DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52538#0045
35
“ Because those who depend on good works are, owing to
their passions, improvident, they fall and become miserable
when their life is finished. Considering sacrifice and good
works as the best, these fools know no higher good and having
enjoyed their reward on the height of the heaven gained by
good works, they enter again this world or a lower one.” * * * §
To Thoreau the occupation with good works was inde-
scribably petty and trivial in comparison with life’s true pur-
pose which must be all-absorbing :
“What a foul subject is this of doing good I Instead of
minding one's life which should be his business. . . . As
if the sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the
splendor of a man, or a star of the sixth magnitude and go
about like a Robin Goodfellow peeping in at every cottage
window . . . instead of increasing his genial heat and
beneficence till he is of such brightness that no mortal can look
him in the face ; and, then, in the meantime, too, going about
the world in his own orbit doing it good, or, rather, as a truer
philosophy has discovered, the world going about him getting
good.” f
So much energy spent in doing leaves none for being :
“ Even the wisest and best are apt to use their lives as the
occasion to do something else than to live greatly. What a
man does compared with what he is, is a small part." |
Thoreau quotes, further, from the Bhagvat Geeta con-
cerning
. ‘ ‘ The forsaking of works taught by Krishna to the
first of men. In wisdom is to be found every work without
exception.” §
To him who has attained to wisdom, the uselessness of
works are apparent. The Veda teaches :
* Mund-Upan, i, 9, 10. Max Muller, Vol. XV, p. 32.
f Walden, p. 117.
f Spring, p. 248.
§ Week, p. 118.
“ Because those who depend on good works are, owing to
their passions, improvident, they fall and become miserable
when their life is finished. Considering sacrifice and good
works as the best, these fools know no higher good and having
enjoyed their reward on the height of the heaven gained by
good works, they enter again this world or a lower one.” * * * §
To Thoreau the occupation with good works was inde-
scribably petty and trivial in comparison with life’s true pur-
pose which must be all-absorbing :
“What a foul subject is this of doing good I Instead of
minding one's life which should be his business. . . . As
if the sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the
splendor of a man, or a star of the sixth magnitude and go
about like a Robin Goodfellow peeping in at every cottage
window . . . instead of increasing his genial heat and
beneficence till he is of such brightness that no mortal can look
him in the face ; and, then, in the meantime, too, going about
the world in his own orbit doing it good, or, rather, as a truer
philosophy has discovered, the world going about him getting
good.” f
So much energy spent in doing leaves none for being :
“ Even the wisest and best are apt to use their lives as the
occasion to do something else than to live greatly. What a
man does compared with what he is, is a small part." |
Thoreau quotes, further, from the Bhagvat Geeta con-
cerning
. ‘ ‘ The forsaking of works taught by Krishna to the
first of men. In wisdom is to be found every work without
exception.” §
To him who has attained to wisdom, the uselessness of
works are apparent. The Veda teaches :
* Mund-Upan, i, 9, 10. Max Muller, Vol. XV, p. 32.
f Walden, p. 117.
f Spring, p. 248.
§ Week, p. 118.