Professor Louis Agassiz People Mentioned in Walden

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

ALMOST MENTIONED IN WALDEN: PROFESSOR JEAN LOUIS

RODOLPHE AGASSIZ, THE AMERICAN LYSENKO

“I have always suspected Agassiz of superficiality & wretched reasoning powers; but I think such men do immense good in their way. See how he stirred up all Europe about Glaciers.” — Charles Darwin, commenting on Louis Agassiz’s pseudoscientific political agenda, in a private letter to Thomas Henry Huxley on September 26, 1857 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

THE THREE “SCIENTISM-ISTS”

Over the years the Thoreau Society has brushed up against a number of public intellectuals out of Harvard, professors who have traded on their credentials as scientists in order to profess that they knew, better than we know, how it is that we ought to live. First Professor Agassiz, whom Thoreau had mentioned in WALDEN, gave serieses of public lectures in downtown Boston about the Godliness of human enslavement, defending his friends the Southern slavemasters against the unrighteous attacks being made upon them by people like Thoreau and Darwin who did not understand the exigencies of human biology. Then Professor Skinner took time off from raising his daughter in a cage, and time off from developing an early generation of “smart bombs” in which pigeons were trained to peck at screens inside a nose-cone until they blew themselves up, to write a book WALDEN II which was twice as good as Thoreau’s WALDEN. The burden of WALDEN II is that human freedom is a wrong goal. We should all be training each other by behavioristic operant conditioning to be good little cogs in a friction-free local social engine. We need to get beyond false ideals like freedom and dignity. Professor Skinner came out to Concord and lectured us. He let us know that he kept a copy of Thoreau’s WALDEN in the glove compartment of his car, and every once in awhile when he had a chance he would dip into it and pick out one sentence to muse upon entirely at random. It is such a wonderful piece of writing, he pointed out, that it makes no difference in what sequence you consider its sentences. It would make just as much sense to him if he read the last sentence first and the first sentence last (we listened to this, and thought “What a great Thoreauvian you are, Professor Skinner, you are so wise and profound”). Then along came Professor Wilson, with his sociobiology. We are a social species and like all social species, we are being trained by evolution to care for one another. What works for ants will work for human beings, as ant wars and human wars get deselected through the general selection drift toward more and more altruistic behavior more and more of the time. The more biodiversity there is, the safer the planet will become for life. The more we go with evolution and do things the natural way, the kinder and more considerate and tolerant we will become toward one another. What great things to offer the unwashed public, on the lecture circuit! We awarded this Thoreauvian our Thoreau Medal. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

(I’m going to attempt to make a case, in these three chronological studies of three lives of public intellectuals, that although a tradition of Evolutionary Ethics captivates both Harvard University in Cambridge and the Thoreau Society in Concord, this attitude of scientism was something that Henry Thoreau himself had found deeply disquieting.)

It has been claimed that there are no 2d acts in American lives. Of these three “scientism-ists,” Professor Agassiz did not get a 2d act in which to be sorry he had believed in racial enslavement because God gave him a crab-shaped brain aneurysm that did not disturb his equanimity but caused him to suddenly fall down. Professor Skinner was never reproached by his daughter Deborah Skinner Buzan for having kept her inside what he classified as an “heir conditioner,” nor did his trained pigeons ever point out to him that a truly “smart” bomb would be one that would refuse to go off: “You’re insane, right? –Blow myself up? –Would I want to do that?”

However, it seems that God is now granting Professor Wilson a 2d act! In his old age he has repented of what he told us about the inevitability of altruism. He now acknowledges all that to have been a just-so story. He made it up out of whole cloth. (His colleagues are so enraged at him for his belated “change of heart” that literally hundreds of them have been signing letters telling him that he ought to have retired long ago and is making himself an embarrassment.)

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1794

May: Volume I of Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s ZOONOMIA, a medical textbook punctuated with the author’s reflections on philosophy, natural history, and human life, was published (in this, Chapter 39 was an open espousal of the fact of biological evolution, in that he had all life as arising from “one living filament, which THE GREAT FIRST CAUSE endued with animality”).1

THE SCIENCE OF 1794

1. Although Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s grandson Charles Robert would read ZOONOMIA at the age of 16 or 17, he would report later in life that the poem had been without effect on his mind. He hadn’t even retained a memory of what his family’s motto E conchis omnia was, or what it signified. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Organic life beneath the shoreless waves Was born and nurs’d in ocean’s pearly caves; First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; These, as successive generations bloom, New powers acquire and larger limbs assume; Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.

This poem would be honored (and advertised) by the Pope by being placed on the INDEX EXPURGATORIUS. This must not be read by any faithful Catholic! It would appear in many editions, including three Irish editions and four American editions, and in addition would be widely translated into other languages. Its author would brag that it made him one hell of a lot of money! Some birds have acquired harder beaks to crack nuts, as the parrot. Others have acquired beaks adapted to break the harder seeds, as sparrows. Others for the softer seeds of flowers, or the buds of trees as the finches. Other birds have acquired long beaks to penetrate the moister soils in search of roots, as woodcocks; and others broad ones to filtrate the water of lakes, and to retain aquatic insects. All of which seem to have been gradually produced during many generations by the perpetual endeavour of the creatures to supply the want of food. When his grandson Charles Robert Darwin would write his biography, he would observe that: The “Zoonomia” is largely devoted to medicine, and my father thought that it had much influenced medical practice in England; he was of course a partial, yt naturally a more observant judge than others on this point. The book when published was extensively read by the medical men of the day, and the author was highly esteemed by them as a practitioner. Well, you may inquire, if Dr. Erasmus Darwin had the idea that life forms had evolved, then why isn’t he the one whom we recognize as the creator of the theory of evolution, rather than his grandson Charles? The simple answer is that all Erasmus had going for him was the power of poetry. He didn’t got no proof. Even when his grandson Charles Darwin read this poem in his youth, he wasn’t much impressed. Erasmus hadn’t been able to suggest a mechanism which would make this idea that life forms had evolved and were continuing to evolve into an idea that possessed scientific necessity. It would be left for his grandson Charles actually to dope out the nature of this mechanism, and provide this proof.

Not that being supplied with scientific proof is always enough! Professor Louis Agassiz, for instance, at Harvard College, twenty miles as the crow flies from Henry Thoreau, would be forced to choose between Darwin’s proof and his own ingrained belief in the natural rightness of human slavery — and so of course this Harvard man would close his eyes to the scientific proof and insist upon his embrace of the natural rightness of human slavery. You can just look at these blacks and know that they are separate from us, and inferior to us. (And his buddy Waldo Emerson, having his minor children being educated by Agassiz, would exhibit the same “Negrophobia.”)

Note that Dr. Erasmus Darwin was first with the theory that the moon originated in being split apart from the earth. He has clear priority over his grandson George Darwin, who usually gets all the credit for origination of this hypothesis. Gnomes! how you shriek’d! when through the troubled air Roar’d the fierce din of elemental war; HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

When rose the continents, and sunk the main, And Earth’s huge sphere exploding burst in twain.— Gnomes! how you gazed! when from her wounded side Where now the South-Sea heaves its waste of tide, Rose on swift wheels the Moon’s refulgent car, Circling the solar orb, a sister star, Dimpled with vales, with shining hills emboss’d, And roll’d round Earth her airless realms of frost. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM

(How interestingly different this is, from the idea that Erasmus Darwin, because he knew about the fact of evolution, should take priority over his grandson Charles Darwin in regard to the theory of evolution! The difference is caused by the fact that in the case of the origination of the earth’s moon, there is no distinction to be made between the hypothesis that it split off from the earth, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a theory as to how it could have and how it inevitably needed to split off from the earth.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1795

During this year and the next, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe produced his WILHELM MEISTERS LEHRJAHRE, in which he has the mysterious child Mignon, whom the male lead has rescued from the circus troupe, sing as follows:

Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn? Know’st thou the land where lemon-trees do bloom, Im dunkeln Laub die Gold-Orangen glühn, And oranges like gold in leafy gloom; Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht, A gentle wind from deep blue Heaven blows, De Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht, The myrtle thick, and high the laurel grows? Kennst du es wohl? Know’st thou it, then? Dahin! Dahin ’Tis there! ’tis there, Möcht ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn. O my belov’d one, I with thee would go. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

This would eventually appear in LITTLE WOMEN, in the introduction to the character known as Professor Bhaer (Louisa May Alcott’s impression of the stocky Cambridge teacher, Professor Louis Agassiz, Harvard’s racist biologist during that era):

I was thanking my stars that I’d learned to make nice buttonholes, when the parlor door opened and shut, and some one began to hum, — “Kennst du das Land,”

like a big bumblebee. It was dreadfully improper, I know, but I couldn’t resist the temptation, and lifting one end of the curtain before the glass door, I peeped in. Professor Bhaer was there, and while he arranged his books, I took a good look at him. A regular German — rather stout, with brown hair tumbled all over his head, a bushy beard, good nose, the kindest eyes I ever saw, and a splendid big voice that does one’s ears good, after our sharp or slipshod American gabble. His clothes were rusty, his hands were large, and he hadn’t a really handsome feature in his face, except his beautiful teeth, yet I liked him, for he had a fine head, his linen was very nice, and he looked like a gentleman, though two buttons were off his coat and there was a patch on one shoe. He looked sober in spite of his humming, till he went to the window to turn the hyacinth bulbs toward the sun, and stroke the cat, who received him like an old friend. Then he smiled, and when a tap came at the door, called out in a loud, brisk tone, — “Herein!” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1807

May 28, Thursday: Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz (Louis Agassiz) was born in Motier, a village on the shore of Lake Morat, Switzerland, the son of the Protestant pastor there.2

WALDEN: The mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, PEOPLE OF which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a WALDEN wild native kind (Mus leucopus) not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bo-peep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.

LOUIS AGASSIZ This is the Vaudois region of Switzerland in which many followers of Pierre Waldo, Waldenses, had holed up during the Middle Ages. The Agassiz family could trace its Protestant roots back into the 13th Century in the canton of Vaud adjacent to Fribourg, and Louis’s father was the 6th in an unbroken succession of pastors. –In all likelihood Louis had remote ancestors who had attempted to lead a life like that of Jesus!

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5 day 28 of 5 M / Attended our Moy [Monthly] Meeting which was held in town, the part for worship to my mind was a time of quiet & I trust a degree of strength was acquired. Holder Almy was concerned to encorage those whose minds were also in a Situation to say “teach me the right way & guide me therein”. Also enfor[ced] the necessity of our faithfulness in little things & said they that were faithful in the little should be made ruler over much. & at a Second Standing appeard much engaged to encorage us to the use of the plain language & simplicity in dress The part for discipline was a season of labor some trying cases were before us, but generally appeard to end pretty well Matthew Barker & Ruth Anthony had their Answer & were at liberty

2. One explanation for the unintelligibility of the popular song “Louie, Louie,” in which the only words on which people have been able to agree are “Louie, Louie,” is that it was written by little Jean Louis Rodolphe’s papa, who spoke only an obscure Swiss dialect, to sing to him in the evenings in his cradle. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

to marry marry. Such a poor tool as I am was appointed with a better to oversee their Marriage Obadiah Williams & Ruth Hadwen published their intentions of the same kind. Oh that I may be favord to dwell deep in the Spirit of my mind, Surely the present low State of things require that, the Youth as well as those more advanced should strive to support the tottering fabrick. I desire to be kept humble & low that nothing of the creature may move me to be active in Society. & from my present Standing there is aboundant need that I get often to the watch tower, & even to the place of fasting, that every particle of the creaturly will may be Subjected. ——————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1826

In boyhood Louis Agassiz had attended gymnasium in Bienne, and the academy at Lausanne. He had then entered the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg, and München. While at Heidelberg he “fenced” with such ferocity that he wounded a chum. (Would this have been actual fencing, or would it have amounted to hacking at one another with cavalry sabres in the Teutonic manner?) Our young gent considered that it devolved upon his strong right arm to defend the honor of his native Switzerland, and issued a standing challenge to cross blades with any German student. –Hey, great, this guy is all set to grow up to be a certain kind of honorable man! This hacker took at Erlangen the degree of doctor of philosophy and then at München that of doctor of medicine.

Engraved from a pastel drawing by his first wife, as of the age of 19

Although the classification of the species of some fish specimens brought from Brazil to München in 1819/ 1820 began, when the classifier would die the collection would be turned over to young Agassiz. THE SCIENCE OF 1826 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1827

Summer: Louis Agassiz grew up in the Vaudois region of Switzerland where many followers of Pierre Waldo (the “Waldenses”), had holed up during the Middle Ages. The Agassiz family could trace its Protestant past back into the 13th Century in the canton of Vaud adjacent to Fribourg. His father was the 6th in an unbroken succession of pastors, and in all likelihood little Louis had remote ancestors who had attempted to lead a life like that of Jesus — but you know how it is, religions deteriorate badly with time and need to be perpetually renewed, the transformation rule for creating from a religion of peace and humility one of aggressive self- legitimation being simple: “wait a couple generations.” Clearly, little Louis’s well-reared parents had little to offer their son by the way of true religious council, for during the summer of 1827 he was left to extrapolate his life’s religion from the pages of Lorenz Oken’s LEHRBUCH DER NATURPHILOSOPHIE and –in the mode of his time and place– portray this religion as science much as Professor E.O. Wilson does today. “Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429 The core of this scientistic religion of the self-worship of the white man as the highest form of existence was the attitude that inferior forms of life were but “persistent fœtal states.” A worm would be seen as merely a man who had been incapable of growing a backbone —a woman as merely a man who had failed to mature a penis —an ape as merely a Negro that had not had the moxie to shed its body hair and stand tall —etc. This is because God has ordained that all creatures strive to fulfil one final and perfect type, the white human male who can “get ’em down and hump ’em,” and master the sciences, and dissect frogs, and hack other humans to pieces with his sabre. All very satisfying, and guaranteed to make your life work for you (if you happen to be a white man, and happen to be wilful enough to enable yourself to go for such shit).3 THE SCIENCE OF 1827

The Congregationalist Reverend Josiah Brewer (1796-1872) of Massachusetts was spending a pleasant summer in the midst of a vineyard on a very fruitful hill in Constantinople, renting at the residence of a Greek family that had formerly had the responsibility of educating the female children of the Seraglio. There, without the presence of a single male Turk, the little girls had been taught chiefly singing and dancing — until the father and two eldest sons of this Greek family had, for some offense given to the Sultan by a friend of the family, had their heads chopped off. After the headchoppings their habitations had been stripped as usual of anything of value. The only members of this Greek family who were left on the premises were the female members, who needed to support themselves with the produce of their vineyard, and with the rent of their houses to this visiting missionary family. CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1827

3. OK, do it if you must, but don’t come around here angling for respect. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1828

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s WORK WITHOUT HOPE.

During this year, in Paris, Victor Cousin was delivering the series of lectures upon Idealism which would see publication, first in French in 1829 as FRAGMENTS PHILOSOPHIQUES, and then in English in 1832 as INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY.

HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Waldo Emerson would quickly seize upon the French version of this new “eclecticism,” and then refresh his memory by consulting the English version immediately upon its publication. It would probably be at the Reverend Brownson’s suggestion (he would write on Cousin in 1836) that David Henry Thoreau would check this book from the library in June 1837, and renew it in July. In subsequent years both Emerson and Thoreau would read widely in the writings of such disciples of Cousin as Théodore Simon Jouffroy4 and Henry- Benjamin Constant. The gist of this Idealism, known as Cousin’s “Eclecticism,” would be that in human history as in the universe itself, there is continuous harmony and balance, and nothing truly perishes. In war, we see not pain and evil but mere progress, “the defeat of the people that has served its time.” The best is 4. Théodore-Simon Jouffroy (1796-1842) was not the same person as the steamboat inventor Claude-François-Dorothée, marquis de Jouffroy d’Abbans. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

happening when you have to “break some eggs in order to make an omelet,” for this is the victory of “the people which is to serve its time in turn, and which is called to empire.” When you win you are on the side of the future, and when you are on the side of the future you are right and righteous. You are on the side of God. Since “the vanquished is always in the wrong,” if by chance you happen to lose, don’t feel bad for at the very least you will make good compost: “In reality, not a single great battle has taken a turn detrimental to civilization.” Why was this termed an idealism? –Because the ideal alone is pure, thought being the true reality: “All that is actual, is mingled and imperfect.” The conceptions of human reason “are nothing else than modes of the existence of eternal reason.” Why is this termed eclecticism? –I will allow Laura Dassow Walls to explain on her page 245 how Professor Victor Cousin stressed that “eclecticism” would combine and harmonize the dangerous and, as he saw it, unnecessary fragmentation created by the proliferation of philosophical systems. By his book’s end he has worked through all of history and is ready to pronounce the wave of the future: “Idealism is as true and was just as necessary as empiricism,” he intones, but both have been taken to their limit, and no third is possible. The solution is to combine and reconcile both “by regarding them in a point of view which, being more comprehensive than that of either the one or the other system, may be capable of including, and thus of explaining and completing them both.” Thus emerges his philosophy, which unites the opposites of Kant’s “subjective idealism” and “the empiricism and sensualism” of Locke “by centering them both in a vast and powerful eclecticism,” a system that reckons with, interrogates, and judges all other systems. This is already happening: Cousin points to current philosophy, in which the reign of exclusive systems is past and “idealism” and “sensualism” are attempting to meet and mingle. Eclecticism, he proclaims, is “necessarily the philosophy of the present century.”

How would Thoreau receive this? Walls explains on page 33 that Thoreau would find much of Cousin “echoed

5. Laura Dassow Walls. SEEING NEW WORLDS: HENRY DAVID THOREAU AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY NATURAL SCIENCE. Madison WI: U of Wisconsin P, 1995 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

–even to the vocabulary– in Emerson’s NATURE,” which he had begun to peruse immediately after laying down Cousin’s tome. She points out that the romantic science of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, far from dwindling into obscurity, had come to dominate British mainstream naturalistic science through the idealist synthesis of Thomas Carlyle’s friend Richard Owen, the leader of the “Coleridgean intelligentsia.” Laura Dassow Walls points out that Louis Agassiz would bring a related scientistic metaphysics to Harvard College, and that “Thoreau would come to reject” Cousin, Emerson, Coleridge, Owen, Agassiz — reject, indeed, that entire attitude.

During this year Robert Owen, the founder of socialism and not a close relative of Richard Owen, went by invitation to Mexico in order to carry out his scheme (nothing would happen there). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1829

Louis Agassiz completed the work of classifying the fishes brought from Brazil to München in 1819-1820, that had been entrusted to him after their collector had died, and the work was published as SELECTA GENERA ET SPECIES PISCIUM. THE SCIENCE OF 1829

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

The external genitalia of a deceased “female Hottentot” (that is, of Saartje Baartman, a woman taken from one of the Khoikhoin tribes of South Africa) had been written up, scientifically of course, and were the talk of Paris. During her lifetime she had been, nude of course, the highlight of a high-society ball. It was droll, the

way the pink lips of her vagina hung down out of her dark pubic hair, contrasting sharply with her dusky skin. After her death, white male Parisians were able to dissect the “specimen’s oversized genitals.” (Want to see genitalia old enough to be those of your great-great-great-grandmother? They are preserved in the Museum of Man in Paris.) In France, also, Jean-Baptiste de Monet de Lamarck died alone, blind, and impoverished. For an obituary, the Baron Georges Jean-Léopold-Nicolas-Frédéric Cuvier would damn him with faint praise. The name of this naturalist had become associated with a theory of the progressive development of types, or “Lamarckism” that, utterly independent of any scientific evidence, proved to be exceedingly useful in support of various political ideologies such as racism, Communism, etc. The essence of this recurrent pseudoscientific dogma is that striving to be man, the worm mounts through all the spires of form: “Waldo Emerson’s profound racism abated over time, but it never disappeared, always hovering in the background and clouding his democratic vision. Like all too many of his fellow intellectuals, throughout his life and works Emerson remained convinced that the characteristics that made the United States, for all its flaws, the great nation of the world were largely the product of its Saxon heritage and history. Here, alas, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s democratic imagination largely failed him.” — Peter Field HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

The theory would prove so useful that over and over laboratory evidence would simply be manufactured, or declared to exist somewhere, to prove its validity. The professor of geology and zoology at Harvard College, Louis Agassiz, Charles Darwin’s chief opponent in America, would be attracted to this theory because he needed a scientistic legitimation for belief in the separate and unequal essences of the various races of humankind and the inevitable rightness of racial purity, the overriding necessity of social order, and the preservation of Harvard as a bastion of white righteousness:

Selected white boys developing their attitudes of entitlement HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

However, Stephen Jay Gould has found reason to doubt this standard story about the French biologist. What Professor Gould has discovered is that Lamarck had on December 11, 1802, while attending a lecture on worms by Cuvier, achieved a realization that the pot category of worms would need to be subdivided into at least two separate categories, one for the annelid worms and the other for the parasitic internal worms, and that this insight had, by 1820, caused Lamarck to entirely abandon his theology of a progressive ladder of life, in favor of a contingent bush or branching tree of life. In other words, Lamarck has been faulted for a theory which, faced with evidence, he had entirely abandoned. THE SCIENCE OF 1829

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1830

Louis Agassiz issued a prospectus of a HISTORY OF THE FRESH WATER FISHES OF CENTRAL EUROPE, which would be printed in parts from 1839 to 1842.

In Paris, this was the year of the great Geoffroy/Cuvier debate. BIOLOGY THE SCIENCE OF 1830

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

Winter: Louis Agassiz and the chum he had hacked with a sword had gone on beyond Lorenz Oken, to Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. Here is the report, a report not by Lorenz but by his chum whom he had hacked with the sword: We go once a week to hear Oken on “Natur-philosophie,” but by that means we secure a good seat for Schelling’s lecture immediately after. A man can hardly hear twice in his life a course of lectures so powerful as those Schelling is now giving on the philosophy of revelation.

The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1831

Charles Darwin embarked on the Beagle voyage around the globe, returning to London in 1836. THE SCIENCE OF 1831

With the help of Alexander von Humboldt, Louis Agassiz got his first professorship, the chair in natural history at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. (However, all his life Agassiz would insist that each species was a separate and distinct “thought of God” and that God repeatedly rethinks organic life on earth – a series of independent and special creations without hereditary continuity– each time it is destroyed in a natural cataclysm.) BIOLOGY EVOLUTION

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1832

Professor Louis Agassiz traveled first to Paris (then a great center of scientific research) and later to Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where he would spend many years. While in Paris he lived the life of an impecunious student in the Latin Quarter, supporting himself and helped at times by the kindly interest of such friends as the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt –who would secure for him a professorship at Neuchâtel– and Baron Cuvier, the most eminent ichthyologist of his time. Already Agassiz had become interested in the rich stores of the extinct fishes of Europe, especially those of Glarus in Switzerland and of Monte Bolca near Verona, of which, at that time, only a few had been critically studied. THE SCIENCE OF 1832

Until 1846, Agassiz would serve as professor of natural history in the University of Neuchâtel. In Neuchâtel he acted for a time as his own publisher and his private residence became a hive of activity with numerous young men assisting him. During this period he began NOMENCLATOR ZOOLOGICUS, a catalog with references of all the names applied to genera of animals from the beginning of scientific nomenclature (a date since fixed at January 1, 1758).

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

July: Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe returned from his investigations in Europe and, in his father’s home on Pleasant Street in Boston, began to train a few blind children. Then the new institute was opened in a family mansion donated by the Boston merchant Thomas Handasyd Perkins.

This school would be known as the Perkins Institute for the Blind and the kind of raised type sponsored there would come to be known as “Boston Line Lettering.” The Perkins mansion on Pearl Street would, however, prove to be unsuitable as “the house was not large enough for a suitable separation of the two sexes.... The offspring of marriages between congenital defectives almost invariably perpetuate the taint in the blood of the parents ... marriage between two blind persons he [Howe??] always denounced as against every law of morality. The justness of this view is too evident to need demonstration.”6

6. This, and illustrations from drawings by John Elliott, is from: Howe, Maude and Florence Howe Hall. LAURA BRIDGMAN: DR.HOWE’S FAMOUS PUPIL AND WHAT HE TAUGHT HER. Boston MA: Little, Brown, 1903.

One can imagine Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe’s friend, Professor Louis Agassiz, using the same reasoning on him in regard to the suitable separation of the races. One can imagine Professor Agassiz pointing out that the offspring of marriages between persons of different race almost invariably perpetuate the taint in the blood of the colored parent, and thus are against every law of morality. One can imagine Professor Agassiz insisting in his letter that the justness of this view is too evident to need demonstration. —But this is no exercise in fantasy, for in fact Professor Agassiz would write Dr. Howe precisely such a letter, saying precisely these things, on August 10, 1863. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1833

Beginning in this year and continuing over a decade until 1843, progressive publication of section after section of Louis Agassiz’s RECHERCHES SUR LES POISSONS FOSSILES. In this work the number of named fossil fishes was raised to more than 1,700 species. On page 170 in the initial volume appeared the 1st use of the spindle diagram in biology. Here is how the situation has been presented by Stephen Jay Gould in “A Tale of Three Pictures”: THE SCIENCE OF 1833

Successive theories often display the interesting property of incommensurability. They do not speak the same language; they do not parse the world into the same categories; they embody fundamentally different views about the nature of causality. The new is not simply more and better information heaped upon the explanatory structure of the old. In this sense, the history of theories is a successive replacement of mutually incompatible worldviews, not a stroll up the pathway of objective knowledge.... Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), the great Swiss zoologist who became America’s premier naturalist, was the last great scientific creationist (I am writing this essay in the museum and laboratory that he opened in 1859). He built his career upon two fundamental achievements: the development of the theory of ice ages, and a monumental work on the classification and relationships of all fossil fishes. Agassiz summarized his fifteen-year project on fossil fishes with the first major example of an iconography that paleontologists have since adopted as canonical — the so-called spindle diagram.... Each group of organisms is drawn as a spindle, with varying widths through time representing a history of fluctuating diversity, and the ends of the spindle marking origin and extinction ... he chooses a topology of branching from a central stem in each of his four groups. This iconography embodies his biological theory of life’s history as a tale of differentiation through time from simple and highly generalized archetypes. Live diversifies on an embryological model.... This view sounds so evolutionary that we wonder why Agassiz continued his lone holdout against Darwin to the death. But such a feeling only represents the chauvinism of later knowledge imposed upon a fundamentally different worldview. Differentiation from a common archetype need not imply a physical, evolutionary connection among successive forms. Suppose that differentiation is God’s grand design for all developmental processes in nature. Embryology continues in physical continuity, but geological succession may feature a series of independently fashioned forms, linked together as incarnations of an ordered pattern of thought in their creator’s mind. Agassiz depicted his creationist interpretation in the second striking feature of his iconography. The separate spindles in each of his four groups HDT WHAT? INDEX

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may converge lovingly toward one another, and towards the central or archetypal line, but they never join! And Agassiz knew exactly what he was doing, and why: Nevertheless, I have not joined the lateral branches to the central trunks because I am convinced that they do not descend, one from the other, by pathways of direct procreation or successive transformation, but that they are materially independent, although forming in their ensemble ... a systematic whole, whose connections must be sought in the creative intelligence of its author. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1836

The Beagle brought Charles Darwin back to London after a mind-bending circumnavigation of the globe (his journal of this voyage would become Henry Thoreau’s favorite travel reading). THE SCIENCE OF 1836

In Switzerland, Louis Agassiz began to study the movements and effects of glaciers. Several writers had already expressed themselves as of the opinion that these solid rivers must once had been much more extensive than at present, and must have been what produced the various boulders that could now be observed erratically scattered across the surface of the region. Some of these boulders were present even up toward the summit of the Jura Mountains, and how did they get there if they had not been carried there by the movements of glaciers? Agassiz constructed a hut out on the ice of the Aar Glacier, terming this the “Hôtel des Neuchâtelois,” and from this hut he and his associates began to trace the structure and movements of the ice.

In Massachusetts, Dr. Augustus Addison Gould became a corresponding member of the Connecticut Natural History Society. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1837

At a meeting of naturalists in Neuchâtel, Pierre Jean Édouard Desor (standing) met Professor Louis Agassiz, four years his senior (gazing). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Talk about made in heaven!

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

July: Jean de Charpentier having described how glaciers carry along “erratic” rocks and scrape and gouge the bedrock which they pass over, Louis Agassiz, after a tour of the valley of the Rhone River, recognizing that many of the topographical features he could inspect in this land currently free of rivers of ice (known as “glaciers”) could be best explained as features left behind by vanished massive past rivers of ice, proposed that this same process had operated at one time on a vastly larger scale than at present, and that huge glaciers had once covered Europe and Asia all the way down to the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas.

THE WISCONSONIAN GLACIATION (There have been actually, we now know, not merely the recent “Wisconsonian” but at least 17 glacial maximums, or “Ice Ages.” The rocks of America are presently still rising after having been pressed down under an accumulation of three kilometers of such overburden, the Laurentide, that had melted and flowed into the oceans only 12,000 years ago.) THE SCIENCE OF 1837

The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At a meeting of the Swiss Society of Natural Sciences (Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft) at Neuchâtel, Professor Agassiz presented his theory that there had been an Ice Age (Eiszeit) during which all of Europe had been covered by glaciers. The shocked audience reacted with hostility — most scientists were then presuming that the earth had been gradually and smoothly cooling down ever since its birth as a molten globe, and his theory was viewed as in conflict with this general tendency.

“Everything is what it is because it got that way.” — D’Arcy W. Thompson, ON GROWTH AND FORMS Cambridge UP, 1917 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1838

Charles Darwin formulated a new theory of natural selection, but due to a responsibility which he deeply felt in regard to its not fully thought out but obviously manifold implications for the practices of religion, politics, and culture, was careful to tell no-one. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

After having published for a decade about fossil fishes, Louis Agassiz would until 1842 be publishing about the fossil echinoderms of Switzerland.

Although Thomas Bell had supported the arrangements for publication of ZOOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. BEAGLE, he had been very slow to make progress on the work, and though the first parts of work were at this point published, Part 5, his contribution on reptiles, would not be published until 1842 and 1843 — and then subsequently he would neglect to take any action at all in regard to the crustacea. THE SCIENCE OF 1838 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1839

Roderick Murchison and Adam Sedgwick named the Devonian System. THE SCIENCE OF 1839

From this year until the great European revolution of 1848, Professor Arnold Henri Guyot would be teaching physical geography and history at the Academy of Neuchatel. His interests were in glaciology, physical geography, meteorology, and cartography. His early studies on the flow of ice and the distribution of glacial erratics in Switzerland served to underpin the catastrophist theory of glaciation that had been advanced and championed by Professor Louis Agassiz. PALEONTOLOGY

THE WISCONSONIAN GLACIATION Timothy Abbott Conrad accepted Agassiz’s catastrophist theory of glaciation as an explanation for various surface features in the United States, such as the Mississippi depression. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June: Bronson Alcott admitted the child Susan7 Robinson to the shrunken “School of Human Culture” in his home at 6 Beach Street in Boston, a school which since it had been forced to relocate to the basement no longer looked anything like this:

A few weeks afterward the school was visited by Dr. John Flint, as the representative of a group of parents.

My patrons, through Dr. John Flint, urge the dismissal of the Robinson Child. I decline....

Bronson had got his tit in the ringer and couldn’t get it out. Susan Robinson was black, or at least a very little bit black, and yet she had feelings, and this sensitive man simply could not steele himself to tell her she couldn’t come to school now, couldn’t learn any more, couldn’t associate with her schoolmates any more, because she was not as white — because her friends were really really white. This painfully honest man also couldn’t bear to leave it to another person to break the news to her. “You aren’t good to be with, because you are what you are.” It was the unthinkable crime.

Immediately almost all the children, except the Alcott girls and Susan Robinson and William Russell’s boy, were withdrawn by their parents, and the school Bronson had founded in 1834 became defunct. Sex education in the schools might be an idea whose time would come. Apostasy about the human origins of Christ might be

7. Interestingly, the only way we know that the name of this child was Susan is, that 8-year-old Anna wrote it in her diary. She was not old enough to know that to history, a person who is not white is merely another nameless instance of the type “colored people.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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winked at by the worldly wise. Amalgamation could not, however, be tolerated. To be a colored child was to be the bearer of manifold unnameable contaminations.

To help Bronson Alcott recover from the Temple School disaster, the Alcotts would visit the Mays in South Scituate.

This experience would later show up in Louisa May Alcott’s LITTLE WOMEN, at the end of which Mrs. Jo

March Bhaer and Professor Fritz Bhaer are running a boarding school for boys in their large suburban home “Plumfield” and are including one token “small quadroon” child (who was musically inclined, we notice), in this melting pot.8 Here I suppose the author to be conflating her father Bronson Alcott’s upper room “Temple School” at the Tremont Temple in Boston with the school run by the Professor and Mrs. Agassiz in Cambridge, because I suppose that latter school would have been an unlikely venue for integration in the light of the manifest ingrained racism of the father of that family. It would be of great interest here, if anyone could turn up any evidence that any such gesture had been made toward integration of that later Cambridge school, of associating an unnamed small charge with the defect of having had a black grandparent with larger defective white charges described as “slow boys and bashful boys, feeble boys and riotous boys, boys that lisped and boys that stuttered, one or two lame ones” including a “pale lad, who sat adoring her with his little crutch beside him,” etc., for such evidence would generate the most serious scholarly reappraisal of the defective

8. A quadroon has three white grandparents and one black, that is, for the moment to tolerate this method of calculation, it is “one quarter black and three quarters white.” By way of contrast, in our modern era the modal person who self-identifies as black in the United States of America tests, genetically, roughly a third to a half similar to the general African genepool and roughly a half to two-thirds similar to the general European genepool. In this arena, cultural perceptions and self-identifications and genetic tests seldom match up with one another, and the general rule of accommodation seems to be that we should just ask people to self-identify as they please — and then align ourselves with whatever that happens to be. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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character of Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College.

It never was a fashionable school, and the Professor did not lay up a fortune; but it was just what Jo intended it to be, — ‘a happy, home-like place for boys, who needed teaching, care, and kindness.’ Every room in the big house was soon full; every little plot in the garden soon had its owner; a regular menagerie appeared in barn and shed, — for pet animals were allowed, — and, three times a day, Jo smiled at her Fritz from the head of a long table lined on either side with rows of happy young faces, which all turned to her with affectionate eyes, confiding words, and grateful hearts, full of love for ‘Mother Bhaer.’ She had boys enough now, and did not tire of them, though they were not angels by any means, and some of them caused both Professor and Professorin much trouble and anxiety. But her faith in the good spot which exists in the heart of the naughtiest, sauciest, most tantalizing little ragamuffin gave her patience, skill, and, in time, success, — for no mortal boy could hold out long with Father Bhaer shining on him as benevolently as the sun, and Mother Bhaer forgiving him seventy times seven. Very precious to Jo was the friendship of the lads, their penitent sniffs and whispers after wrongdoing, their droll or touching little confidences, their pleasant enthusiasms, hopes, and plans; even their misfortunes, — for they only endeared them to her all the more. There were slow boys and bashful boys, feeble boys and riotous boys, boys that lisped and boys that stuttered, one or two lame ones, and a merry little quadroon, who could not be taken in elsewhere, but who was welcome to the Bhaer-garten, though some people predicted that his admission would ruin the school. … [T]he Professor suddenly began to sing. Then, from above him, voice after voice took up the words, and from tree to tree echoed the music of the unseen choir, as the boys sang, with all their hearts, the little song Jo had written, Laurie set to music, and the Professor trained his lads to give with the best effect. This was something altogether new, and it proved a grand success: for Mrs. March couldn’t get over her surprise, and insisted on shaking hands with every one of the featherless birds, from tall Franz and Emil to the little quadroon, who had the sweetest voice of all. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1840

Louis Agassiz’s ÉTUDES SUR LES GLACIERS ... OUVRAGE ACCOMPAGNÉ D’UN ATLAS DE 32 PLANCHES (Neuchatel, aux frais de l’auteur).9 In this he demonstrated irrefutably that at a geologically recent period all of Switzerland had been covered by “great sheets of ice, resembling those now existing in Greenland,” resulting in all this “unstratified gravel (boulder drift)” that now clutters its surface. He and Charles Darwin made each other’s acquaintance at the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

9. Henry Thoreau would check this out of Harvard Library on March 13, 1854. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(Characteristically, the author omitted any mention of Karl Friedrich Schimper, who had brought him into this glacial research and who also was preparing a book about the glaciation of the Alps.) Thus began Agassiz’s lifetime of intense personal conflicts with colleagues and contemporaries. One of these would be with a self-taught American field scientist named Henry D. Thoreau. THE WISCONSONIAN GLACIATION THE SCIENCE OF 1840

1840s, 1850s: In this timeframe several scientists were glimpsing chromosomes under the microscope, but not having the slightest clue what it was that they were looking at.

Laura Dassow Walls has pointed out in SEEING NEW WORLDS: THOREAU AND HUMBOLDTIAN SCIENCE that to enact the agenda of exploration and investigation being recommended by Alexander von Humboldt would require an army of workers — which on the continent of North America was indeed created, in the form of the tax-funded Corps of Topographical Engineers established by the federal government of the United States of America.

There were in the first half of the 19th Century a multitude of Congress-sponsored scientific expeditions and the control of our new federal government was extended in this manner over much of North America. Geological or natural history surveys funded by state governments had begun in North Carolina in 1823, and by the end of the 1830s such surveys had been initiated by 13 states. In addition the federal government had been funding or assisting with exploration since the expedition of Lewis and Clark, but throughout the 1840s and 1850s the great reconnaissance of the American West was being conducted by Army officers. Lieutenant John Charles Frémont led only three of these numerous expeditions across the western regions of the North

American continent. Between 1840 and 1860, the US government published 60 enormously expensive multi- volume double-folio or oversize treatises on the American West, in addition to 15 treatises on global naval expeditions and uncounted reports of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Very little of our incessant contemporary dialog about the “free enterprise system” dates back to that era, and the cost of all this seems to have amounted HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1 1 to from /4th to /3d of the annual federal budget without having in any way set off alarm bells in the minds of the ideologues of the right of the political spectrum!10 Since Humboldt was very much in touch with these activities, a number of the explorers, scientists, and artists of the period may safely be characterized as “Humboldt’s Children”:11 personages such as Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, Frederic Edwin Church, John Charles Frémont, and Professor Thomas Nuttall. However, Louis Agassiz would also need to be characterized as having been a protégé of Humboldt, and Charles Darwin, Professor Asa Gray, and Arnold Henri Guyot. Humboldt corresponded with and was visited by American scientists such as vice-president of the Boston Society of Natural History Charles T. Jackson, academic scholars such as Harvard professor George Ticknor, and popular writers such as Washington Irving (to whom in this year we were offering the position of Secretary of the Navy).

Dr. Augustus Addison Gould of Massachusetts General Hospital became a corresponding member of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia, of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, of the National Institute in Washington DC, and of the American Statistical Association. He published a pioneering work in the United States on the geographical distribution of species, “Results of an Examination of the Shells of Massachusetts and their Geographical Distribution,” in the Boston Journal of Natural History (Volume 3, Art. xviii, pp. 483-494).

10. NASA, eat your heart out. 11. Goetzmann, William H. NEW LANDS, NEW MEN, AMERICA AND THE SECOND GREAT AGE OF DISCOVERY. NY: Viking, 1986 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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James Ellsworth De Kay became First Vice-President of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York. His CATALOGUE OF THE ANIMALS BELONGING TO THE STATE OF N.Y. AS FAR AS THEY HAVE BEEN FIGURED AND DESCRIBED (made May 7, 1839) appeared on pages 7-14 of the FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE STATE MADE JANUARY 24, 1840 (484 pages, New York Assembly Document #50) and was reviewed in the American Journal of Science (Volume 40:73-85). (His “Report of the zoological dept” appeared on pages 15-36 of that same document.)

The Reverend Professor Edward Hitchcock was awarded the degree of LL.D. by Harvard University. His DYSPEPSY FORESTALLED AND RESISTED, OR, LECTURES ON DIET, REGIMEN, AND EMPLOYMENT. Also, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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his textbook ELEMENTARY GEOLOGY (of which there would be 31 editions):

ELEMENTARY GEOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(You may be forgiven, I suppose, as modern types, for initially presuming that the colorized paleontological chart on the previous screen, revealing as it does the branchings of genera and species over immense eras of time, had something or other to do with “evolution of species” — in fact, however, it did not have anything at all to do with anything of that sort! Looking backward to the 1840s through our eyes, it is easy for us to be guilty of “presentism” — of, that is to say, supposing that the sorts of scientific understanding we now take for granted were being somehow prefigured or anticipated in the minds of yesteryear when they most definitely were not.) PALEONTOLOGY

October 11, Sunday: Birth of Annie (or Anna) Keyes (or Keves) Bartlett, 8th child of Dr. Josiah Bartlett and Martha Tilden Bradford Bartlett of Concord.

Henry Thoreau made an entry in his journal while studying Professor Charles Lyell’s THE PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY: AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE FORMER CHANGES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE BY REFERENCE TO CAUSES NOW IN OPERATION in which he compares how difficult it is to come to an appreciation of the vastness LYELL’S GEOLOGY

of the geological timespans with how difficult it might be to persuade someone to reexamine their deepest religious convictions: “In a lifetime you can hardly expect to convince a man of an error — You must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced his grand children may be. It took 100 years to prove that fossils are organic, and 150 more, to prove that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge.” This material would make its way into A WEEK:

Oct 11th 1840 It is always easy to infringe the law — but the Bedouin of the desert find it impossible to resist public opinion.

The traveller Stevens12 had the following conversation with a Bedouin of Mount Sinai. “I asked him who governed them; he stretched himself up and answerd in one word, ‘God’, I asked him if they paid tribute to the pasha; and his answer was, ‘No, we take tribute from him.’ I asked him how. ‘We plunder his caravans.’ Desirous to understand my exact position with the sheik of Akaba, under his promise of protection, I asked him if they were governed by their sheik; to which he answered, ‘No, we govern him’.

The true man of science will have a rare Indian wisdom — and will know nature better by his finer organization. He will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper and finer experience We do not learn by inference and deduction, and the application of mathematics to philosophy but by direct intercourse. It is with science as with ethics — we cannot know truth by method and contrivance — the Baconian is as false as any other method. The most scientific should be the healthiest man.

Deep are the foundations of all sincerity — even stone walls have their foundation below the frost. Aristotle says in his “Meteorics” “As time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais, nor the Nile, can have flowed forever.” Strabo, upon the same subject, says, “It is proper to derive our explanations from things which are obvious, and in some measure of daily occurrence, such as deluges, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, and sudden swellings of the land beneath the sea.” –Geology.

Marvellous are the beginnings of philosophy– We can imagine a period when “Water runs down hill” may have 12. John Lloyd Stephens’s INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN EGYPT, ARABICA PETRÆA AND THE HOLY LAND (London, 1837). INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL HDT WHAT? INDEX

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been taught in the schools. That man has something demoniacal about him who can discern a law, or couple two facts.

Every idea was long ago done into nature as the translators say– THere is walking in the feet — mechanics in the hand climbing in the loose flesh of the palms — boxing in the knuckles &c, &c.

In a lifetime you can hardly expect to convince a man of an error– You must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced his grand children may be. It took 100 years to prove that fossils are organic, and 150 more, to prove that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge.

A WEEK: As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of church paused to look at us from above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish comparisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny day. According to Hesiod, “The seventh is a holy day, For then Latona brought forth golden-rayed Apollo,” and by our reckoning this was the seventh day of the week, and not the first. I find among the papers of an old Justice of the Peace and Deacon of the town of Concord, this singular memorandum, which is worth preserving as a relic of an ancient custom. After reforming the spelling and grammar, it runs as follows: “Men that travelled with teams on the Sabbath, Dec. 18th, 1803, were Jeremiah Richardson and Jonas Parker, both of Shirley. They had teams with rigging such as is used to carry barrels, and they were travelling westward. Richardson was questioned by the Hon. Ephraim Wood, Esq., and he said that Jonas Parker was his fellow- traveller, and he further said that a Mr. Longley was his employer, who promised to bear him out.” We were the men that were gliding northward, this Sept. 1st, 1839, with still team, and rigging not the most convenient to carry barrels, unquestioned by any Squire or Church Deacon and ready to bear ourselves out if need were. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian of Dunstable, “Towns were directed to erect ‘a cage’ near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.” Society has relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the tighter in another. You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be. The geologists tell us that it took one hundred years to prove that fossils are organic, and one hundred and fifty more, to prove that they are not to be referred to the Noachian deluge.

HESIOD CHARLES LYELL HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 5, Thursday: It would appear from his journal that on this day Henry Thoreau was studying Professor Charles Lyell’s THE PRINCIPLES OF GEOLOGY: AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE FORMER CHANGES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE BY REFERENCE TO CAUSES NOW IN OPERATION. LYELL’S GEOLOGY

Nov 5th 1840 Truth is as vivacious and will spread it self as fast as the fungi, which you can by no means annihilate with your heel, for their sporules are so infinitely numerous and subtle as to resemble “thin smoke; so light that they may be raised into the atmosphere, and dispersed in so many ways by the attraction of the sun, by insects, wind, elasticity, adhesion, &c., that it is difficult to conceive a place from which they may be excluded.”

Henry D. Thoreau ... in 1840, was ... deeply and permanently smitten by the PRINCIPLES. ...[Lyell] was completely committed to the assumption that nothing on Earth can change in a fundamental way, not even organic evolution, writing: “There is no foundation in geological facts, for the popular theory of the successive development of the animal and vegetable world, from the simplest to the most perfect forms.” ...he would not admit into evidence any process or intensity of process not known to be operating on Earth in his lifetime, which disqualified Agassiz’s instantaneous deep freeze from the outset. In short, Lyell’s lifelong work was “an almost ideological crusade” against catastrophism, with “overtones of cosmic conflict.” To fight the good fight against scripturally motivated infidels, he penned: “I must put on all my armour.” Sentences like this instantly endeared him to Thoreau. — Professor Robert M. Thorson, WALDEN’S SHORE, pages 94-5 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1841

During this year and the following one, Louis Agassiz’s ÉTUDES CRITIQUES SUR LES MOLLUSQUES FOSSILES. PALEONTOLOGY

Roderick Murchison named the Permian System.

William Smith’s nephew John Phillips proposed the geologic eras Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cainozoic (Cenozoic). BIOLOGY

Charles Maclaren inferred that during an ice age sea levels would have needed to be some 800 feet lower than at present. THE WISCONSONIAN GLACIATION

During this year and the following one Sir Richard Owen was sponsoring the nomenclature Dinosauria (“terrible lizards”). THE SCIENCE OF 1841 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1842

Pierre Jean Édouard Desor contribute material to Volume III of Professor Louis Agassiz’s MONOGRAPHIES D'ÉCHINODERMES VIVANTS ET FOSSILES (Neuchâtel). THE SCIENCE OF 1842

Based on Professor Agassiz’s theory of an Age of Ice, Charles Maclaren pointed out in a newspaper article that substantial ice sheets in the northern hemisphere would have lowered global sea levels (as can be seen in this globe as the exposure of the continental shelves).

THE WISCONSONIAN GLACIATION Large numbers of Americans paid to see Phineas Taylor Barnum’s “Feejee Mermaid.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1843

Professor Louis Agassiz completed LES POISSONS FOSSILES describing fossil fish of the world. This single monograph increases tenfold the formally described vertebrates known to science. PALEONTOLOGY

Based on earlier interpretations by Samuel Thomas von Soemmering, Edward Newman portrayed a Pterosaur as a furry bat. THE SCIENCE OF 1843 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1844

Pierre Jean Édouard Desor’s EXCURSIONS ET SEJOURS DANS LES GLACIERS ET LES HAUTES REGIONS DES ALPES DE M. AGASSIZ ET DE SES COMPAGNONS DE VOYAGE (Neuchâtel). THE SCIENCE OF 1844 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1845

Spring: Louis Agassiz’s 1st wife up and walked out on him. In LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, Edward Lurie would report in regard to this, on his pages 200-201, that: Agassiz’s excellent wife had moved on her own accord to end the financial uncertainty that had seemed to plague her husband whenever a new project was born. She realized that he had spent six thousand dollars since receiving from Harvard the payment for his collections. She knew, too, that such expenditures would increase as long as he needed his personal income to finance his intellectual pursuits. Aided by Pauline and Ida, she planned a means whereby both the household and Agassiz would be guaranteed a regular source of income. The Quincy Street home would house a school for girls of college age. The idea was a sound and practical one, since there were no institutions readily at hand where girls of? Boston, Cambridge, and surrounding communities could receive a good, modern education. Tuition would pay for Agassiz’s turtles and general culture would benefit. As soon as he found out about the scheme planned independently by his wife and daughters, Agassiz entered into the spirit and purpose of the conception with typical enthusiasm. Natural history was a primary requirement in the education of any modern young woman. Had not Massachusetts schoolteachers for years come to lectures by Agassiz and held squirming grasshoppers in their hands as he illustrated salient points of classification? Had not Mary Peabody Mann begged the Harvard Corporation for permission for female normal school students to attend Agassiz’s college lectures, only to be refused because, in the words of President Walker, it was “inexpedient” to accede to such a request? Alex, now a handsome youth of twenty just about to graduate from Harvard College, would instruct in German and French. What more could an Ellen Emerson or Lillie Lodge ask for in the way of education than the instruction of a handsome if by now portly father and a shy but equally charming son? Mrs. Agassiz would be in charge of the entire curriculum and would teach English composition and music appreciation. The resources of Cambridge were far from exhausted. Another Cary-Agassiz-Harvard exponent of higher learning, Cornelius Felton, would be an obliging and jolly teacher of Greek, Latin, and literature. With this faculty, New Englanders knew the education of their daughters would be in good hands. Eliots, Lymans, Shaws, Russells, Appletons, Lodges, and Bigelows all sent their daughters to Quincy Street, as did members of the Harvard faculty such as President Walker and the philosopher Francis Bowen. George Ticknor wrote Agassiz his feelings: “I only wish I were a little girl and were to be sent to Mrs. Agassiz. In time ... I should come to something.” Agassiz now talked of echinoderms and starfish to dally audiences of young ladies, often joined by parents come to wish them well and unable to leave until they HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

too had heard the professor. Upstairs, Henry James Clark worked valiantly studying the development of turtle eggs under the microscope. Songs of Germany and tales of Homer came floating through the partition, as Professor Felton and Mrs. Agassiz worked at their tasks. Outside, turtles sunned themselves in a specially built inclosure. The Agassiz School was a success from the beginning. Tuition was $150 per term, and it was such a popular venture that it lasted until 1863, when the money it brought in was no longer needed with such urgency. Thus the efforts of Mrs. Agassiz provided her naturalist husband with an added income of about two thousand dollars a year, funds that were most welcome at a time when the country had to be searched for the best materials to make the CONTRIBUTIONS truly what subscribers had been led to expect. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1846

Spencer Fullerton Baird’s 12-page pamphlet on the field collection and preparation of biological specimens, 13 HINTS FOR PRESERVING OBJECTS OF NATURAL HISTORY (Carlisle PA: Gitt and Hinkley).

Augustus Addison Gould became a corresponding member of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York. Publication of his EXPEDITION SHELLS; DESCRIBED FOR THE WORK OF THE UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION, COMMANDED BY CAPT. WILKES, U. S. N., DURING THE YEARS 1838-’42 (Boston). Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, ii, 141-145, 148-152,153-156, 159-162,165-167, 170-173, 175- 176,177-179, 180-181,182-184, 185-187,190-192, 196-198,200-203, 204-206, 208-209, 210-212, 214-215, 218-221, 222-225, 237-239. 251-252; iii, 73-75, 83-85, 89-92, 106-108, 118-121, 140-144, 151-150, 169-172, 214-218, 252-256, 275-278, 292-296, 309-312, 343-348. OTIA CONCHOLOGICA, pp. 1-100, 1862. THE SCIENCE OF 1846

13. Henry Thoreau would have in his possession a later version of this reduced to ten pages on blue paper, DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING COLLECTIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY, PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE PARTIES ENGAGED IN THE EXPLORATION OF A ROUTE FOR THE PACIFIC RAILROAD ALONG THE 49TH PARALLEL. Would he have been using it as a guide, in his preparation of specimens for Louis Agassiz? HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

In this year the Phrenological Journal announced that

among nations, as among individuals, force of character is determined by the average size of head; and that the larger-headed nations manifest their superior power, by subjecting and ruling their smaller-headed brethren — as the British in Asia, for example.

PHRENOLOGY Ever careful of the sensitivities of its subscribers, who might for some reason have tender feelings toward their wives, this journal forbore to belabor the obvious, that their average reader’s manly brain was considerably more massive and ponderous than that of his sweet little wife. Their point, after all, was “We can dominate

foreigners,” and they all already knew “We can domesticate domestics.” And in Europe, Louis Agassiz, a professor at Neuchâtel, declared, in regard to the collection of human skulls that Samuel George Morton had created in Philadelphia in order to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt the basic differences between human races, that

This collection alone is worth a journey to America.

(It’s worth a journey to America because it reassures us that we white people are inherently superior to any and all other people, irregardless of whether we comport ourselves with decency.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(In this year Professor Morton’s “Observations on the Ethnology and Archaeology of the American Aborigines” appeared in Silliman’s Journal.)

Professor Agassiz would found the American Association for the Advancement of Science as a vehicle for advancing his covert agenda of favoring the laboratory scientist over the field scientist and the technician/ specialist over the generalist14 and would then condemn Charles Darwin’s development theory as not only “mischievous” but also “unscientific.” He would also enact his overtly declared agenda to preserve the racial purity of our nation’s schools, starting with his own elementary school in which the Emerson children were

14. To his credit, Henry Thoreau would suspiciously decline to become involved with this group of people. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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being educated, and with the sacred halls and classrooms of Harvard.

Professor Agassiz in early 1846, while still at Neuchâtel

Not strangely, this scientist was a follower of the theory of the progressive development of types associated with the name of Jean-Baptiste de Monet de Lamarck, or “Lamarckism,” which was merely a 19th-Century adaptation of the old doctrine of the “great scale of being” (Scala Natura) according to which all of nature reflects human society, some obviously being worth more than others. As an illustration of how such belief systems functioned at that time, Elias Hicks had asserted in a sermon of December 1, 1824 in Philadelphia that “We are on a level with all the rest of God’s creatures.” After theories of evolution had become current, an adherent of a Lamarckian theory put on the hat “objective scientist” to attack such “leveller” allegations as being not only theologically pernicious, but also scientifically false. As a mere lay person, a nonscientist, Friend Elias did not understand, this scientist declared, that some current forms of life have been shown by science to be more advanced, and others more primitive, on the great scale of being! It is not amusing, but profoundly saddening, to see professed scientists oppose the trends that would become established in their own disciplines, and watch them lump Waldo Emerson together with Friend Elias as unscientific thinkers — in order to legitimate social agendas of viciousness such as black slavery. And, likewise, it is notable that some gifted amateurs like Henry Thoreau were able to get past this scientistic smoke screen. What was it in Thoreau’s spirit that enabled him to be a better scientist than some of the most accredited scientists of his day?

June 25, 1852: What a mean & wretched creature is man by & by some Dr Morton may be filling your cranium with white mustard seed to learn its internal capacity. Of all the ways invented to come at a knowledge of a living man — this seems to me the worst — as it is the most belated. You would learn more by once paring the toe nails of the living subject. There is nothing out of which the spirit has more completely departed — & in which it has left fewer significant traces. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I asked what it was in Friend Elias’s spirit, and then in Henry’s spirit, that enabled them to be better scientists than some of the most accredited American scientists of their day. Yes, I do have a theory — can you figure out what it is?

Not a theologian pretending to be a scientist Agassiz standing on his head and stacking BBs (Some of us understood that all along) (Please don’t attempt this at home)

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Ida Pfeiffer’s travel journal was published in Austria. She used the returns from VISIT TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT, AND ITALY to finance a new adventure into Iceland. Unlike other travelers to Iceland of the time, she was alone and on a tight budget. She relied upon the local pony carts and for some six months lived as the Icelanders did. She sold the plant and rock collections she had made to museums. Her observations would become JOURNEY TO ICELAND, AND TRAVELS IN SWEDEN AND NORWAY. Then, still in the same year, she embarked on a Danish ship with the destination being Rio de Janeiro on the coast of South America. She hired a guide and went into the rain forest to visit the Puri. Then she continued on around the world by way of Cape Horn, her entire journey consuming three years and completing in Vienna only in November 1848. Along the way she became just outraged at the open sensuality of Tahitian females.15

She rode up the river from Portuguese Macau aboard a cargo junk and at Canton she crossed paths with Professor Louis Agassiz. CHINA

For several months she traveled in India with a leather pouch for water, a small pan for cooking, some salt,

15. In America during this year, Herman Melville’s narrative of his sailor sojourn on an island in Polynesia was being republished (it had already appeared in England under the title NARRATIVE OF A FOUR MONTHS’ RESIDENCE AMONG THE NATIVES OF A VALLEY OF THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS; OR, A PEEP AT POLYNESIAN LIFE) by Wiley and Putnam, as TYPEE: A PEEP AT POLYNESIAN LIFE. Melville was “dedicating” this book to his father-in-law Judge Shaw, who had been advancing the cause of racial fairness from the bench. Henry Thoreau read this new book (it may be the only thing by Melville that he ever read) and stuck a reminder to himself into a journal notebook he was keeping that fall, that he would use in his writings about his Maine adventures and then put into his 1st draft of WALDEN, a reminder to cite this work by Melville as proof that elderly people in primitive societies are healthier than their civilized counterparts. Longfellow was praising Melville’s “glowing description of Life in the Marquesas,” and Amos Bronson Alcott was referring to the volume as “charming.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, who by the influence of his friends Horatio Bridge and Franklin Pierce in the Democratic party, had secured a morning job, “Surveyor of Port,” at the Salem Custom House, was provided with a review copy by Evert Duyckinck and commented in the Salem Advertiser that he knew of “no work that gives a freer and more effective picture of barbarian life.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and bread and rice. INDIA

Continuing on to Baghdad she joined a camel caravan for the 300-mile trek through the desert to Mosul, and then went into Persia, to Tabriz, where she amazed the British consul. Joining a caravan going toward Russia, she was of course briefly detained as a spy and jotted in her journal, “Oh you good Arabs, Turks, Persians, Hindoos! How safely did I pass through your heathen and infidel countries; and here, in Christian Russia, how much have I had to suffer in this short space.”

WALDEN: When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the PEOPLE OF world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, WALDEN she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she “was now in a civilized country, where ... people are judged of by their clothes.” Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they who yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them.

IDA PFEIFFER Madame Pfeiffer continued through Turkey, Greece, and Italy to her home in Vienna and reunion with her two sons. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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October: Louis Agassiz arrived in America on a trip that was supposed to be temporary and which had been funded by Frederick William IV of Prussia:

Professor Agassiz in early 1846, while still at Neuchâtel

(He would elect to become an immigrant and in the following year would be offered an appointment as professor of zoology and geology at Harvard College with the opportunity to found there a Museum of Comparative Zoology. He would employ Henry Thoreau, among others, to collect museum specimens for payment, and Thoreau would forward to him by way of James Elliot Cabot “many firkins of fishes and turtles.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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After spending a few years in the north of Europe, primarily analyzing the puzzles of the Scandinavian moraine topography, Pierre Jean Édouard Desor followed Professor Louis Agassiz to the United States. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter: Lecture Season of ’46/47, at the Odeon in Boston:

8th Season of The Lowell Institute 12 (r) announced Prof. Henry D. Rogers, F.G.S. Geology ...... 24 given 12 announced Rt. Rev. A. Potter, D.D. Natural Religion ...... 12 given 12 (r) announced Prof. Louis Agassiz, M.D. The Plan of Creation as shown in the Animal Kingdom. One French Lecture ...... 25 given 12 (r) announced Prof. O.M. Mitchell. Astronomy ...... 24 given 12 announced Geo. S. Hillard, Esq. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

THE LOWELL INSTITUTE In LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, Edward Lurie would report in regard to this, on his page 127, that: In an age alive and responsive to the idealism of Emerson, Agassiz gave a scientific demonstration of the spiritual quality underlying all material creation.... The men and women who listened to Agassiz heard that their species was not only the highest form of vertebrate but represented the direction and the purpose to which all creation had moved from the beginning. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(Professor Agassiz would follow up on this series of Lowell lectures in which he provided reassurance to Boston audiences that “their species was not only the highest form of vertebrate but represented the direction and the purpose to which all creation had moved from the beginning,” with another series of such lectures down in the Deep South, in Charleston, in which he would provide reassurance to whites-only audiences that “our race” was not only the highest form of humankind but represented the direction and the purpose to which all creation had moved from the beginning. –What, are you surprised?) Agassiz was less interested in glaciers as a geological agent than as the killing mechanism for the final global extinction that paved the way for Homo sapiens to culminate God’s plan.... It was his knowledge of paleontology –not sedimentary geology or glacial theory– that got him invited to deliver his “Plan of Creation” lectures at Harvard University in 1846, speeches that made Emerson uneasy for their teleology. In fact, Agassiz’s zealous promotion of the –Saussure-Goethe-Perraudin-Venetz- Charpentier-Schimper-Agassiz-Forbes– glacial theory during the 1840s was a decade-long detour from an otherwise zoological career that spanned six decades, and which ended sadly on the wrong side of evolutionary theory. TO his death, Agassiz believed that God invoked serial catastrophes to wipe out previous stages of life; that his Eizeit was the last of these catastrophes; that Darwinian evolution was in error; and that so-called primitive races had their own creations separate from those of European stock. — Professor Robert M. Thorson, WALDEN’S SHORE, pages 95-6

Winter 1846-1847: {Twenty-eight pages missing} grown; –hoary tower –of azure tinted marble.– an acre yielded about 1000 tons. They stacked up in a good day about 1000 tons. INDIA The parched inhabitants of Madras Bombay –Calcutta –Havana –charleston & New Orleans drink at my well– While I incredulous read the vast cosmogonal philosophy of Ancient India –in modern New England The Brahmen’s Stoic descendant still sits in his native temples and cools his parched lips with the ice of my Walden well. Though incredible ages ages have intervened –I am a denizen of the same earth with their descendants. The descendant of the religious devotee who dwelt at the roots of trees with his crust of bread and water jug cools his water today with ice from my well. If I am not a modern hindoo we are near neighbors –and by the miracle of commerce we quench our thirst and cool our lips at the same well. And concord fixed air is carried in that ice to mingle with the sultry zephyrs of the Indus & the Ganges. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Late in this year Louis Agassiz visited Philadelphia and for the first time observed Negroes, up close and familiar and in quantity. He did indeed feel pity, but “truth before all.”

By scientific observation he was establishing that it was beyond question that no way could such people ever be anything but an inferior order, perhaps fit for service but surely fit for nothing higher. –If one could consider them as people at all, rather than within the range of chimpanzees and orangutans and the gorilla, which was during this year being first brought to the attention of Europeans.16

16. An American missionary had obtained some gorilla skulls in Gabon and was showing them around. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1847

Lola Montez fled her situation as countess of Landsfeld and mistress to King Ludwig I in the midst of riotous demonstrations against her; the furor she had helped to create by her liberal and anti-Jesuitical influence upon him then forced his own abdication.

Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz (1821-1894) articulated a doctrine that would later travel under the rubric “Conservation of Energy,” in his ÜBER DIE ERHALTUNG DER KRAFT (“ON THE CONSERVATION OF FORCE”). The heat generated by muscles can be accounted for as the result of a complex chemical reaction that is more similar to than dissimilar from any of the very simple heat-producing chemical reactions that might occur when a chemist pours some one non-organic chemical into some other non-organic chemical in a test tube in a lab. There is therefore no need for any inventive or elaborate or special “vitalistic” explanation. In this same year, using a device that continuously measured blood pressure, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm found that the circulation of the blood was a mere fluidic process that could be fully explained in ordinary physical terms. THE SCIENCE OF 1847

Benjamin Disraeli, future prime minister, proposed in TANCRED, OR THE NEW CRUSADE that All is race; there is no other truth.

In other words, white is right and (–oh, incidentally, you must know that) Jews are Caucasians rather than HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Semites.

Professor Louis Agassiz accepted a professorship of zoology at Harvard College. In this year, also, appeared his AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY, IN A SERIES OF LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE HALL OF THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS, NEW YORK. BY PROFESSOR AGASSIZ. ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. ALSO, A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR (New-York: Greeley & McElrath, Tribune Buildings). AGASSIZ’S INTRODUCTION

His former student Charles Frédéric Girard followed Professor Agassiz to Harvard, as an assistant.

In this year, also, the German traveler Johann J. von Tschudi was offering in his TRAVELS IN PERU, DURING THE YEARS 1838-1842 ON THE COAST, AND IN THE SIERRA, ACROSS THE CORDILLERAS AND THE ANDES, INTO THE PRIMEVAL FORESTS, just then being published in London in English translation, racist remarks which would subsequently be brought forward in such accounts as Dr. Josiah Clark Nott’s and George Robins Gliddon’s foundational textbook of the new racialist American anthropology, to be published in London in 1854, TYPES OF MANKIND: OR, ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCHES, BASED UPON THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS, PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, AND CRANIA OF RACES, AND UPON THEIR NATURAL, GEOGRAPHICAL, PHILOLOGICAL, AND BIBLICAL HISTORY: ILLUSTRATED BY SELECTIONS FROM THE UNEDITED PAPERS OF SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, M.D., AND BY ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PROF.L. AGASSIZ, LL.D., W. USHER, M.D.; AND PROF. H.S. PATTERSON, M.D., and again subsequently be brought forward in 1876 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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by Herbert Spencer in Volume I of his THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY, and again subsequently to be brought forward by an Austrian politician imprisoned in Germany in 1925-1926, in his book about his struggles, entitled MEIN KAMPF. Some lies are so choice, they can never die. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

Professor Samuel George Morton’s “Hybridity in Plants and Animals considered in reference to the Question of the Unity of the Human Species” appeared in Silliman’s Journal. The author concluded that from the standpoint of the science of biology, all members of our species needed to be considered to be parts of the same human family — regardless of race.

Jakob Mathias Schleiden and Theodor Schwann announced that cells were the basic units of all living structures. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April: Louis Agassiz recruited Spencer Fullerton Baird:

I prefer to have a great number of specimens of the most common species in all their ages, then to have few specimens of many rare species. I will mention as an example, that I should collect as many as twenty and more specimens of all your salamander, frogs, toads, and have besides the tadpoles in all their different states, the whole preserved in spirit.

He also sought reptiles, fish, “bats, mice, rats, moles, shrews, weasels, squirrels, etc.” It was Baird, along with Agassiz’s assistant and secretary James Elliot Cabot, who organized Agassiz’s collecting network, and it was Cabot who recruited Henry Thoreau in Concord as a collector: in a letter of May 3, 1847 Cabot thanked Thoreau for several shipments of specimens, including breams, pout, painted tortoises and snapping turtles,

Colored wood engraving of a bream lying on a sandy bank, engraved by A.F. Lydon and printed by B. Fawcett, in William Houghton’s “British Fresh-water Fishes,” 1879

with which he stated that Mr. Agassiz was “highly delighted” — although he was forced also to convey a message that the Professor, such a very important personage, regretfully had to decline Thoreau’s invitation to a mere low-rent “spearing excursion” involving no other famous men. On May 8, Thoreau offers to take “toll” for his contribution “in the shape of some, it may be, impertinent and unscientific inquiries.” He followed with HDT WHAT? INDEX

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an inventory of Concord River fish, and offered to obtain further specimens:

there are also minks, muskrats, frogs, lizards, tortoise, snakes, caddice-worms, leeches, muscles [sic], etc., or rather, here they are (179-80; emphasis in original).

In Cabot’s reply of May 27 there is mention of a live fox contributed by Thoreau which was apparently “doing well” and making a contribution to scientific understanding in a cage in Professor Agassiz’s back yard in Cambridge. Among Thoreau’s fish were a possibly new species of bream, a possibly new species of dace, and two possibly new species of minnows. Cabot’s letter apparently responded to one from Thoreau of the same date:

I send you 15 pouts, 17 perch, 13 shiners, 1 larger land tortoise, and 5 muddy tortoises, all from the pond by my house. Also 7 perch, 5 shiners, 8 breams, 4 dace? 2 muddy tortoises, 5 painted do., and 3 land do., all from the river. One black snake, alive, and one dormouse? caught last night in my cellar.

Thoreau would go on to take some of his “toll” in questions:

What are the scientific names of those minnows which have any? Are the four dace I sent to-day identical with one of the former, and what are they called? Is there such a fish as the black sucker described,— distinct from the common?

The exchanges, and apparently the contribution of specimens, ended at that point, except for a letter Thoreau would post nearly a year later inquiring whether Cabot’s journal might pay for an article, and except for one final communication, from the Professor himself, once again declining an invite from Thoreau — this time Thoreau had attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the great scientist to deliver a series of public lectures at the Lyceum in Bangor, Maine.

This was the collecting which Thoreau would describe in WALDEN, in speaking of an unnamed “distinguished HDT WHAT? INDEX

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naturalist”:

LOUIS AGASSIZ

In LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, Edward Lurie would report in regard to this collecting that Thoreau did for Agassiz, on his page 146, by deploying the phrase: ...snapping turtles sent by an admiring Henry David Thoreau... We may note that, first, Edward Lurie has radically simplified the service that Thoreau was providing in Concord to the biological research staff in Cambridge, the snapping turtles referenced by Lurie being only one small part of it but being made to stand for the whole without any ellipsis. We may note that, second, Lurie employs an ambiguous modifier “admiring” which might mean that Thoreau was admiring the research which was going on, or which might mean that Thoreau admired Professor Agassiz’s scientific projects and plans, or which might mean that Thoreau admired Professor Agassiz himself, his energy or his capacity or his spirit or his intellect or his persona or his ethics or his racism or his catastrophism (or whatever). Where in the documentation that we have available to us would this word “admiring” have come from? Lurie provides no reference for this. Why would such a modifier have been inserted here? Well, folks, I am not just asking rhetorical questions, I do have a suggestion as to what the answer is. But there is no way that I can make this suggestion and be polite, not at one and the same time. My suggestion is that what we have here is an example of the two cultures of Science and the Humanities, with this bombastic bully Agassiz, the scientist with the political and social agenda and the life-style and the persona which was to be legitimated by his pretend science, being used to stand in for the “The Sciences” part of the dichotomy, and our Thoreau being used to stand in for the “The Humanities” part of the dichotomy. Thoreau as appreciative lay audience for the Scientist! Thoreau as trophy: see here’s this recognized sensitive poet mystic writer among our public scalps. My argument would be based on the assertion that nowhere is there to be found the slightest justification for an inference that Thoreau respected Agassiz as a person, or was anything but troubled by his scientistic hijinks — that such an inference is the sheerest presumption. One may send scientific specimens to a center for scientific investigation and receive pay for that service not out of any admiration but merely out of trust that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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eventually, somehow, a recognizably bad situation will begin to improve. Or, for the ready cash. That the situation at this center for scientific investigation was bad, Lurie goes to great trouble to document. Basically, Agassiz was locked in “gimme” mode and seldom made very much use of anything he had already been given, but Lurie assigns Thoreau no credit for having been able to see this at the time. This is, incidentally, the only mention of the naturalist Thoreau in the entire 400-page biography of this institutionalist (although the nonscientist Waldo Emerson is mentioned, sometimes at length, on 15 of its pages). One wonders why that would be. I would offer that Lurie is relying on the 19th-Century appreciation of the relative cultural significance of the Sage of Concord, whose admiration could be made to indicate a great deal to the readers of this biography, and the relative cultural insignificance of his low-rent clone Hank the local lad, whose attributed admiration would be worth no more than a mention.

May 3, Monday: In downtown Boston, at a performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix, the leading lady’s costume caught fire. Waldo Emerson was in the audience.

William Cooper Nell presided over reception ceremonies in Boston welcoming Frederick Douglass home from Europe.

James Elliot Cabot wrote, presumably from Boston, to thank Henry Thoreau for several shipments of specimens, including breams, pout, painted tortoises and snapping turtles, with which Professor Agassiz was “highly delighted”—although the Professor regretfully would be obliged to turn down Thoreau’s invitation to a “spearing excursion.” The exchange of specimens and letters would continue for some weeks. I carried them immediately to Mr. Agassiz, who was highly delighted with them. Some of the species he had seen before, but never in so fresh condition. Others, as the breams and the pout, he had seen only in spirits, and the little turtle he knew only from the books. I am sure you would have felt fully repaid for your trouble, if you could have seen the eager satisfation with which he surveyed each fin and scale. He said the small mud-turtle was really a very rare species, quite distinct from the snapping-turtle. The breams and pout seemed to please the Professor very much. He would gladly come up the Con- cord to make a spearing excursion, as you suggested, but is drawn off by numerous and pressing engagements. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 8, Saturday: Henry Thoreau wrote to James Elliot Cabot from Concord about his collections for Professor Agassiz, offering to take “toll” for his contribution “in the shape of some, it may be, impertinent and unscientific inquiries.” (This would of course be quite impossible, an indignity, since from the point of view of the new academic scientist, Thoreau was no sort of colleague but a mere native informant!) Thoreau followed this inappropriate request in his letter, however, with a useful inventory of Concord River fish, and an offer to collect new specimens which was more in keeping with the subordinate position in which they needed to keep him:

there are also minks, muskrats, frogs, lizards, tortoise, snakes, caddice-worms, leeches, muscles, etc., or rather, here they are.

Concord May 8th –47 Dear Sir I believe that I have not yet acknowledged the receipt of your notes and a 5 dollar bill. I am very glad that the fishes afforded M. Agassis so much pleasure. I could easily have obtained more specimens of the Sternothaerus odoratus. They are quite numerous here. I will send more of them ere long. Snapping turtles are perhaps as frequently met with in our muddy river as anywhere, but they are not always to be had when wanted. I t is now rather late in the season for them. As No one makes a business of seeking them, and they are valued for soups, science may be forestalled by appetite in this market, and it will be necessary to bid pretty high to induce persons to obtain or preserve them. I think that from 75 cts to a dollar apiece would secure all that are in any case to be had, and will set this price upon their heads, if the treasury of science is full enough to warrant it. You will excuse me for taking toll in the shape of some it may be impertinent and unscientific inquiries. There are found in the waters of Concord, so far as I know, the following kinds of fishes. Pickerel— Beside the common fishermen distinguish the Brook or Grass–Pickerel which bites differently–and has a shorter snout— Those caught in Walden pond by my house are easily distinguished from those caught in the river, being much heavier in proportion to their size, stouter–firmer fleshed, and lighter colored. The little pickerel which I sent last jumped into the boat in its fright. Pouts. Those in the pond are of different appearance from those I have sent. Breams— Some more green others more brown. Suckers— The Horned which I sent first–& the black. I am not sure HDT WHAT? INDEX

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whether the Common or Boston sucker is found here. Are the three which I sent last which were speared in the river–identical with the 3 black suckers taken by hand in a brook, which I sent before? I have never examined them minutely. Perch— The river perch of which I sent 5 specimens in the box–are darker colored than those found in the pond. There ar e myriads of small ones in the latter place and but few large ones. I have counted 10 transverse bands on some of the smaller. Lampreys— very scarce since the dams at Lowell & Billerica were built. Shiners— Leuciscus Crysoleucas–silver & golden— What is the difference? Roach or Chivin— Leuciscus pulchellus--Argenteus–or what not— The white and the red–the former described by Storer– but the latter which deserves distinct notice, not described to my know ledge.— Are the Minnows (called here dace) of which I sent 3 live specimens I believe, one larger & 2 smaller, the young o f this species? Trout of different appearance in different brooks in this neighborhood. Eels– Red-finned Minnows, of which I sent you a dozen alive— I have never recognized these in any book. Have they any scientific name? If convenient will you let Dr. Storer see these? Brook Minnows, There is also a kind of Dace or fresh water smelt in the pond–which is perhaps distinct from any of the above. What of the above does M. Agassis particularly wish to see— Does He want more specimens of kinds which I have already sent? There are also minks muskrats–frogs–lizards–tortoises, snakes caddice worms, leeches, muscles, &c &c — or rather here they are The funds which you sent are nearly exhausted. Most fishes can now be taken with the hook–and it will cost but little trouble or money to obtain them. The snapping turtles will be the main expense. I should think that 5 dollars more at least might be profitably expended here Yrs &c Henry D. Thoreau

An account of Frederick Douglass’s farewell meeting in England appeared in the Niles’ Register: Frederick Douglass is the colored man that escaped from Mr. Lloyd, of Talbot county, Maryland, some time since. He has been quite the lion for some time in England and Ireland, as the eloquent expounder of slavery in the United States. We have an account in the last English papers of a splendid soiree given as a farewell meeting on his taking leave of that country to return to the United States. The meeting was held at the London HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Tavern; George Thompson, Esq., presided, and on taking the chair addressed the meeting. A number of “appropriate” sentiments were proposed and carried by acclamation, recognising the services of Frederick Douglass as “the champion of the cause of slavery abolition,” appealing to the United States congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and prohibit the traffic between the states, and to the legislatures of the southern states to emancipate their slaves, &c.; finally, after adopting a very laudatory compliment, Mr. Douglass came forward, and was loudly cheered, and attentively listened to through a discourse of great length, which was concluded by the “out gushing of a surcharged heart, when he bade them farewell.” (Loud and continued cheering.)

May 27, Thursday: Henry Thoreau’s letter of May 8th was responded to by James Elliot Cabot presumably in Boston, speaking of Professor Agassiz’s surprise and pleasure at the extent of Thoreau’s subsequent collections, mentioning a live fox which was “doing well” in a cage in Agassiz’s back yard.

Mr. Agassiz was very much surprised and pleased at the extent of the collections you sent during his absence; the little fox he has established in comfortable quarters in his back-yard, where he is doing well. Among the fishes you sent there is one, probably two, new species. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Franklin Pierce departed from Newport, Rhode Island on his grand foreign adventure: He sailed from Newport on the 27th of May, in the bark Kepler, having on board three companies of the Ninth Regiment of Infantry, together with Colonel Ransom, its commander, and the officers belonging to the detachment. The passage was long and tedious, with protracted calms, and so smooth a sea that a sail boat might have performed the voyage in safety. The Kepler arrived at Vera Cruz in precisely a month after her departure from the United States, without speaking a single vessel from the south during the passage, and, of course, receiving no intelligence as to the position and state of the army which these reenforcements were to join.... During the passage from America, under the tropics, he would go down into the stifling air of the hold, with a lemon, a cup of tea, and, better and more efficacious than all, a kind word, for the sick. BAWTHORNE’S BIO OF PIERCE WAR ON MEXICO HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 1, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau wrote to James Elliot Cabot from Concord, while meanwhile Cabot was writing to him presumably from Boston. The two envelopes evidently crossed in the mail.

In his letter Thoreau went on to attempt inappropriately to take some of his “toll” as responses to questions, disregarding the fact that his lowly role was not to receive the services of science but merely to supply science with services.

The letters, and apparently the collecting, stopped at that point, except for a letter Thoreau would send nearly a year later inquiring if Cabot’s journal might pay for an article and one final letter, from Professor Agassiz, once again declining an invitation — this time Thoreau had invited him to deliver two or three lectures before the Bangor Lyceum. (Shortly after receiving this declination Thoreau would purchase and study Agassiz and Gould’s new text, PRINCIPLES OF ZOÖLOGY.)

According to Cabot, among Thoreau’s fish were one or two species not previously described, over and above the one or two new species they had previously discussed: there were a new bream, a new dace, and two new minnow species in all.

Later on that year Professor Agassiz himself penned a note on the paper of one of this series of letters between Thoreau and Cabot: “I have been highly pleased to find that the small mud turtle was really the Sternothaerus odoratus, as I suspected, — a very rare species, quite distinct from the snapping turtle. The suckers were all of one and the same species (Catastomus tuberculatus); the female has the tubercles. As I am very anxious to send some snapping turtles home with my first boxes, I would thank Mr. T. very much if he could have some taken for me.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Fall: During this autumn and winter season, until January when he needed to be back in Boston to deliver a scheduled series of lectures on Ichthyology (the study of fishes), Professor Louis Agassiz would be visiting friends on their Charleston plantations, and studying their Negroes.

The Harvard professor had a very different image of the white man (in the margin at the right — if you don’t want to believe me, simply click on this image). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November 14, Sunday: Henry Thoreau, living in the Emerson home in Emerson’s absence, wrote to Waldo Emerson terming himself a transplanted hermit:

It is a little like joining a community –this life– to such a hermit as I am – and as I dont keep the accounts I dont know whether this experiment will succeed or fail finally. At any rate, it is good for society– & I do not regret my transient – nor my permanent share in it.

Thoreau included news of the beanfield and Emerson’s shanty, and of Hugh Whelan:

Hugh still has his eyes on the Walden agellum, and orchards are waving there in the windy future for him. That’s-the-where-I’ll- go-next thinks he—but no important steps are yet taken. He reminds me occasionally of this open secret of his with which the very season seems to labor, and affirms sincerely that as to his wants, wood, stone, or timber—I know better than he. That is a clincher which I shall have to consider how to avoid to some extent, but I fear [see MS page for drawing] that it is a wrought nail and will not break. Unfortunately the day after Cattle- show—the day after small beer, he was among the missing, but not long this time. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots—nor indeed Hugh his—Hugh.

THOREAU ON THE IRISH (Eventually, after the shanty would tip backward into the cellar hole that Hugh had dug, cracking its plaster, this man would be seen on the road out of town — and he would be crying.)

Thoreau described an encounter with Sophia Foord which would be suppressed by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn HDT WHAT? INDEX

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when it was initially printed in The Atlantic Monthly:

We note that this letter, which is often quoted simply because it reveals a titillating love incident, more importantly reveals also a positive interest by Thoreau in abstract science, and in particular with the astronomical discoveries that were being made with the assistance of the powerful new telescope at the Harvard Observatory: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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[Perez Blood] and his company have at length seen the stars through the great telescope, and he told me that he thought it was worth the while. [Professor Benjamin Peirce] made them wait till the crowd had dispersed (it was a Saturday evening) & then was quite polite. He conversed with him & showed him the Micrometer &c— He said that Mr [Blood]’s glass was large enough for all ordinary astronomical work. [The Reverend Barzillai Frost] & [Dr. Josiah Bartlett] seemed disappointed that there was no greater difference between the Cambridge glass and the Concord one. They used only a power of four hundred. Mr [Blood] tells me that he is too old to study the Calculus or higher mathematics They think that they have discovered traces of another satellite to Neptune— They have been obliged to exclude the public altogether at last — the very dust which they raised “which is filled with minute crystals &c &c” as professors declare, having to be wiped off the glasses, would ere long wear them away. It is true enough. Cambridge college is really beginning to wake up and redeem its character & overtake the age. I see by the new catalogue that they are about establishing a Scientific school in connexion with the University — at which any one above eighteen, on paying one hundred dollars annually — (Mr Lawrence’s 50000 will probably diminish this sum) may be instructed in the highest branches of Science — in Astronomy theoretical and practical, with the use of the instruments — so the great Yankee Astronomer may be born without delay — in Mechanics and Engineering to the last degree — [Professor Louis Agassiz] will ere long commence his lectures in the zoological department — a Chemistry Class has already been formed, and is under the direction of [Professor Eben N. Horsford] — A new and adequate building for these purposes is already being erected.

Concord Nov 14th 1847. Dear Friend, I am but a poor neighbor to you here — a very poor companion am I— I understand that very well — but that need not prevent my writing to you now. I have almost never written letters in my life, yet I think I can write as good ones as I frequently see, so I shall not hesitate to write this such as it may be, knowing that you will welcome HDT WHAT? INDEX

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anything that reminds you of Concord. I have banked up the young trees against the winter and the mice, and I will look out in my careless way to see when a pale is loose, or a nail drops out of its place. The broad gaps at least I will occupy. I heartily wish that I could be of good service to this household — but I who have used only these ten digits so long to solve the problem of a living — how can I? This world is a cow that is hard to milk— Life does not come so easy — and ah! how thinly it is watered ere we get it— But the young bunting calf — he will get at it. There is no way so direct. This is to earn one’s living by the sweat of his brow. It is a little like joining a community –this life– to such a hermit as I am — and as I dont keep the accounts I dont know whether this experiment will succeed or fail finally. At any rate, it is good for society –& I do not regret my transient– nor my permanent share in it. Lidian and I make very good housekeepers — she is a very dear sister to me— Ellen & Edith & Eddy & Aunty Brown keep up the tragedy & comedy & tragi-comedy of life as usual. The two former have not forgotten their old acquaintance — even Edith carries a young memory in her head, I find. Eddie can teach us all how to pronounce. If you should discover any new and rare breed of wooden or pewter horses I have no doubt he will know how to appreciate it. He occasionally surveys mankind from my shoulders as widely & wisely as ever Johnson did. I respect him not a little, though it is I that lift him up there so unceremoniously— And sometimes I have to set him down again in a hurry, according to his “mere will & good pleasure.” He very seriously asked me the other day— “Mr Thoreau — will you be my father?” I am occasionally Mr Rough-and-Tumble with him — that I may not miss him, and lest he should miss you too much — so you must come back soon, or you will be superseded. Alcott has heard that I laughed & so set the people a laughing at his arbor, though I never laughed louder than when on the ridge pole. But now I have not laughed for a long time, it is so serious. He is very grave to look at. But not knowing all this I strove innocently enough the other day to engage his attention to my mathematics. “Did you ever study geometry?”— “The relation of straight lines to curves — the transition from the finite to the infinite?”— “Fine things about it in Newton & Leibnitz.”— But he would hear none of it.— Men of taste preferred the natural curve— Ah! he is a crooked stick himself. He is getting on now so many knots an hour— There is one knot at present occupying the point of highest elevation —the present highest point— and as many knots as are not handsome, I presume, are thrown down & cast into the pines. Pray show him this if you meet him anywhere in London, for I cannot make him hear HDT WHAT? INDEX

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much plainer words here. He forgets that I am neither old, nor young, nor anything in particular, and behaves as if I had still some of the animal heat in me. As for the building I feel a little oppressed when I come near it, it has so great a disposition to be beautiful. It is certainly a wonderful structure on the whole, and the fame of the architect will endure as long— —as it shall stand. I should not show you this side alone if I did not suspect that Lidian had done ample justice to the other. Mr Hosmer has been working at a tannery in Stow for a fortnight, though he has just now come home sick— It seems that he was a tanner in his youth—& So he has made up his mind a little at last. This comes of reading the New Testament. Was’nt one of the apos- tles a tanner? Mrs Hosmer remains here, and John looks stout enough to fill his own shoes and his father’s too. Mr. Blood and his company have at length seen the stars through the great telescope, and he told me that he thought it was worth the while. Mr Peirce made them wait till the crowd had dispersed (it was a Saturday evening) & then was quite polite. He conversed with him & showed him the Micrometer &c— He said that Mr B’s glass was large enough for all ordinary astronomical work. Mr Frost & Dr Bartlett seemed disappointed that there was no greater difference between the Cambridge glass and the Concord one. They used only a power of four hundred. Mr B tells me that he is too old to study the Calculus or higher mathematics They think that they have discovered traces of another satellite to Neptune— They have been obliged to exclude the public altogether at last — the very dust which they raised “which is filled with minute crystals &c &c” as professors declare, having to be wiped off the glasses, would ere long wear them away. It is true enough. Cam- bridge college is really beginning to wake up and redeem its character & overtake the age. I see by the new catalogue that they are about establishing a Scientific school in connexion with the Univer- sity — at which any one above eighteen, on paying one hundred dollars annually — (Mr Lawrence’s 50000 will probably diminish this sum) may be instructed in the highest branches of Science — in As- tronomy theoretical and practical, with the use of the instruments — so the great Yankee Astronomer may be born without delay — in Mechanics and Engineering to the last degree— Agassiz will ere long commence his lectures in the zoological department — a Chem- istry Class has already been formed, and is under the direction of Prof. Horsford— A new and adequate building for these purposes is already being erected. They have been foolish enough to put at the end of all this earnest the old joke of a diploma. Let every sheep keep but his own skin, I say. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I have had a tragic correspondence, for the most part all on one side, with Miss Ford. She did really wish to — I hesitate to write — marry me — that is the way they spell it. Of course I did not write a deliberate answer — how could I deliberate upon it? I sent back as distinct a No, as I have learned to pronounce after considerable practice, and I trust that this No has succeeded. Indeed I wished that it might burst like hollow shot after it had struck and buried itself, and make itself felt there. There was no other way. I really had anticipated no such foe as this in my career. I suppose you will like to hear of my book — though I have nothing worth writing about it — indeed for the last month or two I have forgotten it — but shall certainly remember it again. Wiley & Putnam — Munroe — The Harpers — & Crosby & Nichols — have all de- clined printing it with the least risk to themselves — but Wiley & Putnam will print it in their series — and any any of them anywhere at my risk. If I liked the book well enough I should not delay, but for the present I am indifferent. I believe this is after all the course you advised — to let it lie. I do not know what to say of myself. I sit before my green desk in the chamber at the head of the stairs — and attend to my thinking, sometimes more, sometimes less distinctly. I am not unwilling to think great thoughts if there are any in the wind, but what they are I am not sure. They suffice to keep me awake while the day lasts, at any rate. Perhaps they will redeem some portion of the night ere long. —I can imagine you astonishing — bewildering — confounding and sometimes delighting John Bull with your Yankee notions — and that he begins to take a pride in the relationship at last — introduced to all the stars of England in succession after the lectures, until you pine to thrust your head once more into a genuine & unquestionable nebula — if there be any left. I trust a common man will be the most uncommon to you before you return to these parts. I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we “minghle with the herd of common men.” Hugh still has his eyes on the Walden agellum, and orchards are waving there in the windy future for him. That’s-the-where-I’ll- go- next thinks he — but no important steps are yet taken. He reminds me occasionally of this open secret of his with which the very season seems to labor, and affirms sincerely that as to his wants, wood, stone, or timber — I know better than he. That is a clincher which I shall have to consider how to avoid to some extent, but I fear [see MS page for drawing] that it is a wrought nail and will not break. Unfortunately the day after Cattle-show — the day after small beer, he was among the missing, but not long this time. The Ethiopian cannot change his skin, nor the leopard his spots — nor indeed Hugh his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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— Hugh. As I walked over Conantum the other afternoon I saw a fair column of smoke rising from the woods directly over my house that was, as I judged, and already began to conjecture if my deed of sale would not be made invalid by this. But it turned out to be John Richard- son’s young wood on the S E of your field— It was burnt nearly all over & up to the rails and the road. It was set on fire no doubt by the same Lucifer that lighted Brooks’ lot before. So you see that your small lot is comparatively safe for this season, the back fires having been already set for you. They have been choosing between John Keyes & Sam Staples if the world wants to know it as representatives of this town — and Staples is chosen. The candidates for Governor –think of my writing this to you– were Gov. Briggs & Gen Cushing — & Briggs is elected, though the Democrats have gained. Aint I a brave boy to know so much of politics for the nonce? but I should’nt have known it if Coombs17 had’nt told me. They have had a Peace meeting here— I should’nt think of telling you of it if I did’nt know that anything would do for the English market, and some men —Dea Brown at the head– have signed a long pledge swearing that they will “treat all mankind as brothers” henceforth. I think I shall wait and see how they treat me first. I think that nature meant kindly when she made our brothers few. However, my voice is still for peace.

So Good-bye and a truce to all joking — My Dear Friend — from H.D.T. LOUIS AGASSIZ

17. This was probably not Eseek Coombs, but perhaps was his father or some other relative. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter: Lecture Season of ’47/48, at the Odeon in Boston:

9th Season of The Lowell Institute 12 (r) announced Prof. Eben Horsford. Chemistry ...... 24 given 12 announced Rev. Alonzo Potter, D.D. Natural Religion ...... 12 given 12 (r) announced Prof. Louis Agassiz, M.D. Ichthyology ...... 24 given 12 (r) announced Prof. O.M. Mitchell. Astronomy ...... 24 given 8 announced Francis Bowen, A.M. Systems of Philosophy as affecting Religion. . . 8 given HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE LOWELL INSTITUTE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1848

PRINCIPLES OF ZOÖLOGY: TOUCHING THE STRUCTURE, DEVELOPMENT, DISTRIBUTION AND NATURAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE RACES OF ANIMALS, LIVING AND EXTINCT; WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. PT. I. COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY. BY LOUIS AGASSIZ, AND AUGUSTUS A. 18 GOULD (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln. 59, Washington Street). PRINCIPLES OF ZOÖLOGY, I

Dr. Gould became a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

The Swiss federal constitution. Although Lucerne had played a major role in the old Swiss confederacy and had been proposed earlier in the 19th Century for the federal capital, Berne was chosen due to Lucerne’s opposition to this new constitution.

Theodore Sedgwick Fay would function as the United States’s Chargé d’Affaires during the sittings of the German Parliament at Frankfort. There would occur what was referred to as the “Neuchâtel Affair,” having to

18. Most of the illustrations for this had been prepared by Louis François de Pourtalès (1824-1880), who had followed Professor Agassiz from Switzerland and at this point was joining the US Coast Survey (eventually he would become custodian of Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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do with the peculiar relationship in which the Canton of Neuchâtel had stood in regard to Prussia, since it had in 1707 fallen by inheritance under Prussian control. In this year Prussia gave tacit consent for the canton to ally itself with the Swiss Confederation.

When the Academy of Neuchâtel closed due to the political unrest of this year’s European politics, Louis Agassiz suggested to Arnold Henri Guyot that he emigrate to the United States. He gave a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston titled “The Earth and Man” which would in the following year become the basis for a text of the same name.

In front of Nassau Hall at Princeton University now stands the Guyot boulder, a glacial erratic that would be HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sent by Guyot’s former students at the Academy of Neuchâtel.

THE SCIENCE OF 1848

March 8, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau wrote to James Elliot Cabot, incidentally mentioning his collecting of turtle specimens for Professor Agassiz.

Concord March 8th–48 Dear Sir, Mr Emerson’s address is as yet– “R. W. Emerson, care of Alexander Ireland Esq.–Examiner Office, Manchester, England.” We had a letter from him on Monday dated at Manchester 10th Feb, and he was then preparing to go to Edinburg the next day– where he was to lecture. He thought that he should get through his northern journey- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ing by the 25th of Feb. & go to London to spend March & April, and, if he did not go to Paris, May–& then come home. He has been eminently successful, though the papers this side of t he water have been so silent about his adventures. My book fortunately did not find a publisher ready to undertake it– and you can imagine the effect of delay on an author’s estimate of his own work. However, I like it well enough to mend it, and shall look to it again directly when I have despatched some other things. I have been writing lectures for our Lyceum this winter, mainly for my own pleasure & advantage. I esteem it a rare happiness to be able to write anything, but there, if I ever get there, my concern for it is apt to end. Time & Co. are after all the only quite honest & trustworthy publishers that we know. I can sympathize perhaps with the barberry bush whose business it is solely to ripen its fruit–though that may not be to sweeten it–& to protect it with thorns, so that it holds on all winter even, unless some hungry crows come to pluck it. But I see that I must get a few dollars together presently in order to manure my roots– Is your journal able to pay anything–provided it likes an article well enough? I do not promise one– At any rate, I mean always to spend only words enough to purchase silence with– and I have found that this which is so valuable–though many writers do not prize it–does not cost much after all I have not obtained any more of the mice which I told you were so numerous in my cellar, as my house was removed immediately after I saw you, and I have been living in the village since. I captured one snapping turtle, but suffered it to go again–as Mr Agassiz was in New York. However, if I should happen to meet with anything rare I will forward it to you. I thank you for your kind offers–and will avail myself of them so far as to ask if you you can anywhere borrow for me for a short time the copy of the Revue des Deux Mondes containing a notice of Mr Emerson I should like well to see it, & to read it to Mrs E. & others. If this book is not easy to be obtained, do not by any means trouble yourself about it Yrs truly Henry Thoreau

September 20, Wednesday: The initial meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November (Prior to the 25th, probably on the 22d, Wednesday): Henry Thoreau delivered the “Student life in New England, its economy” portion of “Economy” chapter of WALDEN at Salem. This was his first trip to lecture and was at the invitation of Nathaniel Hawthorne. This year the slate at their Lyceum included Daniel Webster, Waldo Emerson, Professor Louis Agassiz, and the Reverend Theodore Parker. Note that, as of that time, Senator Webster and Nathaniel Bowditch were Great Men with statues in Boston:

The magnificent building for the use of the BOSTON ATHENÆUM is situated on Beacon Street, near the State House. It is of Patterson freestone, and in the Palladian style of architecture. It is one hundred and fourteen feet in length, of irregular breadth, sixty feet in height, and stands ten feet back from the street, the ground space in front being surrounded by a balustrade with stone coping. The main entrance opens into a pillared and paneled rotunda, from which fine iron staircases conduct above.... Near the foot of the staircase stands Ball Hughes’s statue of Bowditch, and a very fine one of Webster, by Powers. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Winter: Lecture Season of ’48/’49, at the Odeon in Boston:

10th Season of The Lowell Institute 12 (r) announced Prof. Adolphus L. Kœppen. Ancient and Modern Athens ...... 24 given 12 (r) announced Prof. L. Agassiz. Comparative Embryology ...... 24 given 12 (r) announced Prof. Jeffries Wyman, M.D. Comparative Physiology ...... 24 given 12 announced Prof. Francis Bowen, A.M. Application of Ethical Science to the Evidences of Religion ...... 12 given 12 (r) announced Prof. Henry D. Rogers. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

THE LOWELL INSTITUTE

December 2, Saturday: Professor Louis Agassiz wrote off to his mother in Switzerland to advise her of what he had established about Negroes: “They are not of the same blood as we.”19 EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

19. “I have always suspected Agassiz of superficiality & wretched reasoning powers; but I think such men do immense good in their way. See how he stirred up all Europe about Glaciers.” – Charles Darwin, commenting on Agassiz’s pseudoscientific political agenda, in a private letter to Thomas Henry Huxley on September 26, 1857. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Margaret Fuller reported to the New-York Tribune from Rome on the events of the preceding summer in Italy: Rome, December 2, 1848. I have not written for six months, and within that time what changes have taken place on this side “the great water,” — changes of how great dramatic interest historically, — of bearing infinitely important ideally! Easy is the descent in ill. I wrote last when Pius IX. had taken the first stride on the downward road. He had proclaimed himself the foe of further reform measures, when he implied that Italian independence was not important in his eyes, when he abandoned the crowd of heroic youth who had gone to the field with his benediction, to some of whom his own hand had given crosses. All the Popes, his predecessors, had meddled with, most frequently instigated, war; now came one who must carry out, literally, the doctrines of the Prince of Peace, when the war was not for wrong, or the aggrandizement of individuals, but to redeem national, to redeem human, rights from the grasp of foreign oppression. I said some cried “traitor,” some “imbecile,” some wept, but In the minds of all, I believe, at that time, grief was predominant. They could no longer depend on him they had thought their best friend. They had lost their father. Meanwhile his people would not submit to the inaction he urged. They saw it was not only ruinous to themselves, but base and treacherous to the rest of Italy. They said to the Pope, “This cannot be; you must follow up the pledges you have given, or, if you will not act to redeem them, you must have a ministry that will.” The Pope, after he had once declared to the contrary, ought to have persisted. He should have said, “I cannot thus belie myself, I cannot put my name to acts I have just declared to be against my conscience.” The ministers of the people ought to have seen that the position they assumed was utterly untenable; that they could not advance with an enemy in the background cutting off all supplies. But some patriotism and some vanity exhilarated them, and, the Pope having weakly yielded, they unwisely began their impossible task. Mamiani, their chief, I esteem a man, under all circumstances, unequal to such a position, — a man of rhetoric merely. But no man could have acted, unless the Pope had resigned his temporal power, the Cardinals been put under sufficient check, and the Jesuits and emissaries of Austria driven from HDT WHAT? INDEX

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their lurking-places. A sad scene began. The Pope, — shut up more and more in his palace, the crowd of selfish and insidious advisers darkening round, enslaved by a confessor, — he who might have been the liberator of suffering Europe permitted the most infamous treacheries to be practised in his name. Private letters were written to the foreign powers, denying the acts he outwardly sanctioned; the hopes of the people were evaded or dallied with; the Chamber of Deputies permitted to talk and pass measures which they never could get funds to put into execution; legions to form and manoeuvre, but never to have the arms and clothing they needed. Again and again the people went to the Pope for satisfaction. They got only — benediction. Thus plotted and thus worked the scarlet men of sin, playing the hopes of Italy off and on, while their hope was of the miserable defeat consummated by a still worse traitor at Milan on the 6th of August. But, indeed, what could be expected from the “Sword of Pius IX.,” when Pius IX. himself had thus failed in his high vocation. The king of Naples bombarded his city, and set on the Lazzaroni to rob and murder the subjects he had deluded by his pretended gift of the Constitution. Pius proclaimed that he longed to embrace all the princes of Italy. He talked of peace, when all knew for a great part of the Italians there was no longer hope of peace, except in the sepulchre, or freedom. The taunting manifestos of Welden are a sufficient comment on the conduct of the Pope. “As the government of his Holiness is too weak to control his subjects,” — “As, singularly enough, a great number of Romans are found, fighting against us, contrary to the expressed will of their prince,” — such were the excuses for invasions of the Pontifical dominions, and the robbery and insult by which they were accompanied. Such invasions, it was said, made his Holiness very indignant; he remonstrated against these; but we find no word of remonstrance against the tyranny of the king of Naples, — no word of sympathy for the victims of Lombardy, the sufferings of Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Mantua, Venice. In the affairs of Europe there are continued signs of the plan of the retrograde party to effect similar demonstrations in different places at the same hour. The 15th of May was one of these marked days. On that day the king of Naples made use of the insurrection he had contrived to excite, to massacre his people, and find an excuse for recalling his troops from Lombardy. The same day a similar crisis was hoped in Rome from the declarations of the Pope, but that did not work at the moment exactly as the foes of enfranchisement hoped. However, the wounds were cruel enough. The Roman volunteers received the astounding news that they were not to expect protection or countenance from their prince; all the army stood aghast, that they were no longer to fight in the name of Pio. It had been so dear, so sweet, to love and really reverence the head of their Church, so inspiring to find their religion for once in accordance with the aspirations of the soul! They were HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to be deprived, too, of the aid of the disciplined Neapolitan troops and their artillery, on which they had counted. How cunningly all this was contrived to cause dissension and dismay may easily be seen. The Neapolitan General Pepe nobly refused to obey, and called on the troops to remain with him. They wavered; but they are a pampered army, personally much attached to the king, who pays them well and indulges them at the expense of his people, that they may be his support against that people when in a throe of nature it rises and striven for its rights. For the same reason, the sentiment of patriotism was little diffused among them in comparison with the other troops. And the alternative presented was one in which it required a very clear sense of higher duty to act against habit. Generally, after wavering awhile, they obeyed and returned. The Roman States, which had received them with so many testimonials of affection and honor, on their retreat were not slack to show a correspondent aversion and contempt. The towns would not suffer their passage; the hamlets were unwilling to serve them even with fire and water. They were filled at once with shame and rage; one officer killed himself, unable to bear it; in the unreflecting minds of the soldiers, hate sprung up for the rest of Italy, and especially Rome, which will make them admirable tools of tyranny in case of civil war. This was the first great calamity of the war. But apart from the treachery of the king of Naples and the dereliction of the Pope, it was impossible it should end thoroughly well. The people were in earnest, and have shown themselves so; brave, and able to bear privation. No one should dare, after the proofs of the summer, to reiterate the taunt, so unfriendly frequent on foreign lips at the beginning of the contest, that the Italian can boast, shout, and fling garlands, but not act. The Italian always showed himself noble and brave, even in foreign service, and is doubly so in the cause of his country. But efficient heads were wanting. The princes were not in earnest; they were looking at expediency. The Grand Duke, timid and prudent, wanted to do what was safest for Tuscany; his ministry, “Moderate” and prudent, would have liked to win a great prize at small risk. They went no farther than the people pulled them. The king of Sardinia had taken the first bold step, and the idea that treachery on his part was premeditated cannot be sustained; it arises from the extraordinary aspect of his measures, and the knowledge that he is not incapable of treachery, as he proved in early youth. But now it was only his selfishness that worked to the same results. He fought and planned, not for Italy, but the house of Savoy, which his Balbis and Giobertis had so long been prophesying was to reign supreme in the new great era of Italy. These prophecies he more than half believed, because they chimed with his ambitious wishes; but he had not soul enough to realize them; he trusted only in his disciplined troops; he had not nobleness enough to believe he might rely at all on the sentiment of the people. For his troops he dared not have good generals; conscious of meanness and timidity, he shrank from the approach HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of able and earnest men; he was only afraid they would, in helping Italy, take her and themselves out of his guardianship. Antonini was insulted, Garibaldi rejected; other experienced leaders, who had rushed to Italy at the first trumpet-sound, could never get employment from him. As to his generalship, it was entirely inadequate, even if he had made use of the first favorable moments. But his first thought was not to strike a blow at the Austrians before they recovered from the discomfiture of Milan, but to use the panic and need of his assistance to induce Lombardy and Venice to annex themselves to his kingdom. He did not even wish seriously to get the better till this was done, and when this was done, it was too late. The Austrian army was recruited, the generals had recovered their spirits, and were burning to retrieve and avenge their past defeat. The conduct of Charles Albert had been shamefully evasive in the first months. The account given by Franzini, when challenged in the Chamber of Deputies at Turin, might be summed up thus: “Why, gentlemen, what would you have? Every one knows that the army is in excellent condition, and eager for action. They are often reviewed, hear speeches, and sometimes get medals. We take places always, if it is not difficult. I myself was present once when the troops advanced; our men behaved gallantly, and had the advantage in the first skirmish; but afterward the enemy pointed on us artillery from the heights, and, naturally, we retired. But as to supposing that his Majesty Charles Albert is indifferent to the success of Italy in the war, that is absurd. He is ‘the Sword of Italy’; he is the most magnanimous of princes; he is seriously occupied about the war; many a day I have been called into his tent to talk it over, before he was up in the morning!” Sad was it that the heroic Milan, the heroic Venice, the heroic Sicily, should lean on such a reed as this, and by hurried acts, equally unworthy as unwise, sully the glory of their shields. Some names, indeed, stand, out quite free from this blame. Mazzini, who kept up a combat against folly and cowardice, day by day and hour by hour, with almost supernatural strength, warned the people constantly of the evils which their advisers were drawing upon them. He was heard then only by a few, but in this “Italia del Popolo” may be found many prophecies exactly fulfilled, as those of “the golden-haired love of Phoebus” during the struggles of Ilium. He himself, in the last sad days of Milan, compared his lot to that of Cassandra. At all events, his hands are pure from that ill. What could be done to arouse Lombardy he did, but the “Moderate” party unable to wean themselves from old habits, the pupils of the wordy Gioberti thought there could be no safety unless under the mantle of a prince. They did not foresee that he would run away, and throw that mantle on the ground. Tommaso and Manin also were clear in their aversion to these measures; and with them, as with all who were resolute in principle at that time, a great influence has followed. It is said Charles Albert feels bitterly the imputations on his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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courage, and says they are most ungrateful, since he has exposed the lives of himself and his sons in the combat. Indeed, there ought to be made a distinction between personal and mental courage. The former Charles Albert may possess, may have too much of what this still aristocratic world calls “the feelings of a gentleman” to shun exposing himself to a chance shot now and then. An entire want of mental courage he has shown. The battle, decisive against him, was made so by his giving up the moment fortune turned against him. It is shameful to hear so many say this result was inevitable, just because the material advantages were in favor of the Austrians. Pray, was never a battle won against material odds? It is precisely such that a good leader, a noble man, may expect to win. Were the Austrians driven out of Milan because the Milanese had that advantage? The Austrians would again, have suffered repulse from them, but for the baseness of this man, on whom they had been cajoled into relying, — a baseness that deserves the pillory; and on a pillory will the “Magnanimous,” as he was meanly called in face of the crimes of his youth and the timid selfishness of his middle age, stand in the sight of posterity. He made use of his power only to betray Milan; he took from the citizens all means of defence, and then gave them up to the spoiler; he promised to defend them “to the last drop of his blood,” and sold them the next minute; even the paltry terms he made, he has not seen maintained. Had the people slain him in their rage, he well deserved it at their hands; and all his conduct since show how righteous would have been that sudden verdict of passion. Of all this great drama I have much to write, but elsewhere, in a more full form, and where I can duly sketch the portraits of actors little known in America. The materials are over-rich. I have bought my right in them by much sympathetic suffering; yet, amid the blood and tears of Italy, ‘tis joy to see some glorious new births. The Italians are getting cured of mean adulation and hasty boasts; they are learning to prize and seek realities; the effigies of straw are getting knocked down, and living, growing men take their places. Italy is being educated for the future, her leaders are learning that the time is past for trust in princes and precedents, — that there is no hope except in truth and God; her lower people are learning to shout less and think more. Though my thoughts have been much with the public in this struggle for life, I have been away from it during the summer months, in the quiet valleys, on the lonely mountains. There, personally undisturbed, I have seen the glorious Italian summer wax and wane, — the summer of Southern Italy, which I did not see last year. On the mountains it was not too hot for me, and I enjoyed the great luxuriance of vegetation. I had the advantage of having visited the scene of the war minutely last summer, so that, in mind, I could follow every step of the campaign, while around me were the glorious relics of old times, — the crumbling theatre or temple of the Roman day, the bird’s- nest village of the Middle Ages, on whose purple height shone HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the sun and moon of Italy in changeless lustre. It was great pleasure to me to watch the gradual growth and change of the seasons, so different from ours. Last year I had not leisure for this quiet acquaintance. Now I saw the fields first dressed in their carpets of green, enamelled richly with the red poppy and blue corn-flower, — in that sunshine how resplendent! Then swelled the fig, the grape, the olive, the almond; and my food was of these products of this rich clime. For near three months I had grapes every day; the last four weeks, enough daily for two persons for a cent! Exquisite salad for two persons’ dinner and supper cost but a cent, and all other products of the region were in the same proportion. One who keeps still in Italy, and lives as the people do, may really have much simple luxury for very little money; though both travel, and, to the inexperienced foreigner, life in the cities, are expensive. ARTHUR FULLER’S BOOK

Margaret Fuller continued her report to the New-York Tribune on the revolution in Rome: Rome, December 2, 1848. Not till I saw the snow on the mountains grow rosy in the autumn sunset did I turn my steps again toward Rome. I was very ready to return. After three or four years of constant excitement, this six months of seclusion had been welcome; but now I felt the need of meeting other eyes beside those, so bright and so shallow, of the Italian peasant. Indeed, I left what was most precious, but which I could not take with me;20 still it was a compensation that I was again to see Rome, — Rome, that almost killed me with her cold breath of last winter, yet still with that cold breath whispered a tale of import so divine. Rome so beautiful, so great! her presence stupefies, and one has to withdraw to prize the treasures she has given. City of the soul! yes, it is that; the very dust magnetizes you, and thousand spells have been chaining you in every careless, every murmuring moment. Yes! Rome, however seen, thou must be still adored; and every hour of absence or presence must deepen love with one who has known what it is to repose in thy arms. Repose! for whatever be the revolutions, tumults, panics, hopes, of the present day, still the temper of life here is repose. The great past enfolds us, and the emotions of the moment cannot here greatly disturb that impression. From the wild shout and throng of the streets the setting sun recalls us as it rests on a hundred domes and temples, — rests on the Campagna, whose grass is rooted in departed human greatness. Burial-place so full of spirit that death itself seems no longer cold! O let me rest here, too! Hest here seems possible; meseems myriad lives still linger here, awaiting some one great summons.

20. Her child, who was born in Rieti, September 5, 1848, and was necessarily left in that town during the difficulties and siege of Rome. — ED. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The rivers had burst their bounds, and beneath the moon the fields round Rome lay one sheet of silver. Entering the gate while the baggage was under examination, I walked to the entrance of a villa. Far stretched its overarching shrubberies, its deep green bowers; two statues, with foot advanced and uplifted finger, seemed to greet me; it was near the scene of great revels, great splendors in the old time; there lay the gardens of Sallust, where were combined palace, theatre, library, bath, and villa. Strange things have happened since, the most attractive part of which — the secret heart — lies buried or has fled to animate other forms; for of that part historians have rarely given a hint more than they do now of the truest life of our day, which refuses to be embodied, by the pen, craving forms more mutable, more eloquent than the pen can give. I found Rome empty of foreigners. Most of the English have fled in affright, — the Germans and French are wanted at home, — the Czar has recalled many of his younger subjects; he does not like the schooling they get here. That large part of the population, which lives by the visits of foreigners was suffering very much, — trade, industry, for every reason, stagnant. The people were every moment becoming more exasperated by the impudent measures of the Minister Rossi, and their mortification at seeing Rome represented and betrayed by a foreigner. And what foreigner? A pupil of Guizot and Louis Philippe. The news of the bombardment and storm of Vienna had just reached Rome. Zucchi, the Minister of War, at once left the city to put down over-free manifestations in the provinces, and impede the entrance of the troops of the patriot chief, Garibaldi, into Bologna. From the provinces came soldiery, called by Rossi to keep order at the opening of the Chamber of Deputies. He reviewed them in the face of the Civic Guard; the press began to be restrained; men were arbitrarily seized and sent out of the kingdom. The public indignation rose to its height; the cup overflowed. The 15th was a beautiful day, and I had gone out for a long walk. Returning at night, the old Padrona met me with her usual smile a little clouded. “Do you know,” said she, “that the Minister Rossi has been killed?” No Roman said murdered. “Killed?” “Yes, — with a thrust in the back. A wicked man, surely; but is that the way to punish even the wicked?” “I cannot,” observed a philosopher, “sympathize under any circumstances with so immoral a deed; but surely the manner of doing it was great.” The people at large were not so refined in their comments as either the Padrona or the philosopher; but soldiers and populace alike ran up and down, singing, “Blessed the hand that rids the earth of a tyrant.” Certainly, the manner was “great.” The Chamber was awaiting the entrance of Rossi. Had he lived to enter, he would have found the Assembly, without a single exception, ranged upon the Opposition benches. His carriage HDT WHAT? INDEX

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approached, attended by a howling, hissing multitude. He smiled, affected unconcern, but must have felt relieved when his horses entered the courtyard gate of the Cancelleria. He did not know he was entering the place of his execution. The horses stopped; he alighted in the midst of a crowd; it jostled him, as if for the purpose of insult; he turned abruptly, and received as he did so the fatal blow. It was dealt by a resolute, perhaps experienced, hand; he fell and spoke no word more. The crowd, as if all previously acquainted with the plan, as no doubt most of them were, issued quietly from the gate, and passed through the outside crowd, — its members, among whom was he who dealt the blow, dispersing in all directions. For two or three minutes this outside crowd did not know that anything special had happened. When they did, the news was at the moment received in silence. The soldiers in whom Rossi had trusted, whom he had hoped to flatter and bribe, stood at their posts and said not a word. Neither they nor any one asked, “Who did this? Where is he gone?” The sense of the people certainly was that it was an act of summary justice on an offender whom the laws could not reach, but they felt it to be indecent to shout or exult on the spot where he was breathing his last. Rome, so long supposed the capital of Christendom, certainly took a very pagan view of this act, and the piece represented on the occasion at the theatres was “The Death of Nero.” The next morning I went to the Church of St. Andrea della Valle, where was to be performed a funeral service, with fine music, in honor of the victims of Vienna; for this they do here for the victims of every place, — “victims of Milan,” “victims of Paris,” “victims of Naples,” and now “victims of Vienna.” But to-day I found the church closed, the service put off, — Rome was thinking about her own victims. I passed into the Ripetta, and entered the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The Republican flag was flying at the door; the young sacristan said the fine musical service, which this church gave formerly on St. Philip’s day in honor of Louis Philippe, would now be transferred to the Republican anniversary, the 25th of February. I looked at the monument Chateaubriand erected when here, to a poor girl who died, last of her family, having seen all the others perish round her. I entered the Domenichino Chapel, and gazed anew on the magnificent representations of the Life and Death of St. Cecilia. She and St. Agnes are my favorite saints. I love to think of those angel visits which her husband knew by the fragrance of roses and lilies left behind in the apartment. I love to think of his visit to the Catacombs, and all that followed. In one of the pictures St. Cecilia, as she stretches out her arms toward the suffering multitude, seems as if an immortal fount of purest love sprung from her heart. It gives very strongly the idea of an inexhaustible love, — the only love that is much worth thinking about. Leaving the church, I passed along toward the Piazza del Popolo. “Yellow Tiber rose,” but not high enough to cause “distress,” as he does when in a swelling mood. I heard the drums beating, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and, entering the Piazza, I found the troops of the line already assembled, and the Civic Guard marching in by platoons, each battalion saluted as it entered by trumpets and a fine strain from the band of the Carbineers. I climbed the Pincian to see better. There is no place so fine for anything of this kind as the Piazza del Popolo, it is so full of light, so fair and grand, the obelisk and fountain make so fine a centre to all kinds of groups. The object of the present meeting was for the Civic Guard and troops of the line to give pledges of sympathy preparatory to going to the Quirinal to demand a change of ministry and of measures. The flag of the Union was placed in front of the obelisk; all present saluted it; some officials made addresses; the trumpets sounded, and all moved toward the Quirinal. Nothing could be gentler than the disposition of those composing the crowd. They were resolved to be played with no longer, but no threat was uttered or thought. They believed that the court would be convinced by the fate of Rossi that the retrograde movement it had attempted was impracticable. They knew the retrograde party were panic-struck, and hoped to use the occasion to free the Pope from its meshes. All felt that Pius IX. had fallen irrevocably from his high place as the friend of progress and father of Italy; but still he was personally beloved, and still his name, so often shouted in hope and joy, had not quite lost its prestige. I returned to the house, which is very near the Quirinal. On one side I could see the palace and gardens of the Pope, on the other the Piazza Barberini and street of the Four Fountains. Presently I saw the carriage of Prince Barberini drive hurriedly into his court-yard gate, the footman signing to close it, a discharge of fire-arms was heard, and the drums of the Civic Guard beat to arms. The Padrona ran up and down, crying with every round of shot, “Jesu Maria, they are killing the Pope! O poor Holy Father! — Tito, Tito,” (out of the window to her husband,) “what is the matter?” The lord of creation disdained to reply. “O Signora! pray, pray, ask Tito what is the matter?” I did so. “I don’t know, Signora; nobody knows.” “Why don’t you go on the Mount and see?” “It would be an imprudence, Signora; nobody will go.” I was just thinking to go myself, when I saw a poor man borne by, badly wounded, and heard that the Swiss were firing on the people. Their doing so was the cause of whatever violence there was, and it was not much. The people had assembled, as usual, at the Quirinal, only with more form and solemnity than usual. They had taken with them several of the Chamber of Deputies, and they sent an embassy, headed by Galetti, who had been in the late ministry, to state their wishes. They received a peremptory negative. They then insisted on seeing the Pope, and pressed on the palace. The Swiss HDT WHAT? INDEX

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became alarmed, and fired from the windows and from the roof. They did this, it is said, without orders; but who could, at the time, suppose that? If it had been planned to exasperate the people to blood, what more could have been done? As it was, very little was shed; but the Pope, no doubt, felt great panic. He heard the report of fire-arms, — heard that they tried to burn a door of the palace. I would lay my life that he could have shown himself without the slightest danger; nay, that the habitual respect for his presence would have prevailed, and hushed all tumult. He did not think so, and, to still it, once more degraded himself and injured his people, by making promises he did not mean to keep. He protests now against those promises as extorted by violence, — a strange plea indeed for the representative of St. Peter! Rome is all full of the effigies of those over whom violence had no power. There was an early Pope about to be thrown into the Tiber; violence had no power to make him say what he did not mean. Delicate girls, men in the prime of hope and pride of power, — they were all alike about that. They could die in boiling oil, roasted on coals, or cut to pieces; but they could not say what they did not mean. These formed the true Church; it was these who had power to disseminate the religion of him, the Prince of Peace, who died a bloody death of torture between sinners, because he never could say what he did not mean. A little church, outside the gate of St. Sebastian commemorates the following affecting tradition of the Church. Peter, alarmed at the persecution of the Christians, had gone forth to fly, when in this spot he saw a bright figure in his path, and recognized his Master travelling toward Rome. “Lord,” he said, “whither goest thou?” “I go,” replied Jesus, “to die with my people.” Peter comprehended the reproof. He felt that he must not a fourth time deny his Master, yet hope for salvation. He returned to Rome to offer his life in attestation of his faith. The Roman Catholic Church has risen a monument to the memory of such facts. And has the present head of that Church quite failed to understand their monition? Not all the Popes have so failed, though the majority have been intriguing, ambitious men of the world. But even the mob of Rome — and in Rome there is a true mob of unheeding cabbage-sellers, who never had a thought before beyond contriving how to satisfy their animal instincts for the day — said, on hearing the protest, “There was another Pius, not long since, who talked in a very different style. When the French threatened him, he said, ‘You may do with me as you see fit, but I cannot consent to act against my convictions.’” In fact, the only dignified course for the Pope to pursue was to resign his temporal power. He could no longer hold it on his own terms; but to it he clung; and the counsellors around him were men to wish him to regard that as the first of duties. When the question was of waging war for the independence of Italy, they regarded him solely as the head of the Church; but when the demand was to satisfy the wants of his people, and HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ecclesiastical goods were threatened with taxes, then he was the prince of the state, bound to maintain all the selfish prerogatives of bygone days for the benefit of his successors. Poor Pope! how has his mind been torn to pieces in these later days! It moves compassion. There can be no doubt that all his natural impulses are generous and kind, and in a more private station he would have died beloved and honored; but to this he was unequal; he has suffered bad men to surround him, and by their misrepresentations and insidious suggestions at last entirely to cloud his mind. I believe he really thinks now the Progress movement tends to anarchy, blood, and all that looked worst in the first French revolution. However that may be, I cannot forgive him some of the circumstances of this flight. To fly to Naples; to throw himself in the arms of the bombarding monarch, blessing him and thanking his soldiery for preserving that part of Italy from anarchy; to protest that all his promises at Rome were null and void, when he thought himself in safety to choose a commission for governing in his absence, composed of men of princely blood, but as to character so null that everybody laughed, and said he chose those who could best be spared if they were killed; (but they all ran away directly;) when Rome was thus left without any government, to refuse to see any deputation, even the Senator of Rome, whom he had so gladly sanctioned, — these are the acts either of a fool or a foe. They are not his acts, to be sure, but he is responsible; he lets them stand as such in the face of the world, and weeps and prays for their success. No more of him! His day is over. He has been made, it seems unconsciously, an instrument of good his regrets cannot destroy. Nor can he be made so important an instrument of ill. These acts have not had the effect the foes of freedom hoped. Rome remained quite cool and composed; all felt that they had not demanded more than was their duty to demand, and were willing to accept what might follow. In a few days all began to say: “Well, who would have thought it? The Pope, the Cardinals, the Princes are gone, and Rome is perfectly tranquil, and one does not miss anything, except that there are not so many rich carriages and liveries.” The Pope may regret too late that he ever gave the people a chance to make this reflection. Yet the best fruits of the movement may not ripen for a long time. It is a movement which requires radical measures, clear-sighted, resolute men: these last, as yet, do not show themselves in Rome. The new Tuscan ministry has three men of superior force in various ways, — Montanelli, Guerazzi, D’Aguila; such are not as yet to be found in Rome. But should she fall this time, — and she must either advance with decision and force, or fall, since to stand still is impossible, — the people have learned much; ignorance and servility of thought are lessened, — the way is paving for final triumph. And my country, what does she? You have chosen a new President HDT WHAT? INDEX

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from a Slave State, representative of the Mexican war. But he seems to be honest, a man that can be esteemed, and is one really known to the people, which is a step upward, after having sunk last time to choosing a mere tool of party. Pray send here a good Ambassador, — one that has experience of foreign life, that he may act with good judgment, and, if possible, a man that has knowledge and views which extend beyond the cause of party politics in the United States, — a man of unity in principles, but capable of understanding variety in forms. And send a man capable of prizing the luxury of living in, or knowing Rome; the office of Ambassador is one that should not be thrown away on a person who cannot prize or use it. Another century, and I might ask to be made Ambassador myself, (‘tis true, like other Ambassadors, I would employ clerks to do the most of the duty,) but woman’s day has not come yet. They hold their clubs in Paris, but even George Sand will not act with women as they are. They say she pleads they are too mean, too treacherous. She should not abandon them for that, which is not nature, but misfortune. How much I shall have to say on that subject if I live, which I desire not, for I am very tired of the battle with giant wrongs, and would like to have some one younger and stronger arise to say what ought to be said, still more to do what ought to be done. Enough! if I felt these things in privileged America, the cries of mothers and wives beaten at night by sons and husbands for their diversion after drinking, as I have repeatedly heard them these past months, — the excuse for falsehood, “I dare not tell my husband, he would be ready to kill me,” — have sharpened my perception as to the ills of woman’s condition and the remedies that must be applied. Had I but genius, had I but energy, to tell what I know as it ought to be told! God grant them me, or some other more worthy woman, I pray. Don Tirlone, the Punch of Rome, has just come in. This number represents the fortress of Gaëta. Outside hangs a cage containing a parrot (pappagallo), the plump body of the bird surmounted by a noble large head with benign face and Papal head- dress. He sits on the perch now with folded wings, but the cage door, in likeness of a portico, shows there is convenience to come forth for the purposes of benediction, when wanted. Outside, the king of Naples, dressed as Harlequin, plays the organ for instruction of the bird (unhappy penitent, doomed to penance), and, grinning with sharp teeth, observes: “He speaks in my way now.” In the background a young Republican holds ready the match for a barrel of gunpowder, but looks at his watch, waiting the moment to ignite it. A happy New Year to my country! may she be worthy of the privileges she possesses, while others are lavishing their blood to win them, — that is all that need be wished for her at present. ARTHUR FULLER’S BOOK HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 5, Tuesday: Agreement was reached in Cambridge that Pierre Jean Édouard Desor and Professor Louis Agassiz were to submit a difficulty to arbitration.

President James Knox Polk assured the nation that the reports of gold in California were reliable. In the following months “Gold Fever” would spread rapidly through the United States. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1849

June 30, Saturday: The Marchése Ossoli’s troops, quartered in the Vatican gardens, were ordered to man a battery at the Pincian hill, the most exposed position in Rome. Expecting Ossoli to be killed by the French bombardment, Margaret Fuller went to be with him.

(Although Margaret would not be killed, this is reported under the rubric of suicide because it fully qualifies in accordance with the formal definition sponsored by Durkheim in his classic sociological treatise SUICIDE.)

Henry Thoreau wrote to Professor Louis Agassiz. Concord Mass June 30th — 49 Dear Sir, Being disappointed in not finding you in Boston a week or two since, I requested Dr. Gould to make some inquiries of you for me; but now, as I shall not be able to see that gentleman for some time, I have decided to apply to you directly. Suffice it to say, that one of the directors of the Bangor (ME.) Lyce- um has asked me to ascertain simply –and I think this a good Yankee way of doing the business– Whether you will read two or three lectures before that institution early in the next lecture season, and if so, what remuneration you will expect. Of course they would be glad to hear more lectures, but they are afraid that they may not have money enough to pay for them. You may recognise in your correspondent the individual who for- warded to you through Mr Cabot many firkins of fishes and turtles a few years since, and who also had the pleasure of an introduction to you at Marlboro’ Chapel. Will you please to answer this note as soon as convenient? yrs respectfully Henry D. Thoreau

July 5, Thursday: On about this day Henry Thoreau was being responded to by Professor Louis Agassiz in Cambridge. Dear Sir, I remember with much pleasure the time when you used to send me specimens from your vicinity and also our short interview in the Marlborough Chapel. I am under too many obligations of your kindness to forget it, and I am very sorry that I missed your visit in Bos- ton, but for 18 months I have now been settled in Cambridge. It would give me great pleasure to engage for the lectures you ask from me, on behalf of the Bangor Lyceum; but I find it has been last HDT WHAT? INDEX

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winter such an heavy tax upon my health, that I wish for the present to make no engagements, as I have some hopes of making my living this year by other efforts and beyond the necessity of my wants, both domestic and scientific, I am determined not to exert myself, as all the time I can thus secure to myself must be exclusively devoted to science. You see this does not look much like business making; but my only business is my intercourse with nature and could I do without draughtsmen, lithographers & & I would live still more retired. This will satisfy you, that whenever you come this way, I shall be delighted to see you, since I have also heard something of your mode of living. With great regard Sincerely yours LR Agassiz

July 12, Thursday: Moncure Daniel Conway graduated from Dickinson College.

For your interest, here is what this college has to say, in its little collage about their alum Conway, that they maintain today on the Internet (you’ll note instantly that they quite omit to mention that their guy had known Thoreau): Moncure Daniel Conway was born on March 17, 1832 in Stafford County, Virginia, the son of Walker Peyton and Margaret Daniel Conway. Walker was a justice in the county court, a trustee of Dickinson College from 1848-1865, and a prominent slaveholder in the county. However, Mrs. Conway’s views on slavery differed a great deal from those of her husband’s, and young Moncure’s first contact with abolitionist views came from his mother. At the age of 15 Conway was sent north to attend Dickinson College and graduated with the class of 1849. While at Dickinson, he firmly allied himself with the abolitionist cause and turned his energy toward emancipation. Having encountered religious doubts in his young life, Conway became a circuit-riding Methodist minister in 1851. However, he refused to give up his love of art, the theater, and the works of Emerson, so he left the rigors of Methodism for Unitarianism a year after being ordained. Conway moved to Boston, spent time among prominent intellectuals of the period, began a life-long friendship with his mentor, Emerson, and graduated from Harvard University in 1854. His first job as a minister in Washington, D.C. was short-lived because his abolitionist views clashed with those of his congregation. He did, however, find considerable favor amongst the members of the Unitarian Church of Cincinnati, Ohio, his HDT WHAT? INDEX

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next post as minister.

In 1858, Conway met and married Ellen Dana, the well-educated daughter of a prominent businessman. Together they would have three children: two sons, Eustace (1859) and Dana (1865), and a daughter, Mildred (1868), who would later marry the accomplished architect Phillip Sawyer. Unfortunately, the early 1860s would bring hard times for Conway and his growing family. He and Ellen, along with many of their congregation, became increasingly disillusioned with the Unitarian Church and in 1862, they left the church completely. The outbreak of the US Civil War caused another painful rift in Conway’s life: being Virginians, his two brothers had joined the Confederate army. Faced with familial and religious alienation, Conway settled temporarily in London in 1863. His advocation for a peaceful division of the states caused him to lose credibility with fellow abolitionists following an embarrassing encounter with James Murray Mason, the Confederate envoy in London. Feeling completely alienated, he sent for his wife and sons, having virtually no ties left to the United States. England afforded Conway the intellectual and spiritual freedom for which he had always yearned. He became increasingly involved in the intellectual, artistic, non-conformist, and free- thinking social circles of London, discovering the South Place Ethical Society, an institution founded on the very ideals of personal spiritual fulfillment that Conway held most dear. In 1866, he was asked to take the position of minister, becoming a scholar of world religions and philosophies. He eventually began to regain some credibility with his fellow abolitionists, and was able to return to the United States in 1884 after the death HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of his father. During the next few years, Conway pursued writing, and greatly improved his reputation as a scholar. In 1892, Moncure and Ellen reluctantly returned to London for a short time so he could resume his position at the South Place Society. His wife died in New York on Christmas Day, 1897. After his wife's death, Conway spoke in the United States on topics such as the Spanish-American War, free religion, and voting rights. Again becoming disillusioned with politics in his home country, he left in 1898, this time to France where he devoted much of the rest of his life to the peace movement and writing. Conway’s intriguing life ended on November 15, 1907, alone in his Paris apartment. His long list of published work includes THE EARTHWARD PILGRIMAGE (1870), THE SACRED ANTHOLOGY (1874), DEMONOLOGY AND DEVIL LORE (1879), EMERSON: AT HOME AND ABROAD (1882), LIFE OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1890), THE LIFE OF THOMAS PAINE (1892), and a variety of pamphlets and articles on numerous subjects. His intellectual life had acquainted him with such notables as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Annie Besant, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Andrew Carnegie, who donated money to Dickinson College to construct a building in honor of Conway. Conway Hall was used as the preparatory school until 1917 and then served as a freshman residence hall.

Now, for your interest, here is part of what John Holladay Latané would write in the year of Conway’s death in the early 20th Century, about young Moncure at the point of his graduation from Dickinson College, and we may note with great interest that the racist theories of Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard University are already on the scene (albeit not well understood by young Moncure, who was taking them in a direction of which the professor would most definitely not have approved): After graduation he returned to Virginia and began to read law at Warrenton. These were the days when the great compromise on slavery was being debated in and out of Congress. Although a large slave-holder, his father was not an advocate of the institution, and when Moncure was made secretary of a meeting called to form a Southern Rights Association, his father quietly remarked: “Don’t be the fool of those people! Slavery is a doomed institution.” The son, however, coming across a theory of Agassiz that the races of mankind are not sprung from a single pair, advanced the view before a debating society at Warrenton that the negro was not a man within the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, but that if human, he was entitled to liberty. This eccentricity stirred up quite a religious tempest in the community. Six months later young Conway underwent a second conversion, and in December, 1850, announced in a letter to his father his determination to abandon the law and to apply for admission to the Baltimore Methodist Conference as a minister. Strange to say this resolution was inspired by the study of Emerson’s essays, but he had read only the first and second series, and had not gone far enough to discover that Emerson’s philosophy was inconsistent with any form of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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orthodoxy. WALDO EMERSON JOHN HOLLADAY LATANÉ HDT WHAT? INDEX

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OCTOBER 1849

According to Sanborn’s FAMILIAR LETTERS: Agassiz had reason indeed to remember the collections made by Thoreau, since (from the letters of Mr. Cabot) they aided him much in his comparison of the American with the European fishes. When the first firkin of Concord fish arrived in Boston, where Agassiz was then working, “he was highly delighted, and began immediately to spread them out and arrange them for his draughtsman. Some of the species he had seen before, but never in so fresh condition; others, as the breams and the pout, he had seen only in spirits, and the little tortoise he knew only from the books. I am sure you would have felt fully repaid for your trouble,” adds Mr. Cabot, “if you could have seen the eager satisfaction with which he surveyed each fin and scale.” Agassiz himself wrote the same day: “I have been highly pleased to find that the small mud turtle was really the Sternothaerus odoratus, as I suspected, a very rare species, quite distinct from the snapping turtle. The suckers were all of one and the same species (Catastomus tuberculatus); the female has the tubercles. As I am very anxious to send some snapping turtles home with my first boxes, I would thank Mr. T. very much if he could have some taken for me.” Mr. Cabot goes on: “Of the perch Agassiz remarked that it was almost identical with that of Europe, but distinguishable, on close examination, by the tubercles on the sub-operculum.... More of the painted tortoises would be acceptable. The snapping turtles are very interesting to him as forming a transition from the turtles proper to the alligator and crocodile.... We have received three boxes from you since the first.” (May 27.) “Agassiz was much surprised and pleased at the extent of the collections you sent during his absence in New York. Among the fishes there is one, and probably two, new species. The fresh-water smelt he does not know. He is very anxious to see the pickerel with the long snout, which he suspects may be the Esox estor, or Maskalong; he has seen this at Albany.... As to the minks, etc., I know they would all be very acceptable to him. When I asked him about these, and more specimens of what you have sent, he said, 'I dare not make any request, for I do not know how much trouble I may be giving to Mr. Thoreau; but my method of examination requires many more specimens than most naturalists would care for.” (June 1.) “Agassiz is delighted to find one, and he thinks two, more new species; one is a Pomotis, the bream without the red spot in the operculum, and with a red belly and fins. The other is the shallower and lighter colored shiner. The four dace you sent last are Leuciscus argenteus. They are different from that you sent before under this name, but which was a new species. Of the four kinds of minnow, two are new. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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There is a black sucker (Catastomus nigrican), but there has been no specimen among those you have sent, and A. has never seen a specimen. He seemed to know your mouse, and called it the white-bellied mouse. It was the first specimen he had seen. I am in hopes to bring or send him to Concord, to look after new Leucisci, etc.” Agassiz did afterwards come, more than once, and examined turtles with Thoreau. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1850

Dr. Josiah Clark Nott and Ralph Hermon Major argued against the prevailing “miasma” theory in YELLOW FEVER CONTRASTED WITH BILIOUS FEVER: REASONS FOR BELIEVING IT A DISEASE SUI GENERIS – ITS MODE OF PROPAGATION – REMOTE CAUSE – PROBABLE INSECT OR ANIMALCULAR ORIGIN (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific).

Professor Samuel George Morton became President of the Academy of Natural Sciences.

George Robins Gliddon’s INDIGENOUS RACES OF THE EARTH (in conjunction with Dr. Josiah Clark Nott and others). Also, his ANCIENT EGYPT. THE SCIENCE OF 1850 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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George Robins Gliddon, the American vice-consul to Alexandria, Egypt in 1832, had organized a small shipment of mummies from a friend in Egypt.

In this year this collection if antique desiccated human corpses was placed on exhibit in Boston, and would be viewed by, among others, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the Reverend Professor Jared Sparks, Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Professor Louis Agassiz.

While at the AAAS meeting of scientists in Charleston arguing on behalf of the idea that the races of man were separately created, Professor Agassiz found he was much, much more welcome than the Hoars of Concord had been in 1844, when they had visited this port to protest the systematic imprisonment of innocent free northern

THE HOARS CONCORD’S “ROYAL FAMILY”

black sailors. The good people of Charleston knew a kindred white soul when they saw one. Agassiz was trustworthy, he was a friend, they knew what conclusions he would arrive at after seeing the evidence: he was invited to visit their plantations and to inspect their black slaves. He commissioned a series of daguerreotypes of type specimens, and then these shockingly invasive and unsettling photographs lay in a box at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology for many, many years, until they were rediscovered in 1977 — long after the Harvard institution had conveniently forgotten all about the rabid “scientific” racism of one of its illustrious father figures. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Coincidentally, this was the year in which the astronomer Maria Mitchell was installed as an honorary member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.21

Subsequent to the death of his 1st wife, Professor Agassiz remarried with the writer Elizabeth Cabot Cary of Boston, a promoter of education for females. During this year he prepared his volume LAKE SUPERIOR.

September: Henry Thoreau surveyed for a proposed new street near the Railroad Depot. Length 30" x Width 21". In 1844 when the railroad had been opened in Concord, he had been asked to suggest the route of a new street from the corner of Main and Sudbury Road to the Depot, and in fact he had drawn up several alternatives. The one chosen is the present Middle Street and required the moving of the Concord Academy Building from the spot where Academy Lane and Middle Street meet. This proposal is the present Middle Street from Academy Lane to Thoreau Lane. The old Concord Academy stood on the spot so it had to be moved to the south side of the new street. (The Academy building in which the Thoreau brothers had taught was made over into a double house for Ellery Channing. The Concord Free Public Library has several preserved sketches for this area. One shows the land of Wetherbee on Belknap Street which became the property on which the old Davis Store from Main Street came to rest, and was occupied by William Barrett from 1859 to 1898.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

(The official copy of this survey of course had become the property of the person or persons who had hired this Concord town surveyor to do their surveying work during the 19th Century. Such materials have yet to be recovered.)

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail:

21. How could she, not only as a woman but also as an abolitionist, have been acceptable to these good ol’ white racist boys? –Did they maybe notice that she wore a skirt but neglect to notice that she was wearing nothing made of cotton cloth because such cotton cloth was a product of the slave system? No, that wasn’t what it was, what it was was that she was not becoming a member, but only an honorary member. On her printed certificate, signed by the scientist Asa Gray, the salutation “Sir” had needed to be struck through and above it penned the substitute “Madam,” which is not particularly problematic, but also, the word “fellow” had needed to be struck through — and what had been substituted for this was the invidious descriptor “honorary member.” — There’s a big difference between an honorable member and an honorary member, and the difference is that a woman is not a real human being because an honorary member is not a real member. The lady scientist has eyes and can see a comet and a tongue and can report a comet, but she lacks a penis and therefore cannot interfere with processes of reality formation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/137.htm

Channing wrote in a letter complaining about Waldo Emerson: “a terrible man to deal with — one has to be armed at all points. He threshes you out very soon; is admirably skillful, able to go anywhere and do anything. Those nearest to him feel him hard and cold; no one knows even what he is doing or studying.... Nobody knows what his real philosophy is; his books do not tell it. I have known him for years intimately and have not found it out. Women do not like him: he cannot establish a personal relation with anyone, yet he can get on agreeably with everyone.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At some point during the month Thoreau made an entry in his journal that he was later to copy into his early 22 lecture “WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT” as:

[Paragraph 52] A commerce that whitens every sea in quest of nuts and raisins, and makes slaves of its sailors for this purpose! I saw, the other day, a vessel which had been wrecked, and many lives lost, and her cargo of rags, juniper-berries, and bitter almonds were strewn along the shore. It seemed hardly worth the while to tempt the dangers of the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake of a cargo of juniper-berries and bitter almonds. America sending to the Old World for her bitters! Is not the sea-brine, is not shipwreck, bitter enough to make the cup of life go down here? Yet such, to a great extent, is our boasted commerce; and there are those who style themselves statesmen and philosophers who are so blind as to think that progress and civilization depend on precisely this kind of interchange and activity,—the activity of flies about a molasses-hogshead. Very well, observes one, if men were oysters. And very well, answer I, if men were mosquitoes.

In Godey’s Lady’s Book, Henry T. Tuckerman characterized Alexander von Humboldt as “the Napoleon of science.” This title, although apparently innocuous, would soon be combined with our iniquitous lust for the conquest of nature, so that Humboldt would soon be being worshipped, and eventually would find himself condemned, as something he had simply not been: an exploiter. Professor Laura Dassow Walls points out that during Humboldt’s old age while “his voice was aging and distant,” his legacy would be seized upon by positivists such as Louis Agassiz even though he “could and did protest with every means at this disposal.” His name became synonymous with empire and with the exploitation of nature, while native American

22. Thoreau was referring to his experience at Fire Island in late July 1850. The American bark Elizabeth, with Margaret Fuller Ossoli, her husband, and their son aboard, had sailed from Italy on May 17, 1850, bound for New-York, but wrecked on the coast of Fire Island on July 19th. Thoreau was dispatched to the scene of the wreck to recover the bodies of the Ossolis and their belongings, and when he arrived he found the beach strewn with the unsalvageable portion of the cargo—heaps of rags, juniper- berries, and bitter almonds (see Kenneth Walter Cameron, “Thoreau’s Notes on the Shipwreck at Fire Island,” Emerson Society Quarterly 52 [3d Quarter 1968]: 97-99; and Paula Blanchard, MARGARET FULLER: FROM TRANSCENDENTALISM TO REVOLUTION [NY: Delacorte Press, 1978], pages 329-37). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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populations were being removed and ecological communities disrupted in the name of our Manifest Destiny. How ironic it is today that current approaches to science, which stress the role our own knowledge plays as part of the world we seek to understand, have lost sight of Humboldt’s work. Today, Humboldtian concepts like plant communities, isotherms, and magnetic storms are routine, the “ecology of ideas” is an exciting new concept — and Alexander von Humboldt’s once-glorious name has long since b id d i t th di ft l f th f t t ( 107)

September 4, Tuesday: Charles Darwin commented on Louis Agassiz’s pseudoscientific political agenda, in a private letter to the Reverend William Darwin Fox (1805-1880), his second cousin and a former classmate at Cambridge College:

I wonder whether the queries addressed to me about the specific distinctions of the races of man are a reflexion from Agassiz’s Lectures in the U.S. in which he has been maintaining the doctrine of several species, —much, I daresay, to the comfort of the slave- holding Southerners.— HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter: Winter Lecture Season of ’50/51, at the Odeon in Boston:

12th Season of The Lowell Institute 12 announced Professor Francis Bowen, A.M. Political Economy ...... 12 given 12 announced Professor L. Agassiz. Functions of Life in Lower Animals ...... 12 given 12 announced Rev. George W. Blagden, D.D. Evidences of Revealed Religion ...... 12 given 12 announced Prof. Arnold Guyot, Ph.D. Physical Geography ...... 12 given

THE LOWELL INSTITUTE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1851

The 2d part of John Wells Foster’s survey findings authorized for publication by the federal Congress, REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF A PORTION OF THE LAKE SUPERIOR LAND DISTRICT IN THE STATE OF MICHIGAN: PART TWO, THE IRON REGION. LAKE SUPERIOR REPORT, II

At the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Cincinnati, Professor Louis Agassiz would rise from his seat to pronounce this to be “one of the grandest generalizations ever made in American geology.” THE SCIENCE OF 1851

A copy of this report by Foster would be discovered in the personal library of Henry Thoreau.

Arnold Henri Guyot’s THE EARTH AND MAN: LECTURES ON COMPARATIVE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, IN ITS 23 RELATION TO THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. TRANS. C.C. FELTON, 3RD ED., REV. (Boston: Gould & Lincoln). THE EARTH AND MAN, 1849 THE EARTH AND MAN, 1853

This would be in the library of Waldo Emerson, and would be accessed by Thoreau and referred to in CAPE COD.

CAPE COD: I have been surprised to discover from a steamer the shallowness of Massachusetts Bay itself. Off Billingsgate Point I could have touched the bottom with a pole, and I plainly saw it variously shaded with sea-weed, at five or six miles from the shore. This is “The Shoal-ground of the Cape,” it is true, but elsewhere the Bay is not much deeper than a country pond. We are told that the deepest water in the English Channel between Shakespeare’s Cliff and Cape Grinez, in France, is one hundred and eighty feet; and Guyot says that “the Baltic Sea has a depth of only one hundred and twenty feet between the coasts of Germany and those of Sweden,” and “the Adriatic between Venice and Trieste has a depth of only one hundred and thirty feet.” A pond in my native town, only half a mile long, is more than one hundred feet deep.

ARNOLD HENRI GUYOT Thoreau quoted from this volume at several points in his “Canadian Notebook.”

23. Unfortunately, it will be the 1st Edition, published in 1849, and the 7th Edition, published in 1853, rather than this 3d Edition, published in 1851, which I must display for your electronic access here — Google Books hasn’t yet made this 3d Edition, as accessed by Thoreau and Emerson, available. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Professor Sir William Jackson Hooker’s VICTORIA REGIA.

Gregor Mendel began a 2-year program of study at the University of Vienna. He would take a variety of courses and study with, or attend the lectures of, among others, Professor of Plant Physiology Franz Unger whose BOTANISCHE BRIEFE would in 1852 argue for the evolution of (i.e. non-fixity) of species, Andreas von Ettinghausen, whose course on experimental method and physical apparatus likely drew on his 1826 writings on combinatorial analysis and 1842 writings on the organization of experiments, and Christian Johann Doppler, a well-regarded lecturer on experimental physics.

Hofmeister described alternation of generations in higher plants.

Over the following four years Charles Darwin would be issuing 4 volumes of monographs on cirripedes (marine invertebrates including barnacles). His thorough research would be recognized with the Royal Medal.

Henry Thoreau read in Zoölogy and in Botany: • William Bartram and John Bartram JOHN BARTRAM’S BOOK WM. BARTRAM’S BOOK • Peter Kalm, a disciple of Carolus Linnaeus • the Baron Cuvier, teacher of Louis Agassiz • Loudon, apostle of the Linnaean “artificial” system of botanical classification • Stoever, the biographer of Carolus Linnaeus • Pultenay, a Linnaean • Carolus Linnaeus (in February 1852) • Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus de Candolle, apostle of the Linnaean “artificial” system of botanical classification (later) • Louis Agassiz and Augustus A. Gould’s revised edition of their 1848 PRINCIPLES OF ZOÖLOGY: TOUCHING THE STRUCTURE, DEVELOPMENT, DISTRIBUTION AND NATURAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE RACES OF ANIMALS, LIVING AND EXTINCT; WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS. FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. PT. I. COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY AGASSIZ & GOULD 1851 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CAPE COD: The Greeks would not have called the ocean or unfruitful, though it does not produce wheat, if they had viewed it by the light of modern science, for naturalists now assert that “the sea, and not the land, is the principal seat of life,”– though not of vegetable life. Darwin affirms that “our most thickly inhabited forests appear almost as deserts when we come to compare them with the corresponding regions of the ocean.” Agassiz and Gould tell us that “the sea teems with animals of all classes, far beyond the extreme limit of flowering plants”; but they add, that “experiments of dredging in very deep water have also taught us that the abyss of the ocean is nearly a desert”; –“so that modern investigations,” to quote the words of Desor, “merely go to confirm the great idea which was vaguely anticipated by the ancient poets and philosophers, that the Ocean is the origin of all things.” Yet marine animals and plants hold a lower rank in the scale of being than land animals and plants. “There is no instance known,” says Desor, “of an animal becoming aquatic in its perfect state, after having lived in its lower stage on dry land,” but as in the case of the tadpole, “the progress invariably points towards the dry land.” In short, the dry land itself came through and out of the water on its way to the heavens, for, “in going back through the geological ages, we come to an epoch when, according to all appearances, the dry land did not exist, and when the surface of our globe was entirely covered with water.” We looked on the sea, then, once more, not as , or unfruitful, but as it has been more truly called, the “laboratory of continents.”

PIERRE JEAN ÉDOUARD DESOR AGASSIZ & GOULD CHARLES DARWIN HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 9, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau visited Harvard Observatory on Concord Avenue in Cambridge. Perhaps this had been suggested by John Downes, who earlier in the year had been in touch with the observatory about the occultation of stars. It has been presumed that it was the director, William Cranch Bond, age about 62, who showed Thoreau around and answered his questions. I suggest that it would more likely have been his son the assistant observer George Phillips Bond, six years out of Harvard College, who would have been providing

such a public relations service, and that the director would have been reserving himself for occasional visitors who thought they had cachet and who might be more easily offended, such as Prince Albert. My reasons for suspecting this are that I can’t believe the astronomers would have taken Thoreau seriously, plus George was more of Henry’s own age group, plus George is known to have had an abiding interest in nature and in particular in ornithology.24 ASTRONOMY

24.A case in point is the treatment awarded by historians of the science of astronomy to Henry Thoreau’s visit in the official study on the first four directorships of the Harvard College observatory, by Bessie (Judith) Zaban Jones and Lyle Gifford Boyd, entitled THE HARVARD COLLEGE OBSERVATORY: THE FIRST FOUR DIRECTORSHIPS, 1839-1919 (Cambridge MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1971). This is a meticulous book, quite elaborately documented. Yet I note that in dealing with Thoreau’s visit, they have deviated from their standard practice: they have

1.) quoted from his JOURNAL without scholarly apparatus of footnotes and citations,

they have

2.) quoted incorrectly,

and they have

3.) tried to make a mere joke of his visit, by an aside the point of which seems to be that this guy Thoreau was so far out in left field, who else would come up with the sort of comment he could come up with, whatever his comment might mean if anybody ever tried to take such a person seriously.

In fact, Thoreau’s visit was quite serious, and bore directly upon the struggle the current director was having as a volunteer “gentleman” researcher with the likes of Professors Louis Agassiz and Benjamin Peirce, and all the other ideologs of scientific bureaucracy whose primary objective then as now was not discovery itself, but rather their seizure of control over all processes of discovery. I suppose I am saying that since we cannot expect serious people to take Thoreau seriously today, we can have no reason to assume that serious people would take Thoreau seriously in his own day — certainly not to the extent of extending VIP treatment to someone who was not acting in any manner as VIPs should act! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau stopped by the Boston Society of Natural History and checked out Volume I of the MEMOIRS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, new series.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote to Frederick Douglass while serializing UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, asking him for contacts for information about slave life on cotton plantations. In this letter she took issue with his opposition to colonization and with his criticisms of Christianity: You may perhaps have noticed in your editorial readings a series of articles that I am furnishing for the Era under the title of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life among the Lowly” - In the course of my story, the scene will fall upon a cotton plantation - I am very desirous to gain information from one who has been an actual labourer on one - & it occurs to me that in the circle of your acquaintance there might be one who would be able to communicate to me some such information as I desire - I have before me an able paper written by a southern planter in which the details & modus operandi are given from his point of sight - I am anxious to have some more from another standpoint - I wish to be able to make a picture that shall be graphic & true to nature in its details - Such a person as Henry Bibb, if in this country might give me just the kind of information I desire you may possible [sic] know of some other person - I will subjoin to this letter a list of questions which in that case, you will do me a favor by enclosing to the individual - with a request that he will at earliest convenience answer them - - I have noticed with regret, your sentiments on two subjects, - the church - & African Colonization - & with the more regret, because I think you have a considerable share of reason for your feelings on both these subjects - but I would willingly if I could modify your views on both points. After all my brother, the strength & hope of your oppressed race does lie in the church - In hearts united to Him ... Every thing is against you - but Jesus Christ is for you - & He has not forgotten his church misguided & erring though it be.... This movement must & will become a purely religious one ... christians north & south will give up all connection with [slavery] & later up their testimony against it - & thus the work will be done -

July 9, Wednesday: When I got out of the cars at Porter’s Cambridge this morning –I was pleased to see the handsome blue flowers of the Succory or Endive Cichorium intybus –which reminded me that within the hour I had been whirled into a new botanical region. They must be extremely rare, if they occur at all in Concord. This weed is handsomer than most garden flowers. Saw there also the Cucubalus behen or Bladder Campion. also The Autumnal dandelion Apargia Autumnalis. Visited the Observatory. Bond said they were cataloguing the stars at Washington? or trying to. They do not at ASTRONOMY Cambridge of no use with their force. Have not force enough now to make mag. obs. When I asked if an observer with the small telescope could find employment –he said “O yes –there was employment enough for observation with the naked eye –observing the changes in the brilliancy of stars &c &c –if they could only get some good observers.– One is glad to hear that the naked eye still retains some importance in the estimation of astronomers. Coming out of town –willingly as usual –when I saw that reach of Charles River just above the Depot –the fair still water this cloudy evening suggesting the way to eternal peace & beauty –whence it flows –the placid lake- HDT WHAT? INDEX

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like fresh water so unlike the salt brine –affected me not a little– I was reminded of the way in which Wordsworth so coldly speaks of some natural visions or scenes “giving him pleasure”. This is perhaps the first vision of elysium on this rout from Boston. And just then I saw an encampment of Penobscots –their wigwams appearing above the rail road fence –they too looking up the river as they sat on the ground & enjoying the scene. What can be more impressive than to look up a noble river just at evening –one perchance which you have never explored –& behold its placid waters reflecting the woods –& sky lapsing inaudibly toward the ocean –to behold as a lake –but know it as a river – tempting the beholder to explore it –& his own destiny at once. haunt of waterfowl – – this was above the factories –all that I saw That water could never have flowed under a factory –how then could it have reflected the sky?

WALDEN: Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 1, Friday: We learn from a couple of incidental mentions in the journal, that at this point Henry Thoreau was 25 in the process of studying the 16 volumes of the Baron Cuvier’s THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, ANIMAL KINGDOM, 1 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 2 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 3 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 4 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 5 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 6 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 7 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 8 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 9 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 10 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 11 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 12 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 13 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 14 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 15 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 16 Louis Agassiz and Augustus A. Gould’s PRINCIPLES OF ZOOLOGY, and Peter Kalm’s TRAVELS INTO NORTH AMERICA. He stopped by the Boston Society of Natural History to return 2 books, one of them Volume I of the MEMOIRS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, new series, and check out the MEMOIRS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, Volume IV, Part 1, and Friend William Bartram’s botanical TRAVELS THROUGH NORTH AND SOUTH CAROLINA, GEORGIA, EAST AND WEST FLORIDA, THE CHEROKEE COUNTRY, THE EXTENSIVE TERRITORIES OF THE MUSCOGULGES, OR CREEK CONFEDERACY, AND HDT WHAT? INDEX

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25. In 1827 the initial five volumes were printed, the 1st four as THE CLASS MAMMALIA / ARRANGED BY THE BARON CUVIER, WITH SPECIFIC DESCRIPTIONS BY EDWARD GRIFFITH, CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH AND EDWARD PIDGEON and the 5th as SYNOPSIS OF THE SPECIES OF THE CLASS MAMMALIA, AS ARRANGED WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR ORGANIZATION BY CUVIER AND OTHER NATURALISTS: WITH SPECIFIC CHARACTERS, SYNONYMA, &C. &C. In 1829 volumes 6, 7, and 8 appeared as THE CLASS AVES / ARRANGED BY THE BARON CUVIER, WITH SPECIFIC DESCRIPTIONS BY EDWARD GRIFFITH AND EDWARD PIDGEON, THE ADDITIONAL SPECIES INSERTED IN THE TEXT OF CUVIER BY JOHN EDWARD GRAY. In 1830 the 11th volume appeared out of sequence, as THE FOSSIL REMAINS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM / BY EDWARD PIDGEON. In 1831 the 9th volume appeared as THE CLASS REPTILIA / ARRANGED BY THE BARON CUVIER, WITH SPECIFIC DESCRIPTIONS BY EDWARD GRIFFITH AND EDWARD PIDGEON. In 1832 the 14th and 15th volumes appeared out of sequence, as THE CLASS INSECTA / ARRANGED BY THE BARON CUVIER, WITH SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONS TO EACH ORDER BY EDWARD GRIFFITH AND EDWARD PIDGEON, AND NOTICES OF NEW GENERA AND SPECIES BY GEORGE GRAY. In 1833 the 13th volume appeared out of sequence, as THE CLASSES ANNELIDA, CRUSTACEA, AND ARACHNIDA / ARRANGED BY THE BARON CUVIER, WITH SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONS TO EACH ORDER BY EDWARD GRIFFITH AND EDWARD PIDGEON. In 1834 the 10th volume appeared as THE CLASS PISCES / ARRANGED BY THE BARON CUVIER, WITH SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONS BY EDWARD GRIFFITH AND CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH and the 12th volume appeared as THE MOLLUSCA AND RADIATA / ARRANGED BY THE BARON CUVIER, WITH SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONS TO EACH ORDER BY EDWARD GRIFFITH AND EDWARD PIDGEON. The final, 16th, volume of the set, of which I am unable at present to provide electronic copy, was unnumbered and undated and bore the title A CLASSIFIED INDEX AND SYNOPSIS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM ARRANGED IN CONFORMITY WITH ITS ORGANIZATION, BY THE BARON CUVIER ..., WITH SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONS TO EACH ORDER, BY EDWARD GRIFFITH ... AND OTHERS (this final volume included “A tabular view of the classification of animals adopted by the Baron Cuvier; with specific examples”). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE COUNTRY OF THE CHACTAWS.

PEOPLE OF WALDEN

WALDEN: The customs of some savage nations might, perchance be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not. Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a “busk,” or “feast of first fruits,” as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians? “When a town celebrates the busk,” says he, “having previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town, of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town.–” “On the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame.” They then feast on the new corn and fruits and dance and sing for three days, “and the four following days they receive visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in like manner purified and prepared themselves.” The Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come to an end. I have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it, “outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” than this, and I have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they have no biblical record of the revelation.

AUGUSTINE WILLIAM BARTRAM HDT WHAT? INDEX

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NOAH WEBSTER

WM. BARTRAM’S BOOK

left at 9 AM Aug. 1st After Kingston –came Plympton Halifax & Hanson all level with frequent cedar swamps especially the last – also in Weymouth. Desor & Cabot think the jelly-fish (oceania tubulosa are buds from a polyp of Genus Lyncoryne.) Desor accounting for suspended moisture or fogs over sand banks (or shoals) says the heat being abstracted by radiation the moisture is condensed in form of fog. Lieut Walsh lost his lead & wire when 34,200 or more than 6 statute miles had run out perpendicularly. I could make a list of things ill-managed– We Yankees do not deserve our fame. viz: I went to a menagerie the other day. The proprietors had taken wonderful pains to collect rare and interesting animals from all parts of the world. And then placed by them –a few stupid and ignorant fellows who knew little or nothing about the animals & were unwilling even to communicate the little they knew. You catch a rare creature interesting to all mankind & then place the first biped that comes along with but a grain more reason in him to exhibit & describe the former– At the expense of Millions this rare quadruped from the sun is obtained, and then Jack Halyard or Tom Coach Whip is hired to explain it. Why all this pains taken to catch in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Africa –and no pains taken to exhibit in America? Not a cage was labelled– There was nobody to tell us how or where the animals were caught –or what they were– Probably the proprietors themselves do not know –or what their habits are– But hardly had we been ushered into the presence of this choice this admirable collection –than a ring was formed for Master Jack & the poney. Were they animals then who had caught and exhibited these –& who had come to see these? Would it not be worth the while to learn something? to have some information imparted? The absurdity of importing the behemoth & then instead of somebody appearing tell which it is –to have to while away the time –though your curiosity is growing desperate –to learn one fact about the creature –to have Jack and the poney introduced!!! GEORGES CUVIER Why I expected to see some descendant of Cuviers there to improve this opportunity for a lecture on Nat. Hist. That is what they should do make this an –occasion for communicating some solid information –that would be fun alive that would be a sunny day –a sun day in one’s existence not a secular day of shetland ponies –not jack and his poney & a tintimmara of musical instruments –and a man with his head in the lions mouth. I go not there to see a man hug a lion –or fondle a tiger –but to learn how he is related to the wild beast– There’ll be All-fool days enough without our creating any intentionally. The presumption is that men wish to behave like reasonable creatures –that they do not need and are not seeking relaxation –that they are not dissipated. Let it be a travelling zoological garden –with a travelling professor to accompany it– At present foolishly the professor goes alone with his poor painted illustrations of animated– While the menagerie takes another road without its professor only its keepers. I see June & co or Van Amberg & Co –are engaged in a pecuniary speculation in which certain wild beasts are used as the counters Cuvier & co are engaged in giving a course of lectures on Nat. History. Now why could they not put head & means together for the benefit of mankind –and still get their living. The present institution is imperfect precisely because its object is to enrich Van amburg & co –& their low aim unfits them for rendering any more valuable service –but no doubt the most valuable course would also be the most valuable in a pecuniary sense– No doubt a low self interest is a better motive force to these enterprises than no interest at all but a high self interest –which consists with the greatest advantage of all would be a better still. Item 2nd Why have we not a decent pocket map of the State of Mass? There is the large map why is it not cut into half a dozen sheets & folded into a small cover for the pocket? Are there no travellers to use it? Well to tell the truth there are but few, & that’s the reason why. Men go by rail road –& state maps hanging in bar rooms are small enough– The state has been admirably surveyed at a great cost –and yet Dearborne’s Pocket map is the best one –we have! PIERRE JEAN ÉDOUARD DESOR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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PIERRE JEAN ÉDOUARD DESOR AGASSIZ & GOULD CHARLES DARWIN HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 11, Monday: Henry Thoreau and Bronson Alcott took the train to Cambridge and passed the forenoon in Harvard Library. Bronson looked at the section of English poetry of the Elizabethan age but couldn’t find any book he wanted to check out. Henry returned the books he had checked out on August 1st and checked out Volume I of the Second Series of the COLLECTIONS OF THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, which contains EXTRACTS FROM THE NEW WORLD, OR, A DESCRIPTION OF THE WEST INDIES. BY JOHN DE LAET, DIRECTOR OF THE DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY, &C. TRANSLATED TR. FROM THE ORIGINAL DUTCH, BY THE EDITOR [George Folsom]).26 THE ENTIRE VOLUME

JOHANNES DE LAET

In addition, he checked out the first three volumes of Peter Kalm’s TRAVELS INTO NORTH AMERICA; CONTAINING ITS NATURAL HISTORY, AND A CIRCUMSTANTIAL ACCOUNT OF ITS PLANTATIONS AND AGRICULTURE IN GENERAL ... (English version of 1770; Thoreau had evidently already been reading Kalm in volumes obtained from the library of the Boston Society of Natural History). PETER KALM’S TRAVELS PETER KALM’S TRAVELS

Later, Henry dined with the Alcotts and borrowed Bronson’s copy of REI RUSTICAE AUCTORES LATINE VETERES, M. CATO, M. VARRO, L. COLVMELLA, PALLÂDIVS: PRIORES TRES, E VETUSTISS. EDITIONIBUS; QUARTUS, E VETERIBUS MEMBRANIS ALIQUAMMULTIS IN LOCIS EMENDATIORES: CUM TRIBUS INDICUBUS, CAPITUM, AUCTORUM, & RERUM AC VERBORUM MEMORABILIUM …. REI RUSTICAE AUCTORES...

“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson

26. He would place his notes from this reading in his Canadian Notebook and in his Indian Notebook #5. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(I should mention at some point, and therefore will insert the material arbitrarily at this point in the Kouroo Contexture, that Thoreau had in his personal library one of the editions of a very expansive Latin/English lexicon that was being published regularly over the years by Harper & Brothers of New-York, A COPIOUS AND CRITICAL LATIN-ENGLISH LEXICON: FOUNDED ON THE LARGER LATIN-GERMAN LEXICON OF DR. WILLIAM FREUND; WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS FROM THE LEXICONS OF GESNER, FACCIOLATI, SCHELLER, GEORGES, ETC, by Professor Ethan Allen Andrews. We do not know which edition it was that Thoreau owned, but it is the 1851 edition that is presently offered online by Google Books: .)

Thoreau commented in WALDEN that old Marcus Porcius Cato the Censor’s DE RE RUSTICA was his “Cultivator.” Compare this antique text that he at this point borrows from Alcott’s library, therefore, with a “Pictorial Cultivator” magazine being produced monthly for the farmers of Thoreau’s own era: PICTORIAL CULTIVATOR

WALDEN: Old Cato, whose “De Re Rusticâ” is my “Cultivator,” says, and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage, “When you think of getting a farm, turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good.” I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Marcus Porcius Cato (the Elder) (the Censor) 234-149 BCE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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There were a great many holidays at Plumfield, and one of the most delightful was the yearly apple-picking, — for then the Marches, Laurences, Brookes, and Bhaers turned out in full force, and made a day of it. Five years after Jo’s wedding, one of these fruitful festivals occurred. — A mellow October day, when the air was full of an exhilarating freshness which made the spirits rise and the blood dance healthily in the veins. The old orchard wore its holiday attire; golden-rod and asters fringed the mossy walls; grasshoppers skipped briskly in the sere grass, and crickets chirped like fairy pipers at a feast. Squirrels were busy with their small harvesting; birds twittered their adieux from the alders in the lane; and every tree stood ready to send down its shower of red or yellow apples at the first shake. Everybody was there, — everybody laughed and sang, climbed up and tumbled down; everybody declared that there never had been such a perfect day or such a jolly set to enjoy it, — and every one gave themselves up to the simple pleasures of the hour as freely as if there were no such things as care or sorrow in the world.

Mr. March strolled placidly about, quoting Tusser, Cowley, and COLUMELLA Columella to Mr. Laurence, while enjoying “The gentle apple’s winey juice.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Thoreau also went to the Society of Natural History, and looked at Louis Agassiz and Augustus A. Gould’s PRINCIPLES OF ZOÖLOGY in its new edition. AGASSIZ & GOULD 1851

(He also looked through the 16 volumes of the Baron Cuvier’s THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.) ANIMAL KINGDOM, 1 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 2 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 3 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 4 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 5 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 6 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 7 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 8 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 9 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 10 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 11 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 12 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 13 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 14 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 15 ANIMAL KINGDOM, 16 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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November??: Waldo Emerson to his journal, about having observed Professor Louis Agassiz on the train:

The Democrats carry the country, because they have more virility: just as certain of my neighbors rule our little town, quite legitimately, by having more courage & animal force than those whom they overbear. It is a kind of victory like that of gravitation over all upraised bodies, sure, though it lie in wait for ages for them. I saw in the cars a broad featured unctuous man, fat & plenteous as some successful politician, & pretty soon divined it must be the foreign Professor, who has had so marked a success in all our scientific & social circles, having established unquestionable leadership in them all — and it was Agassiz. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1853

Benjamin Peirce, Perkins Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics at Harvard College, became the president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. THE SCIENCE OF 1853 HARVARD OBSERVATORY

The 6th and final volume of Richard Hildreth’s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, which had begun publication in 1849. Also, finally, his THEORY OF POLITICS. Hildreth was one of the initial American historians to experiment with a “science” of history, through attempting to present not merely an edifying story with a patriotic moral but instead the state of affairs “exactly as it was.” He was in disagreement with the Reverend Professor Francis Bowen, who had written discouragingly in an 1851 review, “it is impossible to write history without seeking, either avowedly or stealthily, or unawares, to verify some hypothesis, or establish some theory, which furnishes a reason and guide for the selection and arrangement of materials.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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An attempt to appoint Bowen as McLean Professor of History was blocked when some state office-holders who had been made members of the Harvard Board of Overseers, ex-officio, took offense at the honest plainness of his political agenda. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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After Professor Louis Agassiz savaged his assistant Charles Frédéric Girard, the man had obtained a science job at the Smithsonian Institution, working for Spencer Fullerton Baird. Professor Agassiz, outraged that any part of the scientific establishment would make any use of someone of whom he personally had blacklisted, continued relentlessly to pursue his former assistant:

If you had been willing to listen to my advise [sic] before, you should have known that Girard, though capable of sustained work and endowed with considerable ability in distinguishing the peculiarities of animals, has no judgement, and is utterly unable to trace original researches without supervision. Moreover he is as obstinate as a mule, if contradicted, which makes it necessary that he should be led with a high hand and kept in an entirely subordinate position. Now this supervision of his work you have not made; you have not tested the value of the characters upon which he has based his generic and specific distinctions. I recognize his hand both in the style of the language used, and in the scientific character of the work. In the hurry of your many engagements you have entrusted to him a task to which he is not equal; and there goes forward from the Smithsonian Instit. a production which in quality is far inferior to what is done elsewhere, though by the quantity of the materials you had the means of surpassing every work of that kind.

Girard collected specimens in Maine, Massachusetts, and South Carolina. Baird created the CATALOG OF NORTH AMERICAN REPTILES with Girard’s assistance. Robert Kennicott, Girard, and other young naturalists were urged to form an informal group, known as the “Megatheria.”

It was in approximately this time period that Professor Agassiz of Harvard College began to organize the scientific pressure group of schemers and administrators he referred to as his “Lazzaroni.”27 The work of this group would continue behind the scenes until the creation, in the wee small hours of the 37th Congress, on March 3, 1863, after a decade of plotting and conspiring, of a new disciplinary “jury” (the professor’s term) to be known as the National Academy of Sciences. Here they are depicted attempting to acquire respectability

27. The Lazzaroni of Naples are gangs of pickpockets and con artists who work the street crowds for what they can get. (One of them once tried to sell me a Rolex® for like $40, while I was waiting for a boat at the docks, but I pointed out to the man that my wristwatch had an Indiglo® dial which his Rolex® lacked, that my wristwatch had a day-of-the-week indicator which was practically all I ever looked at on the dial which his Rolex® lacked, that my wristwatch had also cost me about $40 on sale at K- Mart when it had been new a number of years before, and besides the brand name of my wristwatch also ended in “-ex”! I suggested to this gent “Nevertheless, I will be willing to trade you, even-Steven!” –Meanwhile, I was keeping my arm pressed firmly against my wad of cash in the side pocket of my pants under my comb and handkerchief, just in case he was working as a team.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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by rubbing against a respectable person (or maybe they’re just trying to distract him and pick his pocket):

At some point during this year Professor Agassiz wrote from Cambridge to Henry Thoreau among others: To: HDT From: Louis Agassiz Date: [1853] {No MS — printed copy — Thoreau’s copy of this form is at Widener Library} DEAR SIR,— Having been engaged for several years in the preparation of a Natural History of the Fishes of the United States, I wish, before beginning the printing of my work, to collect as extensive materials as possible, respecting the geographical distribution of these animals. It has occurred to me, that by means of a circular containing directions for collecting fishes I might obtain the information required. I should, indeed, like to secure separate collections of our fishes from every bay and inlet along the coast, and from every stream, river, creek, lake, and pond upon the mainland, throughout the whole country, and am satisfied that such collections would furnish invaluable information respecting the geographical distribution of our aquatic animals. I would thank you for any assistance and contribution you can furnish from your quarter of the country, and duly acknowledge it in my work; and since I extend my investigations to all the branches of Natural History, any specimens besides fishes, which may be obtained, would be equally acceptable, including geological specimens and fossil remains. In return I would propose exchanges of other specimens if desired, or reciprocate the favor in any other way in my power, and pay the expenses in- curred in making collections for me. Specimens from foreign countries are also HDT WHAT? INDEX

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solicited, especially when their origin is satisfactorily ascertained. Any person into whose hands this circular may come, feeling inclined to correspond with me upon these subjects, is requested to address me under the following direction:—

L. AGASSIZ, Professor of Zoology and Geology in the Lawrence Scientific School, at CAM- BRIDGE, MASS.

[We may suppose that, in the above, in the original printing, the second “o” of the word Zoology would have had an umlaut over it.] [include Directions?]

January 1, Saturday: Henry Thoreau recorded in his journal that Professor Louis Agassiz considered Dr. Thaddeus William Harris to be the greatest entomologist:

January 1, Saturday, 1853: This morning we have something between ice & frost on the trees, &c. The whole earth as last night but much more is encased in ice, which on the plowed fields makes a singular icy coat a quarter of an inch or more in thickness. About 9 o’clock Am I go to Lees via Hubbards wood & Holdens Swamp & the river side – for the middle is open. The stones & cow dung & the walls too are all cased in ice on the north side– The latter look like alum rocks. This – not frozen mist or frost but frozen drizzle collected around the slightest cores gives prominence to the least withered herbs & grasses– Where yesterday was a plain smooth field appears now a teeming crop of fat icy herbage. The stems of the herbs on their north sides are enlarge from 10 to 100 times. The addition is so universally on the north side that a traveller could not lose the points of compass today though it should never so dark – for every blade of grass would serve to guide him – telling from which side the storm came yesterday. Mere straight stems of grasses stand up like white batons or scepters and make conspicuous foreground to the landscape, – from 6 inches to 3 feet high. C. thought that these fat icy branches on the withered grass & herbs had no nucleus but looking closer I showed him the fine black wiry threads on which they impinged – which made him laugh with surprise.– The very cowdung is incrusted & the clover & sorrel send up a dull green gleam through their icy coat like strange plants– The pebbles in the ploughed land are seen as through a transparent coating of gum. Some weeds bear the ice in masses – some like the trumpet weed & tansy in balls for each dried flower. What a crash of jewells as you walk. The most careless walker who never deigned to look at these humble weeds before cannot help observing them now. This is why the the herbage is left to stand dry in the fields all winter. Upon a solid foundation of ice stand out pointing in all directions between NW & NE or within the limits of 90 degrees little spicula or crystalized points half an inch or more in length. Upon the dark glazed plowed ground where a mere wiry stem rises its north side is thickly clad with these snow white spears like some Indian’s head dress as if it had attracted all the frost. I saw a Prinos bush full of large berries by the wall in Hubbards field– Standing on the west side the contrast of the red berries with their white incrustation or prolongation on the north – was admirable. I thought I had never seen the berries so dazzlingly bright. The whole north side of the bush berries & stock was beautifully incrusted. And when I went round to the N side the redness of the berries came softend through & tinging the allied snow white bush – like an evening sky beyond. These adjoined snow or ice berries being beset within the limits of 90 degrees on the N with those icy prickles or spicula between which the red glow & some times the clear red itself appeared gave it the appearance of a raspberry bush full of over ripe fruit. Standing on the north side of a bush – or tree looking against the sky – you see only a white ghost of a tree without a mote of earthiness, but as you go round it the dark core comes into view. It makes all the odds imaginable whether you are travelling N or S.– The drooping birches along the edges of woods are the most feathery fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the color of their trunks increases the delusion. The weight of the ice gives to the pines the forms which northern trees like the firs constantly wear. Bending & twisting the branches – for the twigs & plumes of the pines being frozen remain as the wind held them–& new portions of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the trunk are exposed. Seen from the N. there is no greenness in the pines–& the character of the tree is changed. The willows along the edge of the river look like sedge in meadows. The sky is overcast and a fine snowy hail & rain is falling–& these ghostlike trees make a scenery which reminds you of Spitzbergen. I see now the beauty of the causeway by the bridge – alders below swelling into the road overtopped by willows & maples. The fine grasses & shrubs in the meadow rise to meet & mingle with the drooping willows & the whole make an indistinct impression like a mist & between this the road runs toward those white ice-clad ghostly or fairy trees in the distance – toward spirit-land. The pines are as white as a counterpane with raised embroidery & white tassels & fringes. Each fascicle of leaves or needles is held apart by an icy club surrounded by a little snowy or icy ball. Finer than the saxon arch is this path running under the pines roofed not with crossing boughs but drooping ice-covered twigs in irregular confusion. See in the midst of this stately pine towering like the solemn ghost of a tree – the white ice-clad boughs of other trees appearing, of a dif. character Sometimes oaks with leaves –incrusted– or fine sprayed maples or walnuts. But finer than all this red oak – its leaves incrusted like shields 1/4 of an inch thick–& a thousand fine spicula like long serrations at right angles with their planes upon their edges. It has an indescribably rich effect – with color of the leaf coming softened through the ice a delicate fawn color.–of many shades. Where the plumes of the pitch pines are short & spreading close upon the trunk – sometimes perfect cups or rays are formed. Pitch pines present rough massy grenadier plumes – with each a darker spot or cavity in the end where you look in to the buds. I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature. I return at last in a rain and am coated with a glaze like the fields. Being at Cambridge day before yesterday – Sibley told me that Agassiz told him that Harris was the greatest entomologist in the world, and gave him permission to repeat his remark. As I stood on the top of a ladder he came along with his hand full of papers–& inquired do you value autographs? – No, I do not, I answered slowly & gravely.– Oh – I didn’t know but you did– I had some of Governor Dunlap.–said he retreating After talking with uncle Charles the other night about the worthies of this country Webster & the rest as usual considering who were geniuses & who not – I showed him up to bed & when I had got into bed myself I heard his chamber door opened – after 11 ’oclock – and he called out in an earnest stenterian voice loud enough to wake the whole house– “Henry! Was John Quincy Adams a genius”? – No, I think not” was my reply– Well I did n’t think he was answered he. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 9, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Captain John Smith’s THE GENERALL HISTORIE OF VIRGINIA, NEW-ENGLAND & THE SUMMER ISLES, TOGETHER WITH THE TRUE TRAVELS, ADVENTURES AND OBSERVATIONS, AND A SEA GRAMMAR (London: Michael Sparkes, 1624). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau also checked out three volumes of Johann-Theodor de Bry’s DESCRIPTIONES AMERICAE, otherwise known as the COLLECTIONES PEREGRINATIONUM IN INDIAM ORIENTALEM ET INDIAM OCCIDENTALEM, XXV PARTIBUS COMPREHENSAE, A THEODORO, JOAN: THEODORO DE BRY, ET A MATHEO MERIAM PULICATAE (Francofurti ad moenum: typis Ioanis Wecheli, sumtibus vero Theodoro de Bry, 1590-1634).

DESCRIPTIONES AMERICAE

Thoreau also checked out the JESUIT RELATION for 1640. He had already considered the volumes for the years 1633-1638 — Harvard Library would not obtain, from Québec, a copy of that volume until late in the following year.28

28. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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http://www.canadiana.org

Thoreau copied from George Heriot’s THE HISTORY OF CANADA FROM ITS FIRST DISCOVERY; COMPREHENDING AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COLONY OF LOUISIANA. BY GEORGE HERIOT, ESQ. DEPUTY POSTMASTER-GENERAL OF BRITISH AMERICA (Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees, Paternoster Row) into his Indian Notebook #8 and into his Canadian Notebook.

February 9: At Cambridge to-day. Dr Harris thinks the Indians had no real hemp but their apocynum — and he thinks a kind of nettle — & an asclepias. &c. He doubts if the dog was indigenous among them — Finds nothing to convince him in the history DOG of N. England.29 Thinks that the potato which is said to have been carried from Virginia by Raleigh was the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ground-nut (which is described, I perceived, in Debry (Heriot?) among the fruits of Virginia), the potato not being indigenous in North America, and the ground-nut having been called wild potato in New England, the north part of Virginia, and not being found in England. Yet he allows that Raleigh cultivated the potato in Ireland. Saw the grizzly bear near the Haymarket to-day, said (?) to weigh nineteen hundred, — apparently too much. He looked four feet and a few inches in height, by as much in length, not including his great head, and his tail, which was invisible. He looked gentle, and continually sucked his claws and cleaned between them with his tongue. Small eyes and funny little ears; perfectly bearish, with a strong wild-beast scent; fed on Indian meal and water. Hind paws a foot long. Lying down, with his feet up against the bars; often sitting up in the corner on his hind quarters. Two sables also, that would not be waked up by day, with their faces in each other’s fur. An American chinchilla, and a silver lioness said to be from California.

March 5, Saturday: The Saint Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, a predecessor to The Travelers insurance company, was founded in St. Paul, Minnesota, serving local customers who were having a difficult time getting claim payments in a timely manner from insurance companies on the east coast of the United States.

Henry Thoreau mentioned in his journal that he had received a circular letter early in March or shortly before from a scientist he had met, Spencer Fullerton Baird, the secretary of Louis Agassiz’s American Association

for the Advancement of Science, advising him and, he suspected, “thousand of others,” that he had been proposed for membership in the Association. The letter asked him “to fill in the blank against certain questions, among which the most important one was what branch of science [he] was specially interested in.” Thoreau did not respond, apparently assuming the group would take no action.

March 5, 1853: F. Brown showed me to-day some lesser redpolls which he shot yesterday. They turn out to be my falsely-called chestnut-frontleted bird of the winter. “Linaria minor, Ray. Lesser Redpoll Linnet. From Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Maine, in winter; inland to Kentucky. Breeds in Maine, Nova Scotia, AUDUBON Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Fur Countries.” –Audubon’s Synopsis. They have a sharp bill, black legs and claws, and a bright-crimson crown or frontlet, in the male reaching to the base of the bill, with, in his case, a 29. Agassiz asked him what authority there was for it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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delicate rose or carmine on the breast and rump. Though this is described by Nuttall as an occasional visitor in the winter, it bas been the prevailing bird here this winter. Yesterday I got my grape cuttings. The day before went to the Corner Spring to look at the tufts of green grass. (got some of the very common leptogium (? ?). Is it one of the Collemacæ? Was pleased with the sight of the yellow osiers of the golden willow, and the red of the cornel, now colors are so rare,. Saw the green fine- threaded conferva in a ditch, commonly called frog-spittle. Brought it home in my pocket, and it expanded again in a tumbler. It appeared quite a fresh growth, with what looked like filmy air-bubbles, as big as large shot, in its midst. The secretary of the Association...The secretary for the Association for the Advancement of Science requests me, as he probably has thousands of others, by a printed circular letter from Washington the other day, to fill the blank against certain questions, among which the most important one was what branch of science I was specially interested in, using the term science in the most comprehensive sense possible. Now, though I could state to a select few that department of human inquiry which engages me, and should be rejoiced at an opportunity to do so, I felt that it would be to make myself the laughing-stock of the scientific community to describe or attempt to describe to them that branch of science which specially interests me, inasmuch as they do not believe in a science which deals with the higher law. So I was obliged to speak to their condition and describe to them that poor part of me which alone they can understand. The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot. Now I think of it, I should have told them at once that I was a transcendentalist. That would have been the shortest way of telling them that they would not understand my explanations. How absurd that, though I probably stand as near to nature as any of them, and am by constitution as good an observer as most, yet a true account of my relation to nature should excite their ridicule only! If it had been the secretary of an association of which Plato or Aristotle was the president, I should not have hesitated to describe my studies at once and particularly. ARISTOTLE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 3, Tuesday: Moncure Daniel Conway had kept a letter of introduction to Waldo Emerson from the Reverend John G. Palfrey tucked away in a drawer for several weeks, for he was fearful that the person would not be so impressive as the essays. On this morning, very early, he took the Fitchburg train out past Walden Pond to Concord.

While working up his courage he had breakfast at an inn, and walked over to the Old Manse and meditated for a while the Old North Bridge. Then, having exhausted his possibilities, he walked out the Lexington road to the Emerson home and presented his credentials. “Eloquent, wonderful, grand and simple, his speech flowed constantly, bearing the wealth of ages on it.” Emerson gave his visitor a copy of Margaret Fuller’s WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY bearing her autograph. Then the two of them walked over to visit with Henry Thoreau, who asked him what he was studying at the Harvard Divinity School. When Conway indicated that he was studying “The Scriptures,” Thoreau affected naïveté and inquired “The Hindu, Arabic or Jewish?”30 May 3, 1853. is a date under which I wrote a couplet from Emerson’s “Woodnotes,”—

’Twas one of the charmèd days When the genius of God doth flow.

—for on that day I first met Emerson. Dr. Palfrey, on finding in our conversations that it was Emerson who had touched me in my sleep in Virginia, advised me to visit him. I felt shy about invading the “spot that is sacred to thought and God.” but he urged me to go and gave me a letter to Emerson. I knew too well the importance of a morning to go straight to Emerson’s house, 30. How different Thoreau’s little jest was from what is known as “the Belfast joke”:

A guy walking through a dark alley in Belfast feels something against his back. “Protestant or Catholic?” he hears. “Actually I’m a Quaker,” the guy blurts out. Pause — then “Protestant Quaker or Catholic Quaker?” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and inquired the way to the Old Manse. It was a fortunate excursion. The man I most wished to meet was Emerson; the man I most wished to see was Hawthorne. He no longer resided at the Old Manse, but as I was gazing from the road down the archway of ash-trees at the house whose “mosses” his genius had made spiritual moss-roses, out stepped the magician himself. It has been a conceit of mine that I had never seen a portrait of Hawthorne, but recognized him as one I had seen in dreams he had evoked. At any rate, I knew it was my Prospero. Who else could have those soft-flashing unsearchable eyes, that beauté du diable at middle age? He did not observe me, and as I slowly followed him towards the village, doubts were awakened by the elegance and even smartness of his dress. But I did not reflect that Prospero had left his isle, temporarily buried his book, and was passing from his masque to his masquerade as consul at Liverpool and man of the world. Hawthorne was making calls before his departure for Europe. I felt so timid about calling on Emerson –it appeared such a one-sided affair– that I once turned my steps toward the railway station. But soon after twelve I knocked at Emerson’s door, and sent in Dr. Palfrey’s letter, with a request that I might call on him during the afternoon. The children came to say that their father was out, but would return to dinner at one, and their mother wished me to remain. The three children entertained me pleasantly, mainly in the bower that Alcott had built in the front garden. I was presently sent for. Emerson met me at the front door, welcome beaming in his eyes, and took me into his library. He remembered receiving a letter from me two or three years before. On learning that I was at the Divinity School and had come to Concord simply to see him, he called from his library door, “Queeny!” Mrs. Emerson came, and I was invited to remain some days. I had, however, to return to college that evening, and though I begged that his day should not be long interfered with, he insisted on my passing the afternoon with him. When we were alone, Emerson inquired about the experiences that had led me away from my Methodism, and about my friendships. “The gods,” he said, “generally provide the young thinker with friends.” When I told him how deeply words of his, met by chance in an English magazine, had moved me while I was a law student in Virginia, he said, “When the mind has reached a certain stage it may be sometimes crystallized by a slight touch.” I had so little realized their import, I told him that they only resulted in leading me to leave the law for the Methodist ministry. It had been among the Hicksite Quakers that I found sympathetic friends, after entering on the path of inquiry. He then began to talk about the Quakers and their inner light. He had formed a near friendship with Mary Rotch of New Bedford. “Mary Rotch told us that her little girl one day asked if she might do something. She replied, ‘What does the voice in thee say?’ The child went off, and after a time returned to say ‘Mother, the little voice says, no.’ That,” said Emerson, “starts the tears to one’s eyes.” He especially respected the Quaker faith that HDT WHAT? INDEX

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every “scripture” must be held subject to the reader’s inner light. “I am accustomed to find errors in writings of the great men, and it is an impertinence to demand that I shall recognize none in some particular volume.” The children presently came in, — Ellen, Edward, and Edith. They were all pretty, and came up to their father with their several reports on the incidents of the morning. Edith had some story to tell of a trouble among one or two rough families in Concord. A man had hinted that a woman next door had stolen something, and she had struck him in the leg with a corkscrew. Emerson summed this up by saying, “He insinuated that she was a rogue, and she insinuated the corkscrew in his leg.” Ellen perceived the joke. and I many times remarked the quickness with which, while not yet out of girlhood, she appreciated every word of her father. The dinner was early; the children were with us, and the talk was the most homelike and merry that I had known for a long time. When the children were gone Mrs. Emerson told me that they had been christened. “Husband was not willing the children should be christened in the formal way, but said he would offer no objection when I could find a minister as pure and good as the children. That was reasonable, and we waited some time; but when William Henry Channing came on a visit to us, we agreed that he was good enough to christen our children.” While Emerson was preparing for the walk, I looked about the library. Over the mantle hung a large copy of Michael Angelo’s “Parcæ;” there were two statuettes of Goethe, of whom also there was an engraved portrait on the wall. Afterwards Emerson showed me a collection of portraits — Shakespeare, Dante, Montaigne, Goethe, and Swedenborg. The furniture of the room was rather antique and simple. There were four long shelves completely occupied, he said, by his MSS., of which there must have been enough to furnish a score of printed volumes. Our walk was around Walden Pond, on both sides of which Emerson owned land. Our conversation related to the religious ferment of the time. He said that the Unitarian churches were stated to be no longer producing ministers equal to their forerunners, but were more and more finding their best men in those coming from orthodox churches. That was a symptom. Those from other churches, having gone through experiences and reached personal convictions strong enough to break with their past. would of course have some enthusiasm for their new faith. But the Unitarians might take note of that intimation that individual growth and experience are essential for the religious teacher. I mentioned Theodore Parker. and he said, “It is a comfort to remember that there is one sane voice amid the religious and political affairs of the country.” I said that I could not understand how I could have tolerated those dogmas of inherited depravity, blood atonement. eternal damnation for Adam’s sin, and the rest. He said, “I cannot feel interested in Christianity; it seems deplorable that there should be a tendency to creeds that would take men back to the chimpanzee.” He smiled at the importance ascribed to academic terms. “I have very good grounds for being Unitarian HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and Trinitarian too: I need not nibble at one loaf forever, but eat it and go on to earn another.” He said that while he could not personally attend any church, he held a pew in the Unitarian church for his wife and children who desired it, and indeed would in any case support the minister, because it is well “to have a conscientious man to sit on school committees, to help at town meetings, to attend the sick and the dead.” As we were walking through the woods he remarked that the voices of some fishermen out on the water, talking about their affairs, were intoned by the distance and the water into music; and that the curves which their oars made, marked under the sunlight in silver, made a succession of beautiful bows. This may have started a train of thought related to the abhorrence I had expressed of the old dogmas, to which I had added something about the Methodist repugnance with which I had witnessed in Maryland some Catholic ceremonies. “Yet,” he said, “they possess beauty in the distance. When one sees them on the stage, –processions of priests in their vestments chanting their hymns at the opera,– they are in their place, and offend no sentiment.” I mentioned a task set me at the Divinity School, to write an essay on Eschatology, and Emerson said, “An actually existent fly is more important than a possibly existent angel.” Again presently: “The old artist said, Pingo in eternitatem; this eternitatem for which I paint is not in past or future, but is the height of every living hour.” When we were in a byway among the bushes, Emerson suddenly stopped and exclaimed, “Ah! there is one of the gods of the wood!” I looked and saw nothing; then turned to him and followed his glance. but still beheld nothing unusual. He was looking along the path before us through a thicket. “Where?” I asked. “Did you see it?” he said, now moving on. “No, I saw nothing — what was it? “No matter,” said he gently. I repeated my question, but he still said smilingly, “Never mind, if you did not see it.” I was a little piqued, but said no more, and very soon was listening to talk that made my Eschatology seem ridiculous. Perhaps the sylvan god I had missed was a pretty snake, a squirrel or other little note in the symphony of nature. My instruction in the supremacy of the present hour began not so much in Emerson’s words as in himself. Standing beside the ruin of the shanty Thoreau built with his own hands. and lived in for a year at a cost of twenty-eight dollars, twelve and a half cents, Emerson appeared an incarnation of the wondrous day he was giving me. My enthusiasm for Margaret Fuller Ossoli, excited by her “Memoirs,” led Emerson in parting to give me a copy of her WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, — an English edition she had sent him from London, with her initials in it. At my request he added his own name and the date. That evening I sat in my room in Divinity Hall (No. 34) as one enriched, and wrote: “May 3. The most memorable day of my life: spent with Ralph Waldo Emerson!” Two days later I attended a great dinner given in Boston to Senator Hale of New Hampshire. I went over with Dr. Palfrey, who was chairman. Emerson was there, but when Palfrey called for a speech from him he had departed. What was my HDT WHAT? INDEX

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chagrin, on my return to the Divinity School, to find that Emerson had been there to call upon me! Being homeless in the North, my summer vacation (1853) was passed at Concord. The Emersons found for me a very pleasant abode at “Hillside,” on Ponkatasset [Ponkawtasset] Hill, about a mile out of the village, where Ellery Channing once lived, and where he wrote his poem on New England. Two sisters, the Misses Hunt, educated ladies, received me into this pleasant cottage, where I was the only boarder. These ladies were cousins of Miss Martha Hunt, whose suicide in Concord River and the recovery of her body are described in Hawthorne’s BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. They were troubled because G. W. Curtis, in his HOMES OF AMERICAN AUTHORS, had suggested that Martha’s suicide was due to the contrast between her transcendental ideals and the coarseness of her home. They described the family of their cousin as educated people. One of these sisters walked with me to the river and pointed out all the places connected with the tragedy, and some years later another cousin drowned herself there. Emerson introduced me to his friends. First of all he took me to Henry Thoreau, who lived in the village with his parents and his sister. The kindly and silent pencil-maker, his father, John Thoreau, was French in appearance, and Henry resembled him physically; but neither parent impressed me as possessing mental qualities that could account for such a rare spirit as Henry. He was thirty-six when I met him. He received me pleasantly, and asked what we were studying at Cambridge. I answered, “The Scriptures.” “Which?” he asked. Emerson said, “You will find our Thoreau a sad pagan.” Thoreau had long been a reverent reader of Oriental scriptures, and showed me his bibles, translated from various languages into French and English. He invited me to come next day for a walk, but in the morning I found the Thoreaus agitated by the arrival of a coloured fugitive from Virginia, who had come to their door at daybreak. Thoreau took me to a room where his excellent sister, Sophia, was ministering to the fugitive, who recognized me as one be had seen. He was alarmed, but his fears passed into delight when after talking with him about our county I certified his genuineness. I observed the tender and lowly devotion of Thoreau to the African. He now and then drew near to the trembling man, and with a cheerful voice bade him feel at home, and have no fear that any power should again wrong him. That whole day he mounted guard over the fugitive, for it was a slave-hunting time. But the guard had no weapon, and probably there was no such thing in the house. The next day the fugitive was got off to Canada, and I enjoyed my first walk with Thoreau. He was a unique man every way. He was short of stature, well built; every movement was full of courage and repose; his eyes were very large, and bright, as if caught from the sky. “His nose is like the prow of a ship,” said Emerson one day. He had the look of the huntsman of Emerson’s HDT WHAT? INDEX

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quatrain: —

He took the colour of his vest From rabbit’s coat and grouse’s breast; For as the wild kinds lurk and hide, So walks the huntsman unespied.

The cruellest weapons, however, which this huntsman took with him were lenses and an old book in which to press plants. He was not talkative, but his occasional monologues were extraordinary. I remember being surprised at every step with revelations of laws and significant attributes in common things — as a relation between different kinds of grass and the geological characters beneath them, the variety and grouping of pine-needles and the effect of these differences on the sounds they yield when struck by the wind, and the varieties of taste represented by grasses and common herbs when applied to the tongue. He offered me a peculiar grass to chew for an instant, laying, “It is a little sharp, but an experience.” Deep in the woods his face shone with a new light. He had a mental calendar of the flora of the neighbourhood, and would go some distance around to visit some floral friend. We were too early for the hibiscus, a rare flower in New England, which I desired to see. He pointed out the spot near the river where alone it could be found, and said it would open about the following Monday and not stay long. I went on Tuesday or Wednesday, but was too late — the petals were scattered on the ground. Thoreau ate no meat; he told me his only reason was a feeling of the filthiness of f1esh-eating. A bear huntsman he thought was entitled to his steak. He had never attempted to make any general principle on the subject, and later in life ate meat in order not to cause inconvenience to the family. On our first walk I told him the delight with which I read his book, “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” He said that the whole edition remained on the shelf of his publisher, who wished to get rid of them. If he could not succeed in giving them away they would probably be sold as old paper. I got from him valuable hints about reading. He had studied carefully the old English Chronicles, and Chaucer, Froissart, Spenser, and Beaumont and Fletcher. He recognized kindred spirits in George Herbert, Cowley, and Quarles, considering the latter a poet but not an artist. He explored the old books of voyages -Drake, Purchas, and others, who assisted him in his circumnavigation of Concord. The Oriental books were his daily bread; the Greeks (especially Æschylus, whose “Prometheus” and “The Seven against Thebes” he translated finely) were his luxuries. He was an exact Greek scholar. Of modems he praised Wordsworth, Coleridge, and, to a less extent, Carlyle and Goethe. He admired Ruskin’s “Modern Painters,” though he thought the author bigoted, but in the “Seven Lamps of Architecture” he found with the good stuff “too much about art for me and the Hottentots. Our house is yet a hut.” He enjoyed William Gilpin’s “Hints on Landscape HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Gardening: Tour of the River Wye.” He had read with care the works of Franklin. He had as a touchstone for authors their degree of ability to deal with supersensual facts and feelings with scientific precision. What he admired in Emerson was that he discerned the phenomena of thought and functions of every idea as if they were antennæ or stamina. It was a quiet joke in Concord that Thoreau resembled Emerson in expression, and in tones of voice. He had grown up from boyhood under Emerson’s influence, had listened to his lectures and his conversations, and little by little had grown this resemblance. It was the more interesting because so superficial and unconscious. Thoreau was an imitator of no mortal; but Emerson had long been a part of the very atmosphere of Concord, and it was as if this element had deposited on Thoreau a mystical moss. During that halcyon summer I read the Oriental books in Emerson’s library, for he not only advised me in my studies but insisted on lending me books. To my hesitation about taking even to Ponkatasset the precious volumes, he said, “What are they for?” In my dainty little room whose window opened on a beautiful landscape with the Musketaquit wandering through it to the Merrimack, or perhaps seated in the vine-covered veranda, I read Wilkins’s “Bhagavat Geeta,” which thenceforth became part of my canon. Close indeed to my heart came the narrative of the charioteer (the god Krishna in disguise) driving Arjoona to the field, where the youth sees that his struggle is to be with his parents, teachers, early companions. Emerson also introduced me to the Persian “Desatir.” In lending me this he said that he regarded the ancient Persian scriptures as more intellectual than the sacred writings of other races. I found delight in these litanies uttered in the beginning of our era, amid whose exaltations there was always the happy beam of reason. “Thy knowledge is a ray of he knowledge of God.” “0 my Prophet ever near me, I have given thee an exalted angel named Intelligence.” “How can we know a prophet? By his giving you information regarding your own heart.” Emerson also in that summer introduced me to Saadi of Schiraz, who has been to me as an intimate friend through life’s pilgrimage. For the “Rose Garden” (Gulistan) I had been prepared by my garden in Frederick Circuit, my “Seclusaval:” Saadi was its interpreter, and restored it to me. For I could not enter deeply into wild nature, but dearly loved a garden. One day when I was walking with Emerson in his garden, he stopped near a favourite plum and said, “This is when ripe a fruit of paradise.” He then discovered one that was ripe and managed to pluck it for me. How simply was this man fulfilling all my youthful dreams I He personally loved Saadi, and later edited the “Gulistan.” One day he told me he bad found somewhere a story about him. Saadi was travelling on foot towards Damascus, alone and weary. Presently he overtook a boy travelling the same way, and asked him to point out the road. The boy offered to guide him some distance, and in the course of conversation Saadi spoke of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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having come from Persia and from Schiraz. “Schiraz!” exclaimed the boy, “then perhaps you can tell me something of Sheik 8aadi of Sohiraz.” The traveller said, “I am Saadi.” Instantly the boy knelt and with tears kissed the hem of his skirt, and after that could not be parted from Saadi, but guided and served him during his stay in Damascus. (And lo, here I am with my grey hairs seeing my own Saadi as he told me the little tale that filled my eyes, all unconscious that my soul was that of the Damascus boy and was kissing the hem of his garment!) I made the acquaintance of several elderly persons in Concord who told me incidents related by their grandparents concerning the Concord fight of April 19, 1775, but I was too much interested in the heroes of 1858 to care much for those of the old Revolution. One day Emerson pointed out to me across the street the venerable Bon. Samuel Hoar and his daughter Elizabeth, and told me the story of their visit to Charleston, S.C. (1844), the eminent lawyer being commissioned by his State to plead for the release of Massachusetts seamen seized from ships and imprisoned there because of their colour. Amid threats of violence the lawyer and his daughter were driven out of Charleston unheard. I had not known this, and thenceforth bowed low whenever I passed the old lawyer. Without any historic halo the Hon. Samuel Hoar would have arrested the attention of a stranger, not only by his very tall thin form and the small face — blond and beardless — that looked as if come out of Bellini’s canvas, but also by his dreamy look and movement. He was seventy- five, but no indications of age explained that absorbed look. Probably it was this as well as the face that suggested to Emerson a resemblance to Dante. U He is a saint,” said Emerson as the old gentleman passed one day; “he no longer dwells with us· down on earth.n There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between the old man and his Bon Judge Rockwood: Hoar, — and I should think also Senator Hoar, so far as appearance went, for the latter I knew only by seeing him occasionally. The “Jedge,” as Lowell calls him in “The Biglow Papers,” made an admirable attorney-general of the United States, but his force was almost formidable in little Concord. One felt in meeting him that the glasses on those bright eyes were microscopic, and that he was under impending cross-examination. He was rationalistic and a “free-soiler,” though his antislavery record did not satisfy abolitionists.31 The judge was unconscious of the satirical accent in his humour. He was personally devoted to Emerson, who, however, rather dreaded him, as he told me half- bumourous, on account of his tendencies to argumentative and remorselessly logical talk. The judge, however, was very amiable in his family and especially with his sister Elizabeth. This lady, who resembled the father more than her brothers did, was most lovely and intellectual. The death of Emerson’s brilliant brother Charles, to whom Miss Elizabeth was betrothed, was the

31. A severe criticism on Judge Hoar by Wendell Phillips was resented even by Emerson. The judge was asked by Sanborn, I believe, whether he was going to the funeral of Wendell Phillips, and replied, “No, but I approve of it.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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pathetic legend of Concord, and the reverential affection of Emerson for her represented a sentiment of the community. But the lady, in a sense widowed, was interested and active in all the culture and affairs of Concord; her sorrows had turned to sunshine for those around her. Mrs. Ripley, the widow of the Rev. Samuel Ripley, a kinsman of Emerson, occupied the famous “Old Manse.” An admirable sketch of her life was written by Elizabeth Hoar. She had a wide reputation for learning. I had heard at Cambridge that when students were rusticated they used to board at Concord in order to be coached by her. She was a fine botanist. A legend ran that Professor Gray called on her and found her instructing a student in differential calculus, correcting the Greek translation of another, and at the same time shelling peas, and rocking her grandchild’s cradle with her foot. But never was lady more simple and unostentatious. In her sixty-third year she was handsome, and her intelligent interest extended from her fruit- trees and poultry to the profoundest problems of her time. Thus the Old Manse had for me precious “mosses” which Hawthorne had not gathered. Her daughters Phœbe and Sophia (afterwards wife of Professor Thayer of Cambridge) always met me with a friendliness gratefully remembered. No doubt they and other ladies in Concord bore in mind that I was far away from my relatives. I found in Mrs. Ripley an intelligent sympathizer with my advancing religions ideas. She was a Theist through recognition of a supreme Reason intimated in the facts of individual reason. She said, “I cannot believe in miracles, because I believe in God.” The subject of spirit manifestations was considered by her worthy of study only as a contemporary illustration of the fallaciousness of human testimony wherever emotions or passions are involved. “People believe what they’ve a mind to,” she said. The well-informed rationalism of Mrs. Ripley, and of her nearest friend Elizabeth Hoar, led me to suppose that the ideas of Emerson were universal in Concord. In this, however, I presently discovered my mistake. One day when I was with Emerson and his wife he referred to Goethe, and I perceived that the great German was a sort of bogy to her. She quoted verbatim two sentences from a letter written to her by her husband before their marriage in which he expressed misgivings about Goethe, beneath whose fiDe utterances be had found “no faith.” Emerson was silent, and his wife went on in a way almost pathetic to describe her need of faith. When after the talk at dinner I was walking with Emerson, he said that Goethe had written some things — “Elective Affinities,” for instance — which could be really read only by minds which had undergone individual training. He was the only great writer who had tamed upon the moral conventions and demanded by what right they claimed to control his life. But people with eyes could not omit Goethe. Mr. William Emerson, an eminent lawyer of New York, occasionally visited his younger brother in Concord. I remember him as an HDT WHAT? INDEX

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interesting gentleman, and was surprised to find any lawyer with his unworldly and even poetic look. In a letter from Germany of William Emerson shown me by his son, Dr. Emerson of New York, he speaks of his acquaintance with Goethe. William was studying divinity, but found that he had not even Socinian faith enough to preach, and was in distress about the disappointment to his parents. Goethe advised him not to disappoint them, but go on with his ministry. I think the Goethean cult at Cambridge and Concord had cooled. And by the way there was a droll relic of it in the Emerson household; one of the children — Edith I think — had the fancy to name her handsome cat “Goethe.” Emerson affected to take it seriously, and once when the cat was in the library and scratched itself, he opened the door and politely said, “Goethe, you must retire; I don’t like your manners.” I managed to make friends with the Concord children. Never had a small town a more charming circle of lovely children. The children of Emerson, of Judge Rockwood Hoar, of the Loring and Barrett families, mostly girls between ten and twelve years, were all pretty and intelligent, and as it was vacation time they were prepared for walks, picnics, boating, etc. Other of their elders beside myself found delight in the society of these young people, especially Thoreau. He used to take us out on the river in his boat, and by his scientific talk guide us into the water-lilies’ fairyland. He showed us his miracle of putting his hand into the water and bringing up a fish.32 I remember Ellen Emerson asking her father, “Whom shall we invite to the picnic?” — his answer being, “All children from six years to sixty.” Then there were huckleberrying parties. These were under the guidance of Thoreau, because he alone knew the precise locality of every variety of the berry. I recall an occasion when little Edward Emerson, carrying a basket of fine huckleberries, had a fall and spilt them all. Great was his distress, and our offers of berries could not console him for the loss of those gathered by himself. But Thoreau came, put his arm around the troubled child, and explained to him that if the crop of huckleberries was to continue it was necessary that some should be scattered. Nature had provided that little boys should now and then stumble and sow the berries. We shall have a grand lot of bushes and berries in this spot, and we shall owe them to you. Edward began to smile. Not far from “Hillside” resided a lonely old man, with whom I exchanged greetings. Bereft of wife and children, he found consolation in “spiritualism.” The Hunt ladies thought that he was suffering his cottage and garden to fan gradually into ruin because of his absorption in another world, and giving his money to a medium for bringing him communications from his wife and children. He was eager to convince me, and said that if I would visit Mrs. Freeman in Boston, and did not find something worth examining in this matter, he would not go there again. Whereupon

32. The bream. This fish has the peculiarity of defending its spawn. Thoreau would find some spot where he could see the spawn, then place his hand beneath it. The bream placed itself over its spawn, and his fingers closed around it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I went off to Boston and Mrs. Freeman. Ushered into the mysterious presence, I found a substantial dark-eyed sibyl seated on a little throne. I was placed in a chair opposite by her husband, who, having made passes between us, left the room. Her eyes were closed, and she drew long breaths. Presently she cried, “Where shall I go with you: to the spirit world or to some place on earth?” I said, “Tell me about my home,” for I knew that no one in Boston could know anything of my home in Falmouth or my personal affairs. This woman then went on to describe in a vague way my father’s house, a description that would apply to many brick houses, She then mentioned several persons in the house and incidents I was sure were not true. I was 80 disgusted at the whole affair that I cut short the interview, and went back triumphantly to my old friend at Concord. The old man went to see the medium, and she said that she found me so sceptical that the rapport was imperfect. The old man, however, fulfilled his contract. Mrs. Freeman had said, “I see a lady who is a good deal worried about somebody named John.” The selection of a name so common rather amused me; but I afterwards had to show my neighbour a letter from my mother saying that she was troubled by the betrothal of a relative named John.33 From Agassiz I derived great benefit. When he rose before us in his class, a rosy flush on his face indicated his delight in communicating his knowledge. His shapely form, eager movements (“his body thought”), large soft eyes, easy unconscious gestures, and sonorous English, with just enough foreign accent to add piquancy, together made Agassiz the perfect lecturer. He was skillful too as a draughtsman, and often while speaking made a few marks on the blackboard which conveyed a complete impression of the thing elucidated. In the warmer months Agassiz used to take his class out into the country, there being no difficulty of finding in the neighbourhood places of scientific interest. Several times we visited Nahant, and I can never forget the charm of our sitting there OD the rocks while Agassiz pointed out on them the autographs of the glaciers recording their ancient itinerary. Or, standing on the top of some boulder, he would trace with his finger in the rocks far out in the sea the ancient outlines of the land; or with some small fossil in his hand, or peculiar shell, he would track the progress of organic development. On one ramble at Nahant Agassiz devoted himself to the sea- serpent, which had twice been reported as seen off that coast. One of our class had unintentionally suggested the subject by mentioning the recent apparition, and smiling at it as a sailor’s yarn. But Agassiz in his always good-natured way said that although there were no doubt exaggerations, it was not quite safe to ridicule the story. He then proceeded to give a 33. In later life Madame Renan, after the decease of her husband, told me that some intelligent ladies of their acquaintance once came to him with marvellous narratives of some incidents in séances in Paris. When he intimated incredulity one of the ladies said, “But your friend Madame B. told me that she saw it herself.” “Ah,” said Renan, “so few people know how to see!” Nearly these same words were said to me by Mrs. Sarah Ripley of the Old Manse in Concord. Emerson had little patience with “spiritualism,” which he called “the rat-hole revelation.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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summary of all the narratives about the alleged monster, with references to time and place that amazed us, as the subject was of casual suggestion. He described huge snakelike saurians of which some may have been amphibious or aquatic, and whose extinction might not be complete. One day in his lecture-room Agassiz displayed some new fossils, mainly of saurians, which had just been added to his collection. They gave him a text for a general review of the morphological chain of reptilian life. As he proceeded, darting off at times to his blackboard, and comparing the extinct form with contemporary fauna, he became more and more animated, his face reddening with excitement, until at last he said: “Gentlemen, I ask you to forgive me if to-day I end my lecture at this point, although the hour is not out. I assure you that while I have been describing these extinct creatures they have taken on a sort of life; they have been crawling and darting about me, I have heard their screaming and hissing, and am really exhausted. I regret it, gentlemen, but I trust that you will excuse me.” Our admiration for the great teacher was such as to break through all rules, and we gave him a hearty cheer. He bowed low to us and quickly disappeared. The determined repudiation by Agassiz of the discovery of Darwin caused something like dismay in scientific circles throughout Europe as well as in America. Concerning this I have some memories that may interest men of science. When I belonged to the class of Agassiz (1853-54), he repeatedly referred to the hypothesis of continuous development of species in a way which has suggested to me a possibility that he may have had some private information of what was to come from Charles Darwin. In his Introduction (1869) Darwin speaks of having submitted a sketch of his work to Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker, — “the latter having seen my sketch of 1844.” Either of these, or Darwin himself, might have consulted Agassiz. Most of us knew about such a theory only through the popular “Vestiges of Creation,” to which he paid little attention. He seemed to have been excit.ed by some German, — perhaps Schopenhauer, in whose works the idea of self-evolution in organic nature is potential, — of whom he spoke with a flush of anger when adding, “He says himself that he is an atheist.” At any rate, during 1854 especially his mind was much occupied with the subject. I also remember well that during this time he often dwelt upon what he called the “ideal connection” between the different forms of life, describing with drawings the embryonic changes; in that progress no unbridged chasm after the dawn of organic life. At the end of every week a portion of the afternoon was given for our putting questions to Agassiz, the occasion often giving rise to earnest discussion. These repeatedly raised the theory of development in “The Vestiges of Creation.” Agassiz frequently referred to the spiritual evolution with which Emerson was particularly associated. But just after Darwin’s discovery had appeared, I happened to be dining at the Saturday Club in Boston, when something like an encounter between these two friends HDT WHAT? INDEX

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occurred. Agassiz was seated at the head of the table, Emerson being on his right. It was near the end of the dinner, and around the long table those present were paired off in conversation; but being next to Emerson I could enjoy the conversation he held with Agassiz. After a time the professor made some little fling at the new theory. Emerson said smilingly that on reading it he had at once expressed satisfaction at confirmation of what he (Agassiz) had long been telling us. All of those beautiful harmonies of form with form throughout nature which he had so finely divined were now proved to be genuine relationship. “Yes,” said Agassiz eagerly, “ideal relationship, connected thoughts of a Being acting with an intelligent purpose.” Emerson, to whom the visible universe was all a manifestation of things ideal, said that the physical selection appeared to him a counterpart of the ideal development. Whereupon Agassiz exclaimed, “There I cannot agree with you,” and changed the subject. There was at Concord a course of lectures every year, one of which was given by Agassiz. His coming was an important event. He was always a guest of the Emer80ns, where the literary people of the village were able to meet him. On one such occasion I remember listening to a curious conversation between Agassiz and A. Bronson Alcott, — who lived and moved in a waking dream. After delighting Agassiz by repudiating the theory of the development of man from animals, he filled the professor with dismay by equally decrying the notion that God could ever have created ferocious and poisonous beasts. When Agassiz asked who could have created them, Alcott said they were the various forms of human sin. Man was the first being created. And the horrible creatures were originated by his lusts and animalisms. When Agassiz, bewildered, urged that geology proved that the animals existed before man, Alcott suggested that man might have originated them before his appearance in his present form. Agassiz having given a signal of distress, Emerson came to the rescue with some reconciling discourse on the development of life and thought, with which the professor had to be content, although there was a soupçon of Evolutionism in every word our host uttered. There was a good deal of suspicion in America that the refusal of Agassiz to accept Darwin’s discovery was due to the influence of religious leaders in Boston, and particularly to that of his father-in-law, Thomas Cary, who had so freely devoted his wealth to the professor’s researches. Some long intimacy with those families convinced me that there was no such influence exerted by the excellent Mr. Cary, but that it was the old Swiss pastor, his father, surviving in him. He had, indeed, departed far from the paternal creed; he repudiated all miracles at a time when Mr. Cary and other Unitarians upheld them tenaciously. He threw a bomb into the missionary camp by his assertion of racial diversity of origin. His utterances against Darwinism were evidently deistic, and had nothing whatever to do with any personal interest, except that he had a horror of being called an atheist. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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I say “deistic,” for “theistic” denotes a more spiritual conception of deity than I can associate with Agassiz. He had adopted Humboldt’s “Cosmos” idea, attached a dynamic deity to it, but did not appear to have any mystical or even reverential sentiment about nature, and pointed out humourously what he called nature’s “jokes.” I was sometimes invited to his house. He had by his first wife two beautiful daughters and the son (Alexander), now eminent. His wife (née Cary) and her sisters were ladies of finest culture and ability. Agassiz was a perfect character in his home life, and neighbourly also. Occasionally he would get together the young girls of Cambridge and guide them among the fossils, telling them the wonders of the primeval world. Longfellow told me that Agassiz was entreating him to write a poem on the primeval world. AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II

Summer: During the 7th meeting of Louis Agassiz’s American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Cleveland, Henry Thoreau and 239 others were elected to membership.34 These people were worse than the church from which he had been forced to formally sign off. To prevent becoming entangled with this new church of science, he would have to repeat himself, write to them and again formally sign off.

Herman Melville probably wrote “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” between the late summer of this year and the early spring of the following year (it would be published in 1855).

34. He was listed as “Thoreau, Henry D., Concord, Mass.” Joseph Lovering, ed., Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Seventh Meeting, Held at Cleveland, Ohio, July, 1853 (Cambridge: Joseph Lovering; New York: G.P. Putnam & Co., 1856), page xiii. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter: Lecture Season of ’53/54, at the Odeon Hall in Boston:

15th Season of The Lowell Institute Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 10 lectures Professor Joseph Lovering. What is Matter! Professor Joseph Lovering. What are Bodies! Charles Jackson, Jr. History of the Useful Arts. Professor H.L. Eustis. The Britannia Bridge. Professor J.P. Cooke, Jr. Light. Professor A. Guyot. Psychological and Physical Characters of the Nations of Europe compared with those of the American People. Professor A. Guyot. The same subject continued. Doctor A.A. Gould. Aquatic Life. Professor Joel Parker. The Science of the Law. Professor H.D. Rogers. The Arctic Regions. Professor L. Agassiz. Natural History ...... 12 lectures Professor J. Lovering. Electricity ...... 12 lectures E.H. Davis. Mounds and Earthworks of the Mississippi Valley . . . . 4 lectures Reverend Orville Dewey. Problem of Human Destiny ...... 12 lectures HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE LOWELL INSTITUTE

December 19, Monday: Sometime after the incident of the spading competition, Michael Flannery had quit working for Abiel H. Wheeler and become a field laborer instead for Elijah Wood. At this point he discussed this new job with Henry Thoreau and told of his continuing efforts to get his family from Ireland. That evening Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. Blake: An Irishman came to see me to-day, who is endeavoring to get his family out to this New World. He rises at half past four, milks twenty-eight cows (which has swollen the joints of his fingers), and eats his breakfast, without any milk in his tea or coffee, before six; and so on, day after day, for six and a half dollars a month; and thus he keeps his virtue in him, if he does not add to it; and he regards me as a gentleman able to assist him; but if I ever get to be a gentleman, it will be by working after my HDT WHAT? INDEX

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fashion harder than he does. THOREAU ON THE IRISH From this day into December 21st, Thoreau would be surveying a Corner Spring woodlot that James P. Brown was selling to William Wheeler, which was cut in 1853-1854. (Brown lived near Nut Meadow Brook, and according to the Concord Town Report for 1851-1852, Thoreau had laid out a town road near his house and had been paid $4.00 for this by the town.)

View Henry Thoreau’s personal working drafts of his surveys courtesy of AT&T and the Concord Free Public Library: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/Thoreau_Surveys.htm

View this particular personal working draft of a survey in fine detail: http://www.concordlibrary.org/scollect/Thoreau_Surveys/137.htm

Thoreau wrote to Spencer Fullerton Baird in regard to Louis Agassiz’s American Association for the Advancement of Science, to withdraw his name, pleading that he would be unable to attend meetings and explaining that the kind of science he was attracted to was the science of the Reverend Gilbert White’s

THE NATURAL HISTORY AND ANTIQUITIES OF SELBORNE

and Alexander von Humboldt’s

ASPECTS OF NATURE

— as he understood very well that this was bound suitably to render him unattractive to them.35

In this letter Thoreau made reference to a poem that had been published anonymously in Punch, or the London Charivari, by Thomas Hood, entitled “The Song of the Shirt.”

In this letter, also, Thoreau made reference to pamphlet of 10 pages of blue paper just put out by the Smithsonian Institution that was going to become part of his personal library, Spencer Fullerton Baird’s DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING COLLECTIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY, PREPARED FOR THE USE OF THE PARTIES ENGAGED IN THE EXPLORATION OF A ROUTE FOR THE PACIFIC RAILROAD ALONG THE 49TH PARALLEL.

35. Harding and Bode, CORRESPONDENCE, pages 309-10. He gave quite a different reason for not becoming a member in his JOURNAL:“The fact is I am a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot.” Although it has been alleged many times that this reading had great influence on Henry Thoreau, quite frankly I have been unable myself to verify that Thoreau took this species of nature writing as Waldo Emerson had, with any seriousness. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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GOD IN CONCORD by Jane Langton © 1992 Penguin Books USA Inc. 38 If you are going into that line, —going to besiege the city of God, —you must not only be strong in engines, but prepared with provisions to starve out the garrison.

Viking Penguin Thoreau, Letter to Harrison Blake, December 19, 1853 Homer took his convictions about Pond View to Police Chief James Flower. ISBN 0-670-84260-5 — PS3562.A515G58

Concord Dec 19th 53 Mr Blake, My debt has accumulated so that I should have answered your last letter at once, if I had not been the subject of what is called a press of engagements, having a lecture to write for last Wednesday, and surveying more than usual besides. – It has been a kind of running fight with me – the enemy not always behind me, I trust. True, a man cannot lift himself by his own waist-bands, because he cannot get out of himself, but he can expand himself, (which is better, there being no up nor down in nature) and so split his waist- bands, being already within himself. You speak of doing & being – & the vanity real or apparent of much doing – The suckers, I think it is they, make nests in our river in the spring of more than a cart-load of small stones, amid which to de- posit their ova. The other day I opened a muskrats’ house. It was made of weeds, five feet broad at base & 3 feet high, and far and low within it was a little cavity, only a foot in diameter where the rat dwelt. It may seem trivial – this piling up of weeds, but so the race of muskrats is preserved. We must heap up a great pile of doing for a small diameter of being. – Is it not imperative on us that we do HDT WHAT? INDEX

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something – if we only work in a tread-mill? and, indeed, some sort of revolving is necessary to produce a centre & nucleus of being. What exercise is to the body – employment is to the mind & morals. Consider what an amount of drudgery must be performed – how much hum-drum & prosaic labor goes to any work of the least value. There are so many layers of mere white lime in every shell to that thin inner one so beautifully tinted. Let not the shell fish think to build his house of that alone; and pray what are its tints to him? Is it not his smooth close-fitting shirt merely? whose tints are not to him, being in the dark, but only when he is gone or dead, and his shell is heaved up to light a wreck upon the beach, do they appear. With him too it is a song of the shirt – “work – work – work” – & this work is not merely a police in the gross sense, but in the higher sense, a discipline. If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather ele- vating as a ladder – the means by which we are translated? How admirably the artist is made to accomplish his self culture by devotion to his art! The woodsawyer through his effort to do his work well, becomes not merely a better woodsawyer, but measure- ably a better man. Few are the men that can work on their navels – only some Brahmens that I have heard of. To the painter is given some paint & canvass instead. – to the Irishman a bog, – typical of himself. – In a thousand apparently humble ways men busy themselves to make some right take the place of some wrong, – if it is only to make a better paste-blacking – and they are themselves so much the better morally for it. You say that you sit & aspire, but do not succeed much. Does it concern you enough that you do not? Do you work hard enough at it— Do you get the benefit of discipline out of it? If so, persevere. Is it a more serious thing than to walk a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours? Do you get any corns by it? Do you ever think of hanging yourself on account of failure? If you are going into that line – going to besiege the city of God – you must not only be strong in engines – but prepared with provisions to starve out the garrison. An Irishman came to see me today who is endeavoring to get his family out to this New World. He rises at half past 4 & milks 28 cows – (which has swolen the joints of his fingers) & eats his breakfast, without any milk in his tea or coffee, before 6 – & so on day after day for six & a half dollars a month – & thus he keeps his virtue in him – if he does not add to it – & he regards me as a gentleman able to assist him – but if I ever get to be a gentleman, it will be by working after my fashion harder than he does – If my joints are not swolen, it must be because I deal with the teats of celestial cows before break-fast, (and the milker in this HDT WHAT? INDEX

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case is always allowed some of the milk for his breakfast) to say nothing of the flocks & herds of Admetus afterward. It is the art of mankind to polish the world, and every one who works is scrubbing in some part. If the mark is high & far, you must not only aim aright, but draw the bow with all your might. You must qualify your self to use a bow which no humbler archer can bend. Work – work – work! Who shall know it for a bow? It is not of yew-tree. It is straighter than a ray of light – flexibility is not known for one of its qualities.

Dec 22nd So far I had got when I was called off to survey. – Pray read the Life of Haydon the painter – if you have not. It is a small revelation for these latter days – a great satisfaction to know that he has lived – though he is now dead. Have you met with the letter of a Turkish cadi at the end of Layard’s “Nineveh & Babylon” that also is re- freshing & a capital comment on the whole book which preceeds it – the oriental genius speaking through him. Those Brahmins put it through, they come off – or rather stand still, conquerors, with some withered arms or legs at least to show — & they are said to have cultivated the faculty of abstraction to a degree unknown to Europeans, – If we cannot sing of faith & triumph – we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls & there are night owls – and each is beautiful & even musical while about its business. Might you not find some positive work to do with your back to Church & State – letting your back do all the rejection of them? Can you not go upon your pilgrimage, Peter, along the winding mountain path whither you face? A step more will make those funereal church bells over your shoulder sound far and sweet as a natural sound Work – work – work! Why not make a very large mud pie & bake it in the sun! Only put no church nor state into it, nor upset any other pepper -box that way. – Dig out a wood-chuck for that has nothing to do with rotting institutions – Go ahead. Whether a man spends his day in an extacy or despondency – he must do some work to show for it – even as there are flesh & bones to show for him. We are superior to the joy we experience. Your last 2 letters methinks have more nerve & will in them than usual – as if you had erected yourself more – Why are not they good work – if you only had a hundred correspondents to tax you? Make your failure tragical – by the earnestness & steadfastness of your endeavor – & then it will not differ from success – Prove it to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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be the inevitable fate of mortals – of one mortal – if you can. You said that you were writing on immortality – I wish you would communicate to me what you know about that – you are sure to live while that is your theme – Thus I write on some text which a sentence of your letters may have furnished. I think of coming to see you as soon as I get a new coat – if I have money enough left – I will write to you again about it. Henry D. Thoreau BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1854

Charles Pickerig Gerrish, son of a Concord teacher, graduated from Harvard College. He would become a merchant. NEW “HARVARD MEN”

In 1796, Dr. John Crawford had written a series of reports contradicting the bad-air theory “malaria,” asserting that the illness that went under that name was not being occasioned by the nature of the air of marshes and swamps but instead by tiny “eggs insinuated, without our knowledge, into our bodies” during mosquito bites, tiny eggs that were hatching within the puncture and migrating through the host’s body, and were producing the manifestations of the disease.

This notion had been considered so entirely absurd, by Dr. Crawford’s American contemporaries, that the local medical journals summarily rejected all Dr. Crawford’s articles. He was disparaged so vehemently that his medical practice began to suffer, and so he desisted from this effort. We had lost, for fully half a century, an opportunity to deal with this disease. However, in this year Lewis Daniel Beauperthy, a “traveling naturalist,” published a theory that malaria, and the yellow fever (or black vomit) as well, were being “produced by venomous fluid injected under the skin by mosquitoes like poison injected by snakes,” that marshes and swamps were made treacherous not by their miasmic vapors, but by the mosquitoes that proliferated within HDT WHAT? INDEX

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them.

WALDEN: It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions PEOPLE OF which the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at WALDEN the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he would soon be completely emasculated. I think that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these to become no better than a modern drawing room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sunshades, and a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.

SARDANAPALUS “JONATHAN” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Dr. Josiah Clark Nott would come to embrace this theory, and eventually would be credited as among the 1st to apply the insect vector theory to yellow fever.

THE SCIENCE OF 1854

Dr. Josiah Clark Nott, George Robins Gliddon, and Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury’s INDIGENOUS RACES OF THE EARTH; OR, NEW CHAPTERS OF ETHNOLOGICAL INQUIRY; INCLUDING MONOGRAPHS ON SPECIAL DEPARTMENTS.

Few of the scientists of Professor Samuel George Morton’s day would have challenged his thesis that the race concept is a physical reality, or his assumption that cranial volume was a prime indicator of human mental HDT WHAT? INDEX

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capability or intelligence.

In this year such views were incorporated, for instance, into Dr. Josiah Clark Nott’s and the former diplomat George Robins Gliddon’s textbook TYPES OF MANKIND: OR, ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCHES, BASED UPON THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS, PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, AND CRANIA OF RACES, AND UPON THEIR NATURAL, GEOGRAPHICAL, PHILOLOGICAL, AND BIBLICAL HISTORY: ILLUSTRATED BY SELECTIONS FROM THE INEDITED PAPERS OF SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, M.D., (LATE PRESIDENT OF THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES AT PHILADELPHIA,) AND BY ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PROF. L. AGASSIZ, LL.D., W. USHER, M.D.; AND PROF. H.S. PATTERSON, M.D. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co.; London: Trübner & Co.), which would go through ten editions offering the unaltering scientific knowledge that the mental superiority of the white man over the colored man was a proven fact. The “Negro-Races” had “ever been Servants and slaves.” TYPES OF MANKIND

The book in fact incorporates a letter from Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard, who supported such a view without any qualification whatever. The book asserts as an unchallengeable scientific finding that the Negro can exist alongside the white race only as a tributary either in name or in fact. The book quite ignores in all its editions Frederick Douglass, who, in one of his speeches during this year, in no uncertain terms denounced it: “Perhaps, of all the attempts ever made to disprove the unity of the human family, and to brand the negro with natural inferiority, the most compendious and barefaced is the book, entitled TYPES OF MANKIND, by Nott and Glidden [sic].”36

In “Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and Their Relation to the Different Types of Man” Professor Agassiz argued that the distinct human types, in effect distinguishable species, having developed

36. And guess what? Subsequent developments have demonstrated that Frederick Douglass the nonscientist was right, and the scientists were wrong — and not merely on moral but on strictly evidentiary grounds! HDT WHAT? INDEX

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under differing conditions in different regions of the globe, could only degenerate when taken out of these environments to which they had accommodated.37 But race is a very great reality.... Any analysis of a great creative period ... must have this chaotic spot in its centre: the incalculable fact of racial intermixture. — Percy Wyndham Lewis, THE LION AND THE FOX: THE ROLE OF THE HERO IN THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE (London: Methuen, 1951 [1927], page 298) Today’s reviewer of the evidences marshalled in this volume may marvel at the easy manner in which the authors interpolated their own views inside the context of quotations ostensibly from the work of others. Certain of the “quotations” placed between the covers of this work are said now to have been “half made-up.” Clearly, from the standpoint of Nott and Gliddon, there was more at stake here than mere accuracy. In the introduction to this textbook, on page 49, Nott and Gliddon indicated that their understanding of this new science ethnology was that it was not only to pose, but also to provide a definitive answer for, the $64,000 question of who had to do whose laundry, “what position in the social scale Providence has assigned to each type of man?”38 Although this was a quite expensive volume, by 1871 it would have gone through fully ten editions. This scientific treatise declared that

We have had too much of sentimentalism about the Red- man. It is time that cant was stopped now.

Also, this detailed scientific argument for the separate creation of the differing human races and the inherent inalienable superiority of some of these races over other of these races pointed out, by “supplanting inferior types” the Caucasian race rather than incurring shame and guilt would be merely “fulfilling a law of nature.” EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

April 18, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau sent off some Harvard Library books, hand carry, with a note to Thaddeus William Harris. Concord April 18th ’54 Dear Sir, I return by Mr. Gerrish three vols. viz Agassiz sur Les Glaciers Shepard’s Clear Sunshine and New England in 1652 Yrs Henry D. Thoreau

In the afternoon, he went to “stone-heaps” by boat.

April 18. For three or four days the lilac buds have looked green, — the most advanced that I have seen. The earliest gooseberry still earlier in garden (though smaller buds).

P. M. — To stone-heaps by boat. Scared up snipes on the meadow’s edge, which go off with their strange zigzag, crazy flight and a distressed 37. As another conservative biologist, Garret Harding, would be commenting, a weed is a plant that is out of place. Refer to Stepan, Nancy, “Biological Degeneration: Races and Proper Places,” in J. Edward Chamberlain and Sander L. Gilman, DEGENERATION: THE DARK SIDE OF PROGRESS (NY: Columbia UP, 1985, page 98-104). 38. Nott’s attitude was that “The time must come when the blacks will be worse than useless to us. What then? Emancipation must follow, which, from the lights before us, is but another name for extermination.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sound, - craik craik or cr-r-ack cr-r-rack. One booms now at 3 P.M. They circle round and round, and zigzag high over the meadow, and finally alight again, descending abruptly from that height. Was surprised to see a wagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, [Vide April 26. Probably hermit thrush.] at the Assabet Spring, which inquisitively followed me along the shore over the snow, hopping quite near. I should say this was the golden- crowned thrush without doubt, though I saw none of the gold, if this and several more which I saw bad not kept close to the water. May possibly be the aquaticus. Have a jerk of the forked tail. The male yellow redpoll's breast and under parts are of a peculiarly splendid and lively yellow, — glowing. It is remarkable that they too are found about willows, etc., along the water. Saw another warbler [Vide April 25.] about in the same localities, — somewhat creeper-like, very restless, more like the Tennessee warbler than any, methinks. Light-slate or bluish-slate head and shoulders, yellowish backward, all white beneath, and a distinct white spot on the wing; a harsh grating note (?) Saw two wood ducks probably; saw a white spot behind eyes; they went off with a shriller craik than the black ducks. I now feel pretty sure that they were crow blackbirds which I saw April 3d with the red-wings [Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus]. They are stout fellows without any red epaulet, and go off with a hoarser chuck chuck, with rounded tail. They make that split singing, and, with the red-wing, feed along the water’s edge. Heard a red-wing sing his bobylee in new wise, as if he tossed up a fourpence and it rattled on some counter in the air as it went up. Saw to-day a lesser blackbird, size of cowbird, slaty-black, on meadow edge. What was it? The snow is sprinkled along the street with the large scales of buds from the trees; thus revealing; what kind of fall is going on at this season.

April 27, Thursday: Waldo Emerson had offered to read a paper in Moncure Daniel Conway’s room at Harvard Divinity School, and Conway had sent out invitations. The authorities had been perplexed for some time at this student’s closeness to the heretic of Concord, and when this latest thing came to their attention, they went into a panic of sorts. Conway would be challenged by Harvard’s Professor of Christian Morals with the possibility that this represented a “decline of Christian morals” in Divinity Hall. Two of the professors would visit student Conway in his room and give voice to their fears that there was being organized “a school within the school,” amounting to an “Emersonian cult.” But the meeting in question, on this date, had in fact gone off without incident, the group having moved because of its size to a public room and Emerson having merely read his paper on “Poetry” to an audience that included Professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and faculty spouse Fanny Appleton Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Professor Charles Eliot Norton, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, and Arthur Hugh Clough. We are left wondering why on earth all these authority figures were getting so exercised.39

Meanwhile, out at Walden Pond, Henry Thoreau was hypothesizing that the level of water in the pond ought to become very low again during the period 1866-1869 (amazingly, this anticipation would prove to have been accurate).

April 27. 7 A.M. –To Cliffs. ... The wood thrush [Hermit Thrush Catharus guttatus] afar, –so superior a strain to that of other birds. I was doubting if it would affect me as of yore, but it did measurably. I 39. It wasn’t the fact that Waldo Emerson talked about “arrested and progressive development” in this paper on poetry which had gotten the faculty all excited, even though later it would be proposed, by some folks who demonstrably knew nothing whatever of evolutionary theory, that Emerson had here been anticipating Charles Darwin’s theory. What Emerson had said was simply “The electric word pronounced by [Doctor] John Hunter [1728-1793] a hundred years ago, — arrested and progressive development — indicating the way upward from the invisible protoplasm to the highest organism, — gave the poetic key to natural science, — of which the theories of Geoffroy St. Hilaire, of Lorenz Oken [1779-1851], of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832], of Louis Agassiz [1807-1873], and [Sir] Richard Owen [1804-1892] and [Doctor] Erasmus Darwin [1731-1802] in zoölogy and botany, are the fruits, — a hint whose power is not exhausted, showing unity and perfect order in physics.” –Which is not Darwinism, but the obsolete mental universe of hierarchy and superiority, of Naturphilosophie, the great ladder of being, all of which amounted to the wanna-believe bullshit that Charles Darwin would be struggling to supersede. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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did not believe there could be such differences. This is the gospel according to the wood thrush. He makes a sabbath out of a week-day — I could go to hear him—could buy a pew in his church— Did he ever practice pulpit eloquence? He is right about the slavery question— ... Forbes says that the guides who crossed the alps with him lost the skin of their faces — (Ap from the reflections from the snow.) It is remarkable that the rise & fall of Walden though unsteady & whether periodical or merely occasional are not completed but after many years. I have observed one rise & part of 2 falls. It attains its maximum slowly & surely though unsteadily. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, requires many years for its accomplishment — and I expect that a dozen or 15 years hence it will again be as low as I have ever known it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1855

Alfred Russel Wallace began to publish the connections he was making between facts of geographical and geological distribution and the general idea of species evolution: “ON THE LAW WHICH HAS REGULATED THE INTRODUCTION OF NEW SPECIES.” He engaged in the first extensive collecting efforts and field studies of the orangutan. He investigated and described the faunal discontinuity which we now refer to as “Wallace’s Line.” THE SCIENCE OF 1855

Orra White Hitchcock was badly injured in falling from a balcony onto a brick surface, and in addition her eyesight was deteriorating. She would no longer be able to assist her husband the Reverend Professor Edward Hitchcock in the preparation of his publications. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April: Waldo Emerson received a note from Professor Louis Agassiz:

It will give me great pleasure to have your daughter attend my school and I feel proud in the confidence you place in me in trusting to my care ... one who must be so dear to you. I trust this circumstance may lead to a personal acquaintance between us which I regret has not been brought about before.

Harvard College’s racist biologist during that era, and his wife, had set up their home in Cambridge as a racially and sexually segregated school, in order to educate Ellen Emerson and Louisa May Alcott among other toney white girls. We have, in the introduction to the character known as Professor Bhaer in LITTLE WOMEN, OR, MEG, JO, BETH AND AMY, an impression of the author’s regard for her stocky Cambridge professor:

I was thanking my stars that I’d learned to make nice buttonholes, when the parlor door opened and shut, and some one began to hum, — “Kennst du das Land,”

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Winter: Lecture Season of ’55/56, at the Odeon Hall in Boston: James Russell Lowell’s series on the English poets was so popular that each lecture was being repeated, for those who had not managed to get inside the hall on the designated night, on the next afternoon. They were appearing verbatim in the newspaper. It was this series for The Lowell Institute which would win Lowell his appointment to succeed Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Harvard College:40

17th Season of The Lowell Institute Reverend Orville Dewey. Education of the Human Race 12 lectures Reverend W.H. Milburn. Early History and Settlement of the Mississippi Valley 12 lectures George William Curtis. Contemporaneous English Fiction 6 lectures Professor J.P. Cooke, Jr. Chemistry of the Non-metallic Elements 12 lectures Professor E. Vitalis Scharb. The Great Religious and Philosophical Poems of Modern Times 12 lectures HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

40. This was the way Louis Agassiz also got onto the Harvard College faculty, for he had been brought to America to lecture for The Lowell Institute and had initially given over a hundred popular lectures. Yet, as the Lowell Institute’s historian later boasted:

Crude theories and plans for moral and political reforms are not to be found in the Lowell lectures. The selection of lectures and lecturers is made from a broad and comprehensive knowledge of the safe thought and intelligent study of the time.

Thus Louis Agassiz’s lifelong disdain for the development theory of Charles Darwin may not have been motivated solely by his racism, and by an awareness of how his “scientific” posturing could be utilized to bolster the institution of slavery and the financial interests of his slavemaster friends, but may also have been motivated by his desire to be lauded by and followed by the general public — for in fact no paid Lowell lecturer would have been allowed to advocate anything as leveling as the theory of Darwin. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1856

Arnold Henri Guyot founded at Princeton University what is now the Princeton Museum of Natural History, and would continue to contribute specimens to it until his death. In Guyot Hall also are his handwritten labels of the glacial erratic stones he collected in the 1840s in Switzerland (the specimens themselves have disappeared). While Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard University, a fair-weather Unitarian, in ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION advocated a theory of multiple creations that contradicted both evolution and the story of Noah’s ark, calling for a virtual infinitude of miracles, Guyot, an evangelical Presbyterian, insisted that God had made only three-count-’em-three intrusions into the natural order, specially creating matter –then life – then humans. The Presbyterian geologist John William Dawson followed his mentor Charles Lyell in positing successive creations in various “centres” but stopped short of insisting that “all groups of individual animals, which naturalists may call species, have been separate products of creation.” Professor Agassiz would on more than one occasion frustrate his scientific colleagues by refusing to speculate on how any species might have come into existence. Agassiz’s Harvard colleague Jeffries Wyman would once demand of him, “When a mammal was created, did the oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon of the air, and the lime, soda, phosphorus, potash, water, etc., from the earth come together and on the instant combine into a completely formed horse, lion, elephant, or other animal?” — observing that if the answer to such a question were yes, then “it will be easily seen that the answer is entirely opposed by the observed analogies of nature.” The ichthyologist Theodore N. Gill, likewise complaining about the “vague and evasive” responses which these non-evolutionists were providing, demanded that they answer the following questions: “Did elemental atoms flash into living tissues? Was there vacant space one moment and an elephant apparent the next? Or did a laborious God mould out of gathered earth a body to then endue with life?” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Professor Louis Agassiz published an ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION advocating a theory of multiple creations that would controvert not only evolution but also the Biblical story of Noah’s Ark.

Professor James Dwight Dana of Yale College declared that: The whole plan of creation had evident reference to Man as the end and crown of the animal kingdom, and ... progression from the lower to the higher races.... The earlier races were of lower types.... The development of the plan of creation ... was in accordance with the law of ... progress from the simple to the complex, from comprehensive unity to multiplicity through successive individualizations. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Dana clearly did not consider that the obvious self-serving and self-congratulatory nature of this nonscientific belief system was a reason for self-doubt. That his belief system was self-serving was obviously to him merely some sort of quaint coincidence! (Well, but he was a Yalie, and a Louis Agassiz colleague.) Stephen Jay Gould, page 105: “James Dwight Dana viewed the entire geological history of the earth and life as one long, coherent, and heroic story with a moral — a tale of inexorable progress, expressed in both physical and biological history, and leading, inevitably and purposefully, to God’s final goal of a species imbued with sufficient consciousness to glorify His name and works.” During this year Charles Darwin began to write down his ideas about descent with modification. He wrote to his friend Joseph Hooker in regard to the providentialist idea that Nature exemplified God’s benevolence toward His creatures:

What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature! HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Darwin ... revered William Paley during his youth. In a courageous act of intellectual parricide, he then overthrew his previous mentor — not merely by becoming an evolutionist, but by constructing a particular version of evolutionary theory maximally disruptive of Paley’s system and deepest beliefs.... Where did Darwin get such a radical version of evolution? Surely not from the birds and bees, the twigs and trees. Nature helped, but intellectual revolutions must also have ideological bases. Scholars ... agree that two Scottish economists of the generation just before Darwin played a dominant role: Thomas Robert Malthus and the great Adam Smith himself. From Malthus, Darwin received the key insight that growth in population, if unchecked, will outrun any increase in the food supply. A struggle for existence must therefore arise, leading by natural selection to survival of the fittest (to cite all three conventional Darwinian aphorisms in a single sentence). Darwin states that this insight from Malthus supplied the last piece that enabled him to complete the theory of natural selection in 1838 (though he did not publish his views for twenty-one years). Adam Smith’s influence was more indirect, but also more pervasive. We know that the Scottish economists interested Darwin greatly and that, during the crucial months of 1838, while he assembled the pieces soon to be capped by his Malthusian insight, he was studying the thought of Adam Smith. The theory of natural selection is uncannily similar to the chief doctrine of laissez-faire economics. (In our academic jargon, we would say that the two theories are “isomorphic” — that is, structurally similar point for point, even though the subject matter differs.) To achieve the goal of a maximally ordered economy in the laissez-faire system, you do not regulate from above by passing explicit laws for order. You do something that, at first glance, seems utterly opposed to your goal: You simply allow individuals to struggle in an unfettered way for personal profit. In this struggle, the inefficient are weeded out and the best balance each other to form an equilibrium to everyone’s benefit. Darwin’s system works in exactly the same manner, only more relentlessly. No regulation comes from on high; no divine watchmaker superintends the work of his creation. Individuals are struggling for reproductive success, the natural analog of profit. No other mechanism is at work, nothing “higher” or more exalted. Yet the result is adaptation and balance — and the cost is hecatomb after hecatomb after hecatomb.... For Malthus, Paley actually cites the key line that inspired Darwin’s synthesis in 1838 (but in the context of a passage on civil vs. natural evils). Paley writes: The order of generation proceeds by something like a geometrical progression. The increase of provision, under circumstances even the most advantageous, can only assume the form of an arithmetic series. Whence it follows, that the population will always overtake the provision, will pass beyond the line of plenty, and will continue to increase till checked by the difficulty of procuring subsistence. (At this point, Paley adds a footnote: “See this subject stated in a late treatise upon population” — obviously Malthus.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

[NOTE: Compare and contrast this with Henry Thoreau’s horror at what he found himself thinking, about nature, late at night in the train station in Worcester!!]

Hecatomb41 upon hecatomb, leading only to holocaust!42

But — by the time the ORIGIN OF SPECIES appeared in 1859, he had decided to excise its worst passages about how incompatible the natural facts of parasitism, cruelty, and waste were with any concept of a caring and all- observant deity.43

Later, Darwin would write in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY that: In order to pass the B.A. examination, it was, also, necessary to get up Paley’s EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, and his MORAL PHILOSOPHY.... The logic of this book and as I may add of his NATURAL T HEOLOGY gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the Academical Course which, as I then felt and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the education of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself about Paley’s premises; and taking these on trust I was charmed and convinced of the long line of argumentation. THE SCIENCE OF 1856

May 14, Wednesday: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote to Thomas Gold Appleton, his brother-in-law, in Paris (Appleton happens to have been the Boston wit who originated the famous comment “Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris”) that “We have formed a Dinner Club, once a month, at Parker’s. Agassiz, Motley, Emerson, Peirce, Lowell, Whipple, Sam Ward, Holmes, Dwight, Woodman, myself, and yourself. We sit from three o’clock till nine, generally, which proves it to be very pleasant.”44

May 14. Air full of golden robins. Their loud clear note betrays them as soon as they arrive. Yesterday and to-clay I see half a dozen tortoises on a rail, — their first appearance in numbers. Catbird amid shrub oaks. Female red-wing [Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus]. Flood tells me he saw cherry-birds am the 12th of April in Monroe’s garden.

41. A hecatomb was the slaughter of 100 oxen, and thus by extension any large slaughter perpetrated in the expectation of a consequent divine benefit, or, rather, in order to reduce current levels of anxiety with regard to what would be to come. 42. An offering in which the entire offering is to be consumed by the flames, leaving nothing to be shared among its priests. 43. Stanley Edgar Hyman, THE TANGLED BANK, New York, 1962, page 38. 44. Longfellow overlooked to mention that Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, and Corne- lius Conway Felton would soon join. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 2, Monday: Per Waldo Emerson this was “the finest day, high noon of the year.” He and Henry Thoreau rode in a wagon to Perez Blood’s auction and found his telescope sold for $55.00 which had “cost ninety-five plus ten.”45

Thoreau noted that according to Professor Louis Agassiz, the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat.46

He also noted that according Sir David Brewster’s biography of Sir Isaac Newton, with one of the early telescopes it had been possible to read from Philosophical Transactions at a distance of five hundred feet. BREWSTER’S NEWTON ASTRONOMY

June 2. Carum, i.e. caraway, in garden. Saw most hummingbirds when cherries were in bloom, — on them. P. M. — With R.W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction. Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars; cost ninety-five plus ten. See Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade; not 19th of April.47 Returned by bridle-road. Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet; more, probably, to-day. Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more. English hawthorn will open apparently in two days. Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat. 5 P.M. — To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime. Ranunculus recurvatus the same; how long? White maple keys conspicuous. In the first volume of Brewster’s “Life of Newton” I read that with one of the early telescopes they could read the “Philosophical Transactions” at five hundred feet distance.

July 26, Saturday: The series of poems by Louisa May Alcott, entitled “Beach Bubbles,” continued in Boston’s Saturday Evening Gazette.

July 26. Saturday. 5 A.M. — Up Assabet. The sun's disk is seen round and red for a long distance above the horizon, through the thick but cloudless atmosphere, threatening heat, — hot, dry weather. At five the lilies had not opened, but began about 5.15 and were abundantly out at six. Arranged the hypericums in bottles this morning and watched their opening. The II. angulosum (?) has a pod one-celled (with three parietal placentæ), conical, oblong, acute, at length longer than the sepals, purple. (The Canadense has from three to five (!) placentæ and the mutilum three to four (!), as I find, notwithstanding Gray.) Styles three, short, distinct, and spreading; stamens twenty, more or less, obscurely clustered. Petals oblong. (Do not see the single lateral tooth mentioned by Eaton.) Corolla twelve to fourteen fortieths of an inch in diameter. It is strict, slender, ten to twenty inches high; stem sharply four-angled, like Canadense, and cyme as naked or more so. The large ones make a singularly compact (flat-topped) corymb, of many narrow pods at last. Leaves oblong-lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, commonly blunt, but often gradually tapering and acute, broadest near the base and clasping, one to one and a half inches long by one eighth to three eighths wide, black-dotted beneath. Ground neither very dry nor very moist. It differs from Canadense, which it resembles, in being a larger plant every way, narrower in proportion to height, having more stamens, and in the form of its leaves. Corolla of mutilum nine to eleven fortieths of an inch in diameter; Canadense, twelve to thirteen fortieths; corymbosum eighteen fortieths. The corymbosum in chamber shut up at night. All but Sarothra, which may not be advanced enough, (I have no elodea), opened by 5 A.M., corymbosum and angulosum very fairly; but mutilum, Canadense, and angulosum curled and shut up by 9 A.M.!! The corymbosum shut up in afternoon. The perforatum and ellipticum alone 45. A couple of years earlier, Henry’s telescope had cost him $8, more than a week’s wages, the equivalent of perhaps $800 today. Blood’s telescope would in today’s money have been a device costing in the range of $10,000, a number of months’ salary. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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were open all day. The four lesser ones are very shy to open and remain open very little while, this weather at least. I suspect that in the fields, also, they are open only very early or on cloudy days. H. Canadense and mutilum are often fifteen inches high. The largest and most conspicuous purple pods are those of the ellipticum. Those of the angulosum and Canadense are smaller and more pointed; are also purple, and the mutilum perhaps duller purple and less conspicuous. The pod of the ellipticum, when cut, smells like a bee. The united styles arm it like a beak or spine. This appears to be the most nearly out of bloom of all. I am surprised that Cray says it is somewhat four-angled. It is distinctly two-angled and round between. The Hubbard aster may be the A. Tradescanti. The large potamogeton off Dodd’s seems to be the natans, from size of nutlets, etc. Then there is the second, off Clamshell, a long time out. And the third, heterophyllus (?), or what I have called hybridus, also long out. Drank up the last of my birch wine. It is an exceedingly grateful drink now, especially the aromatic, meadlike, apparently checkerberry-flavored one, which on the whole I think must be the black birch. It is a surprisingly high-flavored drink, thus easily obtained, and considering that it had so little taste at first. Perhaps it would have continued to improve.

P.M. — To Poorhouse Pasture. Nettle, some time. Ambrosia botrys, apparently a few days. A. Radula, ditch by pasture, several days apparently. Lycopus sinuatus, some time. I sec young larks fly pretty well before me. Smaller bur-reed (Sparganium Americanum), judging from form of stigma (ovate and oblique), yet the leaves are almost entirely concave (!), Stow's ditch. Is this the same with that in river? How long? It is very still and sultry this afternoon, at 6 P.M. even. I cannot even sit down in the pasture for want of air, but must keep up and moving, else I should suffocate. Thermometer ninety-seven and ninety-eight to-day. The pig pants and melts in his pen, and water must be cast on him. Agassiz says he has discovered that the haddock, a deep-sea fish, is viviparous. LOUIS AGASSIZ

46. When a carnivore ingests an infected prey animal, the larvae of the Toxascaris leonina roundworms mature within the walls and lumen of the predator’s small intestine. When the female worm becomes an adult, it lays eggs which pass with the feces. The eggs become infective some 3-6 days after defecation, and rodents such as mice and squirrels become infected when they consume something that has been in contact with these feces. The the eggs hatch within the rodent’s digestive system and the larvae migrate through its tissues. When the rodent is consumed, larvae are released in the digestive system of the carnivore and the cycle repeats. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 29: Charles Darwin commented on Professor Louis Agassiz’s pseudoscientific political agenda, in a private letter to Professor James Dwight Dana, a zoologist and geologist at Yale College:

...the great Agassiz, who seems to me to retreat a step & take up a new position with a front so bold as to be admirable in a soldier....

Sept. 29. P. M. - To Grape Cliff. The pea-vine fruit is partly ripe, little black-dotted leans, about three in a pod. 1 (-.,in lucrdly clamher along the grape cliff now witlccact ge tting my clothes covered with desmodiuclc ticks, - there especially the rotarc.difblaUm and paioiculatunt. Though you were running for your life, they would have time to catch and cling to your clothes. - often the whole row of pods of the D. paniculaturn, like a piece of a saw blade with three teeth. You pause at a convenient place and spend a long time picking them off, which it took so short a time to attach. They will even cling to your hand as you go by. They cling like babes to the mother’s breast, by instinct. Instead of being caught and detained ourselves by birdlirrne, we are compelled to catch these seeds and carry them with us. These almost invisible nets, as it were, are spread for us, and whole coveys of desmodium and bidens seeds and burs steal transportation out of us. I have found myself often covered, as it were with an imbricated scaly coat of the brown desmodium seeds or a bristling chevaux-de(rise of beggar-ticks, and had to spend a quarter of an hour or more picking them off at some convenient place; and so they got just what they wanted, deposited in another place. How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliffside, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat! I am late for grapes; most have fallen. The fruit of what I have called Y’itis astivalis has partly fallen. It is dark-purple, about seven sixteenths of an inch in diam eter, very acid and commonly hard. Stem and petiole smooth and purplish, but leaf not smooth or green lwncatlc. Should not this be called frost gape, rather Hum the earlier one I ate at Brattleboro? Urahcs arc singularly various for a wild fruit, like many cultivated ones. Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago, when lie was teaching school in Tewksbury; thought to be one of a pair, the other being killed or seen in Derry. Its large track was seen in the snow in Tewlcsbury and traced to Andover and back. They saw -,where 47. Thoreau here alludes to the Concord memory that on the memorable day of April 19th, 1775, the spring having been exceptionally early, grass and grain were already high enough to be bending with the breeze. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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it had leaped thirty feet! and where it devoured rabbits . Was on a tree when shot. Skin stuffed somewhere.

Sept. 30. Cattle-Show. An overcast, mizzling, and rainy day. Minott tells of a General Hull, who lived somewhere in this county, who, he remembers, called out the whole division once or twice to a muster. Ile sold the army under him to the English in the last war, - thou(,rh General Miller of Lincoln besought [him] to let him lead them,-and never was happy after it, had no peace of mind. It was said that his life was in danger here in consequence of his treason. Once, at a muster in front of the Rayden house, when there was a sham fight, and an Indian party took a circuit round a piece of wood, some put green grapes into their guns, and lie, hearing one whistle by his head, thought some one wished to shoot him and ordered them to disperse, - dismissed them. Speaking of the meadow-ha v which is lost this year, Dlinott said that the little they had got since the last flood lwfore this was good for nothing, would only poison the cattle, l:~iug covered with the dried slime and filth of the freshet. When you mowed it there arose a great dust. He spoke of this grass, thus left over winter to nest year, as “old fog.” Said that Clark (Daniel or Brooks) asked him the other day what made so many young alders and birches and willows spring up in the river meadows of late; years; it did n’t use to be so forty or fifty years ago; and lie told him that in old times, when they were accustomed to take something strong to drink, they did n’t stand for such shrubs but mowed all clear as they went, but now, not feeling so much energy for want of the stimulant, when they carne to a bush, though no bigger than a pipe-stem, they mowed all round it. and left it standing.

October 11, Saturday: At table at the Parker House in Boston:

LOUIS AGASSIZ HAMMATT BILLINGS RALPH WALDO EMERSON EBENEZER ROCKWOOD HOAR JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL BENJAMIN PEIRCE FRANKLIN BENJAMIN SANBORN SAMUEL GRAY WARD EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE HORATIO WOODMAN HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1857

Dr. Josiah Clark Nott left his medical practice in Mobile, Alabama and relocated to New Orleans to become chairman of the anatomy department of the medical school of the University of Louisiana.

Dr. Nott’s, George Robins Gliddon’s, and Louis Ferdinand Alfred Maury’s INDIGENOUS RACES OF THE EARTH; OR, NEW CHAPTERS OF ETHNOLOGICAL INQUIRY; INCLUDING MONOGRAPHS ON SPECIAL DEPARTMENTS. THE SCIENCE OF 1857

Completion of publication (begun in the previous year) of Henry Hotze’s translation of Joseph Arthur, comte de Gobineau’s ESSAI SUR L’INEGALITÉ DES RACES HUMAINES, titled THE MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY OF RACES. Dr. Nott contributed an appendix “containing a Summary of the Latest Scientific Facts bearing upon the Question of Unity or Plurality of Species.” Each race of the human species, each one appropriate to each of the continents, had been created by God separately, as the same species but as a separate act of creation — and therefore these separate creations each appropriate to itself were not to be mingled except through human sinful interference with what obviously was God’s Plan For the World. The proper role of the white was to be master, the proper role of the black to be servant. It was the way they were created and it was the way things should be. It is what God requires of us, that we be racist. Publication of Professor Louis Agassiz’s CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA began at this point, with the Boston firm of Little, Brown, & Company, in four quarto volumes, the most notable volume of which is the 2d, on the embryology of the turtle. The Concord library would come HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to own this, and from it Thoreau would copy in 1858 into his 2d commonplace book. ACALEPHS IN GENERAL CTENOPHORAE DISCOPHORAE HYDROIDAE HOMOLOGIES OF THE RADIATA

An utterly curious event occurred in 1857, in an utterly curious place, that will require some preamble. I have mentioned that all his life Professor Agassiz insisted regardless of any evidence brought before him that each species must be a separate and distinct “thought of God” –and that God must be repeatedly rethinking organic life in a series of independent and special creations without hereditary continuity– each time life on HDT WHAT? INDEX

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earth is destroyed by some natural cataclysm. Now the United States was building up toward a civil war over

Louis Agassiz using his head at Stanford the issue of human slavery and Agassiz published his ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION, a “succinct and fervent” ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION

treatise on his theory of special creationism, the pseudoscientific account which gave his foul politics the authority of reality itself, conveniently legitimating, among other things he desired, this peculiar institution. Now, as one of the curiosities of history, although it had been Alexander von Humboldt who had helped this bigot Agassiz get the chair in natural history at the University of Neuchâtel, it was also von Humboldt who persuaded the King of Prussia –of all people, of all places– to proclaim during this very year that:

A slave who steps on Prussian soil is free. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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March 20, Friday: Henry Thoreau dined at the Emersons, where Professor Louis Agassiz was a guest. He recorded that the scientist “thinks that the suckers die of asphyxia, having very large air-bladders and being in the habit of coming to the surface for air. But then, he is thinking of a different phenomenon from the one I speak of, which last is confined to the very earliest spring or winter.” WALDO EMERSON

March 20. Dine with Agassiz at R.W.E.’s. He thinks that the suckers die of asphyxia, having very large air-bladders and being in the habit of coming to the surface for air. But then he is thinking of a different phenomenon from the one I speak of, which last is confined to the very earliest spring or winter. he says that the Emys picta does not copulate till seven years old, and then does not lay till four years after copulation, or when eleven years old. The Cistudo Blandingii (which he has heard of in Massachusetts only at Lancaster) copulates at eight or nine years of we. He says this is not a Cistudo but an Emys. He has eggs of the serpentina from which the young did not come forth till the nexst spring. He thinks that the Esquimau dog is the only DOG indigenous one in the United States. He had not observed the silvery appearance and the dryness of the lycoperdon fungus in water which I showed. He had broken caterpillars and found the crystals of ice in them, but had not thawed them. When I began to tell him of my experiment on a frozen fish, he said that Pallas had shown that fishes were frozen and thawed again, but I affirmed the contrary, and then Agassiz agreed with me. Says Aristotle describes the care the pouts take of their young. I told him of Tanner's account of it, the only one I had seen. The river over the meadows again, nearly as high as in February, on account of rain of the 19th. LOUIS AGASSIZ

May 26, Tuesday: Thomas Cholmondeley, in London, was writing to Henry Thoreau to let him know that he had received, and had read in their entirety, the copies that had been posted to him of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, Waldo Emerson’s POEMS, Walt Whitman’s LEAVES OF GRASS, and Frederick Law Olmsted’s book on the Southern states.

May 26. 1857 London. My dear Thoreau I have received your four books & what is more I have read them. Olmstead was the only entire stranger. His book I think might have been shortened– & if he had indeed written only one word instead of ten – I should have liked it better. It is a horrid vice this wordiness– Emerson is beautiful & glorious.– Of all his poems the “Rhodora” is my favorite. I repeat it to myself over & over again. I am also delighted with “Guy” “Uriel” & “Beauty” Of your own book I will say nothing but I will ask you a question, which perhaps may be a very ignorant one. I have observed a few lines about Now there is something here unlike anything else in these pages. Are they absolutely your own; or whose? And afterward you shall hear what I think of them. Walt Whitmans poems have only been heard of in England to be laughed at & voted offensive– Here are “Leaves” indeed which I can no HDT WHAT? INDEX

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more understand than the book of Enoch or the inedited Poems of Daniel! I cannot believe that such a man lives unless I actually touch him. He is further ahead of me in yonder west than Buddha is behind me in the Orient. I find reality & beauty mixed with not a little violence & coarseness, both of which are to me effeminate. I am amused at his views of sexual energy – which however are absurdly false. I believe that rudeness & excitement in the act of generation are injurious to the issue. The man appears to me not to know how to behave himself. I find the gentleman altogether left out of the book! Altogether these leaves completely puzzle me. Is there actually such a man as Whitman? Has anyone seen or handled him? His is a tongue “not understanded” of the English people. It is the first book I have ever seen which I should call “a new book” & thus I would sum up the impression it makes upon me. While I am writing, Prince Albert & Duke Constantine are reviewing the guards in a corner of St James Park. I hear the music. About two hours ago I took a turn round the Park before breakfast & saw the troops formed. The varieties of colour gleamed fully out from their uniforms– They looked like an Army of soldier butterflies just dropped from the lovely green trees under which they marched. Never saw the trees look so green before as they do this spring– Some of the oaks incredibly so– I stood before some the other day in Richmond & was obliged to pinch myself & ask “is this oak tree really growing on the earth they call so bad & wicked an earth; & itself so undeniably & astonishingly fresh & fair”.? It did not look like magic. It was magic. I have had a thousand strange experiences lately – most of them delicious & some almost awful. I seem to do so much in my life when I am doing nothing at all. I seem to be hiving up strength all the while as a sleeping man does; who sleeps & dreams & strengthens himself unconsciously; only sometimes half-awakes with a sense of cool refreshment. Sometimes it is wonderful to me that I say so little & somehow cannot speak even to my friends! Why all the time I was at Concord I never could tell you much of all I have seen & done!– I never could somehow tell you anything! How ungrateful to my guardian genius to think any of it trivial or superfluous! But it always seemed already-told & long ago said – what is past & what is to come seems as it were all shut up in some very simple but very dear notes of music which I never can repeat. Tonight I intend to hear Mr. Dow the american lecture in Exeter hall– I believe it is tonight. But I go forearmed against him – being convinced in my mind that a good man is all the better for a bottle of Port under his belt every day of his life. . . . I heard Spurgeon the Preacher the other day. He said some very good things: among others “If I can make the bells ring in one heart I shall be content.” Two young men not behaving themselves, he called them as HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sternly to order as if they were serving under him– Talking of Jerusalem he said that “every good man had a mansion of his own there & a crown that would fit no other head save his”. That I felt was true. It is the voice of Spurgeon that draws more than his matter. His organ is very fine – but I fear he is hurting it by preaching to too large & frequent congregations. I found this out – because he is falling into two voices the usual clerical infirmity.

. . . The bells – church bells are ringing somewhere for the queens birthday they tell me– I have not a court-guide at hand to see if this is so. . . . London is cram-full. Not a bed! Not a corner! After all the finest sight is to see such numbers of beautiful girls riding about & ri ding well. There are certainly no women in the world like ours. The men are far, far inferior to them. I am still searching after an abode & really my adventures have been most amusing. One Sussex farmer had a very good little cottage close to Battle – but he kept a “few horses & a score or two of Pigs” under the very windows. I remarked that his stables were very filthy. The man stared hard at me – as an english farmer only can stare: ie, as a man stares who is trying to catch a thought which is always running away from him. At last he said striking his stick on the ground– “But that is why I keep the Pigs– I want their dung for my hop-grounds” We could not arrange it after that! I received a very kind note today from Concord informing me that there was a farm to be sold on the Hill just over your river & nearly opposite your house. But it is out of the question buying land by deputy! I have however almost decided to settle finally in America– There are many reasons for it. I think of running over in the trial-trip of the Great Eastern which will be at the close of the year. She is either to be the greatest success – or else to sink altogether without more ado! She is to be something decided. I was all over her the other day. The immense creature musical with the incessant tinkling of hammers is as yet unconscious of life.– By measurement she is larger than the Ark. From the promenade of her decks you see the town & trade of London; the river –(the sacred river)–; Greenwich with its park & palace; the vast town of Southwark & the continuation of it at Deptford; the Sydenham palace & the Surrey hills. Altogether a noble Poem. . . . Only think, I am losing all my teeth. All my magnificent teeth are going. I now begin to know I have had good teeth. This comes of too many cups of warm trash– If I had held to cold drinks – they would have lasted me out; but the effeminacy of tea coffee chocolate & sugar has been my bane. Miserable wretches were they who invented these comforters of exhaustion! They could not afford wine & beef. Hence God to punish them for their feeble hearts takes away the grinders from their representatives, one of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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whom I have been induced to become. But, Thoreau, if ever I live again I vow never so much as to touch anything warm. It is as dangerous as to take a Pill which I am convinced is a most immoral custom. Give me ale for breakfast & claret or Port or ale again for dinner– I should then have a better conscience & not fear to lose my teeth any more than my tongue. Farewell Thoreau. Success & the bounty of the gods attend you yrs ever Thos Cholley. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Cholmondeley wrote Thoreau about losing his teeth, speculating that this was due to warm drinks: “Only think, I am losing all my teeth. All my magnificent teeth are going. I now begin to know I have had good teeth. This comes of too many cups of warm trash– If I had held to cold drinks — they would have lasted me out; but the effeminacy of tea coffee chocolate & sugar has been my bane. Miserable wretches were they who invented these comforters of exhaustion! They could not afford wine & beef. Hence God to punish them for their feeble hearts takes away the grinders from their representatives, one of whom I have been induced to become. But, Thoreau, if ever I live again I vow never so much as to touch anything warm. It is as dangerous as to take a Pill which I am convinced is a most immoral custom. Give me ale for breakfast & claret or Port or ale again for dinner– I should then have a better conscience & not fear to lose my teeth any more than my tongue.”

The Dred Scotts became free at last. See, life isn’t always totally vicious, especially when your case has gotten lots of media attention. What happened was that the surgeon/owner, John Emerson, had died while the Dred Scott lawsuit had been dragging through the courts, and Emerson’s widow had remarried, and her new husband was more easily embarrassed than her old. So Dred Scott was able to go to work as a hotel porter in St. Louis. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Friend Daniel Ricketson leaving Concord, to his journal:

Left Concord at 7 1/ A.M. Had a long conversation with ELLEN EMERSON 2 Miss Ellen Emerson, eldest daughter of R.W. Emerson, LOUIS AGASSIZ who attends the school of Professor Agassiz at Cambridge. She is a very sensible, open-hearted, intelligent young lady, but quite peculiar and original in her ideas upon many subjects; modest of her own qualities, but evidently a strongly marked person, one that will grow in strength and finally make a noble woman. I was on the whole quite interested and pleased with her. DR. WALTER CHANNING In Boston called about noon at Dr. Walter Channing’s, in Bowdoin St.; there saw besides the doctor the two ELLERY CHANNING eldest children of my friend Wm. Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller C. and Caroline Sturgis C., daughters RGARET FULLER CHANNING worthy of a poet and of whom any father might be proud: ROLINE STURGIS CHANNING sweet sensitive girls, Margaret not 13 and Caroline about 10. How tenderly I regarded them, deprived of their lovely mother and so neglected by their talented and wayward father! Dined with Arthur B. Fuller, the MADAM OSSOLI brother, and Mrs. Fuller, the mother of the revered and lamented Margaret and Ellen — Madam Ossoli and Mrs. ELLEN FULLER CHANNING William E. Channing. After a long and instructive as well as interesting conversation, the latter part with Mrs. Fuller, I left, deeply impressed with their genuine goodness and beauty of character, about 5 P.M. In the dining-room were three engravings (saved from the wreck) of Madam Ossoli’s, to wit: “Tasso’s Oak,” “Pine in the Colonna Gardens, Rome,” Michael Angelo’s “Cypresses, Rome;” also a scene in Rome, with her residence there. In Mr. Fuller’s own room upstairs were several line engravings from paintings by Zampieri. In the front parlor was a raised plaster head of Margaret, and the engraving underneath the same, placed in the memoirs of her by her brother, very much like the original daguerreotype of Miss Ellen Channing with a child in her arms — a sweet motherly face, truly lovely; also a fine portrait of the deceased wife of Mr. Fuller, a sweet open face. In the dining-room was a portrait of the Hon. Timothy Fuller, the father of Margaret — reddish hair, blue eyes, and rather mild countenance — the portrait resembling in style that of Fisher Ames. Mr. F. presented me with several manuscript pieces of Margaret’s, and Mrs. Fuller with a volume of poems by J.W. Randall, a friend of hers. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At a later point he added the following observation to his journal, about this meal with the Fullers:

The short stay at my friend Arthur B. Fuller’s, where I only dined, was very agreeable from the cordiality of Mrs. Fuller, the mother of the celebrated M.F. Ossoli. I was introduced to Richard H. Fuller, Esq., of the legal profession, but also a farmer, or rather the owner of a farm at Wayland, some twenty miles north of Boston. He as well as the rest of the family are very devout and intelligent people.

May 26. Pink azalea in garden. Mountain-ash a day; also horse-chestnut the same. Beach plum well out, several days at least. Wood pewee, and Minott heard a loon go laughing over this morning. The vireo days have fairly begun. They are now heard amid the elm-tops. Thin coats and straw hats are worn. I have noticed that notional nervous invalids, who report to the community the exact condition of their heads and stomachs every morning, as if they alone were blessed or cursed with these parts; who are old betties and quiddles, if men; who can’t eat their breakfasts when they are ready, but play with their spoons, and hanker after an ice-cream at irregular hours; who go more than half-way to meet any invalidity, and go to bed to be sick on the slightest occasion, in the middle of the brightest forenoon,—improve the least opportunity to be sick;—I observe that such are self-indulgent persons, without any regular and absorbing employment. They are nice, discriminating, experienced in all that relates to bodily sensations. They come to you stroking their wens, manipulating their ulcers, and expect you to do the same for them. Their religion and humanity stick. They spend the day manipulating their bodies and doing no work; can never get their nails clean. Some of the earliest willows about warm edges of woods are gone to seed and downy. P. M.—To Saw Mill Brook. It is very hazy after a sultry morning, but the wind is getting east and cool. The oaks are in the gray, or a little more, and the silvery leafets of the deciduous trees invest the woods like a permanent mist. At the same season with this haze of buds comes also the kindred haziness of the air. I see the common small reddish butterflies. Very interesting now are the red tents of expanding oak leaves, as you go through sprout-lands,—the crimson velvet of the black oak and the more pinkish white oak. The salmon and pinkish-red canopies or umbrellas of the white oak are particularly interesting. The very sudden expansion of the great hickory buds, umbrella-wise. Now, at last, all leaves dare unfold, and twigs begin to shoot. As I am going down the footpath from Britton’s camp to the spring, I start a pair of nighthawks (they had the white on the wing) from amid the dry leaves at the base of a bush, a bunch of sprouts, and away they flitted in zigzag noiseless flight a few rods through the sprout-land, dexterously avoiding the twigs, uttering a faint hollow what, as if made by merely closing the bill, and one alighted flat on a stump. On those carpinus trees which have fertile flowers, the sterile are effete and drop off. The red choke-berry not in bloom, while the black is, for a day or more at least. Roadside near Britton’s camp, see a grosbeak, apparently female of the rose-breasted, quite tame, as usual, brown above, with black head and a white streak over the eye, a less distinct one beneath it, two faint bars on wings, dirty-white bill, white breast, dark spotted or streaked, and from time [to time] utters a very sharp chirp of alarm or interrogation as it peers through the twigs at me. A lady’s-slipper. At Cliffs, no doubt, before. At Abel Brooks’s (or Black Snake, or Red Cherry, or Rye) Hollow, hear the wood thrush. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In Thrush Alley, see one of those large ant-hills, recently begun, the grass and moss partly covered with sand over a circle two feet in diameter, with holes two to five inches apart, and the dry sand is dark-spotted with the fresh damp sand about each hole. My mother was telling to-night of the sounds which she used to hear summer nights when she was young and lived on the Virginia Road,—the lowing of cows, or cackling of geese, or the beating of a drum [this is a reference to the drumming of the male Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus in the woods] as far off as Hildreth’s, but above all Joe Merriam whistling to his team, for he was an admirable whistler. Says she used to get up at midnight and go and sit on the door-step when all in the house were asleep, and she could hear nothing in the world but the ticking of the clock in the house behind her. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1858

Professor Louis Agassiz persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to make a large grant, without strings but to a group of special trustees rather than to the Corporation of Harvard College, for the creation of a museum of natural history. THE SCIENCE OF 1858 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 15, Friday: Would this have been the occasion on which Henry Thoreau read, in the PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOSTON NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Volume 4, a contribution by Dr. W.I. Burnett dating to July 20, 1853?

–and a contribution by Dr. Charles T. Jackson dating to December 1852, and made notes on these in his 2d Commonplace Book? Dr. C.T. Jackson said, that he had recently observed in a pond near Plymouth, Mass. The Bream (Potomis vulgaris) guarding its eggs. The nest was formed of gravel pasted together with the eggs, and over it the fish kept its watch. On driving it HDT WHAT? INDEX

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away, it constantly returned when the alarm had passed. It could be approached so as to be easily thrown on shore with the hands. On breaking up the nest, the fish disappeared. Similar facts had been noticed of late years in the habits of many fish, but Dr. Jackson was not aware that they had been noticed with regard to this species.

January 15, 1858. At Natural History Rooms, Boston. Looked at the little grebe. Its feet are not webbed with lobes on the side like the coot, and it is quite white beneath. Saw the good-sized duck–velvet duck, with white spot on wing–which is commonly called “coot” on salt water. They have a living young bald eagle in the cellar. Talked with Dr. Kneeland. They have a golden eagle from Lexington, which K. obtained two or three years since, the first Dr. Cabot has heard of in Massachusetts. Speaking to him of my night-warbler, he asked if it uttered such a note, making the note of the myrtle-bird, ah, te-te-te te-te-te te-te-te, exactly, and said that that was the note of the white-throated sparrow, which he heard at Lake Superior, at night as well as by day.48 Same afternoon, saw Dr. Durkee in Howard Street. He has not seen the common glow-worm, and called his a variety of Lampyris noctiluca. Showed to Agassiz, Gould, and Jackson, and it was new to them. They thought it a variety of the above. His were luminous throughout, mine only in part of each segment. Saw some beautiful painted leaves in a shop window,–maple and oak. THE BOSTON SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY

April 25, Sunday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Benjamin Marston WatsonBENJAMIN MARSTON WATSON . Concord Ap. 25th 1858. Dear Sir, Your unexpected gift of pear trees reached me yesterday in good condition, and I spent the afternoon in giving them a good setting-out; but I fear that this cold weather may hurt them. However, I am inclined to think that they are insured since you have looked on them. It makes ones mouth water to read their names only. From what I hear of the extent of your bounty, if a reasonable part of the trees succeed this transplanting

Page 2 48. Vide his report, July 15, 1857. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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will make a new era for Concord to date from. Mine must be a lucky star, for day before yesterday I received a box of [M]ay-flowers from Brattleboro, and yesterday morning your pear trees, and at evening a humming-bird’s nest from Worcester. This looks like fairy housekeep- ing. —I discovered two new plants in Concord last winter—the Labrador Tea (Ledum latifolium) and Yew (Taxus baccata). By the way, in January I communicated with Dr. Durkee, whose report on glow-worms I sent you, and it appeared, as I suspected, that he (and, by his account, Agassiz, Gould, Jackson,

Page 3 and others, to whom he showed them) did not consider them a distinct species, but a variety of the common, or Lampyris noctiluca— some of which you got in Lincoln. Durkee, at least, had never seen the last. I told him that I had no doubt about their being a distinct species. His, however, were luminous throughout every part of the body, as those which you sent me were not while I had them. Is nature as full of vigor to your eyes as ever, or do you detect some falling off at last? Is the mystery of the hog’s bristles cleared up,—and with HDT WHAT? INDEX

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it that of our life? It is the [Two lines missing]

Page 4 question to the exclusion of every other interest.

I am sorry to hear of the burning of your woods; but, thank heaven[,] your great ponds and your sea cannot be burnt. I love to think of your warm sandy wood roads, and your breezy island out in the sun. What a prospect you can get every morning from the hill top east of your house! I think that even the heathen that I am, could say, or sing, or dance morning prayers there of some kind. Please remember me to Mrs Watson, & to the rest of your family—who are helping the sun shine yonder— [Two lines missing, apparently the closing and signature] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, or Franklin Benjamin Sanborn checked out for him, volumes 28, 29, and 30 of a series RELATIONS DE LA NOU — the JESUIT RELATION volumes for 1666-1667, 1667-1668, and 1668-1669.49

http://www.canadiana.org

May 4, Tuesday: The Scotts of St. Louis were required to post bond of $1,000 in order to be allowed by white people to continue to reside in Missouri (their friend Taylor Blow acted as security).

May 4. The Salix pedicellaris by railroad, apparently not for two or three days. The Missouri currant, probably to-day. P.M. -- By boat to Holden Swamp. To go among the willows now and hear the bees hum is equal to going some hundreds of miles southward toward summer. I see along the sides of the river, i.e., where the bottom is permanently covered, what I have heretofore called the oat spawn, attached to old pontederia stems, etc. [Vide the 8th.], now some foot or eighteen inches under the surface. It is not black and white, like that of the Rana halecina, sylvatica, and palustris, which I cannot distinguish from one another, but a pale brown or fawn-color. Some is pretty fresh or recently laid, others already flatted out. Hence, from comparison with my earlier sylvatica and halecina spawn, I judge that it may have been laid ten days. [Is it not that of the R. Fontinalis?] At Clamshell Shore, I see a clam lying up with open valves. 49. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Salix pedicellaris at Holden's Swamp, staminate, out apparently two days. It is still warmer than May 1st, yet I hear the stertorous tut test tut of hardly so many frogs (R. palustris chiefly, I suppose) as then. As with the halecina, it is the first sudden heats that excite them most, methinks. I find hopping in the meadow a Rana halecina, much brighter than any I have seen this year. There is not only a vivid green halo about each spot, but the back is vivid light-green between the spots. I think this was not the case with any of the hundreds I saw a month ago!! Why?? The brassy lines along the sides of the back are narrower (only about one sixteenth of an inch) and more prominent than the more fawn-colored lines of the R. palustris. In this one, which I carry home and compare with the palustris, there is a large spot on each orbit, but none on the top of the head in front. It is all white beneath, except a tinge of greenish yellow on the abdomen. Witherell speaks of the R. palustris as the yellow-legged frog, very properly. See several bullfrogs along the river, but silent. I go into Holden Swamp to hear warblers. See a little blue butterfly (or moth) -- saw one yesterday -- fluttering about over the dry brown leaves in a warm place by the swamp-side, making a pleasant contrast. From time to time have seen the large Vanessa Antiopa resting on the black willows, like a leaf still adhering. As I sit there by the swamp-side this warm summery afternoon, I hear the crows cawing hoarsely, and from time to time see one flying toward the top of a tall white pine. At length I distinguish a hen-hawk perched on the top. The crow repeatedly stoops toward him, now from this side, now from that, passing near his head each time, but he pays not the least attention to it. [ILLUSTRATION] I hear the weese wesc wese of the creeper continually from the swamp. It is the prevailing note there. And methought I heard a redstart's note (?), but oftener than the last I heard the tweezer note, or screeper note, of the parti-colored warbler, bluish above, yellow or orange throat and breast, white vent, and white on wings, neck above yellowish, going restlessly over the trees -- maples, etc. -- by the swamp, in creeper fashion, and as you may hear at the same time the true creeper's note without seeing it, you might think it uttered the creeper's note also. The red-wings, though here and there in flocks, are apparently beginning to build. I judge by their shyness and alarm in the bushes along the river and their richer, solitary warbling. Coming back, I talk with Witherell at William Wheeler's landing. He comes pushing Wheeler’s square-ended boat down-stream with a fish-spear. Says he caught a snapping turtle in the river May 1st. He sits on the side of my boat by the shore a little while, talking with me. There is a. hole in the knee of his pants as big as your hand, and he keeps passing his hand over this slowly, to hide his bare skin, which is sunburnt and the color of his face, though the latter is reddened by rum, of which his breath smells. But how intimate he is with mud and its inhabitants. He says he caught a large pickerel the other night with spawn in it yet; that Henry Bigelow put many little trout into that round pond (Green Pond he calls it) on the Marlborough road, which Elbridge Haynes caught a few years after, weighing two or three pounds apiece. A man told him that he saw a trout weighing about a pound and a half darting at a pickerel, and every time he darted he took a bit off a fin, and at last the man walked in and caught the pickerel, and it weighed five pounds. This was in Spectacle Pond in Littleton. A fisherman told him once that the common eel “gendered” into the river clam, and the young fed on the clam till they were big enough to get other food, and hence you found so many dead clams in the river. I asked him if he knew what fish made the stone-heaps in the river. He said the lamprey eel. He saw one making one last spring about this time, as he was going across the fields by the river near Tarbell's to get seed corn. It was a single lamprey piling up the stones. He used to see thousands of them where he lived a boy, where the lead pipe factory was. LOUIS AGASSIZ Agassiz says in his Introduction (page 175), “I have known it [the Chelonara serpentina] snapping in the same fierce manner [which somebody else had described at a later period when it was very young] as it does when full grown, at a time it was still a pale almost colorless embryo, wrapped up in its foetal envelopes, with a yolk larger than itself hanging from its sternum, three months before hatching.”

AGASSIZ’S INTRODUCTION HDT WHAT? INDEX

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May 14, Friday: The Reverend George Luther Stearns wrote from Boston to loose cannon John Brown in Chatham, Canada West, pointing out that the weapons the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee had entrusted to him had been intended specifically for the defense of Kansas and not for any other purpose. A member of the committee was on his way “to confer with you as to the best mode of disposing of them.”

(Remember the Golden Rule, Captain: Those who have the gold make the rules.)

May 14. 5.30 A.M. — Up railroad. Hear and see the red-eye on an oak. The tail is slightly forked and apparently three quarters of an inch beyond wings; all whitish beneath. Hear and see a redstart. Methinks I did also on the 10th? The rhythm a little way off is ah, tche tche tche’-ar. 10 A.M. — To Hill. A kingbird. Saw a young robin dead. Saw the Viola palmata, early form, yesterday; how long? Look at White Avens Shore. See what I call vernal grass in bloom in many places. The Salix sericea, large and small, and the petiolaris or loose-catkinned (so far as I know their staminate flowers) are now out of bloom. The rostrala not quite done. Some of its catkins now three and a half inches long. The alba not quite done. S. pedicellaris by railroad about done, and the Torreyana done. LOUIS AGASSIZ Picked up, floating, an Emys picta, hatched last year. It is an inch and one-twentieth long in the upper shell and agrees with Agassiz’s description at that age. Agassiz says he could never obtain a specimen of the insculpta only one year old, it is so rarely met with, and young Emydidae are so aquatic. I have seen them frequently. To-day, for the first time, it appears to me summerlike and a new season. There is a tender green on the meadows and.just leafing trees. The blossoms of the cherry, peach, pear, etc., are conspicuous, and the air is suddenly full of fragrance. Houses are seen to stand amid blossoming fruit trees, and the air about them is full of fragrance and the music of birds. As I go down the railroad at evening, I hear the incessant evening song of the bay-wing [Vesper Sparrow Pooecetes gramineus] from far over the fields. It suggests pleasant associations. Are they not heard chiefly at this season? The fruit of the early aspen is almost as large — its catkins — as those of the early willow. It will soon be ripe. The very common puffed-up yellow ovaries make quite a show, like some normal fruit; even quite pretty. I discovered this morning that a large rock three feet in diameter was partially hollow, and broke into it at length with a stone in order to reach some large black crystals which I could partly see. I found that it had been the retreat of a squirrel, and it had left many nuts there. It had entered a small hole bristling with crystals, and there found a chamber or grotto a foot long at least, surrounded on all sides by crystals. They thus explore and carry their nuts into every crevice, even in the rocks. Celandine by cemetery. One tells me he saw to-day the arum flower. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

July 1, Thursday: Henry Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. Blake.

Galvanized by a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace in the South Pacific, in which Wallace had come to the same conclusions about the development of species as Darwin but had been unable to propose any mechanism that would enable this development, Lyell and Joseph Hooker presented Wallace’s essay, along with some unpublished fragments from Charles Darwin’s writings on the subject, before the Linnaean Society in London. No attempt was made to contact Wallace until this eminently fair proceeding was completed. BIOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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August 23, Monday: Waldo Emerson wrote his poem “The Adirondacks” about his visit to the Adirondack Mountains

Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change.

of upstate New York with the artist William James Stillman,50 Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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50. Here is a painting which Stillman produced in this year, “The Philosophers’ Camp in the Adirondacks,” now at the Concord Free Public Library, depicting these immortals at their target practice, with Emerson watching in the center of the frame: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar of Concord, Samuel Gray Ward, John

Holmes (brother of Oliver Wendell Holmes), Professor Jeffries Wyman (Comparative Anatomy, Harvard College), and four Boston physicians (see painting), in which he had been so utterly alienated by Nature.51 After spending some time at Stillman’s hunting lodge, the group had taken a boat across Lake Champlain and had ridden in farm carts to Follansbee Lake in upstate New York, where they had camped out.

There is a range of questions which neither Thoreau scholars nor Emerson scholars seem to have considered: 1.) Had Thoreau been invited to participate in this well-organized camping trip? 2.) If he’d been invited to take part — why didn’t he? (The reason commonly given for his failure to participate in the Saturday Club, to wit cigar smoke in the hotel rooms, wouldn’t seem to apply in the great outdoors.) 3.) If he hadn’t been invited — why not? Had he, like Frederick Douglass, somehow been blackballed?

August 23, 1858. Emerson says that he and Agassiz and Company broke some dozens of ale bottles, one after another, with their bullets, in the Adirondack country, using them for marks! It sounds rather Cockneyish. He says that he shot a peetweet [Spotted Sandpiper Actitis macularia] for Agassiz, and this, I think he said, was the first game he ever bagged. He carried a double-barrelled gun – rifle and shotgun – which he bought for the purpose, which he says received much commendation – all parties thought it a very pretty piece. Think of Emerson shooting a peetweet (with shot) for Agassiz, and cracking an ale bottle (after emptying it) with his rifle at six rods! They cut several pounds of lead out of the tree. It is just what Mike Saunders, the merchant’s clerk, did when he was there. The writer needs the suggestion and correction that a correspondent or companion is. I sometimes remember something which I have told another as worth telling to myself, i. e. writing in my Journal. Channing, thinking of walks and life in the country, says, “You don’t want to discover anything new, but to discover something old,” i. e. be reminded that such things still are.

51. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once bailed out of a hunting trip with his sidekick Louis Agassiz upon being told that Waldo Emerson would be along and would be armed. “Somebody will be shot,” he declared. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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READ ALL ABOUT IT

In August, Stillman, their variously fit and attractive captain, led the Adirondack Club, not yet to their Lake Ampersand, the purchase of which was probably not quite completed, but to a lake easier of access from Bill Martin’s, on Lower Saranac, the end of the long wagon drive from Keeseville, New York. Stillman wrote: — The lake where our first encampment was made was known as Follansbee Pond, and it lies in a cul-de-sac of the chain of lakes and streams named after one of the first of the Jesuit explorers of the Northern States, Père Raquette. Being elected captain of the hunt, and chief guide of the Club, it depended on me also, as the oldest woodsman, to select the locality and superintend the construction of the camp, and the choice was determined by the facility of access, the abundance of game, and the fact that the lake was out of any route to regions beyond, giving the maximum of seclusion, as the etiquette of the woods prevented another party camping near us. Follansbee was then a rare and beautiful piece of untouched nature, divided from the highway, the Raquette, by a marsh of several miles of weary navigation, shut in by the hills on all sides but that by which we entered, the forest still unscarred, and the tall white pines standing in files along the lake shores and up over the ridges, not a scar of axe or fire being visible as we searched the shore for a fitting spot to make our vacation lodging-place. Many things are requisite for a good camping-ground, and our camp was one of the best I have ever seen, at the head of the lake, with beach, spring, and maple grove. Two of the hugest maples I ever saw gave us the shelter of their spreading branches and the supports to the camp walls. Here we placed our ridge-pole, laid our roof of bark of firs (stripped from trees far away in the forest, not to disfigure our dwelling-place with stripped and dying trees), cut an open path to the lakeside, and then left our house to the naiads and dryads, and hurried back forty miles to meet our guests. Tradition has long known it as the “Philosophers’ Camp,” though, like Troy, its site is unknown to all the subsequent generations of guides, and I doubt if in all the Adirondack country there is a man except my old guide, Steve Martin, who could point out the place where it stood.” However surely Oblivion was following in the wake of those Argonauts of the forest chain of lakes, the freshness HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of their joy still lingers in the verses of one. “Welcome!” the wood-god murmured through the leaves,- “Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.” Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple boughs, Which o’er-hung, like a cloud, our camping-fire. Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks, Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor. “Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers, daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change, Sleep on the fragrant brush as on down-beds. Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air That circled freshly in their forest-dress Made them to boys again.”

Stillman painted on the spot an admirable picture of the morning hours’ work or diversions, before the excursions by boat or on foot began, the sun filtering down between the foliage of the vast, columnar trunks of pine, maple, and hemlock. There are two groups; on one side, Agassiz and Dr. Jeffries Wyman dissecting a fish on a stump, with John Holmes, doubtless with humorous comment, and Dr. Estes Howe, as spectators; on the other, Lowell, Judge Hoar, Dr. Amos Binney, and Woodman trying their marksmanship with rifles, under the instruction of the tall Don Quixote-like Stillman; between the groups, interested, but apart, stands Waldo Emerson, pleased with the gifts of all. Prolonging the shooting party towards the edge of the picture two or three guides are gathered, silent critics.52 In recruiting this company the rifle had proved both attractive and repellent. Stillman’s skill whether as marksman or hunter was unusual, and he was an admirable instructor for amateurs. Of his experiences in recruiting the party he wrote: “I had done all I could to induce Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes to join the party, but the latter was too closely identified with the Hub in all its mental operations to care for unhumanized nature, and Longfellow was too strongly attached to the conditions of completely civilized life to enjoy roughing it in flannels and sleeping on fir boughs. The company of his great- brained friends was a temptation at times, I think; but he hated killing animals, had no interest in fishing, and was too settled in his habits to enjoy so great a change. Possibly he was decided in his refusal by Emerson’s purchase of a rifle. “Is it true that Emerson is going to take a gun.” he asked me. “Yes,” I replied. “Then I shall not go,” he said; “somebody will be shot.”53 Though Emerson was once paddled noiselessly by night into a remote bay, “jack hunting” (that is, with a torch and reflector in the bow of the skiff), and the guide pointed to the water’s edge, where a deer was gazing at the wondrous light, and whispered “Shoot,” Emerson could only see a “square mist,” and

52. This picture was bought by Judge Hoar, and bequeathed by him to the Concord Public Library. 53. It would be a cheap shot to mention Dick Cheney in this context, so I won’t do it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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his rifle remains until now guiltless of blood of man or beast. Each man of the company had a special guide assigned to him by Stillman, but he asked and received the privilege of doing that service in full for Agassiz, rowing him in his own boat on the water journey, and almost daily on his collecting excursions. He wrote: — For I had the feeling which all had who came under the magic of his colossal individuality, — the myriad- minded one to whom nothing came amiss or unfamiliar, and who had a facet for every man he came in contact with. His inexhaustible bonhomie won even the guides to a personal fealty they showed no other of our band; his wide science gave us continual lectures on all the elements of nature — no plant, no insect, no quadruped hiding its secret from him. The lessons he taught us of the leaves of the pine, and of the vicissitudes of the Laurentine Range, in one of whose hollows we lay; the way he drew new facts from the lake, and knew them when he saw them, as though he had set his seal on them before they were known; the daily dissection of the fish, the deer, the mice (for which he had brought his traps), were studies in which we were his assistants and pupils. All this made being with him not only “a liberal education,” but perpetual sunshine and good fortune. When we went out, I at the oars and he at the dredge or insect-net, or examining the plants by the marsh-side, his spirit was a perpetual spring of science. When he and Wyman entered on the discussion of a scientific subject (and they always worked together), science seemed as easy as versification when Lowell was in the mood, and all sat around inhaling wisdom with the mountain air. Nothing could have been, to any man with the scientific bent, more intensely interesting than the academy of two of the greatest scientists of their day. Stillman’s high estimate of the wise, gentle, judicial, and modest Jeffries Wyman will be given in the sketch of him later. At our dinners, the semblance of which life will never offer me again, the gods sent their best accompaniments and influences — health, appetite, wit, and poetry, with good digestion. Our foaming ale we drank from hunters’ pans — Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread. All ate like abbots, and, if any missed Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss With hunter’s appetite and peals of mirth. Lowell was the Magnus Apollo of the camp. His Castalian humour, his unceasing play of wit and erudition — poetry and the best of the poets always on tap at the table — all know them who knew him well, though not many as I did; but when he sat on one side HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the table, and Judge Hoar (the most pyrotechnical wit I have ever known) and he were matching table-talk, with Emerson and Agassiz to sit as umpires and revive the vein as it menaced to flag, Holmes and Estes Howe not silent in the well-matched contest, the forest echoed with such laughter as no club ever knew, and the owls came in the trees overhead to wonder. These were symposia to which fortune has invited few men, and which no one invited could ever forget.... For Lowell I had a passionate personal attachment to which death and time have only given a twilight glory. Here Stillman’s narrative must be interrupted to put on record a story of Lowell, showing a quality in him that would hardly have been divined in the Cambridge poet. Emerson wrote it in his pocket notebook on the day after the daring venture. On the top of a large white pine in a bay was an osprey’s nest around which the ospreys were screaming, five or six. We thought there were young birds in it, and sent Preston to the top. This looked like an adventure. The tree might be a hundred and fifty feet high, at least; sixty feet clean straight stem, without a single branch, and, as Lowell and I measured it by the tape as high as we could reach, fourteen feet, six inches in girth. Preston took advantage of a hemlock close by it and climbed till he got on the branches, then went to the top of the pine and found the nest empty, though the great birds wheeled and screamed about him. He said he could climb the bare stem of the pine, “though it would be awful hard work.” When he came down, I asked him to go up it a little way, which he did, clinging to the corrugations of the bark. Afterwards Lowell watched long for a chance to shoot the osprey, but he soared magnificently, and would not alight.... Lowell, next morning, was missing at breakfast, and, when he came to camp, told me he had climbed Preston’s pine tree. To resume Stillman’s record: — To Emerson, as to most men who are receptive to Nature’s message, the forest was the overpowering fact. We climb the bank, And in the twilight of the forest noon Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard. The “twilight of the forest noon” is the most concentrated expression of the one dominant sentiment of a poetic mind on first entering this eternal silence and shadow.... We were much together. I rowed him into the innermost recesses of Follansbee Water, and would, at his request, sometimes land him in a solitary part of the lake-shore, and leave him to his emotions or studies. We have no post, and letters neither came nor went, and so, probably, none record the moment’s mood; but well I remember how he marvelled at the completeness HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of the circle of life in the forest. He examined the guides, and me as one of them, with the interest of a discoverer of a new race. Me he had known in another phase of existence — at the Club, in the multitude, one of the atoms of the social whole. To find me axe in hand, ready for the elementary functions of a savage life, — to fell the trees, to kill the deer, or catch the trout, and at need to cook them, — in this to him new phenomenon of a rounded and self-sufficient individuality, waiting for, and waited on, by no one, he received a conception of life which had the same attraction in its completeness and roundness that a larger and fully organized existence would have had. It was a form of independence which he had never realized before, and he paid it the respect of a new discovery.... What seems to me the truth is, that Emerson instinctively divided men into two classes, with one of which he formed personal attachments which, though tranquil and undemonstrative, as was his nature, were lasting; in the other he simply found his objects of study, problems to be solved and their solutions recorded. There was the least conceivable self- assertion in him; he was the best listener a genuine thinker, or one whom he thought to be such, ever had; and always seemed to prefer to listen rather than to talk, to observe and study rather than to discourse. So he did not say much before Nature; he took in her influences as the earth takes the rain. He was minutely interested in seeing how the old guides reversed the tendencies of civilization.... Looking back across the gulf which hides all the details of life, the eternal absence which forgets personal qualities, the calm, platonic serenity of Emerson stands out from all our company as a crystallization of impersonal and universal humanity; no vexation, no mishap, could disturb his philosophy, or rob him of its lesson. The magical quality of the forest is that of oblivion of all that is left in the busy world, of past trouble and coming care. The steeds that brought us in had no place behind for black Care. We lived, as Emerson says,— Lords of this realm, Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day Rounded by hours where each outdid the last In miracles of pomp, we must be proud, As if associates of the sylvan gods. We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac, So pure the Alpine element we breathed, So light, so lofty pictures came and went. Stillman, writing the above happy memories of a golden prime in HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the last years of the century, said: — A generation has gone by since that unique meet, and of those who were at it only John Holmes and I now survive. The voices of that merry assemblage of “wise and polite” vacation-keepers come to us from the land of dreams; the echoes they awakened in the wild wood give place to the tender and tearful evocation of poetic memory; they and their summering have passed into the traditions of the later camp-fires, where the guides tell of the “Philosophers’ Camp,” of the very location of which they have lost the knowledge. Hardly a trace of it now exists as we then knew it. The lumberer, the reckless sportsman with his camp-fires and his more reckless and careless guide, the axe and the fire, have left no large expanse of virgin forest in all the Adirondack region, and every year effaces the original aspect of it more completely. Emerson, on the spot, thus strove to picture Stillman’s heroic figure: — “Gallant artist, head and hand. Adopted of Tahawus grand, In the wild domesticated, Man and Mountain rightly mated, Like forest chief the forest ranged As one who had exchanged After old Indian mode Totem and bow and spear In sign of peace and brotherhood With his Indian peer. Easily chief, who held The key of each occasion In our designed plantation, Can hunt and fish and rule and row. And out-shoot each in his own bow, And paint and plan and execute Till each blossom became fruit; Earning richly for his share The governor’s chair, Bore the day’s duties in his head. And with living method sped. Firm, unperplexed, By no flaws of temper vexed, Inspiring trust. And only dictating because he must. And all he carried in his heart He could publish and define Orderly line by line On canvas by his art. I could wish So worthy Master worthier pupils had — The best were bad.”

One day, that August, a thrill of human communication shot under the Atlantic Ocean from continent to continent. By a strange chance the quick-travelling report of it reached the campers among the primeval woods while on a lake excursion. Emerson HDT WHAT? INDEX

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tells, in his forest notebook, how “Loud exulting cries From boat to boat, and in the echoes round. Greet the glad miracle. Thought’s new-found path Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways. Match God’s equator with a zone of art, And lift man’s public action to a height Worthy the enormous cloud of witnesses, When linked hemispheres attest the deed. A spasm throbbing through the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. The lightning has run masterless too long; He must to school and learn his verb and noun And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage.”54 This miracle had, indeed, been shown to be possible, yet almost immediately some mischance that befel the cable in the depths of the sea, interrupted its use for seven years. When this occurred, another of our poets, “The Professor,” sent forth the question on everybody’s lips as to who in the Provinces had received and transmitted the few words that emerged from the ocean at the western landing-place. He published the whole conversation, as follows: — DE SAUTY An Electro-Chemical Eclogue Professor: Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal! Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you, Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder, Holding talk with nations? Is there a De Sauty,55 ambulant on Tellus, Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in nightcap, Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature Three times daily patent? Breathes there such a being, Ceruleo-Nasal? Or is he a Mythus, — ancient word for “humbug,” Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed Romulus and Remus? Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty? Or a living product of galvanic action, Like the acarus bred in Crosse’s flint-solution? Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!

Blue-Nose: Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger, Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster! 54. In his poem “The Adirondacs” the reception of this wonderful news is told at greater length. 55. The first messages received through the submarine cable were sent by an electrical expert, a mysterious personage who signed himself De Sauty. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me, Thou shalt hear them answered. When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable, At the polar focus of the wire electric Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us; Called himself “De Sauty.” As the small opossum, held in pouch maternal, Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia, So the unknown stranger held the wire electric, Sucking in the current. When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger, — Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy, — And from time to time, in sharp articulation. Said, “All right! De Sauty.” From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples. Till the land was filled with loud reverberations Oi! All Tight! De Sauty.” When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger, — Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker, — Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odour Of disintegration. Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead. Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence. Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended, There was no De Sauty. Nothing but a cloud of elements organic, C.O.H.N., Ferrum, Chlor., Flu., Sil., Potassa, Calc. Sod. Phosph. Mag. Sulphur, Mang.(?) Alumin.(?) Cuprum, (?) Such as man is made of. Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished! There is no De Sauty now there is no current! Give us a new cable, then again we’ll hear him Cry, “All right! De Sauty.”

Emerson also wrote about this jolly camp adventure, without ever claiming to be in any sense a leader: A JOURNAL. DEDICATED TO MY FELLOW-TRAVELLERS IN AUGUST, 1858. Wise and polite, —and if I drew Their several portraits, you would own Chaucer had no such worthy crew, Nor Boccace in Decameron. We crossed Champlain to Keeseville with our friends, Thence, in strong country carts, rode up the forks Of the Ausable stream, intent to reach The Adirondac lakes. At Martin’s Beach We chose our boats; each man a boat and guide,— Ten men, ten guides, our company all told. Next morn, we swept with oars the Saranac, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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With skies of benediction, to Round Lake, Where all the sacred mountains drew around us, Tahawus, Seaward, MacIntyre, Baldhead, And other Titans without muse or name. Pleased with these grand companions, we glide on, Instead of flowers, crowned with a wreath of hills, And made our distance wider, boat from boat, As each would hear the oracle alone. By the bright morn the gay flotilla slid Through files of flags that gleamed like bayonets, Through gold-moth-haunted beds of pickerel-flower, Through scented banks of lilies white and gold, Where the deer feeds at night, the teal by day, On through the Upper Saranac, and up Pere Raquette stream, to a small tortuous pass Winding through grassy shallows in and out, Two creeping miles of rushes, pads, and sponge, To Follansbee Water, and the Lake of Loons. Northward the length of Follansbee we rowed, Under low mountains, whose unbroken ridge Ponderous with beechen forest sloped the shore. A pause and council: then, where near the head On the east a bay makes inward to the land Between two rocky arms, we climb the bank, And in the twilight of the forest noon Wield the first axe these echoes ever heard. We cut young trees to make our poles and thwarts, Barked the white spruce to weatherfend the roof, Then struck a light, and kindled the camp-fire. The wood was sovran with centennial trees,— Oak, cedar, maple, poplar, beech and fir, Linden and spruce. In strict society Three conifers, white, pitch, and Norway pine, Five-leaved, three-leaved, and two-leaved, grew thereby. Our patron pine was fifteen feet in girth, The maple eight, beneath its shapely tower. “Welcome!” the wood god murmured through the leaves,— “Welcome, though late, unknowing, yet known to me.” Evening drew on; stars peeped through maple-boughs, Which o’erhung, like a cloud, our camping fire. Decayed millennial trunks, like moonlight flecks, Lit with phosphoric crumbs the forest floor. Ten scholars, wonted to lie warm and soft In well-hung chambers daintily bestowed, Lie here on hemlock-boughs, like Sacs and Sioux, And greet unanimous the joyful change. So fast will Nature acclimate her sons, Though late returning to her pristine ways. Off soundings, seamen do not suffer cold; And, in the forest, delicate clerks, unbrowned, Sleep on the fragrant brush, as on down-beds. Up with the dawn, they fancied the light air That circled freshly in their forest dress Made them to boys again. Happier that they Slipped off their pack of duties, leagues behind, At the first mounting of the giant stairs. No placard on these rocks warned to the polls, No door-bell heralded a visitor, No courier waits, no letter came or went, Nothing was ploughed, or reaped, or bought, or sold; HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The frost might glitter, it would blight no crop, The falling rain will spoil no holiday. We were made freemen of the forest laws, All dressed, like Nature, fit for her own ends, Essaying nothing she cannot perform. In Adirondac lakes, At morn or noon, the guide rows bareheaded: Shoes, flannel shirt, and kersey trousers make His brief toilette: at night, or in the rain, He dons a surcoat which he doffs at morn: A paddle in the right hand, or an oar, And in the left, a gun, his needful arms. By turns we praised the stature of our guides, Their rival strength and suppleness, their skill To row, to swim, to shoot, to build a camp, To climb a lofty stem, clean without boughs Full fifty feet, and bring the eaglet down: Temper to face wolf, bear, or catamount, And wit to track or take him in his lair. Sound, ruddy men, frolic and innocent, In winter, lumberers; in summer, guides; Their sinewy arms pull at the oar untired Three times ten thousand strokes, from morn to eve. Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen! No city airs or arts pass current here. Your rank is all reversed: let men of cloth Bow to the stalwart churls in overalls: They are the doctors of the wilderness, And we the low-prized laymen. In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test Which few can put on with impunity. What make you, master, fumbling at the oar? Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretension here. The sallow knows the basket-maker’s thumb; The oar, the guide’s. Dare you accept the tasks He shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes, Tell the sun’s time, determine the true north, Or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods To thread by night the nearest way to camp? Ask you, how went the hours? All day we swept the lake, searched every cove, North from Camp Maple, south to Osprey Bay, Watching when the loud dogs should drive in deer, Or whipping its rough surface for a trout; Or bathers, diving from the rock at noon; Challenging Echo by our guns and cries; Or listening to the laughter of the loon; Or, in the evening twilight’s latest red, Beholding the procession of the pines; Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, In the boat’s bows, a silent night-hunter Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist. Hark to that muffled roar! a tree in the woods Is fallen: but hush! it has not scared the buck Who stands astonished at the meteor light, Then turns to bound away, —is it too late? Sometimes we tried our rifles at a mark, Six rods, sixteen, twenty, or forty-five; Sometimes our wits at sally and retort, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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With laughter sudden as the crack of rifle; Or parties scaled the near acclivities Competing seekers of a rumoured lake, Whose unauthenticated waves we named Lake Probability, —our carbuncle, Long sought, not found. Two Doctors in the camp Dissected the slain deer, weighed the trout’s brain, Captured the lizard, salamander, shrew, Crab, mice, snail, dragon-fly, minnow, and moth; Insatiate skill in water or in air Waved the scoop-net, and nothing came amiss; The while, one leaden pot of alcohol Gave an impartial tomb to all the kinds. Not less the ambitious botanist sought plants, Orchis and gentian, fern, and long whip-scirpus, Rosy polygonum, lake-margin’s pride, Hypnum and hydnum, mushroom, sponge, and moss, Or harebell nodding in the gorge of falls. Above, the eagle flew, the osprey screamed, The raven croaked, owls hooted, the woodpecker Loud hammered, and the heron rose in the swamp. As water poured through the hollows of the hills To feed this wealth of lakes and rivulets, So Nature shed all beauty lavishly From her redundant horn. Lords of this realm, Bounded by dawn and sunset, and the day Rounded by hours where each outdid the last In miracles of pomp, we must be proud, As if associates of the sylvan gods. We seemed the dwellers of the zodiac, So pure the Alpine element we breathed, So light, so lofty pictures came and went. We trode on air, contemned the distant town, Its timorous ways, big trifles, and we planned That we should build, hard-by, a spacious lodge, And how we should come hither with our sons, Hereafter, —willing they, and more adroit. Hard fare, hard bed, and comic misery,— The midge, the blue-fly, and the mosquito Painted our necks, hands, ankles, with red bands: But, on the second day, we heed them not, Nay, we saluted them Auxiliaries, Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names. For who defends our leafy tabernacle From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,— Who but the midge, mosquito, and the fly, Which past endurance sting the tender cit, But which we learn to scatter with a smudge, Or baffle by a veil, or slight by scorn? Our foaming ale we drunk from hunters’ pans, Ale, and a sup of wine. Our steward gave Venison and trout, potatoes, beans, wheat-bread; All ate like abbots, and, if any missed Their wonted convenance, cheerly hid the loss With hunters’ appetite and peals of mirth. And Stillman, our guides’ guide, and Commodore, Crusoe, Crusader, Pius Æneas, said aloud, “Chronic dyspepsia never came from eating HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Food indigestible”: —then murmured some, Others applauded him who spoke the truth. Nor doubt but visitings of graver thought Checked in these souls the turbulent heyday ’Mid all the hints and glories of the home. For who can tell what sudden privacies Were sought and found, amid the hue and cry Of scholars furloughed from their tasks, and let Into this Oreads’ fended Paradise, As chapels in the city’s thoroughfares, Whither gaunt Labour slips to wipe his brow, And meditate a moment on Heaven’s rest. Judge with what sweet surprises Nature spoke To each apart, lifting her lovely shows To spiritual lessons pointed home. And as through dreams in watches of the night, So through all creatures in their form and ways Some mystic hint accosts the vigilant, Not clearly voiced, but waking a new sense Inviting to new knowledge, one with old. Hark to that petulant chirp! what ails the warbler? Mark his capricious ways to draw the eye. Now soar again. What wilt thou, restless bird, Seeking in that chaste blue a bluer light, Thirsting in that pure for a purer sky? And presently the sky is changed; O world! What pictures and what harmonies are thine! The clouds are rich and dark, the air serene, So like the soul of me, what if’t were me? A melancholy better than all mirth. Comes the sweet sadness at the retrospect, Or at the foresight of obscurer years? Like yon slow-sailing cloudy promontory, Whereon the purple iris dwells in beauty Superior to all its gaudy skirts. And, that no day of life may lack romance, The spiritual stars rise nightly, shedding down A private beam into each several heart. Daily the bending skies solicit man, The seasons chariot him from this exile, The rainbow hours bedeck his glowing chair, The storm-winds urge the heavy weeks along, Suns haste to set, that so remoter lights Beckon the wanderer to his vaster home. With a vermilion pencil mark the day When of our little fleet three cruising skiffs Entering Big Tupper, bound for the foaming Falls Of loud Bog River, suddenly confront Two of our mates returning with swift oars. One held a printed journal waving high Caught from a late-arriving traveller, Big with great news, and shouted the report For which the world had waited, now firm fact, Of the wire-cable laid beneath the sea, And landed on our coast, and pulsating With ductile fire. Loud, exulting cries From boat to boat, and to the echoes round, Greet the glad miracle. Thought’s new-found path Shall supplement henceforth all trodden ways, Match God’s equator with a zone of art, And lift man’s public action to a height HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Worthy the enormous clouds of witnesses, When linked hemispheres attest his deed. We have few moments in the longest life Of such delight and wonder as there grew,— Nor yet unsuited to that solitude: A burst of joy, as if we told the fact To ears intelligent; as if gray rock And cedar grove and cliff and lake should know This feat of wit, this triumph of mankind; As if we men were talking in a vein Of sympathy so large, that ours was theirs, And a prime end of the most subtle element Were fairly reached at last. Wake, echoing caves! Bend nearer, faint day-moon! Yon thundertops, Let them hear well! ’t is theirs as much as ours. A spasm throbbing through the pedestals Of Alp and Andes, isle and continent, Urging astonished Chaos with a thrill To be a brain, or serve the brain of man. The lightning has run masterless too long; He must to school, and learn his verb and noun, And teach his nimbleness to earn his wage, Spelling with guided tongue man’s messages Shot through the weltering pit of the salt sea. And yet I marked, even in the manly joy Of our great-hearted Doctor in his boat, (Perchance I erred,) a shade of discontent; Or was it for mankind a generous shame, As of a luck not quite legitimate, Since fortune snatched from wit the lion’s part? Was it a college pique of town and gown, As one within whose memory it burned That not academicians, but some lout, Found ten years since the Californian gold? And now, again, a hungry company Of traders, led by corporate sons of trade, Perversely borrowing from the shop the tools Of science, not from the philosophers, Had won the brightest laurel of all time. ’Twas always thus, and will be; hand and head Are ever rivals: but, though this be swift, The other slow, —this the Prometheus, And that the Jove, —yet, howsoever hid, It was from Jove the other stole his fire, And, without Jove, the good had never been. It is not Iroquois or cannibals, But ever the free race with front sublime, And these instructed by their wisest too, Who do the feat, and lift humanity. Let not him mourn who best entitled was, Nay, mourn not one: let him exult, Yea, plant the tree that bears best apples, plant, And water it with wine, nor watch askance Whether thy sons or strangers eat the fruit: Enough that mankind eat, and are refreshed.

We flee away from cities, but we bring The best of cities with us, these learned classifiers, Men knowing what they seek, armed eyes of experts. We praise the guide, we praise the forest life; But will we sacrifice our dear-bought lore Of books and arts and trained experiment, Or count the Sioux a match for Agassiz? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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O no, not we! Witness the shout that shook Wild Tupper Lake; witness the mute all-hail The joyful traveller gives, when on the verge Of craggy Indian wilderness he hears From a log-cabin stream Beethoven’s notes On the piano, played with master’s hand. “Well done!” he cries; “the bear is kept at bay, The lynx, the rattlesnake, the flood, the fire; All the fierce enemies, ague, hunger, cold, This thin spruce roof, this clayed log-wall, This wild plantation will suffice to chase. Now speed the gay celerities of art, What in the desert was impossible Within four walls is possible again,— Culture and libraries, mysteries of skill, Traditioned fame of masters, eager strife Of keen competing youths, joined or alone To outdo each other, and extort applause. Mind wakes a new-born giant from her sleep. Twirl the old wheels? Time takes fresh start again On for a thousand years of genius more. The holidays were fruitful, but must end; One August evening had a cooler breath; Into each mind intruding duties crept; Under the cinders burned the fires of home; Nay, letters found us in our paradise; So in the gladness of the new event We struck our camp, and left the happy hills. The fortunate star that rose on us sank not; The prodigal sunshine rested on the land, The rivers gambolled onward to the sea, And Nature, the inscrutable and mute, Permitted on her infinite repose Almost a smile to steal to cheer her sons, As if one riddle of the Sphinx were guessed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1859

Professor Louis Agassiz prepared in his ESSAY ON CLASSIFICATION to win the next war, by figuring out how best to win the previous war. In Harvard College laboratories, the professor was teaching by the use of some apparently novel techniques.56 In his autobiography, Nathaniel Shaler retailed an account from the 1859 school year. After examining the prospective student in everything from Latin to fencing, Agassiz had left the student alone with a fish in a tin pan: “It was rather an unsavory object, giving forth the stench of old alcohol …. Many of the scales were loosened so that they fell off.” After working for a week without contact with his professor, Shaler was pretty sure he had figured out his professor’s agenda, but his report was condemned. Throwing away his notes, he began again, and after a second week Agassiz “[m]ade an end of my novitiate” by presenting him with a pile of bones to sort, which the diligent student worked on for two months. According to an account written in later life by Samuel H. Scudder, in Professor Agassiz’s laboratory in that same year a single fish was dredged out of “a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol,” and the professor left Scudder alone to just “look at it.” Scudder thought after about ten minutes of such looking that he was ready to report his conclusions, but the professor was nowhere to be found. Scudder began to sketch his “loathsome” and “ghastly” specimen and, when the professor returned, found he was praised for this: “A pencil is one of the best of eyes.” Nevertheless, the student’s report was scorned: “You have n’t even seen one of the most conspicuous features of the animal … look again, look again!” After an “anxious” night, Scudder returned to his fish and asked his professor “Do you perhaps mean … that the fish has symmetrical sides with paired organs?” Agassiz was delighted, but nevertheless sent Scudder back to “that fish” for three more days: “Look, look, look.” Scudder passed the text only to be presented with a second specimen of the same group, and then a third. When, after eight months, he had examined the entire family, he was allowed to proceed. These tales are the source of the famous educational essay “Is There a Fish in this Text?”57 WALLS COMMENTARY BIOLOGY

56. Reported in Cooper, Lane, LOUIS AGASSIZ AS TEACHER (Ithaca NY: The Comstock Publishing Co., 1917), pages 19-25, 40- 8 passim. 57. Scholes, Robert. “Is There a Fish in This Text?” College English 46 (1984): 653-664. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Father Jean-Jacques Pouech described fossil eggshell fragments that would eventually be identified as the eggs of a dinosaur.

An exceptionally well-preserved birdlike dinosaur skeleton was discovered in Bavaria that would be identified as Compsognathus, “dainty jaw.” THE SCIENCE OF 1859

With funding from the Massachusetts legislature, the opening of Professor Louis Agassiz’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (FANFARE, APPLAUSE). But Harvard College’s department of natural history was under the control of Professor Asa Gray.

In this year Professor Gray published his idea that the north American and Eurasian floras had at one time been BOTANY homogeneous. He proposed that Pleistocene glaciation had separated the floras, and during this period of separation, through evolution (a new concept he had learned through personal correspondence with Charles Darwin), the species had become distinct. Gray would become Darwin’s leading advocate in US debates.

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Meanwhile, at the end of this year, Darwin was publishing his ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVORED SPECIES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. As BIOLOGY explained by Darwin, evolution is a simple change in the overall character of a population of either plants or animals. Gradual change over countless generations can lead to origination of a population sufficiently different to be called a new species. The impact of Darwin’s work has been significant in all areas of biology, including the search for natural relationships of plants and interpretations of plant adaptations and ecology.

This year would mark the publication not only of the above science but also of Edward J. Fitzgerald’s very free “translation” known as THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM. Did Henry Thoreau have an opportunity to read the following? Into this Universe, and Why not knowing, Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing: And out of it, as Wind along the Waste I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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This version of the “quatrains” or rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam would attract little attention until it was discovered by other artists and literary figures, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in 1860. The original verses from which Fitzgerald had drawn his inspiration consist of a collection of isolated and separate “quatrains” or robái which resemble the Japanese haiku in function, if not in form. This robái form which is the only form of poetry attributed to Khayyám has remained popular in Persian poetry and nearly every poet who has ever written in Farsi –there happen to have been one whole lot of poets who have written in Farsi– has written some at one time or another.58 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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58. Fitzgerald’s RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM, THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA. TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH VERSE (London: Bernard Quaritch, Castle Street, Leicester Square. G. Norman, Printer, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London. Small quarto. Brown paper wrappers, 75 quatrains, 22 notes). By way of contrast, here is the most recent publication of these quatrains, by Ali Taghdarreh, done in 2008: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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OMAR KHAYYAM,

THE ASTRONOMER-POET OF PERSIA.

EDWARD J. FITZGERALD

(1859; REVISED IN 1868, 1872, AND 1879)

Omar Khayyam was born at Naishapur in Khorassan in the latter half of our Eleventh, and died within the First Quarter of our Twelfth Century. The Slender Story of his Life is curiously twined about that of two other very considerable Figures in their Time and Country: one of whom tells the Story of all Three. This was Nizam ul Mulk, Vizier to Alp Arslan the Son, and Malik Shah the Grandson, of Toghrul Beg the Tartar, who had wrested Persia from the feeble Successor of Mahmud the Great, and founded that Seljukian Dynasty which finally roused Europe into the Crusades. This Nizam ul Mulk, in his Wasiyat –or Testament– which he wrote and left as a Memorial for future Statesmen — relates the following, as quoted in the Calcutta Review, No. 59, from Mirkhond’s HISTORY OF THE ASSASSINS. One of the greatest of the wise men of Khorassan was the Imam Mowaffak of Naishapur, a man highly honored and reverenced, — may God rejoice his soul; his illustrious years exceeded eighty-five, and it was the universal belief that every boy who read the Koran or studied the traditions in his presence, would assuredly attain to honor and happiness. For this cause did my father send me from Tus to Naishapur with Abd-us-samad, the doctor of law, that I might employ myself in study and learning under the guidance of that illustrious teacher. Towards me he ever turned an eye of favor and kindness, and as his pupil I felt for him extreme affection and devotion, so that I passed four years in his service. When I first came there, I found two other pupils of mine own age newly arrived, Hakim Omar Khayyam, and the ill-fated Ben Sabbah. Both were endowed with sharpness of wit and the highest natural powers; and we three formed a close friendship together. When the Imam rose from his lectures, they used to join me, and we repeated to each HDT WHAT? INDEX

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other the lessons we had heard. Now Omar was a native of Naishapur, while Hasan Ben Sabbah’s father was one Ali, a man of austere life and practise, but heretical in his creed and doctrine. One day Hasan said to me and to Khayyam, “It is a universal belief that the pupils of the Imam Mowaffak will attain to fortune. Now, even if we all do not attain thereto, without doubt one of us will; what then shall be our mutual pledge and bond?” We answered, “Be it what you please.” “Well,” he said, “let us make a vow, that to whomsoever this fortune falls, he shall share it equally with the rest, and reserve no pre-eminence for himself.” “Be it so,” we both replied, and on those terms we mutually pledged our words. Years rolled on, and I went from Khorassan to Transoxiana, and wandered to Ghazni and Cabul; and when I returned, I was invested with office, and rose to be administrator of affairs during the Sultanate of Sultan Alp Arslan. He goes on to state, that years passed by, and both his old school-friends found him out, and came and claimed a share in his good fortune, according to the school-day vow. The Vizier was generous and kept his word. Hasan demanded a place in the government, which the Sultan granted at the Vizier’s request; but discontented with a gradual rise, he plunged into the maze of intrigue of an oriental court, and, failing in a base attempt to supplant his benefactor, he was disgraced and fell. After many mishaps and wanderings, Hasan became the head of the Persian sect of the Ismailians, a party of fanatics who had long murmured in obscurity, but rose to an evil eminence under the guidance of his strong and evil will. In A.D. 1090, he seized the castle of Alamut, in the province of Rudbar, which lies in the mountainous tract south of the Caspian Sea; and it was from this mountain home he obtained that evil celebrity among the Crusaders as the OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS, and spread terror through the Mohammedan world; and it is yet disputed where the word Assassin, which they have left in the language of modern Europe as their dark memorial, is derived from the hashish, or opiate of hemp-leaves (the Indian bhang), with which they maddened themselves to the sullen pitch of oriental desperation, or from the name of the founder of the dynasty, whom we have seen in his quiet collegiate days, at Naishapur. One of the countless victims of the Assassin’s dagger was Nizam ul Mulk himself, the old school-boy friend.59

Omar Khayyam also came to the Vizier to claim his share; but not to ask for title or office. “The greatest boon you can confer on me,” he said, “is to let me live in a corner under the shadow of your fortune, to spread wide the advantages of Science, and pray for your long life and prosperity.” The Vizier tells us, 59. Some of Omar’s Rubaiyat warn us of the danger of Greatness, the instability of Fortune, and while advocating Charity to all Men, recommending us to be too intimate with none. Attar makes Nizam-ul-Mulk use the very words of his friend Omar [Rub. xxviii.], “When Nizam-ul-Mulk was in the Agony (of Death) he said, ‘Oh God! I am passing away in the hand of the wind.’” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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that when he found Omar was really sincere in his refusal, he pressed him no further, but granted him a yearly pension of 1200 mithkals of gold from the treasury of Naishapur.

At Naishapur thus lived and died Omar Khayyam, “busied,” adds the Vizier, “in winning knowledge of every kind, and especially in Astronomy, wherein he attained to a very high pre-eminence. Under the Sultanate of Malik Shah, he came to Merv, and obtained great praise for his proficiency in science, and the Sultan showered favors upon him.”

When the Malik Shah determined to reform the calendar, Omar was one of the eight learned men employed to do it; the result was the Jalali era (so called from Jalal-ud-din, one of the king’s names) — “a computation of time,” says Gibbon, “which surpasses the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian style.” He is also the author of some astronomical tables, entitled “Ziji-Malikshahi,” and the French have lately republished and translated an Arabic Treatise of his on Algebra.

His Takhallus or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before Nizam-ul-Mulk’s generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; thus we have Attar, “a druggist,” Assar, “an oil presser,” etc.60 Omar himself alludes to his name in the following whimsical lines: — “’Khayyam, who stitched the tents of science, Has fallen in grief’s furnace and been suddenly burned; The shears of Fate have cut the tent ropes of his life, And the broker of Hope has sold him for nothing!’

We have only one more anecdote to give of his Life, and that relates to the close; it is told in the anonymous preface which is sometimes prefixed to his poems; it has been printed in the Persian in the Appendix to Hyde’s VETERUM PERSARUM RELIGIO, p. 499; and D’Herbelot alludes to it in his BIBLIOTHEQUE, under Khiam.61 — It is written in the chronicles of the ancients that this King of the Wise, Omar Khayyam, died at Naishapur in the year of the Hegira, 517 (A.D. 1123); in science he was unrivaled, — the very paragon of his age. Khwajah Nizami of Samarcand, who was one of his pupils, relates the following story: “I often used to hold conversations with my teacher, Omar Khayyam, in a garden; and one day he said to me, ‘My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses over it.’ I wondered at the words he spake, but I knew that his were no idle words.62 Years after, when I chanced to revisit Naishapur, I went to his final resting-place, and lo! it was just outside 60. Though all these, like our Smiths, Archers, Millers, Fletchers, etc., may simply retain the Surname of an hereditary calling. 61.“Philosophe Musulman qui a vecu en Odeur de Saintete dans sa Religion, vers la Fin du premier et le Commencement du second Siecle,” no part of which, except the “Philosophe,” can apply to our Khayyam. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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a garden, and trees laden with fruit stretched their boughs over the garden wall, and dropped their flowers upon his tomb, so that the stone was hidden under them.” Thus far –without fear of Trespass– from the Calcutta Review. The writer of it, on reading in India this story of Omar’s Grave, was reminded, he says, of Cicero’s ACCOUNT OF FINDING A RCHIMEDES’ TOMB AT SYRACUSE, buried in grass and weeds. I think Thorwaldsen desired to have roses grow over him; a wish religiously fulfilled for him to the present day, I believe. However, to return to Omar.

Though the Sultan “shower’d Favors upon him,” Omar’s Epicurean Audacity of Thought and Speech caused him to be regarded askance in his own Time and Country. He is said to have been especially hated and dreaded by the Sufis, whose Practise he ridiculed, and whose Faith amounts to little more than his own, when stript of the Mysticism and formal recognition of Islamism under which Omar would not hide. Their Poets, including Hafiz, who are (with the exception of Firdausi) the most considerable in Persia, borrowed largely, indeed, of Omar’s material, but turning it to a mystical Use more convenient to Themselves and the People they addressed; a People quite as quick of Doubt as of Belief; as keen of Bodily sense as of Intellectual; and delighting in a cloudy composition of both, in which they could float luxuriously between Heaven and Earth, and this World and the Next, on the wings of a poetical expression, that might serve indifferently for either. Omar was too honest of Heart as well of Head for this. Having failed (however mistakenly) of finding any Providence but Destiny, and any World but This, he set about making the most of it; preferring rather to soothe the Soul through the Senses into Acquiescence with Things as he saw them, than to perplex it with vain disquietude after what they might be. It has been seen, however, that his Worldly Ambition was not exorbitant; and he very likely takes a humorous or perverse pleasure in exalting the gratification of Sense above that of the Intellect, in which he must have taken great delight, although it failed to answer the Questions in which he, in common with all men, was most vitally interested.

For whatever Reason, however, Omar as before said, has never been popular in his own Country, and therefore has been but scantily transmitted abroad. The MSS. of his Poems, mutilated beyond the average Casualties of Oriental Transcription, are so rare in the East as scarce to have reacht Westward at all, in spite of all the acquisitions of Arms and Science. There is no 62. The Rashness of the Words, according to D’Herbelot, consisted in being so opposed to those in the Koran: “No Man knows where he shall die.” –This story of Omar reminds me of another so naturally –and when one remembers how wide of his humble mark the noble sailor aimed –so pathetically told by Captain Cook –not by Doctor Hawkworth –in his Second Voyage (i. 374). When leaving Ulietea, “Oreo’s last request was for me to return. When he saw he could not obtain that promise, he asked the name of my Marai (burying-place). As strange a question as this was, I hesitated not a moment to tell him ‘Stepney’; the parish in which I live when in London. I was made to repeat it several times over till they could pronounce it; and then ‘Stepney Marai no Toote’ was echoed through an hundred mouths at once. I afterwards found the same question had been put to Mr. Forster by a man on shore; but he gave a different, and indeed more proper answer, by saying, ‘No man who used the sea could say where he should be buried.’” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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copy at the India House, none at the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris. We know but of one in England: No. 140 of the Ouseley MSS. at the Bodleian, written at Shiraz, A.D. 1460. This contains but 158 Rubaiyat. One in the Asiatic Society’s Library at Calcutta (of which we have a Copy), contains (and yet incomplete) 516, though swelled to that by all kinds of Repetition and Corruption. So Von Hammer speaks of his Copy as containing about 200, while Dr. Sprenger catalogues the Lucknow MS. at double that number.63 The Scribes, too, of the Oxford and Calcutta MSS. seem to do their Work under a sort of Protest; each beginning with a Tetrastich (whether genuine or not), taken out of its alphabetical order; the Oxford with one of Apology; the Calcutta with one of Expostulation, supposed (says a Notice prefixed to the MS.) to have arisen from a Dream, in which Omar’s mother asked about his future fate. It may be rendered thus: — “O Thou who burn’st in Heart for those who burn In Hell, whose fires thyself shall feed in turn, How long be crying, ‘Mercy on them, God!’ Why, who art Thou to teach, and He to learn?” The Bodleian Quatrain pleads Pantheism by way of Justification. “If I myself upon a looser Creed Have loosely strung the Jewel of Good deed, Let this one thing for my Atonement plead: That One for Two I never did misread.”

The Reviewer,64 to whom I owe the Particulars of Omar’s Life, concludes his Review by comparing him with Lucretius, both as to natural Temper and Genius, and as acted upon by the Circumstances in which he lived. Both indeed were men of subtle, strong, and cultivated Intellect, fine Imagination, and Hearts passionate for Truth and Justice; who justly revolted from their Country’s false Religion, and false, or foolish, Devotion to it; but who fell short of replacing what they subverted by such better Hope as others, with no better Revelation to guide them, had yet made a Law to themselves. Lucretius indeed, with such material as Epicurus furnished, satisfied himself with the theory of a vast machine fortuitously constructed, and acting by a Law that implied no Legislator; and so composing himself into a Stoical rather than Epicurean severity of Attitude, sat down to contemplate the mechanical drama of the Universe which he was part Actor in; himself and all about him (as in his own sublime description of the Roman Theater) discolored with the lurid reflex of the Curtain suspended between the Spectator and the Sun. Omar, more desperate, or more careless of any so complicated System as resulted in nothing but hopeless Necessity, flung his own Genius and Learning with a bitter or humorous jest into the general Ruin which their insufficient glimpses only served to reveal; and, pretending sensual pleasure, as the serious purpose of Life, only diverted himself

63. “Since this paper was written” (adds the Reviewer in a note), “we have met with a Copy of a very rare Edition, printed at Calcutta in 1836. This contains 438 Tetrastichs, with an Appendix containing 54 others not found in some MSS.” 64. Professor Cowell. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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with speculative problems of Deity, Destiny, Matter and Spirit, Good and Evil, and other such questions, easier to start than to run down, and the pursuit of which becomes a very weary sport at last!

With regard to the present Translation. The original Rubaiyat (as, missing an Arabic Guttural, these Tetrastichs are more musically called) are independent Stanzas, consisting each of four Lines of equal, though varied, Prosody; sometimes all rhyming, but oftener (as here imitated) the third line a blank. Somewhat as in the Greek Alcaic, where the penultimate line seems to lift and suspend the Wave that falls over in the last. As usual with such kind of Oriental Verse, the Rubaiyat follow one another according to Alphabetic Rhyme — a strange succession of Grave and Gay. Those here selected are strung into something of an Eclogue, with perhaps a less than equal proportion of the “Drink and make-merry,” which (genuine or not) recurs over- frequently in the Original. Either way, the Result is sad enough: saddest perhaps when most ostentatiously merry: more apt to move Sorrow than Anger toward the old Tentmaker, who, after vainly endeavoring to unshackle his Steps from Destiny, and to catch some authentic Glimpse of TO-MORROW, fell back upon TO- DAY (which has outlasted so many To-morrows!) as the only Ground he had got to stand upon, however momentarily slipping from under his Feet.

Edward J. Fitzgerald65

65. Actually I took this from the 3d Edition, not of 1859 but of 1872. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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February 26, Saturday: In the midst of a storm of controversy, the Board of Overseers of the Corporation promoted George Phillips Bond to fill his father’s shoes as Director of the Harvard Observatory, and appointed him to

be the Phillips Professor of Astronomy. The nominee of the “Lazzaroni,” a pressure group in science which has been sarcastically referred to as “the sacred brotherhood,” had been not Bond but Benjamin Peirce, the Perkins Professor of Astronomy and Mathematics at Harvard College.66 THE SCIENCE OF 1859 ASTRONOMY

In the evening William John Broderip FRS was writing “On the Shark” for Fraser’s Magazine and broke off in the middle of a sentence.

66.The core group of the “Lazzaroni” consisted of Professors Louis Agassiz and Benjamin Peirce of Harvard, and Professor Benjamin Athorp Gould (1824-1896) of Dudley Observatory in Albany NY, plus Alexander Dallas Bache of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Washington DC. According to Edward Lurie, Agassiz’s biographer (LOUIS AGASSIZ. Chicago IL: U of Chicago P, 1960), what they were trying to do was “control the institutional forms of science in America.” The core agenda of this group was to set itself astride all channels of funding in such a manner as to take charge of what research was feasible and important and who could be relied upon to dependably perform this research. They were playing hardball: their machinations included spreading invidious and false whispers about the accuracy of the observations of the Bonds, wherever possible boycotting their membership in scientific bodies, wherever possible alleging the priority of the discoveries of others, and by the back door seizing control of government funding. For one instance, the cheap secret processes of the creation of the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. The prime offense committed at the Harvard Observatory, which so enraged the “sacred brotherhood,” seem to have consisted in the fact that since these astronomers were working to all intents and purposes for free, by financing themselves out of the cash drawer of the timekeeper manufacturing firm of William Bond & Son in Boston, therefore, practically, they had unwittingly placed themselves outside the ordinary spheres of influence of these conspirators and were in a position to treat most of their machination with Christian condescension, as if they amounted to nothing more than “water off a duck’s back.” The machinations of this group had at one point come close to destroying the Dudley Observatory. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 5, Sunday: Waldo Emerson subscribed $5.00 to a fund for Harriet Tubman the slave stealer, and why not? In her peculiarly guiltfree way, she was getting rid of our black people, and didn’t all Americans want to rid themselves of the black people?

On this day and the following one, John Brown would be in New-York.

In Boston, the Reverend William Rounseville Alger delivered an discourse entitled “Lessons for mankind, from the life and death of Humboldt” at the Bulfinch Street Church. (This would soon be published in Cambridge by Welch, Bigelow, and Company as Pamphlet #7 in a series on Louis Agassiz, entitled LESSONS FOR MANKIND, FROM THE LIFE AND DEATH OF HUMBOLDT, A DISCOURSE, DELIVERED IN THE BULFINCH STREET CHURCH, JUNE 5, 1859. BY WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.)

June 5, Sunday: P.M.–To Ball’s Hill. Cat-briar in flower, how long? Allium not out. See several ducks, I think both summer and black. A yellowbird’s nest; four eggs, developed. Pigeon woodpecker’s nest in a hollow black willow over river; six eggs, almost hatched. The new white maple leaves look reddish, and at a distance brown, as if they had not put out yet.

November: Alfred Russel Wallace’s paper “On the Zoological Geography of the Malay Archipelago,” the paper describing “Wallace’s Line,” was read before the Linnaean Society.

Mr. Charles Darwin. M.A.’s ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE was published at London by John Murray BIOLOGY of Albemarle Street. The author courteously sent a complementary copy to Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College with a note: I have ventured to send you a copy of my Book ... on the origin of species. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Well might he describe this as a “venture,” for we know from his letters the extremely low opinion Darwin had of this colleague’s intellect. (As it would turn out, he needn’t have bothered to send along a copy of his monograph. As this biologist would go through the green volume, he would be making resistant notes in the margin such as “What does this prove ...?” and “This is truly monstrous!”)

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (With the benefit of the hindsight that comes from the accumulation of our political and scientific experience since the US Civil War we can understand, very clearly, that here Professor Agassiz’s native politics were once again sadly getting in the way of his native wit.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1860

In a new edition of the Reverend Professor Edward Hitchcock’s ELEMENTARY GEOLOGY,1st published in 1840, the paleontological chart known as the “tree of life” (displayed below) was omitted because it made it seem as if he were agreeing with Darwin when this was not at all the case. The branchings of his diagram had definitively not been evolutions, but rather had been points at which God had stepped in, just-at-the-right-time, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to introduce a needed new species.

NO NO THIS IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT EVOLUTION! ELEMENTARY GEOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Dr. Josiah Clark Nott obtained money and a charter from the Alabama State Legislature for his Medical College of Alabama in Mobile. The College moved into its own quarters on St. Anthony Street.

(Dr. Nott, an ardent secessionist, would during the years of civil war, with the college’s students serving in the military, enable these new facilities to be utilized as a military hospital.)

In about this timeframe Henry Thoreau copied from Dr. Nott’s and George Robins Gliddon’s TYPES OF MANKIND: OR, ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCHES, BASED UPON THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS, PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, AND CRANIA OF RACES, AND UPON THEIR NATURAL, GEOGRAPHICAL, PHILOLOGICAL, AND BIBLICAL HISTORY: ILLUSTRATED BY SELECTIONS FROM THE INEDITED PAPERS OF SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, M.D., AND BY ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PROF. L. AGASSIZ, LL.D., W. USHER, M.D.; AND PROF. H.S. PATTERSON, M.D. (London: Trübner; Philadelphia) into his Indian Notebook #12 and his 2d Commonplace Book. Since he had just read and been impressed with the theory of ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES and had elected to credit Charles Darwin rather than Professor Agassiz, it is doubtful that he would have been very much impressed with this proslavery political scientism. ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES TYPES OF MANKIND

Agassiz’s theism put the supernatural ahead of science. Hitchcock’s theism put it ahead of both science and government.... So much for the separation between church and state, and between scripture and science, during Thoreau’s era. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At the annual meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, in Newport, Rhode Island, Charles Darwin’s newly published ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES was the cause of not so much as a ripple of concern.

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

The Reverend Professor Francis Bowen was “Harvard’s philosopher” in the sense in which Professor Louis Agassiz was “Harvard’s scientist” — just as Professor Agassiz rejected Darwinism, so also Professor Bowen rejected Darwinism. It seemed that it was precisely Darwinism’s scientific strength which was to these scientists its fatal weakness: his scientific accomplishment removed “all proof of the incessant creative action of a designing mind, by reducing it to a blind mechanical process” (Darwin cast as Dr. Victor Frankenstein.) EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

During this year Henry Thoreau would be reappointed to Harvard University’s Visiting Committee in Natural History (something that simply would not have happened, had they made themselves cognizant of the scientific heresies that were on his mind). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Reverend Professor Francis Bowen HDT WHAT? INDEX

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New Year’s Day: Charles Brace, a New York social worker, came to Concord carrying a copy of Charles Darwin’s just- published ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, which he had obtained from Professor Asa Gray of Harvard College,

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

his botanist brother-in-law, a correspondent of Darwin’s. He, Bronson Alcott, and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn had dinner with Henry Thoreau and discussed the new theory. Thoreau had long been interested in the geographical distribution of plants and animals around Concord. Well read in the general subject, he had become skeptical of Professor Louis Agassiz’s certitudes about special creation and immutable species. Three days after the dinner, Thoreau would acknowledge the impact of Darwin’s new theory on him by making an observation about an actual working mechanism of influence: A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally ... We hear and apprehend only what we already half know ... Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and travelling. His observations make a chain. The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest which he has observed, he does not observe. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau’s “The Dispersion of Seeds” may profitably be read not only as a contribution to science, but also as a fable of dissemination. Behind the details of the presentation, we note Thoreau’s insistent focus on natural fecundity. Starting, as Darwin started, from Thomas Robert Malthus’s astonished observation that “the germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years,” Thoreau mentions Darwin’s experiments. “I took in February, three table- spoonsful of mud,” Darwin says, “from three different points, beneath water, on the edge of a little pond; this mud when dried, weighed only 63 ounces. I kept it covered up in my study for six months, pulling up and counting each plant as it grew; the plants were of many kinds and were altogether 537 in number; and yet the viscid mud was all contained in a breakfast cup!” THE SCIENCE OF 1860

The seed had been a favorite metaphor of Friend George Fox. Thoreau had inherited a copy of Friend William Sewell’s account of the founding of the Religious Society of Friends from his Quaker grandmother on his mother’s side, Friend Sarah Orrok Burns. Emerson had made a note about this: “George Fox’s chosen expression for the God manifest in the mind is the Seed. He means the seed of which the Beauty of the world is the flower and Goodness the fruit.” Thoreau’s project was neither the same as Darwin’s, nor as Malthus’s — it was neither about speciation nor about population control, but about seed as apparent death, and as actual rebirth. In “The Dispersion of Seeds” Thoreau expands this. A plant is born again in every seed that sprouts. Every day is a day of creation because it is a day of rebirth. “The very earth itself is a granary and a seminary,” offered Thoreau, “so that to some minds, its surface is regarded as the cuticle of one living creature.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau studied ORIGIN OF SPECIES as soon as it arrived in America. Charles Darwin commented near the end of the book “Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor.” This was an entirely new, non-Idealist reading of the Book of Nature, amounting in effect to the decision that nature was not a text at all. That finding has served ever since as a litmus-test to detect “essentialists,” that is, thinkers who regard the different species as immutable, distinct Ideas in the Mind of God. In the early days of 1860 Waldo Emerson and Louis Agassiz also would read this book, but both would flunk Darwin’s litmus-test for in the field of theoretical population ecology: neither were scientists at all, they were a metaphysician and a theologian.

Louis Agassiz standing on his head and stacking BBs (Don’t try this at home)

In particular Louis Agassiz needed to dispute Charles Darwin in order to retain his belief in the immutable inferiority of the Negro. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429 There is no question but that Professor Agassiz of Harvard was one of the leading lights among American biologists. As such he was quite familiar with all the factual evidences concerning environmental change, variability, and hereditary modification upon which Darwin had been building his insights, but he held in addition that the organic world represented repeated interventions by a Supreme Being. These ordinary physical events upon which Darwin was relying, such as climatic and geologic change, and even glaciers, might indeed bring about extinctions, but nothing of this order could create a new species. Agassiz was ready to grant that the sequence in the fossil record from simple animals and plants in the ancient, deeper strata to the more complex, recent forms found near the surface represented a progressive development, but these different animals and plants did not arise as Darwin was supposing out of interactions between populations and external environmental changes. Agassiz maintained that organisms arose by a series of independent and special creations, there with no hereditary continuity whatever between the different types of organisms. Each species of plant and animal was a separate “thought of God” and what we saw as homologies or anatomical similarities were nothing more than “associations of ideas in the Divine Mind.” Thoreau, on the other hand, easily passed Darwin’s test; what was said in ORIGIN was not only convincing but obvious. Rationality did not produce, but was the product of, nature. The subject did not originate the text. Here is a general analysis of the situation, from Adam Kuper’s THE INVENTION OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY: TRANSFORMATIONS OF AN ILLUSION (NY: Routledge, 1988), pages 44-6 (shown on a following page): HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Whittier-Holmes-Emerson-Motley-Alcott-Hawthorne-Lowell-Agassiz-Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The northern Presbyterians in fact welcomed Darwin’s witness with respect to one very sensitive political issue. This was the question of the unity of origin of the human species. They were up in arms against their southern Presbyterian brethren, who justified slavery on the grounds that God had created several distinct species of man, each with a particular destiny. During the Civil War an ‘American school of anthropology’ developed in the South which propagated this view. It drew the support even of Agassiz, the eccentric Lamarckian biologist of Harvard. According to the northern Presbyterians, this ‘polygenist’ thesis was a denial of the truth, to which both the Bible and the Declaration of Independence bore witness, that all men were created equal. Darwin unequivocably supported the view that all the races were simply varieties of one species, with a common origin. This aspect of Darwinian theory was particularly stressed by Asa Gray, Agassiz’s rival at Harvard, and the leader of the American Darwinians. On one vital matter, however, Darwin’s views were unacceptable to many, indeed most, Christians. He posited the mutability of species and –despite his initial caution– it became evident that he believed man had evolved from non-human primate forbears. This theory of the transmutation of species was clearly irreconcilable with the Book of Genesis, but there were many respectable scholars who believed that it was also at odds with biological facts. A great number of mainstream biologists in the 1860s believed that the species were fixed. Agassiz’s version of Cuvier’s typology even allowed for the separate creation of each individual species. Morgan, a competent amateur biologist, sided with Agassiz on this issue. He wrote a naturalist’s study of the American beaver (which won Agassiz’s admiration) in which he strongly affirmed his faith in Cuvier and in the separate creation of the human species. One could, however, believe that the species were fixed without having to believe that they were changeless. Agassiz and many of his colleagues might rule out ‘transmutation’, the change of one species into another; but they still believed that a species could develop along appropriate lines. Each species might realize an inner potential, which gradually unfolded. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Those who thought in this way commonly conceived of the development of species on the analogy of the evolution of the embryo. The tadpole might become a frog, but that did not amount to a change of species. Indeed, ontogeny, the development of an individual, might recapitulate phylogeny, the history of a species. The term ‘evolution’ itself was generally used in this embryological sense until about 1880, and neither Darwin in THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (1859) nor Morgan in SYSTEMS (1871) or ANCIENT SOCIETY (1877), used the word ‘evolution’ at all. Agassiz’s version of evolution assumed that the world had been designed by God. Particular species had been created in order to fit into particular ecological relations. They were, moreover, programmed to develop as the whole cosmological order itself progressed. Adaptation was a sign of planning rather than of selection. Agassiz was quite explicit that evolution was comprehensible only as the gradual unfolding of a divine plan. Species were incarnations of a divine idea. ‘Natural history must, in good time, become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe, as manifested in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.’ Agassiz’s theory of development was the biological equivalent of a common New England Calvinist belief that human history, since Christ, was a record of progress and moral improvement inspired by God, in which every group had its preordained rôle. This idealistic view was in stark contrast to the scepticism of Darwin or the pessimism of Malthus. ‘I believe in no fixed law of development’, Darwin had written in ORIGIN, and when Christian intellectuals attacked his ‘materialist’ theory they meant in particular his view that history is contingent, unplanned, without a goal, the product simply of random mutation and natural selection.

(See especially William Stanton, THE LEOPARD’S SPOTS: SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDES TOWARD RACE IN AMERICA 1815-1859, 1960. See Morgan, THE AMERICAN BEAVER AND HIS WORKS, 1868.. See Mayr, AGASSIZ, DARWIN AND EVOLUTION, 1959. The passage from Louis Agassiz is cited on page 171.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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After Louis Agassiz had retraced the steps of Humboldt by visiting Brazil, he confided to Waldo Emerson, according to Emerson’s son’s account, that the whole population of that country was “wretchedly immoral, the colours and features of the people showing the entire intermixing of all the races.” Scientistic racism recapitulates typology. We can learn from the same source that Professor Agassiz believed that, were he able to obtain enough live subjects to perform the requisite dissections, “hundreds, that is, of live subjects,” he would be able to demonstrate that a baby elephant while in utero was a mastodon, and a baby tapir in utero a megatheron.67

Thoreau once killed a cistudo for Professor Louis Agassiz, and upon reflection was ashamed.

Scientistic embryology recapitulates theology. While we might prefer not to entertain questions such as whether Thoreau should instead have killed Louis Agassiz for the cistudo: was the placing of such a man in a chair at Harvard College, an institution at that time primarily useful for the habilitation of the younger sons of businessmen, under conditions of primogeniture, as reverend divines, precisely the placing of such a mentality where it didn’t belong, or was it precisely the placing of such a mentality where it did belong?

67. Have you heard that the initial script for the movie Jurassic Park had it as “Park Agassiz”? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1861

January 14, Monday: It was reported, in the Observer, that the “infamous author of the “Impending Crisis,” Hinton Rowan Helper, had in Fayetteville, North Carolina encountered a somewhat hostile audience.

Jan. 14. Coldest morning yet; 20° (?). Pliny says, “In minimis Natura praestat” (Nature excels in the least things). The Wellingtonia gigantea, the PLINY famous California tree, is a great thing; the seed from which it sprang, a little thing; and so are all seeds or origins of things. Richard Porson said: “We all speak in metaphors. Those who appear not to do it, only use those which are worn out, and are overlooked as metaphors. The original fellow is therefore regarded as only witty; and the dull are consulted as the wise.” He might have said that the former spoke a dead language. John Horne Tooke is reported in “Recollections” by Samuel Rogers as having said: “Read few books well. We forget names and dates; and reproach our memory. They are of little consequence. We feel our limbs enlarge and strengthen; yet cannot tell the dinner or dish that caused the alteration. Our minds improve though we cannot name the author, and have forgotten the particulars.” I think that the opposite would be the truer statement, books differ so immensely in their nutritive qualities, and good ones are so rare. Gosse, in his “Letters from Alabama,” says that he thinks he saw a large dragon-fly (Æslona), which was hawking over a brook, catch and devour some minnows about one inch long, and says it is known that “the larvæ of the greater water-beetles (Dyticidœ) devour fish.” It is the discovery of science that stupendous changes in the earth’s surface, such as are referred to the Deluge, for instance, are the result of causes still in operation, which have been at work for an incalculable period. There has not been a sudden re-formation, or, as it were, new creation of the world, but a steady progress according to existing laws. The same is true in detail also. It is a vulgar prejudice that some plants are “spontaneously generated,” but science knows that they come from seeds, i.e. are the result of causes still in operation, however slow and unobserved. It is a common saying that “little strokes fall great oaks,” and it does not imply much wisdom in him who originated it. The sound of the axe invites our attention to such a catastrophe; we can easily count each stroke as it is given, and all the neighborhood is informed by a loud crash when the deed is consummated. But such, too, is the rise of the oak; little strokes of a different kind and often repeated raise great oaks, but scarcely a traveller hears these or turns aside to converse with Nature, who is dealing them the while. Nature is slow but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance; she knows that seeds have many other uses than to reproduce their kind. In raising oaks and pines, she works with a leisureliness and security answering to the age and strength of the trees. If every acorn of this year’s crop is destroyed, never fear! she has more years to come. It is not necessary that a pine or an oak should BOTANY bear fruit every year, as it is that a pea-vine should. So, botanically, the greatest changes in the landscape are produced more gradually than we expected. If Nature has a pine or an oak wood to produce, she manifests no HDT WHAT? INDEX

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haste about it. Thus we should say that oak forests are produced by a kind of accident, i.e. by the failure of animals to reap the fruit of their labors. Yet who shall say that they have not a fair knowledge of the value of their labors — that the squirrel when it plants an acorn, or the jay when it lets one slip from under its foot, has not a transient thought for its posterity? Possibly here, a thousand years hence, every oak will know the human hand that planted it. How many of the botanist’s arts and inventions are thus but the rediscovery of a lost art, i.e. lost to him here or elsewhere! Horace Mann told me some days ago that he found, near the shore in that muddy bay by the willows in the rear of Mrs. Ripley’s, a great many of the Sternothœrus odoratus, assembled, he supposed, at their breeding-time, or, rather, about to come out to lay their eggs. He waded in [and] collected –I think he said– about a hundred AGASSIZ and fifty of them for Agassiz! I see in the Boston Journal an account of robins in numbers on the savin trees in that neighborhood, feeding on their berries. This suggests that they may plant its berries as well as the crows. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter: Lecture Season of ’61/62, at the Odeon in Boston:

21st Season of The Lowell Institute Professor L. Agassiz. Methods of Study in Natural History ...... 12 lectures Rev. Geo. E. Ellis. Natural Religion ...... 12 lectures Rev. Robert C. Waterston. Art in Connection with Civilization ...... 12 lectures Prof. Wm. B. Rogers. Application of Science to Art ...... 12 lectures Guglielmo Gajani. Italian Independence ...... 12 lectures HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE LOWELL INSTITUTE In LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, Edward Lurie would report in regard to this, on his pages 305-308, that: EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

Agassiz ... complained to friends that the “philanthropy” of the past had resulted in such “socialistic” schemes as Brook Farm, and he hoped that this same reformist spirit would not now result in a complete eradication of social and intellectual distinctions.... The Negro could never be the physical equal of the white. Moreover, there were permanent barriers to social and economic equality.... Beginning in December of 1861, Agassiz subordinated all his other activities to the cause of bringing about an informed public opinion through the popularization of knowledge ... the American public was at this time exposed to the most dangerous of scientific and philosophical ideas — the concept of evolution.... The progress of science required an informed public opinion capable of resisting error.... “Nature is the work of thought, the production of intelligence, carried out according to plan.... In our study of natural objects we are approaching the thought of the Creator, reading his conceptions, interpreting a system that is not ours.” Lowell Institute audiences were shown, just as they had learned in 1847, that every fact of nature supported this all-inclusive theory of being.... These sentiments reached a wider audience than the Bostonians present at the Lowell lectures, for they were published as a series in the Atlantic Monthly beginning in January of 1862. THE SCIENCE OF 1861 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1862

Professor James Dwight Dana of Yale College, in offering his MANUAL OF GEOLOGY in this year, felt obliged to denigrate the new theory of descent with modification — despite the fact that he had not as yet perused the copy of THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES with which he had been presented by his friend Charles Darwin.

He explained privately that he had not had time to consider his correspondent’s various arguments about evolution because “my head has all it can now do in my college duties,” a remark which of course amounted to a jibe at the fact that Darwin was merely an independent scholar, rather than an accredited and accomplished academician such as himself. Darwin would respond by personal letter, that he wished his friend had read his book because he might thereby “have been here or there staggered.” ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

Despite being a careful scientist, this American thinker had such an investment in the Providence of Deity, such a conceptual lock based on his understanding of the white man’s place and role in God’s Creation, that he would not until the mid-1870s be forced to succumb to the evidences of Darwinian evolution. To put the matter plainly, Yale Professor Dana had, like his fellow the benighted Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz, been a committed Platonist, and a Providentialist, as well as a racist self-privileger — and this Platonism, this Providentialism, and this racist self-privileging were dying a painfully hard and slow death: Dana viewed the entire geological history of the earth and life as one long, coherent, and heroic story with a moral — a tale of inexorable progress, expressed in both physical and biological history, and leading, inevitably and purposefully, to God’s final goal of a species imbued with sufficient consciousness to glorify His name and works. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Louis Agassiz produced the 4th quarto volume of his CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, the 1st volume of which had been produced in 1857 and in regard to which the most lasting recognized achievement has been his description of the embryology of turtles. According to Lee Rust Brown, although our guy Thoreau had “contributed a specimen” (!) to this series of descriptive volumes, he “would not spring for the subscription.”68 THE SCIENCE OF 1862

68. Presumably Brown is referring to the cistudo that Thoreau killed, and upon reflection was ashamed. See THE EMERSON MUSEUM: PRACTICAL ROMANTICISM AND THE PURSUIT OF THE WHOLE, page 134. Is it not truly remarkable that such an unwarranted and indeed catty remark is to be found in a book published in 1997 by Thoreau’s alma mater, Harvard?

August 18, 1854: I have just been through the process of killing the cistudo for the sake of science; but I cannot excuse myself for this murder, and see that such actions are inconsistent with the poetic perception, however they may serve science, and will affect the quality of my observations. I pray that I may walk more innocently and serenely through nature. No reasoning whatever reconciles me to this act. It affects my day injuriously. I have lost some self-respect. I have a murderer’s experience in a degree. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1863

March 3, Tuesday: In our nation’s puzzle palace on the Potomac, in the wee small hours of the 37th Congress, a decade of plotting and conspiring by the “Lazzaroni” of Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College came to culmination in the creation of a new disciplinary “jury” to be known as the National Academy of Sciences. The Lazzaroni had prepacked this august new secret body of administrators, by name in the enabling legislation, with non-scientist apparatchiks “who never turned a pen or did a thing for science,” officers they had recruited from the Army and Navy, and apparatchiks from the federal bureaucracy of Washington DC, whose chief or only asset was expertise in gameplaying.69 From the very first it was clear that the game plan was not so much discovery as the control, by safe people, of the processes by which things may be discovered. Here they are clustered close around the President, so that some of his legitimacy will rub off on them or so they can pick his pocket:

THE SCIENCE OF 1863

69. It was Louis Agassiz who referred to it as a “jury.” He was gloating about how “the malcontents will be set aside or die out and the institution survive,” and urging his co-conspirators to further such scheming because “it now remains for us to give it permanency by our own doings.” Joseph Leidy appropriately commented that the “grand humbug” was “nothing more than the formation of an illiberal clique based on Plymouth Rock.” Even the founder of MIT, William Barton Rogers, was made fearful by these developments, and how they had been implemented behind the backs of the American researchers by secret political negotiations with non-scientists about which “only two or three of the men of science knew anything until … announced in the newspapers.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

August 10, Monday: President Abraham Lincoln was meeting with Frederick Douglass to consider his petition for the full equality of the Union’s “Negro troops.” While they were at it, the President wrote Douglass out a pass enabling him to go with safety through Union lines. Meanwhile, Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College was writing to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, who was at the time on the American Freedman’s Inquiry Commission, to warn him against government policies that might allow our “manly population descended from cognate nations” to deteriorate into “effeminate progeny of mixed races, half indian, half negro, sprinkled with white blood,” like our neighbor to our south, Mexico. That would reduce us to the same “degradation” as that mongrel nation. Amalgamation was clearly an “unnatural” thing. The scientist recommended to the medical doctor that “all legislation with reference to [half-breeds] ... be regulated with this view & so ordained as to accelerate their disappearance from the Northern States.” EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

September: One of Professor Louis Agassiz’s researchers had published a pamphlet “A Claim for Scientific Property” accusing him of having appropriated this man’s investigations as his own and then, when the researcher objected to this treatment, having stopped his salary. Agassiz wanted this researcher shunned, for instance banned from faculty meetings. Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, who was not only Agassiz’s sidekick but also a Member of the Corporation, tried to cut a deal with the researcher, that if he would just back off it might be possible to allow him continued use of the facilities for his investigations, but nothing less than exoneration was acceptable to the researcher and nothing less than public humiliation was acceptable to Agassiz. This issue would drag on for years, until the researcher would be able to obtain a suitable position with another research institution. Was the researcher right or wrong? –I don’t know, but this sort of thing happened over and over in Agassiz’s life, and, in fact, as he aged it got worse and worse. He must have been the boss from hell.

December: Professor Louis Agassiz had always, persistently and openly, considered that any research or thinking an assistant or student of his did had been done under his supervision and inspiration, and therefore belonged to him. Repeatedly, one of these assistants would attempt to resist Agassiz’s appropriations and would then be fired, maligned, and blacklisted. On this particular occasion he excelled, disposing of practically his entire staff for such disloyalty, and explaining this by precisely inverting the situation — accusing them of having been guilty of precisely the self-aggrandizement and appropriative mode of operation which he himself practiced so well. What had happened had indeed happened only, instead of him accepting the mantle of the malicious perp, he was claiming to be the innocent fall guy. In LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, page 317), Edward Lurie would stand back and allow the man to damn himself out of his own mouth: The fact is that I have always given so freely to all my pupils what could be of any use to them from my own scientific capital that they have accustomed themselves to draw from me what they wanted without ever thinking that they even owed an acknowledgment for it. To all that there must be a limit and when I undertook to draw the line I met with the most determined manifestation of ill will and egotism. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1864

The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway’s article for the Atlantic Monthly “Benjamin Banneker, the Negro Astronomer” was republished as a pamphlet in England.70

In about this timeframe, the Reverend was also having published as a pamphlet in England another of his efforts, under the title “The Spiritual Serfdom of the Laity.”71

In about this timeframe the Reverend reminisced: It is quite different from any I have ever seen. So beautiful and cheerful was this Quaker neighborhood, with its bright homes, and fields filled with happy laborers, the only happy negroes I have anywhere known,72 that I always experienced an exhilaration in riding there, and have often gone several miles out of my way to go through it to my appointments. I could tell the very line on the ground where the ordinary Maryland ended and the Quaker region began. I found on further acquaintance that I was in a place where mental culture was general, where there was a good circulating library and excellent schools, and the interior life of Sandy Spring more attractive even than the exterior.73

70. Moncure Daniel Conway. BENJAMIN BANNEKER. THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER. Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly, by M.D. Conway. Pamphlet. London: Printed and Published for the Ladies London Emancipation Society by Emily Faithfull, Printer and Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty, Victoria Press. 1864. READ THE FULL TEXT

71. Moncure Daniel Conway. THE SPIRITUAL SERFDOM OF THE LAITY. BY M.D. CONWAY. Pamphlet. Published by Thomas Scott, Ramsgate. READ THE FULL TEXT

72. Josiah Henson would write about his experience with slavery in a memoir alleging that his life story had been a basis for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s UNCLE TOM’S CABIN in 1852, as the alleged inspiration for the character “Uncle Tom.” A slave cabin in which Henson is believed to have spent time still stands at the end of a driveway off Old Georgetown Road. 73. The Reverend Conway corresponded for decades with an elder of the Sandy Spring Monthly Meeting there, Friend William Henry Farquhar. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

In this crucial election held in the midst of war, the coining of the new term “miscegenation” as the term of choice for the fertile fusion and merging of the human races, to replace or supplement the older term “amalgamation” which ambiguously also indicated the restoration of the federal union, became a central focus, largely as the result of a anonymous-pamphlet hoax perpetrated by the anti-abolitionists David G. Croley and George Wakeman in New-York. The hoax was that while said pamphlet pretended to be an argument in favor of race mixture as our salvation, actually it was being offered in argument by a couple of white journalistic gents who were supposing race mixture to be the very worst thing which might ever happen to us as a nation:74 The Anthropological Society was incensed by an anonymous pamphlet published in London and New York in that year, entitled MISCEGENATION: THE THEORY OF THE BLENDING OF THE RACES APPLIED TO THE AMERICAN WHITE MAN AND NEGRO. It was with this book that the word “miscegenation” was first introduced, and the impact of this book can be measured from the fact that it caught on immediately. The authors began with a short definition of the term, as well as a cluster of other mostly nonce-words: miscegen, miscegenate, miscegenetic, melaleukation, melaleukon, melaleuketic (the last three terms, from the Greek melas (black) and leukos (white) leading to a further term melamigleukation, “the union of the races.” The strategy involved the production of a new word that would have the more specific meaning of actual racial mixture than the customary term “amalgamation,” which doubled as the term for the restoration of the Union. MISCEGENATION consisted of an audacious, cheeky attack on the thesis of the pro-slavery anthropologists Morton, Nott and Gliddon that claimed inevitable decline to be the effect of the mixing of the races. The authors invoke instead another common argument, to be cited by Darwin in THE DESCENT OF MAN, that a cross with “civilized races” makes “an aboriginal race” more fertile. In MISCEGENATION, the authors advance the proposition that miscegenation, far from producing degeneration as Gobineau and his American sympathizers had claimed, would have altogether beneficial effects, in this case by arresting the people of the United States from their alleged current decline, and increasing their fertility and vigour so as to form them into a new super- race: Whatever of power and vitality there is in the American race is derived, not from its Anglo-Saxon progenitors, but from all the different nationalities which go to make up this people. All that is needed to make it the finest race on earth is to engraft upon our stock the negro element which Providence has placed by our side on this continent.... We must become a yellow-skinned, black- haired people –in fine we must become Miscegens– if we would attain the fullest results of civilization (MISCEGENATION, pages 18, 28). Well, isn’t that something, as provocations go! And yet these anonymous New-York anti-abolitionist agents provocateur newsies weren’t far off their mark, for in fact there were persons in that period in whom such provocative thoughts would resonate. One person in whom they had encouraged provocative thoughts was the

74. Young, Robert J.C. COLONIAL DESIRE: HYBRIDITY IN THEORY, CULTURE AND RACE. London: Routledge, 1995 (page 144). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Reverend Conway, who would argue that “the mixture of the blacks and whites is good.” Well, that might be correct, but in that era it was definitely the wrong opinion to have, if one wanted to be of influence in that society. The Reverend would argue “I believe that such a combination would evolve a more complete character than the unmitigated Anglo-Saxon.” He would argue that rather than attempting to rear a new nationality, here in America, “we have to rear a new race.”75 He would argue that “it is well to remember that Miscegenation is already the irreversible fact of Southern Society in every thing but the recognition of it,” that “the mixture of blood has been very extensive,” that “These Southerners have proved that the repulsion of the alliance of the two bloods extends only to so much of it as the parson and magistrate have anything to do with.” –But in the making of such impolitic arguments, in that period, he would be merely disenfranchising himself and his followers precisely as these anonymous New-York anti-abolitionist agents provocateur newsies desired that such persons disenfranchise themselves!

For the science of the day would not support this:

[see descriptive quotation]

75. By the sheerest coincidence the Reverend Conway had a relative down in Virginia who was doing precisely that. During the 1840s his uncle George Washington Conway had fallen in love with a neighbor’s slave, of mixed race, and gotten her pregnant. Then he had done the decent thing. Marry her? –No, that decent thing was quite impossible in Virginia, so he had done the next best, he had purchased her. They had simply matched the external pretense, the pretense of the law, that she was enslaved, with an internal pretense, the pretense of the heart, that she was enwifed. He had become de facto her loving husband. We don’t know much about this couple, for such people quickly became invisible in the Old South, but we do know that in 1852 they had been living on a small farm in the woods with an elderly black woman, and with their two mixed-race children. (Legally, the black woman, the mulatto woman, and the two mulatto children were all the slaves of G.W. Conway — but the only way we can distinguish this George Washington Conway in the records from which he is almost totally absent, as a white man, is that in these records, such as in the two censuses which were taken during his lifetime, he is listed under his full name within a context in which everyone around him has only a given name. Moncure would comment that “Even my father declares that he is the best-hearted of the family.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

The way in which [Robert Dale] Owen dwells on the physical details of the diseases of the Canadian refugees [in his 1864 treatise THE WRONG OF SLAVERY, THE RIGHT OF EMANCIPATION, AND THE FUTURE OF THE AFRICAN RACE IN THE UNITED STATES] is symptomatic of the phobia and fascination that the idea of miscegenation summons forth in the white imagination. As we have seen, 19th-Century scientists seemed particularly prone to such hostile obsessions and ambivalent fantasies. Take, for example, the reaction of the Swiss-American ethnologist, Louis Agassiz, Professor of Zoology at Harvard and contributor to TYPES OF MANKIND, when invited to comment to the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission on the prospect for emancipated slaves in the United States, with particular reference to the question of whether they would amalgamate with the whites, and whether the mulattos would be prolific in reproducing themselves or die out as Nott had claimed. Agassiz’s own theory of the geographical distribution of the races led him to argue that blacks and whites would segregate naturally, with the white going North and the Blacks south. The mulattos, weak and infertile, he claimed, would die out. Rehearsing the argument of Nott, Agassiz similarly finds himself not entirely convinced by his own scientific racial theory. He cannot bear from dwelling on the overriding nightmare of the possibility of amalgamation: The production of halfbreeds is as much a sin against purity of character.... Far from presenting to me a natural solution of our difficulties, the idea of amalgamation is most repugnant to my feelings, I hold it to be a perversion of every natural sentiment.... No efforts should be spared to check that which is abhorrent to our better nature, and to the progress of a higher civilization and a purer morality. ...Disgust always bears the imprint of desire: Agassiz goes on to suggest that the effect of such philandering with mixed-race servants is that the white Southern male increasingly acquires a taste for pure black women: “This blunts his better instincts in that direction and leads him gradually to seek more spicy partners, as I have heard the full blacks called by fast young men.” At this point Agassiz articulates the unspeakable, and opens up the basis of the necessity for why so much racial theory is based on the insistence on inalienable separation: not only the fear, and delicious fantasy, that the white woman really wants to proclaim “I love the black man,” but an avowal of the sexual desire of white men for black women. Once again, as in Gobineau, we find and ambivalent driving desire at the heart of racialism: a compulsive libidinal attraction disavowed by an equal insistence on repulsion ... an ambivalence nicely illustrated in Agassiz’s [and Mrs. Louis Agassiz’s] own A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL [London: Trübner, 1868], where [Professor] Agassiz’s revulsion against “half-breed” mixed-race populations –“a mongrel crowd as repulsive as the mongrel dogs”– is matched by his wife’s fascination for the “fine-looking athletic negroes” from West Africa whom, she writes, she never tires of watching in the street and the market. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY VOLUME II HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

As part of the propaganda that our civil war was not just a bloody mess but a noble cause –that it had moral purpose, that the North was standing on moral high ground– a number of photographs began to circulate, the intent of which was to demonstrate to all and sundry that slavery wasn’t merely something that happened only to Americans who were noticeably “of color,” but was something that might happen even to me and mine or even to you and yours:

(There’s no reason, of course, to suspect that this photograph has been in any way faked. There were in fact light-mulatto slaves in the American South, just as there were free light mulattos in the American North, who looked just about as white as white gets — but who were still in the South being treated as “just another slave,” and were still in the North being treated as “just another nigger.” If, for instance, you ever get a chance to look at photographs of the “black” students being educated by Prudence Crandall in Connecticut –remember the fuss and feathers as local citizens threw rocks through the windows of her school and attempted to set it on HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

fire?– you will be hard put to make out that these young ladies were not perfectly white.) Carleton Mabee’s BLACK FREEDOM

Americans at large often held the abolitionists responsible for the war. They argued that the abolitionists’ long agitation, strident as it often was, had antagonized the South into secession, thus beginning the war, and that the abolitionists’ insistence that the war should not end until all slavery had been abolished kept the war going. In 1863 the widely read New York Herald made the charge devastatingly personal. It specified that by being responsible for the war, each abolitionist had in effect already killed one man and permanently disabled four others.… While William Lloyd Garrison preferred voluntary emancipation, during the war he came to look with tolerance on the abolition of slavery by military necessity, saying that from seeming evil good may come. Similarly, the Garrisonian-Quaker editor, Oliver Johnson, while also preferring voluntary emancipation, pointed out that no reform ever triumphed except through mixed motives. But the Garrisonian lecturer Pillsbury was contemptuous of such attitudes. Freeing the slaves by military necessity would be of no benefit to the slave, he said in 1862, and the next year when the Emancipation Proclamation was already being put into effect, he said that freeing the slaves by military necessity could not create permanent peace. Parker Pillsbury won considerable support for his view from abolitionist meetings and from abolitionist leaders as well. Veteran Liberator writer Edwin Percy Whipple insisted that “true welfare” could come to the American people “only through a willing promotion of justice and freedom.” Henry C. Wright repeatedly said that only ideas, not bullets, could permanently settle the question of slavery. The recent Garrisonian convert, the young orator Ezra Heywood, pointed out that a government that could abolish slavery as a military necessity had no antislavery principles and could therefore re-establish slavery if circumstances required it. The Virginia aristocrat-turned-abolitionist, Moncure Daniel Conway, had misgivings that if emancipation did not come before it became a fierce necessity, it would not reflect true benevolence and hence could not produce true peace. The Philadelphia wool merchant, Quaker Alfred H. Love, asked, “Can so sublime a virtue as … freedom … be the offspring of so corrupt a parentage as war?” The long-time abolitionist Abby Kelley Foster –the speak-inner and Underground Railroader– predicted flatly, if the slave is freed only out of consideration for the safety of the Union, “the hate of the colored race will still continue, and the poison of that wickedness will destroy us as a nation.” Amid the searing impact of the war –the burning fields, the mangled bodies, the blood-splattered hills and fields– a few abolitionists had not forgotten their fundamental belief that to achieve humanitarian reform, particularly if it was to be thorough and permanent reform, the methods used to achieve it must be consistent with the nature of the reform. … What abolitionists often chose to brush aside was that after the war most blacks would still be living in the South, among the same Confederates whom they were now trying to kill.

In what would be known as the “Salem secession,” a group of the students of Professor Louis Agassiz quit Harvard College.

In LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, page 337, Edward Lurie reports that in this timeframe Professor Agassiz took Waldo Emerson to task and the Sage of Concord backed right off: The museum director addressed a letter of rebuke to Emerson for some public remarks the Concord sage had made which to his friend seemed critical of science, and Emerson, under the spell of one whom he ranked next to Thomas Carlyle in his list of “my men,” wrote a quick apology for having unintentionally offended his dear friend. THE SCIENCE OF 1864 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

May 24, Tuesday: People were continuing to kill each other at North Anna / Jericho Mill / Hanover Junction. In addition, on this day, people were killing each other at Wilson’s Wharf / Fort Pocahontas.

In Concord on this day, however, people were burying each other. Waldo Emerson recorded in his journal that:

Yesterday, May 23, we buried Hawthorne in Sleepy Hollow, in a pomp HAWTHORNE of sunshine and verdure, and gentle winds. James Freeman Clarke read the service in the church and at the grave. Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Agassiz, Hoar, Dwight, Whipple, Norton, Alcott, Hillard, LONGFELLOW Fields, Judge Thomas, and I attended the hearse as pallbearers. J.R. LOWELL Franklin Pierce was with the family. The church was copiously DR. O.W. HOLMES decorated with white flowers delicately arranged. The corpse was PROF. AGASSIZ unwillingly shown, — only a few moments to this company of his friends. But it was noble and serene in its aspect, — nothing amiss, JUDGE E.R. HOAR — a calm and powerful head. A large company filled the church and J.S. DWIGHT the grounds of the cemetery. All was so bright and quiet that pain C.K. WHIPPLE or mourning was hardly suggested, and Holmes said to me that it C.E. NORTON looked like a happy meeting. Clarke in the church said that Hawthorne had done more justice than BRONSON ALCOTT any other to the shades of life, shown a sympathy with the crime in HILLARD our nature, and, like Jesus, was the friend of sinners. FIELDS I thought there was a tragic element in the event, that might be JUDGE THOMAS more fully rendered, — in the painful solitude of the man, which, I suppose, could not longer be endured, and he died of it. I have found in his death a surprise and a disappointment. I thought him a greater man than any of his works betray, that there was still a great deal of work in him, and that he might one day show a purer power. Moreover, I have felt sure of him in his neighbourhood, and in his necessities of sympathy and intelligence, — that I could well wait his time, — his unwillingness and caprice, — and might one day conquer a friendship. It would have been a happiness, doubtless to both of us, to have come into habits of unreserved intercourse. It was easy to talk with him, — there were no barriers, — only, he said so little, that I talked too much, and stopped only because, as he gave no indications, I feared to exceed. He showed no egotism or self-assertion, rather a humility, and, at one time, a fear that he had written himself out. One day, when I found him on top of his hill, in the woods, he paced back the path to his house, and said, “This path is the only remembrance of me that will remain.” Now it appears that I waited too long. Lately he had removed himself the more by the indignation his perverse politics and unfortunate FRANKLIN PIERCE friendship for that paltry Franklin Pierce awakened, though it rather moved pity for Hawthorne, and the assured belief that he would outlive it, and come right at last. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

“The Wayside” would be occupied by the widowed Mrs. Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, with her two daughters Una Hawthorne and Rose Hawthorne and her son Julian Hawthorne, until, while again living in Europe, in October 1868 they would vend the place to George and Abby Gray. OLD HOUSES HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

August: In setting up the National Academy of Sciences, Louis Agassiz’s bully-boy “Lazzaroni” had excluded a number of reputable potential members. Spencer Fullerton Baird, who had offended by hiring as an assistant at the Smithsonian Institution the researcher Charles Frédéric Girard whom Agassiz had fired, had been pointedly excluded as “only a descriptive scientist.” To make sure they carried the day, the Lazzaroni had been less than frank with their colleagues about what they were doing and to whom they were doing it. Then when inquiries began to be raised, there was talk about how they had had “opportunities for inductions upon … parts of their lives,” regarding folks like Baird and George Phillips Bond of the Harvard Observatory, which had led to “distinct conclusions” that such men were “too mean to bring into our Academy.” As more and more of this networking came to the attention of the less well connected members, there was a definite groundswell of resentment, and, in spite of the fact that “Mr. Agassiz lost his temper —and as I found next day —took personal offense,” eventually Baird would be enrolled as a member.76

THE SCIENCE OF 1864

76. Rivinus, E.F. and E.M. Youssef. SPENCER BAIRD OF THE SMITHSONIAN. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Winter: Lecture Season of ’64/65, at the Odeon in Boston:

23d Season of The Lowell Institute Rev. Henry Giles. The Divine Element in Human Nature ...... 12 lectures Rev. J.C. Zachos. English Poets ...... 12 lectures Prof. William D. Whitney. Language and the Study of Language ...... 12 lectures Col. Francis J. Lippitt. On Entrenchments ...... 3 lectures Prof. Josiah P. Cooke, Jr. The Sunbeam, its Nature and its Power ...... 12 lectures J. Foster Kirk. Life and Manners in the Middle Ages ...... 6 lectures Professor L. Agassiz. Glaciers and the Ice Period ...... 8 lectures HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE LOWELL INSTITUTE In LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, Edward Lurie would report in regard to this, on his pages 305-308, that: Agassiz ... complained to friends that the “philanthropy” of the past had resulted in such “socialistic” schemes as Brook Farm, and he hoped that this same reformist spirit would not now result in a complete eradication of social and intellectual distinctions.... The Negro could never be the physical equal of the white. Moreover, there were permanent barriers to social and economic equality.... Beginning in December of 1861, Agassiz subordinated all his other activities to the cause of bringing about an informed public opinion through the popularization of knowledge ... the American public was at this time exposed to the most dangerous of scientific and philosophical ideas — the concept of evolution.... The progress of science required an informed public opinion capable of resisting error.... “Nature is the work of thought, the production of intelligence, carried out according to plan.... In our study of natural objects we are approaching the thought of the Creator, reading his conceptions, interpreting a system that is not ours.” Lowell Institute audiences were shown, just as they had learned in 1847, that every fact of nature supported this all-inclusive theory of being.... These sentiments reached a wider audience than the Bostonians present at the Lowell lectures, for they were published as a series in the Atlantic Monthly beginning in January of 1862. THE SCIENCE OF 1864 EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1865

Professor Louis Agassiz went on an expedition to Brazil (he and Mrs. Agassiz would publish A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL in 1868). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1866

Austria was defeated by a combined Italian/Prussian force, and became the dual monarchy of Austria- Hungary. GERMANY

77 The term oecologie was coined by Ernst Haeckel in his GENERELLE MORPHOLOGIE DER ORGANISMEN. CONSERVATIONISM

77. The conservation movement was little more than a shabby fraud. From the historical record, these early environmental technocrats were intent not on solving our ecological crisis but on destroying the earth as quickly as possible. Their net impact has been negative: we would have been better off had we never had a conservation movement, to teach us how to manage our looting so that we looted with greater and greater effectiveness and economy. According to Samuel P. Hays’s EXPLORATIONS IN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY: ESSAYS BY SAMUEL P. H AYS (Pittsburgh PA: U of Pittsburgh P, 1998), these men were mere pawns of the powers that be, careerists bought by their careers: Conservation, above all, was a scientific movement, and its role in history arose from the implications of science and technology in modern society. Conservation leaders sprang from such fields as hydrology, forestry, agrostology, geology, and anthropology. Vigorously active in professional circles in the national capital, these leaders brought the ideals and practices of their crafts into federal resource policy. Loyalty to these professional ideals, not close association with the grass-roots public, set the tone of the Theodore Roosevelt conservation movement. Its essence was rational planning to promote efficient development and use of all natural resources. The idea of efficiency drew these federal scientists from one resource task to another, from specific programs to comprehensive concepts. It molded the policies which they proposed, their administrative techniques, and their relations with Congress and the public. It is from the vantage point of applied science, rather than of democratic protest, that one must understand the historic role of the conservation movement. The new realms of science and technology, appearing to open up unlimited opportunities for human achievement, filled conservation leaders with intense optimism. They emphasized expansion, not retrenchment; possibilities, not limitations.... They displayed that deep sense of hope which pervaded all those at the turn of the century for whom science and technology were revealing visions of an abundant future.... Conflicts between competing resource users, especially, should not be dealt with through the normal processes of politics. Pressure group action, logrolling in Congress, or partisan debate could not guarantee rational and scientific decisions. Amid such jockeying for advantage with the resulting compromise, concern for efficiency would disappear. Conservationists envisaged, even though they did not realize their aims, a political system guided by the ideal of efficiency and dominated by the technicians who could best determine how to achieve it. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

(This “Survival Is Everything” advocate of Naturphilosophie did not assign the same meaning to his coinage oecologie which today we assign to our term “Ecology,” to wit, the manner in which co-evolving biomes of organisms create homes and food supplies for one another. His usage was not at all adventurous. He deployed his new term merely as a synonym for what we now refer to as “our environment.” He used this term “oecologie” to designate a subspecialty in biology, the description and cataloging of species. Thoreau had had the concept of ecology without the word; this man merely had the word without the concept, which was a much shallower accomplishment if it was an accomplishment at all.78)

This was the year in which Professor Louis Agassiz finally apologized to Professor Asa Gray for having quarreled with him in 1864, and so Professor Gray seized on the occasion to suggest to Professor Agassiz that he should answer a question that Charles Darwin had once attempted to put to him, a question about fishes. Agassiz wrote Darwin belatedly answering the question, but took the occasion to comment that he considered Darwin’s views to be “mischievous because they lead to a looseness of argumentation which it has been the aim of science to avoid.” We may note again the inversion technique: Agassiz’s arguments against the theory of evolution had been so bombastic and ad hominem and slipshod that he had eventually been unable to continue scientific publication on the matter, and had been limited instead to posturing in public lectures before lay audiences. What I would need to point out isn’t that it was untrue that Darwin’s well-constructed reasonings were “mischievous because they lead to a looseness of argumentation which it has been the aim of science to avoid,” but that it was true that Agassiz’s brazen opinioneering were “mischievous because they lead to a looseness of argumentation which it has been the aim of science to avoid.” Yes, inversion, and in Edward Luria’s LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, page 209) Lurie would comment that: The adoration of a public that had sent him fishes and turtle and subscribed in large numbers to his CONTRIBUTIONS [TO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA] was only one mark of the influence he now exerted upon the national culture.... The weight of his reputation was so powerful as to impel editor Horace Greeley to refuse to publish an attack on him by an amateur naturalist and to warn the man that it would be futile to pursue a quarrel against such a personage. THE SCIENCE OF 1866

78. Refer to Bramwell, Anna. ECOLOGY IN THE 20TH CENTURY: A HISTORY. New Haven CT: Yale UP, 1989. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Winter: Lecture Season of ’66/67, at the Odeon in Boston:

24th Season of The Lowell Institute Prof. L. Agassiz. Brazil ...... 12 lectures Charles S. Peirce, S.D. The Logic of Science and Induction ...... 12 lectures T. Sterry Hunt, F.R.S. Chemical and Physical Geography ...... 12 lectures Wm. P. Atkinson. English Literature ...... 12 lectures E. Geo. Squier. The Inca Empire ...... 12 lectures Rev. E. Burgess. The Antiquity of Man ...... 12 lectures R.H. Dana, Jr., LL.D. International Law ...... 12 lectures Rev. W.L. Gage. Biblical Geography ...... 12 lectures HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

THE LOWELL INSTITUTE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1867

Léopold Trouvelot, a Massachusetts researcher associated with Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College, was experimenting with various silk-producing moths including the “European” gypsy moth Porthetrea dispar or Lymantria dispar.79 The investigator reported that he had put five acres of woodland in Medford, Massachusetts within an 8-foot fence, and covered this area over with nets adequate to keep out all birds in order to experiment with these silk-producing moths.80 He was intending to breed a disease-resistant silkworm (and do good and do well). He would accidentally release a very small number of European gypsy moths into the vacant lot next door, which is to say, into the ecosystem. Oops.81

TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS Dr. Samuel Kneeland, Jr. began to serve as an instructor in zoology and physiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An avid collector, he would venture on collection expeditions to Brazil, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Iceland (he does not seem to have brought back with him anything quite as devastating as the gypsy moth). He would contribute over 1,000 articles, mostly on zoological and medical subjects, to APPLETON’S AMERICAN CYCLOPÆDIA. THE SCIENCE OF 1867

79. “Dispar” referred to the fact that the males and females are of different colors. 80. This risk was entirely unnecessary as it was run due to the fact that at that time the “European” gypsy moth (which actually had originated in Japan) was incorrectly being classified by entomologists and taxonomists as in the same genus with the silkworm Bombyx mori. No, it was all a stupid Harvard mistake, folks, and we’re sure embarrassed about that. 81. We may well note that there is no monument in Medford, Massachusetts to mark the “Forefathers Tree” in which the progenitors of the gypsy moths of America “stepped ashore” in 1867 or 1868 in this New World. Is this or is this not discrimination between one kind of intrusive, highly honored, and another kind, decidedly unwanted? –And why do we continue so gratuitously to insult Gypsies, after we have learned that it is so very wrong to insult Jews? HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1868

Professor Louis Agassiz and Mrs. Agassiz having gone on an expedition in 1865, in this year they published A JOURNEY IN BRAZIL. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1869

October 4, Monday: At Te Porere in New Zealand, the Maori led by Te Kooti were decisively defeated by the Colonial militia and their Maori allies.

From that morning into the following day there was an Atlantic Category-2 hurricane (the Saffir-Simpson Scale: sustained winds in the 96-to-110mph range). The strong winds on the “righthand” side of the storm track caused such a large amount of forest blowdown that in following summers there would be an increased forest fire hazard. On the “lefthand” side of the storm track, huge amounts of rain were unloaded in the northern New England states through to eastern New York State. According to the Farmington Chronicle, one Maine farmer recorded 8.25 inches of rain. Virtually every bridge in Maine went out and over a million logs escaped their booms and went downstream. Close to a hundred lives were lost. Roads and railways were blocked by fallen trees and debris.

Many vessels blew ashore in the Eastport, Maine-St. Andrews, New Brunswick area including the barque Genii with the loss of eleven lives. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

This storm, unfortunately, blew down the protective netting which Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, the Massachusetts researcher associated with Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College, had caused to be erected above the five acres of woodlands in which he was experimenting with various supposedly-silk- producing moths including the “European” gypsy moth. (Eventually this guy Trouvelot would feel like he needed to move out of his neighborhood, because he considered that it had become distressing — due to the denudation of its trees.)82

82. Some 4-foot-long metal tubes jammed into the marshy soil and sediment layers at Succotash Marsh in East Matunuck, Rhode Island (at the west side of the ocean entrance of the Narragansett Bay) by Tom Webb of the Geological Sciences Department of Brown University, have revealed that there has been a series of overwash fans created by storm tidal surges, indicating that seven category-three hurricanes have struck Narragansett lowlands in about the past millennium. The 1st such overwash fan that has been revealed dated to the period 1295-1407CE, the 2nd to the period of roughly the first half of the 15th Century, the 3rd to approximately 1520CE (give or take a few decades), the 4th to the historic storm of the 14th and 15th of August, 1635, and the 5th to the historic storm of September 23, 1815. The 6th such overwash fan obviously dates specifically to this historic storm of October 4/5, 1869. NEW ENGLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Winter: Lecture Season of ’69/70, at the Odeon in Boston:

27th Season of The Lowell Institute Prof. L. Agassiz. Deep Sea Dredging ...... 12 lectures John Bascom. Mental Philosophy ...... 12 lectures Wm. H. Channing. Progress of Civilization ...... 12 lectures W.H. Niles. Geological History, Ancient and Modern ...... 12 lectures Burt G. Wilder. Hands and Feet of Mammalia ...... 12 lectures Rev. E.E. Hale. Divine Method in Human Life ...... 12 lectures

Members of the American Social Science Association ...... 12 lectures C.C. Perkins. Art Education in the United States. F.L. Olmsted. Public Parks. Prof. Francis Bacon. Civilization and Health. Gen. T.A. Duncan. The American System of Patents. Prof. D.C. Gilman. Scientific Technical Instruction. Prof. B. Peirce. The Coast Survey. Prof. Raphael Pumpelly. The Chinese Question. E.L. Godkin. Rationalism in Legislation. William B. Osgood. Material Growth of the Northwest. George Derby, M.D. Material Growth of the Northwest. Pres. T.D. Woolsey. Material Growth of the Northwest. David Dudley Field. Material Growth of the Northwest. Albert S. Bickmore. China and the Chinese ...... 12 lectures HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE LOWELL INSTITUTE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1870

June: Thomas Mayne Reid needed to check into the St. Luke Hospital of New-York due to suppuration of the wound he had received in 1847 at the fortress of Chapultepec (I will spare you an image of what the dashing handsome Captain looked like by this point in his life, although such an image does exist).

Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard University demonstrated how much respect he had for academic freedom of speech and of expression, by declaring:

[E]very one who has something to say, is welcome. Let him only prove his qualification to say something and he should be heard.

THE SCIENCE OF 1870

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1871

Professor Louis Agassiz went on an expedition to California, by traveling along both coasts of the South American continent. He would study and publish on the viviparous surf fishes of California. THE SCIENCE OF 1871

Dr. Samuel Kneeland, Jr.’ became the secretary of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Publication of his THE WONDERS OF THE YOSEMITE VALLEY AND OF CALIFORNIA.

LET’S ALL MOVE TO CA HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1872

Professor Louis Agassiz provided a “Eulogy on John E. Holbrook” in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1873

March 30, Sunday: The Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote from Newport, Rhode Island to Charles Darwin in Down, England about how pleased he was that Darwin had enjoyed his book OUTDOOR PAPERS of 1871. He rejoiced at Darwin’s kindly feelings toward the coloured race. He reported that, unfortunately, due to the “unworldliness” of its editor the Reverend Francis Ellingwood Abbot, The Free Religious Index was in financial trouble. He reported that Professor Louis Agassiz of Harvard College, a denier of the theory of evolution, was setting up a summer school for natural history on an island off the Massachusetts coast (this was on the island of Penikese, the outermost of the Elizabeth Islands below Cape Cod) — but that there his pupils had been developing more liberal scientific opinions than those held by their august professor (Agassiz, determinedly racist, was a scoffer at Darwin’s theory of evolution since such a scientific theory might indicate there to be some commonality between the white race and the black one). Since Darwin had recently published on THE EXPRESSION OF THE EMOTIONS IN MAN AND ANIMALS, the Reverend Higginson enclosed some of his scientific notes on the expression of emotions.

Summer: On Penikese,83 the farthest of the Elizabeth Islands below Cape Cod, an island donated by the wealthy New York tobacconist John Anderson,84 Professor Louis Agassiz, just back from a journey to California sailing around Cape Horn, offered an “Anderson School of Natural History.” His lecture room was a large barn that had been cleaned out for the occasion. There were some fifty students. A schooner yacht, the Sprite, donated to the school by a Mr. Galloupe of Boston, was used in dredging for specimens to examine in this barn:

83. The farthest offshore, Penikese, is about half a square mile. The first recorded landing by Europeans was in May 1602, by Bartholomew Gosnold, at which time the island was wooded. The only trees left after the island’s clearing for pasture are a few patches of scrub oak. Most of this island had become grassland sprinkled with glacial rock when in 1867 Anderson bought the place evidently because he had more money than he knew what to do with. Around the turn of the 20th Century, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts took title with a plan to use the island as an isolation unit for smallpox patients, to replace that smallpox isolation hospital on Pine Island in Boston Harbor that had been destroyed by fire in 1872.Then in 1905 the island became an isolation colony for the approximately 20 persons in Massachusetts who were victims of leprosy. For one reason or another only five of these 20 ever came to Penikese. The patients were initially looked after by Dr. Louis Edmonds of Barnstable, and beginning in 1907 by Dr. Frank Parker and Mrs. Parker. One of the more notable patients was 16 years of age, Archie Thomas and his mother insisted on coming with him, this creating a sensation. Archie set up a wireless and was able to communicate with people off the island. In 1912 the home of Dr. and Mrs. Parker burned and many of the island’s records were lost. By 1921 the treatment of leprosy had advanced and the six patients remaining were relocated to a federal leprosarium in Louisiana. The Parkers moved to Montana and retired while the state burned and dynamited all buildings on the island with the understanding that this would kill off the leprosy germs. The State continued to hold ownership, and 1942 the island would be designated a bird sanctuary. In Summer 1973 George Cadwalader and some of his friends would establish a residential school for troubled boys between the ages of 13 and 18. A culprit would be sometimes given the choice to come to Penikese or serve hard time in a Massachusetts prison, but the Penikese School for Delinquent Youths would not acquire any sort of good track record for turning lives around. 84. No relation to John Anderson the escaped American slave. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Prayer of Agassiz by John Greenleaf Whittier

ON the isle of Penikese, Ringed about by sapphire seas, Fanned by breezes salt and cool, Stood the Master with his school. Over sails that not in vain Wooed the west-wind’s steady strain, Line of coast that low and far Stretched its undulating bar, Wings aslant across the rim Of the waves they stooped to skim, Rock and isle and glistening bay, Fell the beautiful white day. Said the Master to the youth : “We have come in search of truth, Trying with uncertain key Door by door of mystery ; We are reaching, through His laws, To the garment-hem of Cause, Him, the endless, unbegun, The Unnamable, the One Light of all our light the Source Life of life, and Force of force. As with fingers of the blind, We are groping here to find What the hieroglyphics mean Of the Unseen in the seen, What the Thought which underlies Nature’s masking and disguise, What it is that hides beneath Blight and bloom and birth and death. By past efforts unavailing, Doubt and error, loss and failing, Of our weakness made aware, On the threshold of our task Let us light and guidance ask, Let us pause in silent prayer !” Then the Master in his place Bowed his head a little space, And the leaves by soft airs stirred, Lapse of wave and cry of bird, Left the solemn hush unbroken Of that wordless prayer unspoken, While its wish, on earth unsaid, Rose to heaven interpreted. As, in life’s best hours, we hear By the spirit’s finer ear His low voice within us, thus The All-Father heareth us ; And His holy ear we pain With our noisy words and vain. Not for Him our violence Storming at the gates of sense, His the primal language, His The eternal silences ! Even the careless heart was moved, And the doubting gave assent, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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With a gesture reverent, To the Master well-beloved. As thin mists are glorified By the light they cannot hide, All who gazed upon him saw, Through its veil of tender awe, How his face was still uplift By the old sweet look of it, Hopeful, trustful, full of cheer, And the love that casts out fear. Who the secret may declare Of that brief, unuttered prayer ? Did the shade before him come Of th’ inevitable doom, Of the end of earth so near, And Eternity’s new year ? In the lap of sheltering seas Rests the isle of Penikese ; But the lord of the domain Comes not to his own again : Where the eyes that follow fail, On a vaster sea his sail Drifts beyond our beck and hail. Other lips within its bound Shall the laws of life expound ; Other eyes from rock and shell Read the world’s old riddles well : But when breezes light and bland Blow from Summer’s blossomed land, WHen the air is glad with wings, And the blithe song-sparrow sings, Many an eye with his still face Shall the living one displace, Many an ear the word shall seek He alone could fitly speak. And one name forevermore Shall be uttered o’er and o’er By the waves that kiss the shore, By the curlew’s whistle sent Down the cool, sea-scented air ; In all voices known to her, Nature owns her worshipper, Half in triumph, half lament. Thither Love shall tearful turn, Friendship pause uncovered there, And the wisest reverence learn From the Master’s silent prayer. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

December 14, Sunday: God played a “leetle joke” on Louis Agassiz in the form of an odd-looking crab-shaped cerebral hemorrhage (as we can see here, this didn’t disturb his equanimity).

DEATHMASK

December 18, Thursday: Boston newspapers were edged in black as Louis Agassiz was laid to rest. An alpine boulder weighing 2,500 pounds was on order from Switzerland, perhaps to make sure this corpse stayed below ground. The worshipful James Russell Lowell was in Italy and wouldn’t learn of the event until several months later: …with vague, mechanic eyes, I scanned the festering news we half despise … When suddenly, As happens if the brain, from overweight Of blood, infect the eye, Three tiny words grew lurid as I read, And reeled commingling: Agassiz is dead! HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1876

Harvard University was planning to create a Museum of Comparative Zoology (it would, it goes without saying, be named the Agassiz, and it would, it goes without saying, contain an exhibit of glass flowers):

Thomas Henry Huxley delivered the inaugural address at the founding of the Johns Hopkins University, with the first modern Department of Biology. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1877

A portrait of Professor Louis Agassiz by Henry Ulke was purchased by our federal government — which has subsequently lost or misplaced it. So here, instead, is the Agassiz deathmask:

DEATHMASK HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1880

Jones Very died. His epitaph has been placed on record by Edwin Gittleman (page 372) as “Although he lived until 1880, Very’s effective life was over by the end of 1840.”85

(A very extensive collection of his letters and papers would be preserved by his surviving sister but upon her death in 1901 those materials would be discarded.)

85. One wonders why biographers do not say the same of Waldo Emerson the sage of Concord, or of Professor Louis Agassiz the great scientist, two other gentlemen who by everyone’s admission had ceased producing new or interesting ideas by about the midpoints of their lives. Is it so different, being thoroughly discredited and from that point accomplishing nothing, and being thoroughly credited and from that point accomplishing nothing? HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1883

February 9, Friday: The Reverend Moncure Daniel Conway addressed the Royal Institution in London on “Emerson and his Views of Nature.” He attempted to advise this competent audience that on April 27, 1854, Waldo Emerson had delivered a talk on poetry in a public room at the Harvard Theological School, at Conway’s request, in which Emerson had spoken of arrested and progressive development in a manner which quite anticipated the 1859 theory of Mr. Charles Darwin’s ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. Darwin, it seems, wasn’t simply mistaken, as Professor Louis Agassiz had been waxing apoplectic at the time and as he died still insisting, but simply hadn’t been original — it had been Agassiz’s buddy Emerson who had been the original, he had known it all along, while the good professor of biology simply hadn’t noticed this wonderful thing about his buddy!

“What does this prove...?” “This is truly monstrous!”

What Emerson had said about the primary theoretical framework of the science of biology, Conway reported, was “The electric word pronounced by [Doctor] John Hunter [1728-1793] a hundred years ago, — arrested and progressive development — indicating the way upward from the invisible protoplasm to the highest organism, — gave the poetic key to natural science, — of which the theories of [Isidore] Geoffroy St. Hilaire [1805-1861], of Lorenz Oken [1779-1851], of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832], of [Professor] Louis Agassiz [1807-1873], and [Sir] Richard Owen [1804-1892] and [Doctor] Erasmus Darwin [1731-1802] in HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

zoölogy and botany, are the fruits, — a hint whose power is not exhausted, showing unity and perfect order in physics.” –Which of course was not Darwinism, but far from it and in opposition to it. It was in fact the obsolete mental universe of hierarchy and superiority, of Naturphilosophie, the great ladder of being which Mr. Charles Darwin had been struggling to supersede. THE SCIENCE OF 1883

Evidently Waldo had been referring to Saint-Hilaire’s 1832-1837 HISTOIRE GENERALE ET PARTICULIERE DES ANOMALIES DE L’ORGANISATION CHEZ L’HOMME ET LES ANIMAUX … OU TRAITE DE TERATOLOGIE …, or perhaps to the English version of Volume I of this by Palmer which had appeared in 1835. Evidently, also, the assembled Brits were so tolerant toward this venturesome American minister, that he was able to mistake their politeness. At any rate, in his relentlessly self-promotional autobiography of 1904 he would proclaim that his audience had been “much startled.”

In LOUIS AGASSIZ: A LIFE IN SCIENCE (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988, Edward Lurie would report in regard to this sort of total misunderstanding, on his pages 282-290, that: Moses Ashley Curtis told his botanist friend, “I am always suspicious of Agassiz. He has an enormous amount of facts —he is incomparable in the discovery of facts— but I am becoming continually more dissatisfied with him as a generalizer....” One reason why the academicians and laymen of Boston were so well informed on major aspects of the new biology was that Agassiz had spent so much time and effort contradicting these ideas. Before 1859, Agassiz had argued with almost every major assumption of the forthcoming Darwinian analysis. As [Asa] Gray knew and Agassiz indicated by his protestations, the world was prepared for a revival of the “development” theory. But this would be in a form that, as Gray predicted, would obviate many of the older arguments against it. In Agassiz’s view, every old argument was just as valid as ever; Darwin’s work supplied no new mechanism or interpretation but was simply a rehash of Lamarck, [Lorenz] Oken, and the VESTIGES It was hardly worth the bother, it seemed, for the director of the Harvard museum to refute the arguments again, but bother he must, because his colleagues would not let the matter rest. Agassiz’s cosmic philosophy shaped his entire reaction to the evolution idea. His definition of the relation of natural history to transcendental conceptions was that such conceptions were basic to understanding and were supported by evidence. Thus he could assert: There is a system in nature... to which the different [classification] systems of authors are successive approximations.... This growing coincidence between our systems and that of nature shows... the identity of the operations of the human and the Divine intellect; especially when it is remembered to what an extraordinary degree many a priori conceptions, relating to nature, have in the end proved to agree with reality, in spite of every objection at first offered HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

to them by empiric observers. An attitude such as this made Agassiz appear to his critics an exponent of a traditional idealism whose German education in the spirit of Naturphilosophie prevented him from admitting the validity of an objective interpretation of nature based on observable, secondary phenomena. This was an understandable reaction to Agassiz. There was an unbroken thread connecting his mental outlook with a view of nature stretching back to Plato, a view intellectually close to a concept of being in which the immaterial world was considered the essence of reality. Exemplifying this intellectual tradition, Agassiz saw natural history as the earthly representation of spirit, and thought of the Creative Power as having engineered a timeless, all- encompassing plan for the universe. This scheme of creation was rational, because nature past and present illustrated the creative intention. All facts could be subsumed under this master plan that had been fashioned in the beginning, and all apparent change explained as indicative of a predictable, fixed order in the universe. Species, the individual units of identity in nature, were types of thought reflecting an ideal, immaterial inspiration. The same was true of the larger taxonomic categories — genera, families, orders, branches, and kingdoms. All such categories had no real existence in nature. Reality could be discovered only in the character of the individual animals and plants that had inhabited and were now inhabiting the material world. The individual fossil or living form represented on earth the categories of divine thought ranging from species to kingdom and ultimately symbolized a complete identity with the highest concept of being, God. For Agassiz there was only one method by which an insight could be gained into this creative process, and that was the method of the natural scientist. The naturalist had an understanding vastly superior to the theologian; it was his expert knowledge of the data of the material world that could provide continual and ever more impressive verification of the power and grandeur implicit in the plan of creation. The fact that Agassiz thought of himself as possessing this ability provided him with the intellectual drive to achieve superior knowledge. It was this life role, moreover, that prevented a simple espousal of traditional idealism. Without constant empirical study, Agassiz would have been deprived of a basis for offering the world new demonstrations of the work of the Creative Power, such as the Ice Age. In drawing a spiritual lesson from his study, Agassiz had to create “species” that did not exist, because he could not admit variation and had to interpret the glacial epoch as another event in a long chain of divinely inspired catastrophes. It was this intellectual quality that made Agassiz such a formidable and perplexing opponent for men like Darwin and Gray. He was quite capable of making the most admirable scientific discoveries reflecting complete devotion to scientific method, but he would then interpret the data through the medium of what HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

seemed to be the most absurd metaphysics. Faced with this kind of mentality, Darwin and his defenders understandably labeled Agassiz the advocate of an outworn idealism. The tragedy of Agassiz’s relationship to Darwin’s ideas was that in a crucial decade of transformation in natural history interpretation, he had given too little thought to justifying his own viewpoint. When Agassiz finally published an integrated statement of his philosophy in 1857, the “Essay on Classification” represented ideas that had little value for his times. This publication demonstrated, however, that Agassiz was by this time entirely certain that the teachings of Naturphilosophie were incompatible with special creationism. He therefore equated this concept with the false notion that “all animals formed but one simple, continuous series,” an idea that could readily “become the foundation of a system of the philosophy of nature which suggests all animals as [being] the different degrees of development of a few primitive types.” It was but a short step from such a view to one that interpreted animal forms as sharing a unity of origin and genetic derivation, illustrating the transformation of one form into another through modification from “physical” causes. Unable to tolerate this idea, Agassiz found it necessary to abjure what he felt were these larger tendencies of Naturphilosophie, all the while retaining the mental attitude once derived from its idealism, the ability to interpret the data of experience as significant of a meaning above and beyond experience. Naturphilosophie seemed a threat to Agassiz’s special creationism primarily because it assumed a continuity in organic creation. Agassiz and his honored master Cuvier, on the other hand, deeply believed that the creative plan was so ordered as to illustrate discontinuity and the independence of natural categories. Thus catastrophes had operated to break the thread of natural history on many occasions. Moreover, since species and the larger units of identity were symbolic of divine intelligence, they were immutable and could never be said to illustrate material connection with each other. Individuals representing the divine plan were created independently and separately. This discontinuous view of creation gave the Deity much more power than believers in “development” were ever able to allow. Multiple and new creations were symbolic of the discontinuity ordained by the creator. Agassiz did believe, however, in one particular concept of continuity and development. Indebted to his German education from Dollinger, he affirmed that change was to be discerned in the life-history of the individual form, namely, the ontogenetic transformations revealed by embryology. The development of the individual from egg to adult signified, to Agassiz, a progressive, unfolding evolution along a path predetermined by the potentiality of the original egg and ending in a fixed form HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

that was the permanent character of the individual. Change and development were in this view transitory stages in the achievement of permanence. Schelling employed this concept to demonstrate the existence of a supreme being who could ordain the potentiality of highest perfection from the beginning. Agassiz drew similar comfort from embryology, synthesizing empiricism and idealism by insisting that the naturalist had to observe the development of the egg under the microscope to experience demonstrations of absolute power. Understandably, Agassiz insisted that embryology provided “the most trustworthy standard to determine relative rank among animals.” This science was the necessary basis for all classification, since study of individual development revealed how the animal conformed to the essence of its type. Individual growth reflected an unfolding of the higher categories of identity, and by studying a single fish Agassiz could see the entire scale of being from species to branch in the animal kingdom. Embryology thus illustrated the entire history of life. Agassiz, therefore, could never understand why the evolution concept of Darwin required such a great amount of time to accomplish change in species or types when he could observe change and evolution that occurred rapidly in the individual. If such change was so sudden in the history of life from egg to adult, it was incomprehensible why great periods were required to effect changes in classes, orders, or types. To Agassiz change was dynamic and catastrophic in embryology, just as it was in geology. In each instance, sudden change resulted in preordained, final purpose. Agassiz could not understand the evolutionary process because he confused two different kinds of evolution. He made the common error of his time of equating the history of the individual — ontogeny— with the history of the type or race—phylogeny. Agassiz believed that the various phases of embryological development or ontogeny were in fact determined by the inherent race history that each individual form contained within its germ as a kind of preview of things to come. Thus the embryology of the animal revealed in successive stages the predetermined scale of categories to which it belonged—species, genus, family, and so on. Agassiz was consequently very impressed with the “biogenetic law,” that ontogeny or individual development is a recapitulation of phylogeny or racial history, the history of the type being the cause of the history of the individual. His student Joseph Le Conte claimed that Agassiz had discovered this “law.” This was an unfounded assertion, because the concept had been known since the late eighteenth century, and Agassiz had learned it from his teacher Tiedemann. Agassiz’s specific contribution to the recapitulation concept was empirical. In his own words, “I have shown that there is a correspondence between the succession of Fishes in geological times and the different stages of growth in their egg, that is all.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Analysts such as Le Conte and others claimed that Agassiz’s association with the recapitulation idea made him a notable forerunner of Darwin. Nothing could be further from the truth. Agassiz’s interpretation of the facts of embryology was a cosmic one: The leading thought which runs through the succession of all organized beings in past ages is manifested again in new combinations in the phases of development of the living representatives of these different types. It exhibits everywhere the working of the same creative Mind, through all times, and upon the surface of the whole globe. Moreover, Agassiz emphatically contradicted the wider uses of the recapitulation concept by men of his generation, an interpretation that viewed the separate examples of ontogeny as proof of a long history of causally connected phylogenetic transformations in an ascending scale of development from lower to higher forms beginning with the earliest ancestor and ending with contemporary creation. Agassiz insisted, therefore, that embryology showed a recapitulation of phylogeny only in the repetition of the natural history of the particular and separate type-plan to which the individual belonged. In so doing he reflected his disapproval of the assumptions of Naturphilosophie, that there was an ascending and unbroken scale of development from lower to higher forms. He was explicit on this point: It has been maintained... that the higher animals pass during their development through all the phases characteristic of the inferior classes. Put in this form, no statement can be further from the truth; and yet there are decided relations, within certain limits, between the embryonic stages of growth of higher animals and the permanent characters of others of an inferior grade.... As eggs, in their primitive condition, animals do not differ one from the other; but as soon as the embryo has begun to show any characteristic features, it presents such peculiarities as distinguish its branch. It cannot, therefore, be said that any animal passes through the phases of development which are not included within the limits of its own branch. No Vertebrate is, or resembles at any time, an Articulate; no Articulate a Mollusk.... Whatever correlations between the young of higher animals and the perfect condition of inferior ones may be traced, they are always limited to representatives of the same branch.... No higher animal passes through phases of development recalling all the lower types of the animal kingdom. Agassiz’s interpretation of the recapitulation idea had consequences for the concept of evolution. From the first, HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Agassiz was much more radical in regard to recapitulation than the embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer. Agassiz believed that ontogeny was a recapitulation of adult ancestral forms, while Von Baer would grant only that recapitulation was limited to a repetition of young or intermediate forms in the life-history of ancestors and that the individual deviated from these resemblances in a progressive fashion during its growth. In 1859 Darwin cited Agassiz’s concept of adult recapitulation and Agassiz’s belief that this process of repetition in the individual signified the history of the race. For Darwin, this concept “accords well with the theory of natural selection,” and he hoped it would be proved in the future. Subsequently, Darwin accepted the Agassiz view without qualification. Agassiz’s view of recapitulation as a direct repetition of final adult forms was erroneous. Darwin’s acceptance of it had unfortunate results for the later history of the evolution doctrine. Von Baer’s view, on the other hand, laid the groundwork for the modern science of embryology by stressing the fact of individual development from egg to adult, and the very limited recapitulation of younger forms in such development. Had Darwin followed Von Baer and not Agassiz, modern embryology would not have had to rescue Von Baer’s interpretations from the obscurity in which they were placed by the triumph of Darwinism and by the ideas of such subsequent advocates of the Agassiz position as Ernst Haeckel. Von Baer, of course, opposed evolution from idealistic presuppositions, and vacillated a good deal in his own relationship to Darwinism. Nevertheless, when modern embryologists who were intellectually equipped to separate Von Baer the idealist from Von Baer the embryologist perceived the value of his view of recapitulation, they could employ it as a means of understanding phylogeny as the result of individual ontogeny in particular periods of natural history. To call Agassiz a precursor of Darwin on the basis of Darwin’s ill-considered use of an erroneous Agassiz conception is a vast mistake. In fact, when Von Baer criticized Darwin for his use of the recapitulation concept, he was in effect criticizing Agassiz. Agassiz was wrong on recapitulation, and Darwin made the same error. Darwin made other errors too, but despite gaps in his knowledge, despite ignorance of the mechanism of heredity, and despite Agassiz, Darwin was right. He was right because the evolution idea did not require the recapitulation theory for its general validity. Darwin, after all, understood phylogeny, and Agassiz did not. Regardless of the erroneous Agassiz belief that individual development was determined by previous ancestral history, it is most nearly accurate to say that the history of types and races is the result of separate, modified, individual transformations. Ontogeny “causes” phylogeny in the large sense, rather than the reverse of this process, as Agassiz believed. Phylogeny, moreover, is best understood through knowledge of the history of life. Organic development occurs through the introduction and HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

preservation of new and useful variations and the consequent influence of such transformations on the character of subsequent populations. In Von Baer’s criticisms, Darwin paid a heavy price for his use or Agassiz’s interpretation of recapitulation. To make matters worse, Darwin did not realize that Agassiz had expressed strong reservations about the very recapitulation idea he advocated and Darwin used. Agassiz criticized recapitulation, moreover, before 1859, and his criticism was both empirical and idealistic. Agassiz did so because of a growing realization that the concept was useful to advocates of the development hypothesis. Recapitulation, sometimes put forward as proof of a long, continuous sweep of natural history with types and races transformed into more advanced types, was a view of phylogeny Agassiz could never accept. Consequently, he cast doubt upon such continuity, taking issue with the logical extension of an idea he had advocated by citing evidence that demonstrated that ontogeny did not always recapitulate phylogeny in direct repetition, since many characters appeared in the individual in a sequence different from that in which they had appeared in the history of the type. Agassiz joined Von Baer both before and after 1859 in opposing concepts of development with the weapons of idealism. For Agassiz, the reality of the plan of creation was threatened by a historical view of the evolution of types and races; permanence of type was also threatened by a concept of transmutation made possible through the agency of physical processes. Hence recapitulation, to Agassiz, had to prove thought and premeditation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1906

April 18, Wednesday: When the Louis Agassiz statue toppled in the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the president of Stanford was another ichthyologist. Rumor has it that when Professor David Starr Jordan saw the inverted statue, he commented that he had always thought better of Agassiz in the concrete than in the abstract. This putative comment has been commented upon by Stephen Jay Gould: “A lovely story that surely deserves to be true. But, alas, it is not.” The less ept comment actually made, by someone less qualified in ichthyology, had been merely that Agassiz was “great in the abstract but not in the concrete.” L’esprit de l’escalier strikes again!

Not a theologian pretending to be a scientist Agassiz standing on his head and stacking BBs (Some of us understood that all along) (Please don’t attempt this at home) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1918

December 22, Sunday: Newell Convers Wyeth reported that Henry Thoreau had not become important to him until after he had moved to Pennsylvania, due to an initial limited impression which had been passed on to him by his grandfather Jean Denys Zirngieble (1829-1905). His grandfather, who had worked at Harvard’s Botanic Garden in association with Louis Agassiz and Ephriam Wales Bull (two gents who have become renown since their deaths for their foul attitudes), had evidently absorbed attitudes from those questionable sources — and so had informed his grandson with a shrug of the shoulders that Henry had been merely an “amateur naturalist.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1925

July 18, Saturday: The 1st volume of Adolf Hitler’s “My Prisons” opus, MEIN KAMPF, was published by Max Amann. Would you like to be inspired?

Hitler would be in prison in Germany this year and the next. He was what you’d call a political prisoner. WORLD WAR II

This jailhouse author, we notice now, was guilty of uncritically passing along racist remarks which had originated with the German traveler Johann J. von Tschudi in TRAVELS IN PERU, DURING THE YEARS 1838- 1842 ON THE COAST, AND IN THE SIERRA, ACROSS THE CORDILLERAS AND THE ANDES, INTO THE PRIMEVAL FORESTS, published in London in English translation in 1847, racist remarks which had subsequently been brought forward in such accounts as Dr. Josiah Clark Nott’s and George Robin Gliddon’s foundational textbook of the new racialist American anthropology, published in London in 1854, TYPES OF MANKIND: OR, ETHNOLOGICAL RESEARCHES, BASED UPON THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS, PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, AND HDT WHAT? INDEX

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CRANIA OF RACES, AND UPON THEIR NATURAL, GEOGRAPHICAL, PHILOLOGICAL, AND BIBLICAL HISTORY: ILLUSTRATED BY SELECTIONS FROM THE UNEDITED PAPERS OF SAMUEL GEORGE MORTON, M.D., AND BY ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PROF. L. AGASSIZ, LL.D., W. USHER, M.D.; AND PROF. H.S. PATTERSON, M.D., and again subsequently been brought forward in 1876 by Herbert Spencer in Volume I of his THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY. Some lies are so choice, they never die.

Of course, as we all know, Adolf was the sort of guy who would only use biological weapons if he could get away with it.

He wasn’t like us at all. WORLD WAR II ( What he would do would be a radical departure from what had come before ;-) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1960

Edward Luria authored a scholarly biography of Professor Louis Agassiz in the pages of which Henry Thoreau rated one mention and one descriptor. Thoreau is mentioned because he supplied some turtle specimens from Concord. He is characterized –without the offering of any shred of evidence– as “admiring” this professor (surely the remainder of the pages of this scholarly biography must be more authoritative than this page 146 would seem to indicate).86

86. Edward Lurie. LOUIS AGASSIZ. Chicago IL: U of Chicago P, 1960 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1963

Professor Guy Davenport’s THE INTELLIGENCE OF LOUIS AGASSIZ: A SPECIMEN BOOK OF SCIENTIFIC 87 WRITINGS; SELECTED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY GUY DAVENPORT (Beacon Press).

With a published book under his belt, Professor Davenport left Haverford College for the University of Kentucky. He would teach there until receiving a MacArthur Fellowship and retiring at the end of 1990. In this year in the story “Ithaka,” he described a visit he had made to the home of Ezra Pound in Rapallo, Italy while still writing his dissertation on Pound’s poetry (this would in 1983 see publication as CITIES ON HILLS).

87. Avoid the Greenwood Press reprint of 1983, for its illustrations from CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA by Louis Agassiz are deficient. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1967

April 22, Saturday: Salvador de Madariaga, in a piece in the Saturday Review entitled “The Dangerous Lure of Parrotland,” described the difference between the scientific approach and the religious approach by making a distinction which was almost simplistically penis-versus-vagina sexual: Were I therefore asked whether the philosopher or the scientist on the one hand, or the saint or the poet on the other can get closer to the Mystery, I should not hesitate for the philosopher and the scientist endeavor to penetrate the Mystery, while the saint and the poet let themselves be penetrated by it. (In a sense, Louis Agassiz’s approach to nature was an attempt to penetrate it, while Henry Thoreau’s was being penetrated by it.) EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1971

Continuing the tradition of Evolutionary Ethics scientism at Harvard University pioneered by Professor Louis Agassiz during Henry Thoreau’s lifetime, not content with merely teaching pigeons to commit suicide, Professor Burrhus Frederic Skinner at this point authored BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY.

EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1977

While Harvard’s Professor Louis Agassiz had been at the AAAS meeting of scientists in Charleston during Henry Thoreau’s lifetime, arguing on behalf of his religio-scientistic conceit that the races of man were separately created, the good slaveholders of Charleston had known a kindred white soul when they saw one. Agassiz was trustworthy, he was a friend, they knew what conclusions he would arrive at after inspecting all the evidence: therefore they had invited the visiting Northern professor to come out to their plantations and take a close look at their black slaves. He had commissioned a series of daguerreotypes of type specimens — and then these shockingly invasive and unsettling photographs had lain in a box at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology for many many years. At this point they were, gee whiz, rediscovered — long after this institution had conveniently “forgotten” all about the rabid scientistic racism of one of its illustrious father figures. For anyone capable of being embarrassed, how embarrassing.

DEATHMASK HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1981

According to Guy Mattison Davenport’s THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE IMAGINATION consisting of forty essays (San Francisco: North Point Press), on page 242 in his essay on Professor Louis Agassiz, “More than once Agassiz came to the cabin at Walden ‘too look after new Leucisci,’ and to inspect turtles.” (This author also has attempted to inform us that Thoreau invented and marketed the lead pencil, and that he was the 1st to bake raisin bread.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1995

July 12, Wednesday: Pellegrino University Professor and Curator of Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology E.O. Wilson, a maintainer of the tradition of Evolutionary Ethics scientism at Harvard University pioneered by Professor Louis Agassiz during Henry Thoreau’s lifetime, delivered the annual plenary lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Thoreau Society in Concord, Massachusetts. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

Not only was the Thoreau Society incautious in this, but it had in a previous year incautiously invited Professor Burrhus Frederic Skinner, another maintainer of the tradition of Evolutionary Ethics scientism at Harvard pioneered by Professor Agassiz during Thoreau’s lifetime, out to Concord, to inflict a similarly scientistic vision upon us. Incautiously, this has happened without providing dissenters with any forum in which they might express disagreement with these prominent moral philosophasters. I can think of several reasons why this has happened: • 1st, the folks at The Thoreau Society, relatively unsophisticated in such matters, are too easily impressed when one or another scientist without a humanities background, who is arrogant enough and ignorant enough to posture in public as a moral philosopher of standing, wants to lay one or another heavy sociobiology trip on them. • 2d, B.F. Skinner and E.O. Wilson made out that they were impressed with Thoreau — and we’re such suckers for anybody who alleges that they are impressed with Thoreau. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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In Thoreau’s day, the scientist who was hot to use the power of his authority in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal was Professor Agassiz of Harvard, who was using his scientific standing to issue justification after justification for slavery and for race prejudice. Thoreau distanced himself from this man, refusing for instance to join an association that this man was sponsoring. In our day, the scientists who have been hot to use the power of their authority in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal have been Lysenko in Russia, now thoroughly discredited, and Skinner (safely dead as of the time of this writing) and Wilson of Harvard in America. (Professors Skinner and Wilson have been, of course, overtly opposed both to human slavery and to race prejudice, and many of us respect the personal prejudice or social goal for which one or the other of them is plumping.) So the question in my mind would be, did Thoreau distance himself from Professor Agassiz, and the association which this man was sponsoring, for reason A alone, or for reason B alone, or for both reason A and reason B? • A: Agassiz was for slavery and racism and Thoreau was against these things. • B: Agassiz wanted to use his social standing as a scientist to plump for a political agenda, and Thoreau did not consider this sort of leakage of authority to be proper.

If it was for reason A alone that Thoreau distanced himself from Agassiz, then perhaps Thoreau would side with Professor Skinner or with Professor Wilson or with Professor Lysenko. However, if there was reason B mixed in as well, then presumably, if Wendell Berry is right, Thoreau would not side with them.

As a further exploration of this, here’s what Daniel C. Dennett had to offer, in his DARWIN’S DANGEROUS IDEA (pages 469-470, published in this same year), about the likes of Professors B.F. Skinner and E.O. Wilson: Most of the debates about the naturalistic fallacy are better interpreted as disagreements analogous to the skyhooks-versus- cranes debates in evolutionary theory. For instance, B.F. Skinner, in my estimation the world-champion greedy reductionist of all time, wrote an ethical treatise of his own, BEYOND FREEDOM AND D IGNITY (1971). In it, he “committed the naturalistic fallacy” on every scale, from the minute to the megalomaniacal. “To make a value judgment by calling something good or bad is to classify it in terms of its reinforcing effects” (Skinner 1971, page 105). Let’s see: that would mean that heroin is good, apparently, and taking care of elderly parents is bad? Is this objection just nitpicking a careless definition? The reinforcing effect of heroin, Skinner assures us when he notices the problem (page 110), is “anomalous.” Hardly a convincing defense against the charge of greedy reductionism. He goes on and on in the book about how scientific his “design for a culture” is, and how optimally suited it is for ... for what? What is his characterization of the summum bonum? “Our culture has produced the science and technology it needs to save itself. It has the wealth needed for effective action. It has, to a considerable extent, a concern for its own future. But if it continues to take freedom and dignity, rather than its own survival, as its principal value, then it is possible that some other culture will make a greater contribution in the HDT WHAT? INDEX

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future.” (Skinner 1971, page 181) I hope you want to join me in retorting: So what? Even if Skinner were right (and surely he isn’t) that a behaviorist regime is our best chance of preserving our culture into the future, I hope it is clear to you that Skinner may well have been mistaken when he deemed “survival of the culture” to be the highest goal any of us could ever imagine wanting to further.... What is wrong with Skinner is not that he tried to base ethics on scientific facts about human nature, but that his attempt was so simplistic! I suppose pigeons might indeed fare as well as they ever could want in a Skinnerian utopia, but we are really much more complicated than pigeons. The same defect can be seen in the attempt at ethics by another Harvard professor, E.O. Wilson, one of the world’s great entomologists and the coiner of the term “sociobiology” (1975). In his ethical treatise, ON HUMAN NATURE (1978), Wilson (pages 196, 198) faces the problem of identifying the summum bonum or “cardinal value,” and comes up with two coequals: “In the beginning the new ethicists will want to ponder the cardinal value of the survival of human genes in the form of a common pool over generations.... I believe that a correct application of evolutionary theory also favors diversity in the gene pool as a cardinal value.” Then (page 199) he adds a third, universal human rights, but suggests that it must be demythologized. A “rational ant” would find the idea of human rights “biologically unsound and the very concept of individual freedom intrinsically evil.” “We will accede to universal rights because power is too fluid in advanced technological societies to circumvent this mammalian imperative; the long-term consequences of inequity will always be visibly dangerous to its temporary beneficiaries. I suggest that this is the true reason for the universal rights movement and that an understanding of its raw biological causation will be more compelling in the end than any rationalization contrived by culture to reinforce and euphemize it.” (E.O. Wilson 1978, page 199) Writing in collaboration with the philosopher of biology Michael Ruse, Wilson declares that sociobiology has shown us that “Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends” (Ruse and Wilson 1985). Nonsense....

I must confess, I do agree that Harvard Professor E.O. Wilson was a better choice of speaker than Harvard Professor B.F. Skinner had been (on our tax dollar Skinner taught pigeons to commit suicide whereas there is no record that Wilson ever contemplated teaching such tricks to ants). Nevertheless, both of these “scientismists” would seem to be problematic speakers at a celebration of a person who had attempted to point out to us that: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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“No good ever came of obeying a law which you had discovered.” — Henry Thoreau, JOURNAL, March 19, 1851 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

1998

Pellegrino University Professor and Curator of Entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology E.O. Wilson, a maintainer of the tradition of Evolutionary Ethics scientism at Harvard University pioneered by Professor Louis Agassiz during Henry Thoreau’s lifetime, authored CONSILIENCE: THE UNITY OF KNOWLEDGE, and his ESSAYS ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY: INTEGRATED SCIENCE AND THE COMING CENTURY OF THE ENVIRONMENT. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: February 20, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: PROFESSOR LOUIS AGASSIZ PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.