
chusetts establishment; Roger Williams
law, yet came down on the side of freedom and the individual.
in the
Like all ideas, that of a higher law could become a weapon
lex aeterna
hands of groups and institutions. For Thomas Aquinas
meant the supremacy of the church, for Thomas Hobbes
the "Law
the supremacy of the state. For Jefferson and
of Nature" meant
and the establishment
of a
revolution
Paine, natural law meant
counter state. But for Thoreau
it meant no supremacy of church
over state or vice versa, or of one state over another, or of one
rather the logical last step of indi
group over another. It meant
vidual action. Belief in higher law plus practice of individual direct
that Conscience,
if that
action equal anarchism. "I must conclude
in the Week, "was not given us
be the name of it," wrote Thoreau
From Antigone
to Bronson
for no purpose, or for a hindrance."
and Benjamin Tucker,
the individuals who acted
Alcott, Thoreau,
on the imperatives of their consciences,
"cost what it may," were
Thus
anarchists.5
2
So much for the main sources and the master pillars of Thor
I have argued that in those crucial matters
eau's political position.
it added up to anarchism.
in which expediency was not applicable,
this made him a workaday
But the question of whether
anarchist
lands us in the middle of a tangle. Was Thoreau
an
individ
really
can
were
anarchists
shared with Thoreau
Yankee
characteristic:
yet another
they
all members
of an entrepreneurial
was
middle-class
which
professional
a
on
to
based
and
Not
trade.
economy
integral
relatively
simple
farming
tended
to assume
that the interests
of all would
be best
unnaturally
they
were
if
left
the
individual
to pursue
free
self-in
his
promoted
absolutely
terest. That
is to say, just as they developed
law doctrine
to its logical
higher
so did they take laissez
faire theory beyond
to advo
conclusion,
the liberals
cate a marketplace
without
controls.
Thoreau
literally
political
Fortunately
did not join these anarchists
in their preoccupation
with
currency
manipula
economic
from being more
Aside
tion, free banking,
competition.
interesting,
cut for himself
the trail Thoreau
lead
to
somewhere.
promised
5
followed
Thoreau's
and refused
to pay the poll
In 1875 Tucker
example
he was
tax of the town of Princeton,
in Worcester
Massachusetts;
imprisoned
Men
a short while
for his refusal?see
the State,
against
Martin,
pp. 203-04.
a habit
in the area. Three
become
It had almost
Thoreau
years before
spent
was
arrested
in jail, Alcott
for not paying
his poll
his night
tax. Thoreau
was probably
influenced
and by the civil disobedience
by his example
agita
tion of William
"'Civil
manities
Lloyd Garrison
Disobedience':
VII
Review,
Thoreau's
(Winter
and his followers?see
Attack
1952-53),
upon
35-42.
Wendell
Relativism,"
129
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Western
Glick,
Hu
RICHARD DR1NNON
defined
ualist, an anarchist, or both, or neither? Emma Goldman
anarchism as "the philosophy
of a new social order based on liberty
in
law" and once spent an evening
unrestricted
by man-made
Concord vainly trying to persuade Franklin Sanborn that under this
definition Thoreau was an anarchist. Joseph Wood Krutch doubts
that Thoreau
for any social order, old
felt a direct responsibility
or new, and stresses his "defiant individualism."6
Sherman Paul,
on the other hand laments that "one of the most persistent
errors
never
that
Thoreau
has
been
is
concerning
sufficiently dispelled
that Thoreau was an anarchical
individualist."7
Still, "Thoreau
was not an anarchist but an individualist,"
argues John Haynes
Holmes.8
The tangle becomes
impassable with Paul's additional
observation
that Thoreau
to government
"was not objecting
but
to what we now call the State."
There are two main reasons for this muddle. Thoreau was him
self partially responsible. His sly satire, his liking for wide margins
for his writing,
and his fondness for paradox provided
ammuni
tion for widely divergent
of
"Civil
Disobedience."
interpretations
Thus, governments
being but expedients, he looks forward to a day
when men will be prepared
for the motto:
"That government
is
best which governs not at all." The reader proceeds
through some
lines highly
critical of the American
to be
government,
only
in
the
third
sweet
the
reasonable
brought up sharp,
paragraph, by
ness of the author: "But, to speak practically and as a citizen, un
like those who call themselves no-government
men, I ask for, not
at once no government,
Those
but at once a better government."
sentence
radicalism
this
which
who discount Thoreau's
snap up
seems clear on the face of it: Do not think me an extremist
like
and anarchists, he seems to be saying, but think
the Garrisonians
of me as one who moderately
now.
desires a better government
But is this all he wants? Might he not favor, a little later, no gov
ernment? Shattered by this doubt, the reader is thrown forward
into another bitter attack on the American
and on the
government
state.
It
becomes
clear
that
critics
who have
generic
increasingly
tried to put together a governmentalist
from Thoreau's
writings
on politics have humorlessly missed
the point. He does indeed say
that he will take what he can get from the state, but he also twits
himself a little for inconsistency:
"In fact, I quietly declare war
with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make what use
and get what advantage of her I can, as is usual in such cases."
David
York:
Thoreau
William
(New
6Krutch,
Henry
Sloane,
1948),
133-35.
7
The Shores
Thoreau*s
Inward
Paul,
of America:
(Urbana:
Exploration
of Illinois
377. Paul
Thoreau's
Press,
75-80,
1958),
University
emphasizes
to have
interference
for the general
welfare."
willingness
"governmental
'Civil Disobedience,'"
"Thoreau's
Christian
LXVI
8Holmes,
Century,
787-89.
1949),
(January-June
130
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THOREAU'S POLITICS OF THE UPRIGHT MAN
Compare Thoreau's wry position here with that of Alex Comfort,
the English anarchist, written a hundred years later: "We do not
refuse to drive on the left hand side of the road or to subscribe to
is lim
national health insurance. The sphere of our disobedience
ited to the sphere in which society exceeds its powers and its use
fulness. . . ."9But let us back up a bit. What was the nature of the
"better government"
it was one that
he wanted at once? Obviously
cease to
would stay strictly in its place and ungrow?progressively
exist. What was the "best government"
he could imagine? He has
already told us and the essay as a whole supports his declaration:
a government
"which governs not at all."
But the main obstacle to any clear cut identification of Thoreau's
lib
shifting borders of anarchism,
politics has been the uncertain
in the nineteenth
and
after.
No
eralism, and socialism
century
series of definitions has succeeded
in decisively marking
out their
frontiers. Stephen Pearl Andrews,
for instance, the erudite con
as at one and the
conceived
of himself
temporary of Thoreau,
same time a believer
in the socialism of Charles Fourier and the
anarchism of Josiah Warren.
The intermingling
of socialism and
anarchism is further illustrated by Mikhail Bakunin,
the founder of
communist
anarchism, who thought of himself as a socialist and
for the control of the First International. Even Marx
fought Marx
has been called an ultimate anarchist, in the sense that he presum
after the state withered
ably favored anarchism
away. But per
the
closest
analogue to Thoreau was William Morris. Working
haps
for a number of years, Morris
re
closely with Peter Kropotkin
and joined forces with the libertarians
jected the parliamentarians
in the Socialist League of the 1880's?the
League was eventually
taken over completely by anarchists!?and
wrote News
from No
where which was anarchist
in tone and sentiment. Yet his ex
planation of why he refused to call himself an anarchist was ob
and showed that he was rejecting
individualist
viously confused
anarchism
and not Kropotkin's
communist
anarchism.10
A somewhat
confusion mars a recent attempt
to
comparable
individual
analyze Thoreau's
position. He was not "an anarchical
ist," argues Paul, because he went toWaiden not "for himself alone
but to serve mankind."
It would be easy to quote passages
from
Waiden which seem to call this contention
into question. One ex
9
Quoted
archy, No.
by Nicolas
Walter,
14 (April 1962),
"Disobedience
and
the New
Pacifism,"
113. It is worth noting that Walter
An
thinks
an anarchist,"
wasn't
"Thoreau
he believes
that "the
though
implications
and his essay are purely
of his action
am sure that Thoreau
anarchist-"I
would
or perhaps
have chuckled
in his full free way
had he known
laughed
a hundred
this question
would
still be debated
after his death.
years
10
and Ivan Avakumovic,
Woodcock
The Anarchist
Prince
George
(Lon
T. V.
don:
216-19.
Thoreau's
on the
influence
Boardman,
1950),
great
to
left
dates
back
this
when
were
filled with
English
many
period
idealism
and with
for the "sublime
admiration
doctrine"
of anarchism.
131
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RICHARD DR1NNON
ample: "What good I do, in the common sense of that word, must
be aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly unin
are devoted
tended." Another:
"While my townsmen and women
in so many ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at
least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits."11 Yet this
as he informed
would be to read Thoreau
literally. Unquestionably,
us in "Civil Disobedience,"
he was "as desirous of being a good
was
as I am of being a bad subject." The distinction
neighbor
crucial. Though he served the state by declaring war on it, in his
own way, he served society for a lifetime by trying to understand
to itself. The manageable
and explain Concord
unit of society?
or even Boston?was
in Washington
unlike the vast abstraction
and other villages.
drawn to the human scale of Concord
If men
lived simply and as neighbors,
informal patterns of voluntary agree
ment would be established,
there would be no need for police and
since "thieving
and robbery would
be un
military
protection,
known,"12 and there would be freedom and leisure to turn to the
was the
consciousness
community
things that matter. Thoreau's
the follow
essential, dialectical other of his individuality. Consider
ing from Waiden:
and their elder
It is time that villages were universities,
inhabitants
the fellows of universities,
with leisure ... to
liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the
pursue
to one Paris or one Oxford
world be confined
forever?
Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal educa
. . Why
.
tion under the skies of Concord?
should our life
If we will read newspapers,
be in any respect provincial?
why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best news
of cul
paper in the world at once. ... As the nobleman
to
tivated taste surrounds himself with whatever
conduces
his
culture?genius?learning?wit?books?paintings?
instruments and the like;
statuary?music?philosophical
so let the village do. ... To act collectively
is according to
... Instead of
the spirit of our institutions.
let
noblemen,
us have noble villages of men.13
11
I have marked
Since
Modern
Li
up my
copy of Waiden
(New York:
be to this edition
all my
will
citations
to the
rather
than
1937),
brary,
Waiden
volume
of his Works.
Here
are
the quotations
(II)
appropriate
from pp. 65, 66.
u
156.
Waiden,
13
see Lewis
Mumford's
98-100.
fine discussion
of
Waiden,
By all means
on
"Renewal
of
in his chapter
the Landscape,"
Thoreau
in The
Brown
Dover
64-72. Mumford
Decades
credits
Publications,
(New York:
1955),
of helping
with
Thoreau
"to acclimate
the achievement
the mind
of highly
men
to the natural
and civilized
sensitive
of the environment"
possibilities
in the history
of regional
and gives him a major
in America.
place
planning
on Paul Goodman,
influence
of Thoreau
The
who
describes
as a
himself
to anyone
is apparent
who
has
read his and his
anarchist,"
"community
132
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THOREAU'S POLITICS OF THE UPRIGHT MAN
One nobleman who also agitated for noble villages was the an
with Thor
He could have agreed completely
archist Kropotkin.
to act col
with his locality and his readiness
eau's preoccupation
our
In
Aid
Mutual
"in
institutions."
the
of
(1902),
lectively
spirit
the vital growth of society in the ancient
celebrated
Kropotkin
of
the consequences
Greek and medieval
cities; he sadly outlined
in the
when the state "took possession,
the rise of centralization
and adminis
of all the judicial, economical,
interest of minorities,
the village community
trative functions which
already had exer
advocated
cised in the interest of all." Like Thoreau, Kropotkin
that the community's power be restored and that local individuality
and creativity be left free to develop. The closeness of their views
too much an in
?though
Kropotkin must have thought Thoreau
like Ibsen!?points
dividualist
up the mistake of Sherman Paul and
others in equating the "anti-social" with the "anarchical."
Society
were very much aware,
and Kropotkin
and the state, as Thoreau
should not be confused or identified.
The definition of Emma Goldman
quoted above will have to do
for our purposes,
then, though we must keep in mind its approxi
mate nature and the greased-pole
the
slipperiness of the political
views are so often confidently
said to
ory from which Thoreau's
this definition Thoreau was always an an
have differed. Under
an ultimate anarchist for a time
of conscience,
archist in matters
an an
for it," and in the meanwhile
"when men are prepared
But enough of this attempt to stuff the poet
archical decentralist.
slot. Actually
in one political
Thoreau's writings may
and mystic
yet help to explode all our conventional
political categories.
3
to call him the last of an older race
"We scarcely know whether
of men, or the first of one that is to come," admitted an English
for 12 July, 1917. "He
critic in The Times Literary Supplement
senses of an Indian,
the stoicism, the unspoilt
had the toughness,
the exacting discontent,
combined with the self-consciousness,
the
of the most modern. At times he seems to reach
susceptibility
beyond our human powers in what he perceives upon the horizon
remarkable
of humanity." With
insight, the writer had perceived
Thoreau's perplexing doubleness
and had even touched the edge of
his higher, profoundly
exciting unity.
Of Thoreau's
"unspoilt senses of an Indian" and his passion for
there can be no question.
the primitive
"There is in my nature,
he declared in the Week, "a singular yearning toward all
methinks,"
To the end he was convinced
that "life consists with
wildness."
brother
Percival's
Communitas
(Chicago:
University
of
Chicago
1947).
133
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Press
RICHARD DR1NNON
But this conviction
did not rest on a sentimental-ro
wildness."
view of our "rude forefathers."
The crude relics of the
mantic
even in the
North American
carelessness
tribes, their improvident
and their "coarse and imperfect use" of nature repelled
woods,
in Maine
led to
him. His unpleasant
of a moose-hunt
experience
the reflection: "No wonder
that their race is so soon exterminated.
I already, and for weeks afterwards, felt my nature the coarser for
this part of my woodland
and was reminded that our
experience,
life should be lived as tenderly and daintily as one would pluck a
flower."14 Yet Thoreau never gave up his conviction
that, standing
so close, Indians had a particularly
intimate and vital relationship
with nature. "We talk of civilizing
the Indian," he wrote
in the
Week, "but that is not the name for his improvement. By the wary
and aloofness of his dim forest life he preserves his
independence
intercourse with his native gods, and is admitted from time to time
to a rare and peculiar society with nature. He has glances of starry
to which our saloons are strangers."
recognition
By way of contrast, "the white man comes, pale as the dawn,
as a fire
with a load of thought, with a slumbering
intelligence
raked up, knowing well what he knows, not guessing but calculat
to authority; of ex
ing; strong in community,
yielding obedience
common
wonderful
race; of wonderful,
sense; dull but
perienced
severe but just, of little humor but
capable, slow but persevering,
a laboring man, despising
a
game and sport; building
genuine;
house that endures, a framed house. He buys the Indian's mocca
sins and baskets, then buys his hunting-grounds,
and at length for
gets where he is buried and plows up his bones."15 In this list of
the bourgeois
the keen, far-reaching
social criticism of
virtues,
"Life Without
entitled "Higher Law"?and
in
Principle"?first
deed of Waiden
itself is anticipated.
for the main
Calculating
chance, this obedient white man had cut his way through thousands
of Indians in order to rush to the gold diggings in California,
"re
flect the greatest disgrace on mankind,"
and "live by luck, and so
the labor of others less lucky, with
get the means of commanding
out contributing
to
value
any
society! And that is called enterprise!
I know of no more
of the immortality
of
startling development
trade.. .. The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the
soil so, would be ashamed of such company."16
In this powerful
he concluded
that "there is
essay on "Life Without
Principle,"
even
more
not
to
to
crime,
nothing,
poetry,
opposed
philosophy,
of
ay, to life itself, than this incessant business." An economist
as the first chapter of Waiden may yet prove to a
importance,
in Albert
The
Indian
in American
Keiser,
"Quoted
York:
Oxford
227.
University
Press,
1933),
10
see also 55.
Works,
I, 52-53;
16
"Life without
in Waiden,
111.
Principle,"
Literature
134
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(New
THOREAU'S POLITICS OF THE UPRIGHT MAN
saw clearly that the accumulation
of
skeptical world, Thoreau
wealth really leads to the cheapening of life, to the substitution for
man of the less-than-hog-like
creature who calculates and lays up
even
to
root
and
fails
"What is
up the soil in the process.
money
he wrote
in "Life Without
called politics,"
"is com
Principle,"
so superficial and unhuman,
that practically
paratively
something
I have never fairly recognized
that it concerns me at all." The
war against Mexico,
the scramble for territory and power,
and
other debauches
in nationalism were, he trusted, a different mani
fest destiny from his own. In his letter to Parker Pillsbury on the
eve of the fighting at Fort Sumter, he reported that he did "not so
much regret the present condition of things in this country
(pro
vided I regret it at all) as I do that I ever heard of it. I know one
or 2 who have this year, for the first time, read a president's
but they do not see that this implies a fall in themselves,
message;
rather than a rise in the president. Blessed were the days before
Blessed are the young for they do
you read a president's message.
not read the president's message."17 Yet, despite all these devas
tating shafts aimed at the institutions reared up by the "pale as
dawn" white man, Thoreau
honored
learning as much or more
than any man in America.
a return to some
Far from advocating
he
on
in
his
in
bliss,
advocated,
preliterate
chapter
"Reading"
a study of "the oldest and the best" books, whose
"au
Waiden,
thors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy
in every society,
and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind."
Thus Thoreau's doubleness,
of which he was well aware: "I find
an instinct in me conducting
to a mystic
spiritual life, and also
another to a primitive savage life." It was one of his great achieve
ments to go beyond the polarities of "Civilization
and Barbarism"
attractive poles which drew most of Thoreau's
con
?alternatively
back
and
forth
come
like
metal
temporaries helplessly
particles?to
close to a creative fusion: "We go eastward to realize history and
study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the
race," he wrote in the serene summary of his walks. "We go west
ward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure."
Thoreau wanted
the best for his countrymen
from both nature
and civilization,
past and present. He perceived
clearly the mean
was
an
of
It
new
America.
for
"The
ing
opportunity
beginnings:
is a Lethean
Atlantic
stream, in our passage over which we have
to forget the Old World
had an opportunity
and its institutions.
If
we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one more chance for
the race left before it arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is
17
His
reference
to "manifest
destiny"
appeared
in his
letter
to H.
Blake, 27 February, 1853; his letter to Pillsbury was dated 10 April,
The
Correspondence
of Henry
David
Thoreau,
eds. Walter
Harding
G.
Carl Bode (New York: New York University Press, 1958), 296, 611.
135
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O.
1861?
and
RICHARD DR1NNON
in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three times as wide." Had he
lived with unflagging powers for another decade or so, he might
have used his laboriously accumulated
notebooks
of "Extracts re
to
to
the
the
Indians"
show
aborigines enjoyed "a rare
why
lating
and peculiar society with nature."18 It is indisputable
that his in
terest in classical mythology,
ancient societies, and contemporary
concern for the enduring features of
tribes was an anthropological
life in groups. His interest in savages was much like that of Claude
and might have been expressed
L?vi-Strauss
in the latter's words:
"The study of these savages does not reveal a Utopian
state in
nor does it make us aware of a perfect
Nature;
society hidden
deep in the forests. It helps us to construct a theoretical model of
to none that can be observed
in reality,
society which corresponds
but will help us to disentangle
'what in the present nature of Man
is original, and what is artificial.' "19 Thoreau's
theoretical model,
which came from all his efforts to drive life into a corner and get
its measurements,
made
it clear that the efforts of his neighbors
to
live for the superfluous made their lives superfluous. Through care
ful inspection of his model, he was able to see, years before Lenin,
that at bottom
the state is a club. To cooperate with
it, espe
is to deny life, for the state, like
cially in matters of importance,
a standing army, is organized power and at the disposal of hate.
"You must get your living by loving," confidently
this
declared
supposedly narrow village eccentric. Clearly, he aspired to create
a "new heaven and a new earth," just as each
for his countrymen
sons had done for her. The look of this new heaven is
of Greece's
in the Week. On Saturday, after he and
suggested by a passage
John had made
the long pull from Ball's Hill to Carlisle Bridge,
their heads waving
they saw "men haying far off in the meadow,
the wind seemed to
like the grass which they cut. In the distance
bend all alike. As the night stole over, such a freshness was wafted
across the meadow
that every blade of cut grass seemed to teem
with life."
To this feeling of the correspondence
of man to nature, "so that
The Indian
in American
"cannot
but believe
Literature,
18Keiser,
217-18,
that cruel fate robbed
the world
of a great work
in a sanely
realistic
dealing
...
on
manner
the American
with
the child of nature
conti
yet sympathetic
that the Civil War might
nent_"
it is possible
have undone
though
Perhaps,
so
It should be noted
others.
that Thoreau
Thoreau
many
along with
shows,
an intuitive
sense of the distinction,
in many
made
passages,
by such modern
as
students
between
time and progressive,
Mircea
archaic
Eliade,
cyclical
were
modern
time. His
works
cumulative
the former.
around
organized
as
an
Indeed
the Week
be
extended
defense
of Par
interpreted
might
the Heraclitean
menides's
of the universe
thesis of the permanence
against
a
of
of
nation
boosters
(see esp. 54-56,
128, 239,
347,
progressivism
60,
return
to the problem
of time and its obvious
416). His constant
importance
a
for his understanding
of man
in nature
invite
careful,
systematic
inquiry.
"Tristes Tropiques,"
XC
40.
Encounter,
19L?vi-Strauss,
(April
1961),
136
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THOREAU'S POLITICS OF THE UPRIGHT MAN
he is at home in her," Thoreau
added poetic intuitions of an in
to come. With his common sense, he realized that the
dividualism
common
sense of his countrymen was insane. The im
notorious
portant questions were buried under daily rounds of trivia. Living
was constantly
was allowed
to
deferred. No
joyful exuberance
could
Thoreau
have
Blake
in
William
his
by
slip
joined
prudence.
belief that "Prudence
is a rich, ugly old maid, courted by Incapac
the
ity." The incapacity was partly the result of a split between
head and the heart, thought and feeling, and the absurd belief that
the intellect alone enables man to meet
life. In his final summing
up, in the essay "Walking," he warned that the most we can hope
... a
to achieve is "Sympathy with Intelligence
that there
discovery
are more
are
in
heaven
and
earth
than
in our
of
dreamed
things
But
not
an
his
had
overfaith
in ab
philosophy."
neighbors
only
stract reasoning and in the general efficacy of the intellect; they
the body. William
also distrusted
Blake could thrust through the
his
of
time to rediscover the body; hemmed
in by the
prudishness
moral
sentimentalism
of his family, by Emersonian
etherealness,
and his own confirmed virginity, Thoreau had more difficulty. His
admission?"what
the essential difference
between
embarrassing
man and woman
is, that they should be thus attracted to one an
answered"?is
other, no one has satisfactorily
indeed, as Krutch
he took a sensuous de
points out, "a real howler."20 Nevertheless,
that "we need pray for no
light in his body, claiming in the Week
higher heaven than the pure senses can furnish, a purely sensuous
life. Our present senses are but rudiments of what they are destined
to become." Here
is a body mysticism
which
placed Thoreau
in the tradition of Jacob Boehme
and William
Blake.
It presup
Brown
that "the consciousness
observes,
posed, Norman
strong
be no longer Apollonian
but
enough to endure full life would
which does not observe
the limit, but
Dionysian?consciousness
overflows;
consciousness
which
does
not
negate
any
more."21
Shocked by phallic forms in nature, the stiff-backed Thoreau
yet
remarked that he worshipped most constantly at the shrine of Pan
the upright man of the Arcadian
?Pan,
fertility cult, famous for
his Dionysiac
revels with the mountain
nymphs!22 The vision of
individuals with
and the simple animal
spiritual development
was
to
one
affirm
their
bodies
of
the important contribu
strength
tions of this paradoxical
celibate. It was a vision sensed and acted
and Emma Goldman
upon, in their own ways, by Isadora Duncan
20
207.
Thoreau,
Krutch,
21
Death
an University
Conn.:
Life
Brown,
against
(Middletown,
Wesley
308-11.
Press,
1959),
22
not place
on this passage,
reliance
Works,
I, 65. I should
any great
was
which
in part for its shock
valued
if it stood
alone.
apparently
value,
It does not.
137
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RICHARD DRINNON
and Randolph
It exerts its ap
Bourne and Frank Lloyd Wright.
to men as diverse
peal to the poetic libertarian strain in radicalism,
as e. e. cummings, Karl Shapiro, Henry Miller,
Paul Goodman,
Kenneth
late
and
Herbert
the
Albert
Camus
Read,
Patchen,
A
Nicolas
rather
form
is
recent,
extravagant
Berdyaev.
perhaps
Allen Ginsberg's
In any
notion of "Socialist-Co-op
Anarchism."
form it is revolutionary.
"One thing about Thoreau
keeps him very near to me," Walt
"I refer to his lawlessness?his
Whitman
remarked.
dissent?his
going his absolute own road let hell blaze all it chooses."23 Thou
meant. A few
sands of young people know exactly what Whitman
can
see
was
that
Thoreau's
death
his
greatest achievement,
perhaps
for it showed that his philosophy
had taught him how to die?and
therefore how to live. Some can appreciate and understand his two
Pond. But many are ready, like the young Indian
years at Waiden
in 1907, to be impressed
that Thoreau
lawyer in South Africa
was
not
to
he
in
himself."24
"taught nothing
practice
prepared
are
on
Like Gandhi,
to
draw
Thoreau's
"Civil
Disobedi
they
ready
ence" for "a new way" of handling
conflict. Thoreau
political
to radical politics,
another major contribution
for
thereby made
been strong on ends
anarchism
and socialism have traditionally
and weak or worse on means.
It is true that Thoreau was himself
as his splendid tribute to John Brown and
unclear about violence,
on war show?"it
callow observations
his occasional
is a pity,"
he wrote a correspondent
in 1855, "that we seem to require a war
from time to time to assure us that there is any manhood
still left
in man."25 Yet he went farther than most
in thinking his way
like Antigone
he left us
through this problem. More
importantly,
irresistible appeal of his example.
It is as
the powerful, burning,
as
Exists"
Law
banner
the
which
marched
beside
"Unjust
timely
in the recent Wash
Camus' "Neither Victims Nor Executioners"
It is as timely as Bertrand Russell's
ington youth demonstrations.
in Trafalgar
sit-down
Square. It may even help us survive the
disease called modern history.
33
A Thoreau
Handbook
New
by Walter
Harding,
(New York:
Quoted
201.
York University
Press,
1959),
21
"The
Influence
of Thoreau's
'Civil Dis
Hendrick,
Quoted
by George
on Gandhi's
obedience'
New
XXIX
Satyagraha,"
England
Quarterly,
(1956), 464.
35
Letter
of Thoreau,
to Thomas
371.
Cholmondeley,
7 February
1855?see
Correspondence
138
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