DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52538#0084
74
“ . . . 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. ... 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. . . . The nation, itself, with all its so-
called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all ex-
ternal and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and over-
grown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up
by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense.”*
a. Remedy: Return to Nature.
The remedy is simplicity and naturalness of life, f It is
necessary to cast off the clogging weights with which society
is hung about, and to lead once more a natural life.
“ In society you will not find health, bzct in nature. As
nature feeds my imagination she will also feed my body.
There is not necessarily any gross or ugly fact which may
not be eradicated from the life of a man.” J
3.—THOREAU AND ROUSSEAU.
This criticism of civilized life and advocacy of return
to nature cannot fail to recall Rousseau, who proclaimed
the same message to society in the preceding century—a mes-
sage which had been echoed by the American constitution
itself. That Rousseau exercised any direct influence upon
Thoreau’s political views is impossible to establish as Tho-
reau does not once mention him in his writings. There is,
however, almost no possibility that he did not know Rousseau
as he was well acquainted with French literature.
Their political ideas bear in many points a resemblance
to each other which may be interesting to note in connection
with the statement of Thoreau’s political principles.
* Walden, p. 144-5.
t v. Letter to H. Blake (1848). Letters, p. 194.
f Letters, p. 199.
“ . . . 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. ... 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. . . . The nation, itself, with all its so-
called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all ex-
ternal and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and over-
grown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up
by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense.”*
a. Remedy: Return to Nature.
The remedy is simplicity and naturalness of life, f It is
necessary to cast off the clogging weights with which society
is hung about, and to lead once more a natural life.
“ In society you will not find health, bzct in nature. As
nature feeds my imagination she will also feed my body.
There is not necessarily any gross or ugly fact which may
not be eradicated from the life of a man.” J
3.—THOREAU AND ROUSSEAU.
This criticism of civilized life and advocacy of return
to nature cannot fail to recall Rousseau, who proclaimed
the same message to society in the preceding century—a mes-
sage which had been echoed by the American constitution
itself. That Rousseau exercised any direct influence upon
Thoreau’s political views is impossible to establish as Tho-
reau does not once mention him in his writings. There is,
however, almost no possibility that he did not know Rousseau
as he was well acquainted with French literature.
Their political ideas bear in many points a resemblance
to each other which may be interesting to note in connection
with the statement of Thoreau’s political principles.
* Walden, p. 144-5.
t v. Letter to H. Blake (1848). Letters, p. 194.
f Letters, p. 199.