Emerson and Thoreau on Higher Laws: Finding Freedom of the Soul
Emily Sullivan
University of Florida
18 Apr 2011
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Emerson and Thoreau on Higher Laws: Finding Freedom of the Soul
All our wisdom consists of servile prejudices; our customs consist in subjection, discomfort, constraint. Civil man is born, lives, and dies in slavery. At his birth the infant is bound up in swaddling clothes; at his death he is nailed down in his coffin. As long as he keeps a human form he is enchained by our institutions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile
Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson opposed African
American slavery; however their dissatisfaction was not limited to the context of an historical institution. As passionate abolitionists as they might have been, they perceived slavery as a larger and more abstract concept pertaining to individual souls of any social order. Their opposition to slavery stems forth from ideological influences, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who posited the importance of individual freedom. Although Rousseau wrote within the context of eighteenth-century France, his philosophies generated future thought of American revolutionaries, like Benjamin Franklin, whose concepts of selfhood informed the
Transcendentalist thinkers. In evaluating Transcendentalist perspectives, it is important to explore the ideological foundations of their philosophies. Emerson and Thoreau endorse principles of morality predicated upon higher spiritual laws. They argue that in to experience personal liberty, we must align ourselves with moral truth whereby identifying truth allows us to identify the master within ourselves. Both Emerson and Thoreau advance that living by a higher moral truth has implications on our minds, on the way we give our time, and on the way we use our love.
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Land of the Free?
America is emblematically referred to as the land of the free. In assuming that title, two dimensions must be explored: from what has America freed itself? And, what does this freedom entail? Thoreau deals with these questions in “Life Without Principle,” claiming that “even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic—the res-publica—has been settled, it is time to look after the res-privata—the private state,” (369). In order to properly frame our answers to the questions of freedom, we need to agree upon a perspective: freedom as a nation or freedom as an individual. There is a difference. America became a free, or sovereign, nation after winning independence from the British monarchy; however Thoreau argues that many people still live in restraint within themselves. Thoreau is more concerned with achieving freedom as an individual, asking, “What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom but as means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?” (369). Thoreau differentiates between political freedom from a sovereign and moral freedom within the individual. Political freedom concerns the collective governmental influences, whereas moral freedom concerns the individual. Although political freedom may exist, prejudice, understood in this context as social judgments on character traits, creates a socially binding slavery of the individual. Thoreau advocates a deeper freedom beneath the layer of publically recognized political freedom to encompass individual freedom from social prejudice.
A paradox exists where having status as a free citizen does not equate having freedom within the individual. Rousseau describes the archetype of the “civil man” as one whose Sullivan 4 allegiance is to the res-publica. Akin to Thoreau’s disdain for allegiance to “King Prejudice,”
Rousseau describes societal bindings of “servile prejudices; [where] our customs consist in subjection, discomfort, constraint. Civil man is born, lives, and dies in slavery. At his birth the infant is bound up in swaddling clothes; at his death he is nailed down in his coffin. As long as he keeps a human form he is enchained by our institutions,” (Rousseau). The diction of
“constraint,” “slavery,” “bound,” and “enchained” evoke images of the lifestyle of the African
American slaves. Within the mid-nineteenth century when Thoreau and Emerson were writing, abolitionism emerged as a forerunning issue however Rousseau, as well as the
Transcendentalists, extend these harsh images to color the reality of each citizen who knowingly and willfully submits to the institutions of civilization without transcending the human form.
Civilization, as understood in the context of Transcendentalist thought, refers to a socially constructed body of people that align their values to a governmental sovereign rather than to individual moral guidance. The term ‘society’ within this context refers to a similar social construction where social expectations and norms mandate thought and choices. Thoreau and
Emerson identify various binding traps wrought throughout the infrastructure of society, and constructively, they also provide various means to transcend these personal constraints to freedom. They have settled upon the definition of a free man as a man first, and a countryman second.
The Higher Code of Morality
The free man advocated by the Transcendentalists differs from the anarchist. Like the civil man he follows a set of laws; however these laws are not dependent on one form of government, but rather something more encompassing. “Spiritual Laws” as referred to by Emerson, “Higher
Laws” as advanced by Thoreau, these laws are not mutually exclusive from manmade laws. Sullivan 5
They may even coincide depending on the issue, but they are available to all humanity, unconstrained by a nation, a religion, or an institution. Leigh Kathryn Jenco advances that “A major tenet of the higher law philosophy is that nature refines man's understanding by revealing specific moral truths, and disciplines his reason by revealing the holistic correspondence between thought and things” (358-359). The correspondence between thought and things requires an understanding of the self, and of where the self fits into the holistic scope of humanity.
Emerson argues that “it is only the finite that has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose,” (“Spiritual Laws” 78). The finite and ephemeral institutions of this world show the wear of civilization, and that is why Emerson draws his strength from the infinite, the spiritual source that continues to remain constant. Benjamin Franklin endorsed views of selfhood and moral living before the Transcendentalist movement, and his writings inform later thought by Emerson and Thoreau. In his essay, “The Ephemera,” he describes the futility in fueling transitory establishments and collecting temporary wealth. While his narrator strolls through a garden, he overhears the conversation of a few tiny bugs on a leaf, called the
Ephemera. The creatures, which only live for the duration of eighteen hours, speak about their frustrations as one exclaims, “What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics what can laws do without morals?” (Franklin). The
Ephemeron has collected a sizeable amount of honey-dew, or collateral, however his wealth does not gain him satisfaction. The narrator observes that “the brevity of life should teach insects and men alike that happiness is to be found only in virtue, the only pledge of happy immortality,”
(Aldridge 389). Rather than deriving happiness from his wealth, the insect evaluates the virtuous aspects of his life. He considers his actions, not what he has, but what he has done. First, he has Sullivan 6 pursued a career in politics and he has used his platform for the “good” of his “compatriot inhabitants.” He has also studied in order to use his knowledge “for the benefit of our race” in an act of service. Finally, he argues that in order to maintain an effective political system, laws must coexist with morality in a supportive relationship. Although the Ephemera’s role in society as a political servant may align with the actions of the “civil man” denounced by Rousseau, the overlaying message of the Ephemeron’s soliloquy advances that resources like government and education must be buttressed with morality for virtuous implications beyond the scope of a transient lifespan.
But what is morality? Thoreau says that “our whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice,” (Emerson, “Higher Laws” 172). Thoreau’s relational diction identifies his definition of morality. Virtue and vice are binary oppositions, they cannot coexist together in “an instant’s truce.” The word “truce” can refer to a respite from a painful state of tension; it derives from the Old English trēowth, meaning fidelity (Merriam-
Webster Online Dictionary). “Truce” shares the same Old English root as “truth,” which has interesting implications when we consider that by living in truth, we are living in fidelity, living in loyal relationship (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). The loyal relationship cannot exist in the tension between virtue and vice—serving two masters would be disloyal. Instead, Thoreau argues that our whole lives are defined in relationships and if we choose to live virtuously, or to live morally, we choose fidelity. Whereas anarchy can be “defined as a system in which participants can seize and defend resources without regulation from above,” living under a
Higher Law establishing moral accountability through relationship would contrast a system based on anarchy (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). Sullivan 7
Moreover, “if we look wider, things are all alike; laws and letters and creeds and modes of living seem a travesty of truth,” (Emerson, “Spiritual Laws” 81). Laws, letters, creeds, and various modes of living are societal constructions, institutions that do not reinforce truth, but are infidels in their parody of what truth should be. They do not encourage loyal relationships between souls, but are inaccurate representations of the truth that is available to every individual.
Emerson and Thoreau enumerate certain societal institutions that break the bonds of fidelity in their moral deficit and forge the bonds of individual slavery. They warn that when an individual is not living in virtuous relationship, then the individual forms a bond with vice, ensnaring the individual to the travesties of truth, society’s “laws and letters and creeds and modes of living.”
Societal Chains
The danger of institutions is their power to induce mass conformity without discernment.
When society ascribes to preconceived tenets without question, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” (Emerson, “Self-Reliance” 35). Emerson employs the abstract notion of consistency to describe the slavery of the mind within the “comfortable sanctimonies,” (Lauter
122). Both Emerson and Thoreau attack the gap between opinion and action condemning people who “petition; but […] do nothing in earnest or with effect,” (Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience
270). Both authors argue that many convictions that could turn to positive action are lost when filtered through seemingly beneficial institutions. By refusing to “prevail through the power of the majority,” the individual succumbs to the chains of society, (270).
Government
The societal modes of living take many forms, but they are all in effect modes of slavery.
One of the most ensnaring societal mechanisms is the governmental system, specifically the morally questionable politics that dominate the practice of government. In his essay, “Politics,” Sullivan 8
Emerson argues that “this is the history of governments—one man does something which is to bind another,” (342). Thoreau supports Emerson’s opinion of government’s manipulative power as “governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage,” (“Civil Disobedience” 265). Because of the base governmental advantages, the American political system “is losing some of its integrity,” (“Civil
Disobedience” 265). These advantages lead to “legislating to regulate the breeding of slaves, or the exportation of tobacco” (Thoreau, “Life Without Principle” 371), but “must the citizen for ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?” (“Civil
Disobedience” 266). Thoreau refers to the American reader not as an individual but as a
“citizen” because it is the citizen who prioritizes the aims of the state. Thoreau acknowledges the power of the legislator, and the weakness of many citizens who do not assert their moral discernment in a legal context.
Thoreau, even in his greatest frustrations, does not advocate for a complete absence of government but rather “a better government,” (“Civil Disobedience” 266). There are two major issues with the government: the first is the men that lead, and the second is the men that follow.
The leaders, “most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders—serve the state chiefly with their heads, [however] they rarely make any moral distinctions,” (“Civil
Disobedience” 267). Rousseau’s example of the Spartan citizen exemplifies the state servants who serve chiefly with their heads rather than with their morals. In the example, “a Spartan mother had five sons in the army and awaited news of the battle. A Helot arrived; trembling she asked his news. ‘Your five sons have been killed.’ ‘Vile slave, was that what I asked you?’
‘We have won the victory.’ She ran to the temple to give thanks to the gods. That was a citizen,” (Rousseau). Akin the leaders described by Thoreau, the Spartan citizen serves her state Sullivan 9 similarly as she allows herself to submit to the greater government without consulting her moral conscience. The Spartan woman chastises her slave for considering the individual souls of her five sons, choosing instead to remove her moral sentiment for a greater appreciation of the state’s victory. She thinks chiefly with her head as do most of the state leaders described by Thoreau.
Slavery
With a de-emphasis on moral conscience, citizens “are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God,” (“Civil Disobedience” 267). One major service of evil is the promulgation of slavery within the United States’ borders. There is an issue with a government’s moral conscience “when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be a refuge of liberty are slaves,” (“Civil Disobedience” 268). In Thoreau’s speech, “Slavery in
Massachusetts,” he makes the distinction between African American slaves, and the greater slavery to the government where “there is not one slave in Nebraska; there are perhaps a million slaves in Massachusetts,” (“Slavery in Massachusetts”). Government enslaves its citizens by allowing them to believe that they are actively participating in a just governmental process.
Citizens believe that the power of the vote will correct injustice, however “when the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will be the only slaves,” (“Civil Disobedience” 270). In theory, voting is a democratically representative way to extend the will of the people to reach moral ends; however “democracy pretends that voting means consent, and that representation means equality; by doing so it presents as moral duties the institutional obligations that are meant only as expedients to facilitate the fulfillment of those moral duties,” (Jenco 370). Thoreau argues that when individuals relinquish their freedom, they become slaves themselves, and he refuses to “recognize that political organization as [his] Sullivan 10 government which is the slave’s government also,” (“Civil Disobedience” 268). Thoreau’s dissatisfaction with the government in rooted in the moral void of conscience in its legislators, and in the blind service of its subjects.
Media
Thoreau writes in Life Without Principle of the manipulative interrelationship between politics and the media as he “cannot pick up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it—more importunate than an Italian beggar,” (371). Thoreau views media as the foremost extension of the government’s infiltration into society, a powerful tool where “the newspapers are the ruling power,” (372). Politics, as conveyed through the media, are “those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, the vital functions of human society,” (372). Thoreau equates the consumption of the news with the
“corresponding functions of the physical body” where men are dependent upon the sustenance of the newspapers (372). Thoreau argues that dependence on media like the Daily Times is fruitless and a poor source of nourishment. The media is comprised of political content, “so superficial and inhuman;” it does not offer the life-giving truth that should nourish the individual, (372).
Like an “Italian beggar,” the news is a foreign intrusion, unnatural, and it unnecessarily draws energy rather than rejuvenates.
Aesthetics and Manners
Another binding societal obsession recognized by Thoreau is the high regard for outward appearances. In an effort to create authenticity, Thoreau argues that society men and women attempt to construct an image of their true identity by altering their exterior. Although the
English Parliament possesses the “finest manners in the world,” those outward signs of good Sullivan 11 breeding “are awkwardness and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence,” (“Life
Without Principle” 370). Thoreau discerns between excess and etiquette as the emphasis on new-age fashion is “a vice, […] not the excellence of manners,” (370). As society places such importance on exteriors, “you are presented with the shells instead of the meat, and it is no excuse generally, that, in the case of some fishes, the shells are of more worth than the meat,”
(370). Thoreau satirically acknowledges the depraved moral interiors covered up by flashy outward appearance. When there is such a dependence on outward appearance, the individual loses the significance of freely cultivating a personal identity aside from the societal aesthetics.
In his essay, “Economy,” Thoreau warns readers to “beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes,” (22). He argues that unless one changes the person inside of the clothes, then the same person exists and no new clothes are needed to fit the same individual. Many people feel that they need new clothes for new activities however “all men want something to do with, not something to do, or rather something to be,” (22). The underlying desire to change one’s exterior is really a desire to be something different. The societal practice is to purchase clothes before each new enterprise, to fit the new action, but the individual man in search of truth makes himself a new enterprise and in doing so, finds clothes to fit his inwardly formed identity.
Thoreau encourages a utilitarian function of clothing, in contrast to the societal ideology “led oftener by love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility,” (“Economy” 21). Clothing serves practical purposes “to maintain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness,” (21). We all wear clothing to meet these purposes, and in doing so repeatedly in our daily practice, we “know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits,” (21). To Thoreau, there is something sacred about wearing clothes accustomed to Sullivan 12 the wearer. It is as if clothes well worn have a relationship to the wearer, a kind of fidelity.
Kings and queens who wear a garment only once do not experience the physical and emotional comfort of clothing after repeated wear, and instead remain in the “awkwardness and fatuity” of the English Parliament (“Life Without Principle” 370). The issue in Thoreau’s society, and in many evidences our society today, is that what is truly respectable, for example, character, has secondary status to what is respected, such as fashion, where “we know but few men, but a great many coats and breeches,” (“Economy” 21). Clothing intersects with media where newspapers publish examples of the most recent and highest fashion, but neglect to comment on the indwelling of the souls beneath those layers. Today, most publicized awards shows on television are preceded by programming of equal time devoted solely to the viewing and commentary of dress. According to Thoreau, “only they who go to soirees and legislative halls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not?” (“Economy” 22). In an attempt to attain freedom from the entanglements of society, we must remove the noose of adornments from around our necks and retain only that which enables us to practically serve in our purpose- driven lives.
Education
In the same way that appearances are maintained through dress, appearances also extend into institutions like education. In regards to the political system, which is largely intertwined with the educational system, “to educate the wise man the State exists, and with the appearance of the wise man the State expires,” (Emerson, “Politics” 342-343). The education system does not make a man wise, and if the government is permitted to exist in its current state alongside the
“education” of the wise, then the institution of education must be passive enough to maintain the Sullivan 13 status quo. In maintaining the functions of the State, “we are full of mechanical actions [while] we pass in the world for sects and schools,” (Emerson, “Spiritual Laws” 80-81). The education system becomes another system of slavery, a rote process used to produce mass ways of thinking and to continue to produce thinkers that will remain within the philosophical boundaries determined by society, the “hobgoblin of little minds,” (Emerson, “Self-Reliance” 35).
Furthermore, Emerson proposes that most of his education emanates from experience rather than the “regular course of studies” as “the years of academical and professional education have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School. What we do not call education is more precious than what we call so. We form no guess, at the time of receiving a thought, of its comparative value,” (“Spiritual Laws” 78). Akin to Emerson’s disenchantment in the educational system, Thoreau also argues that there is a disconnect between modes of instruction and resultant learning where “there may be one or two in each hundred, prematurely old perchance, that approaches the subject from a similar point of view to his teachers, but for the rest, and the most promising, it is like agricultural chemistry to so many
Indians,” (qtd. in Willson, “Thoreau on Education” 20). Education is an institution that is preconceived, a system. If the students do not fit within the constructs of the system, the mold of the chains, then they will not achieve more instruction than through the idle Latin books that
Emerson found underneath a bench. Thoreau places a burden on the instructors to mold the education to the students’ needs for learning through application. Thoreau encourages a teaching style that will enable students to employ their knowledge in a greater context than the classroom.
The “common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, [is] where anything is professed and practiced than the art of life,” (“Economy” 44). He warns that Sullivan 14 when students are forced to learn canned material within schools, they will leave the institutions without the proper skills needed to be a successful free-thinking individual.
Rather than enlightening the individual with the weapon of truth, Thoreau argues that schooling merely drills the mind through repetition. To use Thoreau’s military diction, students do not learn meaningful knowledge through schooling, “but at most learn where the arsenal is, in case they should ever want to use any of its weapons,” (qtd. in Willson, “Thoreau on Education”
20). By using military diction, Thoreau assimilates knowledge and education with the magnitude of martial power. Because knowledge empowers, it is important to be taught correctly and in a manner that is applicable to life experience. Education is an important weapon of truth, and that is why Thoreau upholds the practice of learning with utmost reverence. Both
Thoreau and Emerson indicate the shortcomings of the education system of their time and the lack of application when students “are shut up in schools . . . for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands... our legs
. . . our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun,” (Emerson qtd. in Willson, “Thoreau on
Education” 20). The “shut up” enclosure of schools furthers the slavery of the young mind where they are fed the fodder of words that fail in application, and a lack of skills to help the students navigate the world outside the scholastic institution. Perhaps one of the earliest forms of societal slavery is the constraining of the young mind within the education system.
Religion
Both Emerson and Thoreau categorize the closed minded instruction of the education system evident in many forms of institutionalized religion as well. They make a distinction between the worship of a higher power, and the conscription to a rote religious system void of recognizable Sullivan 15 spiritual benefits. Although the American Constitution contains protections to uphold religious beliefs as understood in the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, (“The United States
Constitution”), Thoreau argues that the culture does not choose to exercise these rights as “we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten,”
(“Economy” 35). Limiting one’s educational portion leads to malnutrition of the mind, whereby limiting one’s spiritual portion leads to malnutrition of the soul. Both types of starvation are culturally imposed, and enslaving in their own right.
Thoreau found that the atmosphere of the church, “which might be sacred to thought and religion, if one had any,” could be of value; however he was “not sure but this Catholic religion would be an admirable one if the priest were quite omitted,” (Thoreau qtd. in Willson, “Thoreau and Roman Catholicism” 159). Thoreau blames the authority figures for the perversion of what could be sacred spiritual thought much in the same way that he condemns the immoral legislators for their leadership in government. According to Lawrence Willson, Thoreau views the Catholic
Church, like all organized religion, as an institution, “like the state and, therefore, it could not be trusted,” (157). He avoided “institution and its representatives,” explaining his disfavor with the clergy, “avoiding also […] what he considered prejudice and hypocrisy of the institutionalized faithful,” (157). Thoreau disapproves of the religious leaders because of their institutionalized bondage rather than for their spiritual nature, the latter which he argues lacks evidence. He claims that the Church exists primarily through ceremonies of marriage and funerals where
“most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself,” (Thoreau,
“Economy” 49). From Thoreau’s perspective, “what you might call Christianity” does not serve its intended spiritual purpose if it only enters into one’s existence at the memorial of life. Sullivan 16
Thoreau links spiritual practice with earthly implications; his “test for ministers and priests was his test for all men: they must prove the efficacy of their faith in this world,” (Willson,
“Thoreau and Roman Catholicism” 158). Emerson uses the term “pretension” to exemplify the nominal spirituality practiced by many who “sit still, but cannot act,” (“Spiritual Laws” 94).
Emerson personifies pretension, which “never wrote an Iliad, nor drove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery,” (94). Pretension only furthers the slavery of the self, binding the individual in the false precept that intention is equal to action. Inaction from
“the blindness of the preacher” maintains dogmatic tenets “instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul; the omnipotence of the will; and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood,” (Emerson,
“Compensation” 56-57). Emerson differentiates between the truthfulness of spirituality, and the preacher’s obscured representation. The preacher lacks clarity in discerning his own spiritual insight and therefore cannot convict his congregation with a truth he does not know. The example of the blind preacher reinforces conformity to a static system that encourages tradition while sacrificing spiritual enlightenment.
Emerson argues that “young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like,” (“Spiritual Laws” 94). These points of theological contention and dissention are “the soul’s mumps and measles and whooping- coughs,” (94). Young people are especially plagued by the disease of the details as they have not developed their sense of truth yet. They become entangled in the religious dogma when trying to communicate their beliefs with others, isolating them where “they cannot describe their health or prescribe the cure,” (94). Emerson contrasts the bindings of dogmatic confusion with the ability
“to give account of his faith and expound to another the theory of his self-union and freedom,” Sullivan 17
(94). The type of faith endorsed by Emerson, which will be discussed further, does not isolate but unifies. The unity is a “self-union” that does not constrain the masses together through the chains of pretension, but instead through self-knowledge and truth delivers one into “freedom,”
(94). A faith that provides freedom may be cultured in any place “sacred to thought and to religion,” it could be found in a church, but it cannot pretend to thrive under the auspices of inapplicable and institutionalized religious dogma (Thoreau qtd. in Willson, “Thoreau and
Roman Catholicism” 159).
Property Ownership
In addition to the right to exercise religious beliefs, another paradoxical freedom is the right to own property, or rather, the enslaving nature of America’s value system founded on property ownership. Property is an indication of wealth; it evidences the American obsession with material worth, and “leads us to our slavish respect for numbers,” (Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
53). In contrast to independence, “the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance,” (53). As societal worth is defined by ownership, people living within the culture “measure their esteem of each other by what each other has, and not by what each other is” (53); ownership takes the place of character. Although ideologically, “of all persons, all have equal rights,” property laws during the nineteenth century had evolved into “such a structure given to our usages as allowed the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep them poor,” (Emerson, “Politics” 335). Emerson describes the “whole constitution of property” as “injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading,”
(335). Returning to Rousseau’s allusions to the Spartans, Emerson highlights the Spartan principle of declaring “that which is just, equal; not that which is equal, just,” (qtd. in Emerson, Sullivan 18
“Politics” 335). Indicative of the civil man, ownership may bind an individual to the land, but it may also divide the soul between conscience and citizenship.
In Walden, Thoreau concentrates on the constraining elements of land ownership and inheritance. In surveying his townsmen, “whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools,” he deduces that their inherited properties are “more easily acquired than got rid of,” (Thoreau, “Economy” 8). Once the townsmen inherit their land, they no longer discern their destiny of “what field they were called to labor in” and instead succumb to the life and occupation that has been passed down through inheritance, (8). “Inherited encumbrances” have made the townsmen “serfs to the soil,” as they must devote their lives to the processing of the land for their livelihood (8). They have become indentured servants to their own property and have “no time to be anything but a machine,” (9).
In the mid-nineteenth century, property did not only refer to land, but also people. Thoreau writes of “the state which buys and sells men, women, and children like cattle at the door of the senate house. […] Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their odd-fellow society,” (“The Village”
137). The “dirty” institution of slavery operates directly through slave auctions, and also indirectly, constraining the individual to buy into the “odd-fellow society.” The American individual is constantly pursued and pawed at by the “dirty” beast of slavery that seeks to bind him into the system. In relinquishing moral direction, the individual becomes the property of the ruling state power. In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau argues that the individuals who “assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property,” (276). Those that accumulate property are dependent on the state financially. The rich man “is always sold to the institution which makes Sullivan 19 him rich,” (276). A man may have a fortune by the means of slave labor from agricultural production, however in acquiring material wealth through the institution of slavery, he is enslaved to that system for “if you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own,” (Emerson, “Compensation” 65).
Thoreau chastises America for its inability to form moral standards “because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end,” (“Life Without Principle” 370). Thoreau warns us against molding our lives around trade and commerce or else we become “warped and narrowed” by the very channels that we hoped would lead us to our fruitful ends. Although trade and commerce may be appropriate practices to achieve the goals of living, without principle they are only vehicles without fuel. They are the means, but if we enter into them with “exclusive devotion,” removing our principles for the sake of the means, then we enter into a vehicle without turning on the ignition. We settle for the experience of existing inside the vehicle, but it does not take us to where we could go if we only allowed our inner convictions to drive us on our natural course.
Thoreau argues that it is impossible to reach the ends of individual truth if we submit to the lull of mass complacency. Newspapers are one institution that robs man of individualism because all men in reading the Daily Times participate in a mass routine consumption of “columns” that work to enclose the mind rather than expand it. In connection with nature, “a snowdrift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down,”
(“Life Without Principle” 372). Institutions and societal constructions like the government, media, fashion, education, religion, and property laws become ineffective and detrimental Sullivan 20 without principle. Principles and truth are forces that may blow against the structures of society, but Thoreau argues that those are the only winds worth following. Along with the constraints of society, Thoreau and Emerson explore the principles that ultimately lead to freedom and spiritual satisfaction.
Paths to Freedom
Emerson, like Rousseau, argues that the growth of the individual does not emanate from the greater society, but rather that societal influence may have a detrimental effect on personal development as
Society everywhere is conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each share-holder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most requests is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and custom. (“Self-Reliance” 30).
Emerson’s example of a joint-stock company is quintessentially American in that “the members agree” to join. The agreement reinforces concepts of societally favored unity and freedom.
Although members of society have a personal choice to participate, Emerson argues that by doing so they electively choose to relinquish the full capacity of their personal choice. In their society, members so easily “capitulate to badges and names;” they surrender to “large societies and dead institutions,” (31).
Thoreau argues that rather than a lifeless corporation, “goodness is the only investment that never fails,” (“Higher Laws” 172). Like Emerson’s joint-stock company, Thoreau identifies the “Universe’s Insurance Company” as a system of governance where “our little goodness is all the assessment that we pay,” (172). It is significant that both authors use financial metaphors, indicating the American predilection for monetary gain and material worth. Both Emerson and Sullivan 21
Thoreau attempt to subvert the material value system in exchange for an intangible value system based on morality.
The “Unit” in Unity
Service should be enacted with moral basis. According to Emerson “there is a class of persons of whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be,” but this is not to be confused with “your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies; though I confess with shame that I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold,” (“Self-Reliance” 32). There are many good causes to serve, however
Emerson’s service operates on an intimate and relational level as understood by the group
“class,” comprised of the units of “persons.” These units contrast with the “thousand-fold” units
Emerson uses to describe varied and diluted philanthropic organizations. Rousseau also employs numerical diction in his differentiation of mass-pursuits versus those of the individual where natural man is “the numerical unit, the absolute whole, accountable only to himself or to his own kind. Civil man is only a fractional unit dependent on the denominator, whose value is in his relationship with the whole, that is, the social body. Good social institutions are those that know best how to denature man, to take away his absolute existence in order to give him a relative one, and to transport the "me" into a common unity so that each individual no longer regards himself as one but as a part of the unity and is sensitive only to the whole,” (Rousseau).
The trap lays in the ambiguous promises that these large scale institutions offer to members of society hoping to partake in a meaningful cause. Perhaps the beginning of meaning begins with the smallest unit. Less is more; well, it seems that way to Emerson. It is the same Sullivan 22 concept that fuels his argument for taking the care and concern one may extend to free the slaves in Barbados, and challenging that person to turn that love toward his children, the town wood- chopper, to be good natured and to be modest, to have that kind of grace without crossing an ocean, (Emerson, “Self-Reliance” 31). What is close may not seem as grandiose as some of the causes of the Relief Societies, but it may be just as meaningful, and that discovery cannot be found through an institution, but reliance on the self.
Individual Construction
Thoreau advances that “we are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them,” (“Higher Laws” 175). Whereas meanness leads to slavery, nobleness leads to freedom. We must assert the power to construct our souls in the light of nobleness rather than submit to the common structure of the surrounding society. Thoreau encourages that while many men believe that they are powerless against the “common mode of living” and “there is no choice left, […] it is never too late to give up our prejudices,”
(“Economy” 11). He advocates a power of the self, and that power found through a Higher
Authority will deliver the individual into a greater understanding of truth.
Concerning government, Thoreau does not condemn government in and of itself, but the
“mass of men [who] serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies,”
(“Civil Disobedience” 267). These men are not individuals but a “mass.” Instead of assuming the role of the painter or sculptor to make one’s body and soul into a masterpiece, “they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose [of the state] as well,” (267). In contrast to Thoreau’s image of an individually created work of art, the man enslaved to the government does not use Sullivan 23 his materials to the extent of his potential and instead allows the system to mold him into a mass production replacing the life giving “flesh and blood and bones” (“Higher Laws” 175) with
“wood and earth and stones,” (“Civil Disobedience” 267). The first way to assert one’s individual freedom is to recognize the materials that he has been given and to see the potential for construction within that bodily facility. Thoreau writes in the conclusion of Walden that
“things do not change; we change,” whereby we must have the courage to improve,
(“Conclusion” 257).
Conscientious Objection
Accepting the power to change oneself requires the courage to make those changes in service to a Higher Power even in the face of governmental opposition. Society often scorns that rank of people, the “heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, [who] serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it,” (Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” 268). Thoreau claims that
“unjust laws exist,” but the question is “shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded or shall we transgress them at once?”
(“Civil Disobedience” 272). The Quakers during the American Civil War answered Thoreau by transgressing the military conscription laws and conscientiously objecting to the draft. Under the
Quaker religion there is a principle prohibiting involvement in violent warfare. George Fox, an early Quaker leader, writes in a declaration to King Charles II in 1660 that “we utterly- deny; with all outward wars and strife, and fightings with - outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world,” (Fox). Abstinence from violence is a major component of the Quaker religion, which posed tension when the states required military conscription during the Civil War. The American government faced the challenge of Sullivan 24 interpreting the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution which states that “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” (“The United States Constitution”). More recent commentary explains that
“though in practically all matters civil law could not be violated based on religious beliefs, conscientious objection to war was considered an exception,” (Wilson qtd. in West, 374).
The correspondence between President Abraham Lincoln and Eliza P. Gurney in 1862 is an enlightening insight into the government’s response to conscientious objectors, specifically, the Quakers. Eliza P. Gurney, the English-born widow of Quaker leader Joseph John Gurney, visited the White House along with several other Quakers to meet with Lincoln in October of
1862 (“Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney (1801-1881)”). The meeting consisted of time spent mostly in prayer and meditation. For the next two years, Abraham Lincoln and Eliza P. Gurney continued to maintain written correspondence. Much of the content is founded on spiritual encouragement and biblical citation from Gurney, with responses of gratitude and honest sentiment from Lincoln. In one of the letters from Lincoln to Gurney in reference to allowing the
Quaker people exception from conscription, he writes,
Your people, the Friends, have had and are having a very great trial. On principle and faith opposed to both war and oppression, they can only practically oppose oppression by war. In this hard dilemma some have chosen one horn and some the other. For those appealing to me on conscientious grounds I have done, and shall do, the best I could and can, in my own conscience, under my oath to the law. (Lincoln)
The Quakers, referred to here as “Friends,” were permitted to abstain from conscription under the permission of Lincoln. The example demonstrates the power of principles and the positive way that one’s principles may be interfaced with government.
Sullivan 25
Societal Deconstruction
Conscientious objection exemplifies the Transcendentalist tenet of developing the individual’s sense of moral truth. The fear is that a government that is too invasive will deter from the individual journey of self reliance and understanding. Emerson advocates that “the antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of the private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supercede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man; of who the existing government is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation,”
(“Politics” 342). The developed individual tries to overcome the “shabby imitation” in exchange for authentic character.
Emerson attempts to empower the individual by focusing on the youth to whom,
society is an illusion […]. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men and institutions rooted like oak-trees to the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres, but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement and compel the system to gyrate round it. (“Politics” 332)
Emerson immediately differentiates society from truth, defining it as an illusory construction around which many shape their existence. He makes the distinction that as society “lies in rigid repose” (332), it is “the infinite [that] lies stretched in smiling repose” where the finite has
“wrought and suffered,” (Emerson, “Spiritual Laws” 78). Therefore, society is an impermanent structure where “the names, men and institutions” have the ability to change through work and effort. Emerson widens the scope of his static ecosystem metaphor to compare society to a dynamic solar system, encouraging the individual to become the center particle, to begin the movement that will set the structure into motion around truth. That will include the “broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love,” (“Politics” 345-346). The rightness and love alluded to are founded on truth, they are not illusory. Emerson argues that in Sullivan 26 order to change the government, or the imagery of the solar system, change must begin in the individual, the particle by particle alignment of truth within, or else the design will be merely
“air pictures,” (346).
Akin to Thoreau’s view of the individual as a creator or artist of his self, or his soul to use more infinite language, Emerson also advances a process of shaping necessary for change within the individual with the effects of shaping the surrounding society and government. According to
Hans Von Rautenfeld, “the value at the heart of Emerson’s conception of democracy is the ability of all person’s to shape their lives through thinking and thus to exercise their capacity for self-government,” (184). As mentioned previously, self government does not imply anarchy, but self reliance upon a Higher Authority and personal accountability to live morally. As the individual shapes his or her character in truth, unlearning the “wisdom of the world,” the bond of slavery to the rigid construction of society is broken, when we “learn that truth alone makes rich and great,” (Emerson, “Spiritual Laws” 95).
Identifying Truth
In order to experience truth, both Emerson and Thoreau agree that it is necessary to identify what is false, for what is false enslaves the individual into an illusory notion of truth and purpose. The blind follower does not know truth and so he does not see the figurative bindings of society around his heart and mind. To explain truth and fallacy, light imagery is used by both authors to identify the illumination of truth, and the obscurity of fallacy. Thoreau describes the current state of America as “a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity,” (“Civil
Disobedience” 267). The shadow imagery symbolizes the darkness of fallacy, a constructed societal way of living made to imitate truth. The shadow cannot illuminate, it cannot inspire.
Rather than succumbing to the darkness, Emerson urges that humanity should “shine with real Sullivan 27 light and not with the borrowed reflection of light,” (“Spiritual Laws” 95). The
Transcendentalists argue that all humans are equipped with the means to achieve truth through moral development and an individual relationship with a Higher Power. When the individual does not develop the inside potential, that person lives as a shell, a skeletal appearance of the goodness that is possible (Thoreau, “Life Without Principle” 370). The light does not shine from the inside when the individual attempts to borrow the idea of light from institutions, systems of government, and societal trends. By attempting to form an identity through these peripheral mechanisms, the individual borrows a reflection of light. It is significant that the reflection is borrowed, the reminiscence of a human existence. These people do not even borrow real truth, but a glimpse of truth as seen through the perspective of another entity. The truth, like the light, is found inside of the individual versus through an organization or institution. Because of the individual accessibility to truth, Emerson encourages self-reliance as a means of understanding by introspection. He says that “a man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across the mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages,”
(“Self-Reliance” 27). Seeing the light, detecting the gleam, comes with learning. The gleam that
“flashes” from within is active, whereas the “luster of the firmament” is a reflection of light off of another surface. The luster does not emanate from the individual, but from the byproducts of the sages. Emerson summarizes that the chief object of man “is to make daylight shine through him, to suffer the law to traverse his whole being without obstruction, so that on what point soever of his doing your eye falls it shall report truly of his character,” (“Spiritual Laws” 96). To live in truth means not only to live in light but to shine light. The darkness of fallacy, myths of success and worth communicated by society, obstruct the light and it is only when the darkness is cleared that true character can be seen. Sullivan 28
Truth in Action
True character manifests through action. The notion of action, specifically its combination with moral principles, drives much of Thoreau’s writing, especially in “Civil
Disobedience” where he states that “action from principle, the perception and performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist in wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine,” (272). Action committed from principles has the ability to identify true character. Action discerns between the opinions of the well intentioned from the impact of the revolutionaries. Whereas the intended outcome of political action typically is cohesion, Thoreau advances a kind of action that will separate evil from goodness, stasis from dynamism, fallacy from truth. That action, or moreover, his principles that result in action, drives Thoreau to incarceration (278).
Thoreau went six years without paying a poll-tax, so as not to fuel the government’s role in its unjust exploits like African American slavery and the Mexican War (“Civil Disobedience”
278). His time in confinement paradoxically taught him lessons of freedom where “under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison,” (275).
The parallel sentence structure subverts expectations where the unjust equates to government, and the just equates to prisons. Furthermore, Thoreau focuses his perspective onto the political system of Massachusetts which has “provided for her freer and less desponding spirits […] in her prisons,” (275). Thoreau’s abstract diction of “spirits” differentiates concrete citizens from abstract souls. Whereas incarceration functions to constrain the citizen, the spirit cannot be constrained by the earthly prison, “the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide Sullivan 29 with honor,” (275). Thoreau views the prison as a sanctuary for his soul, and his imprisonment as a necessary action from his principles.
Spiritual Freedom
Finding freedom from the constraints of the world involves finding unity in the spirit. As termed the “over-soul” by Emerson, it is the unity “within which every man’s particular being is contained and made one with all other, […] to which all right action is submission,” (“The Over-
Soul” 156). Unlike the common bonds of slavery through societal institutions, the concept of the soul is a unifying force that transcends the societal illusions and constructions. By forming identity upon institutions, humans live in “succession, in division, in parts, in particles,” (156).
In contrast to the units that work together in mutual service to form unity, those whose lives revolve around the societal structure do not move in sync and they are hard-pressed into the modes of living previously constructed. By accessing the spirit nature, the “universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related,” the societal bonds are broken, (156-157).
Although “we see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree, […] the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul,” (157). Again, light is mentioned in the context of the individual. As light is analogous to truth, the collection of the “shining parts” signifies that truth exists in the shimmers, and together they make the Over-soul. One can envision all of the individuals that dwell upon the earth, not as people, but as lights. When all of the lights are shining, they comprise a great light, the Over-soul. The light described by
Emerson is not an esoteric attainment but rather “from within or behind, a light shines through us upon things and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all,” (157-158). Humankind attempts to define and describe through activities, habits, and customs, but these can obscure the light of truth when these modes of living are conducted without moral principles (158). Sullivan 30
The action advocated by Thoreau, specifically the action that moves an individual to tread against society, fuels from a “generative energy [that] invigorates and inspires us,”
(“Higher Laws” 173). Thoreau describes the concept of the soul as an energy “which, when we are loose,” or in a state of disunity, “dissipates and makes us unclean,” (173). Akin to Emerson,
Thoreau establishes unity in the spiritual, versus the dissention in dogma. In the same way that the derivation of the word “truth” is “fidelity” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary), the concept of relationship reinforces the Transcendentalist understanding of the unity of the soul between individuals wherein “the soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth,” (Emerson, “The
Over-Soul” 163). Whereas many believe that to find truth they must seek outwardly to educational systems or doctrinal mandates, the Over-soul “passes into and becomes that man whom it enlightens; or in proportion to that truth he receives, it takes him to itself,” (163). Truth, therefore, resides in oneself, or one’s soul. Living by the guidance of the Higher Power, or the spirit which animates (Thoreau, “Conclusion” 251), illuminates the individual in truth and freedom.
The light of the spirit cultures individual growth whereas “chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is opened,” (“Higher Laws”
173). Thoreau argues that the “channel of purity” allows the life-giving light from God to enter into the individual. From this light grows various fruits that comprise an individual’s character.
Purity associates with the higher energy, whereas impurity associates with societal debility. An individual with a pure channel to God becomes more complete; however the individual who has allowed the ways of the world to obscure this channel retains only a shell; the life is leeched by society. Emerson affirms Thoreau’s belief in individual accessibility to truth through a Higher Sullivan 31
Power claiming that “we lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams,” (“Self-Reliance” 39). Thoreau’s “channel” compares to Emerson’s “passage” through which enlightenment moves into the individual, filling the being with a greater perspective resulting in a more efficacious organ of activity.
The Transcendentalists argue that anyone has the ability to claim the light of truth, and the claim to individual freedom. Thoreau states that “he is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established,” (“Higher Laws” 173). He advances that the establishment of the divine enables the enslaved beast to assume the humanity that is possible. In choosing to accept the divine, the individual must accept purity. Living in purity means living in the spirit, allowing a Higher Power to “let it appear through his action” where the man is the organ of its will (Emerson, “The Over-Soul” 158). Emerson describes the spirit organically; “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,” (158). The spirit does not limit action, but it enhances and magnifies individual potential. As the spirit breathes, it inhales life, with the byproducts of genius, virtue, and love. These characteristics are evident in man only when the animal dies, and the divine manifests through the channel of purity.
Principles and Provision
Action breathed with spiritual energy can accomplish great gains for humanity. Thoreau discusses the practical implications of living in the spirit in terms of livelihood and labor. In regards to wealth, he writes that “superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul,” (“Conclusion” 257). Many men are bound to the societal hierarchy founded on capital; however monetary accumulation need not be the ends but Sullivan 32 the means of living. Thoreau offers an alternative perspective, proposing money’s inability to sustain the soul. Thoreau devalues the importance of occupational attainment and the status structure therein to import the quality of work completed, rather than the quantity of capital gain.
He argues that the “aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get a ‘good job,’ but to perform well a certain work,” (“Life Without Principle” 358). In doing so, the laborer works for
“moral ends,” rather than “low ends,” (358). The low ends are contrasted to the moral ends predicated upon Higher Laws. Laboring to improve the self elevates any labor to a moral ambition. The laborer chooses to do the work virtuously, which produces freedom.
When laboring with principles, the work becomes a construction of the soul, versus merely a construction of the field. Thoreau advises that in order to produce a work of freedom,
“do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it,” (“Life
Without Principle” 358). As man “is always sold to the institution that makes him rich,” the man who does work simply for a profit without principle enslaves himself to his employer (“Civil
Disobedience” 276). In addition to constraining himself to profits, the laborer cheats himself
“for the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. […]
These ends of labor cannot be answered but by exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives,” (Emerson, “Compensation” 69). Emerson adds another dimension to labor as an opportunity for learning and growth. Although both authors condemn the esoteric foundation of the education system, labor is a beneficial application of knowledge and when executed with pure motives, with moral principles, it is virtuous.
Thoreau describes himself as “more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom;” his concern causes his relationship with as well as his obligation to society to be as slight and transient as possible, (“Life Without Principle” 359). He keeps his desires conservative so as not Sullivan 33 to increase the labor necessary to supply them, which would change his labors from “pleasure” to
“drudgery,” (359). Therefore, Thoreau also argues that industry may indicate excess wants requiring excess work. Industry, in this context, suggests the laborer does “not spend his time well” and “there is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living,” (359). In contrast to the breathing and life-giving imagery used by Emerson in reference to his description of the Over-soul (“The Over-Soul” 158), Thoreau’s diction of
“time” and “fatal” create a mood of suffocation and mortality. The destructive word choice reinforces that money cannot provide the necessities of the soul. The implications of greed become fatal when men misspend their days working “as if [they] could kill time without injuring eternity,” (“Economy” 11). Ultimately, Thoreau advances that in order to pursue the kind of work that will impact eternity, “you must get your living by loving,” (“Life Without
Principle” 359).
Loving for a Living
Emerson connects labor to the concept of love—quite possibly the greatest work in progress. He says that the individual is “put in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality, but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom,” (“Love” 111). It is a love that does not stand aloof from the partiality of an institution or hesitate at the appearance of a person. Love according to Emerson is an action; it
“seeks.” Love is also a continual process, a “training” that will work until it reaches the ends of goodness. In Emerson’s essay, “Compensation,” he writes about action and reaction, tracing human motivation and its implications. In a discussion about the nature of law, he notes that in addition to providing penalties for wrong action, the “law holds with equal sureness for right action. Love, and you shall be loved,” (70). The law that supports right action is the moral law. Sullivan 34
In the same way that violent crime is met with violent punishment under a crime control system, the commitment of love is embraced with more love in return. It is upon that foundation that the individual should act. Emerson writes of the balance existent in a loving relationship for “all love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation,” (70). Unlike slavery where at least one party is subservient to a master, action governed by the principle of love result in equality. Love is representative of “absolute good, which like fire turns every thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do any harm,” (70). To be absolute is to be free from authority, to be pure; it is the ultimate freedom and it is found through love. As both authors explain the manifestation of truth as light, absolute truth manifests as a fire. The fire not only shines, but it consumes so that all who are loved are made into loving beings themselves, liberating their souls while taking captive their hearts for eternity.
Whereas society constrains “excess” freedom, “there can be no excess to love, none to knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense,” (Emerson,
“Compensation” 73). As stated by Thoreau, once the channel of purity is open, “man flows at once to God,” and accesses the completeness of his soul, (“Higher Laws” 173). That is why the acknowledgement of the soul is imperative to the individual’s spiritual formation of freedom because “the soul refuses limits, and always affirms Optimism, never Pessimism,”
(“Compensation” 73). The individual accesses hope through the purity of the soul, a hope that overpowers the bonds of society with absolute goodness. The soul operates in absolutes, because
“Essence, or God, is not a relation or part, but the whole,” (“Compensation” 72). Because God cannot be segmented into parts, the Essence possesses all love, knowledge, and beauty, which is accessible to man through his channel. Sullivan 35
When one makes a “living by loving” (Thoreau, “Life Without Principle” 359), the entire notion of livelihood and gain inverts. Inequalities vanish whereby “love reduces them as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea,” (Emerson, “Compensation” 74). When the capital is love, “the bitterness of His and Mine ceases,” as “the heart and soul of all men [become] one,” (74). Love resists the bonds of societal greed, for Emerson writes that even “if I feel overshadowed and outdone by my neighbors, I can yet love; I can yet still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own grandeur he loves,” (74). Love illuminates the shadows cast by societal status. Love provides to the receiving heart. Love reconfigures societal grandeur into magnanimity of the soul; it cyclically illuminates, provides, and makes new in an ever continuous, and limitless, progression of the soul.
And love does not lie. Unlike the inflexibility of societal institutions that can break a soul in order to assume the shape of its structure, Emerson advocates a love that fully encompasses a person’s innate truth, for “if you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier,”
(“Self-Reliance” 44). The epitome of freedom is finding oneself, developing the spirit, and loving in total honesty and acceptance without boundaries. Emerson supports that love’s strength come from its spiritual properties. Possessing all of the power that earthly matter cannot strip, “love prays. It makes covenants with Eternal Power,” (“Love” 109). Through this union, it “adds a new value to every atom in nature—for it transmutes every thread throughout the whole web of relation into a golden ray, and bathes the soul in a new and sweeter element,”
(109). Visually, Emerson equates love with a “golden ray” of light, indicative of the light imagery used in his descriptions of truth. The power of the light has the ability to take truth, and
“thread” it into “relation” with others. Love is the ultimate action that allows us to unite our souls. Love then, is about becoming more divine, and less human. As humans surrender their Sullivan 36 lives to each other through love, they “lose their finite character and blend with God, to attain their own perfection,” (111). This kind of surrender differs from the surrender to government,
“for we need not fear that we can lose anything by our progress of the soul. The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations, must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on forever,” (111). As the soul progresses in open communion with the Divine, it can be trusted that love will endure and infinitely renew.
Love is the light of truth set aflame, “it astonishes and fires us with new endeavors after the unattainable,” (106). As love consumes, nothing becomes unattainable, unchangeable, and unlovable. Love seeks to consume individuals and their relationships with the ends of changing the universe through goodness, supplanting beauty in its path.
Love possesses the light of truth, with the fire of action allowing for an explosion of change. In order to find and give love in the purest sense, the individual must separate from the institutions of society that further falsehoods of meaning and worth. Both Emerson and Thoreau argue that the bonds onto the soul attach at the societal level, when individuals enchain themselves to an institution that they hope will bring identity and purpose. The problem is not with society, but with the beings that comprise it, and that is where the reconstruction must begin. Although the authors indicate some of the concrete manifestations of personal slavery such as governmental systems, dress, money, education, etc., the channels to freedom are much more abstract, and must be identified on an intimate and individual level.
Thoreau ends his essay “Life Without Principle” by explaining that he “might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence. Wherever a man separates form the multitude, and goes his own way in this mood, there indeed is a fork in the road, though ordinary travelers may see only a gap in the paling. His Sullivan 37 solitary path across lots will turn out the higher way of the two,” (Thoreau, “Life Without
Principle”). Thoreau’s figurative first step is guided by a Higher Power, and it is by those laws that he acts. Many people claim to follow the guidance of a Higher Power, and it can be confusing when those drives seem adversarial. How could men fly airplanes into buildings packed with people and claim that it was in service of a Higher Power? How could a woman bomb an abortion clinic containing women just like herself and explain that it was done in the name of a Higher Authority? The reality of our society’s slavery to hate is as painful as the chains that constrain, and the most disturbing part is that many mistake the fork in the road between right and wrong for “only a gap in the paling.” They have separated from the multitude into a smaller contingency of travelers but their lanterns of truth and love must have extinguished long before they saw the fork.
The kind of Higher Power advanced by Thoreau and Emerson is a power that guides by truth and love that seeks to spread goodness. It is a power that operates through souls, not people, because people are subject to deceit and disaster. Out of the obscurity of a society that is in constant conflict about whom or what is right, it is a power that merely shines a light, and in doing so, illuminates an entire world of individual channels that ignite in relationship with each other to consume the darkness. Call it the Over-soul, call it God, call it Morality, there is something shining on the horizon and it can be seen through the cracks of our societal structures.
It illuminates the bonds of the chains that we did not know we carried, and it exposes us in the light of virtue where we lack. Truth, as understood by the Transcendentalists, can convict and consume. Pursuing truth, following the “higher way” like Thoreau, is a path void of many travelers, but we are each given a lantern to light the way, and the assurance that it burns with an infinite fire. Sullivan 38
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