瓦尔登湖 英文版 Walden
亨利.戴维.梭罗 Henry David Thoreau
Economy Page 1
When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, Ilived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a housewhich I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord,Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojournerin civilized life again.
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of myreaders if very particular inquiries had not been made by mytownsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would callimpertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent,but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent.Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if Iwas not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learnwhat portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; andsome, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained.I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particularinterest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of thesequestions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, isomitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism,is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is,after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should nottalk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew aswell. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrownessof my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer,first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and notmerely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account ashe would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he haslived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhapsthese pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. Asfor the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as applyto them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on thecoat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.
I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chineseand Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said tolive in New England; something about your condition, especially youroutward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, whatit is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whetherit cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good dealin Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, theinhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousandremarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed tofour fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended,with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavensover their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resumetheir natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing butliquids can pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, chained for life,at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, likecaterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg onthe tops of pillars -- even these forms of conscious penance arehardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I dailywitness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparisonwith those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were onlytwelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew orcaptured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friendIolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but assoon as one head is crushed, two spring up.
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to haveinherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for theseare more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had beenborn in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might haveseen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Whomade them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres,when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should theybegin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have gotto live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and geton as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I metwell-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down theroad of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty,its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land,tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, whostruggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find itlabor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man issoon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonlycalled necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book,laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thievesbreak through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will findwhen they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said thatDeucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their headsbehind them:--
Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,
Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.
Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,--
"From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."
So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing thestones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mereignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares andsuperfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot beplucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsyand tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has notleisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustainthe manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in themarket. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can heremember well his ignorance -- which his growth requires -- who hasso often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe himgratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before wejudge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom onfruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet wedo not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, aresometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt thatsome of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinnerswhich you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which arefast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page tospend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour.It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live,for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits,trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a veryancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass,for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying,and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promisingto pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curryfavor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prisonoffenses; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into anutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin andvaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let youmake his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or importhis groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay upsomething against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an oldchest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, inthe brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almostsay, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form ofservitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtlemasters that enslave both North and South. It is hard to have aSouthern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst ofall when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinityin man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market byday or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest dutyto fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him comparedwith the shipping interests? Does not he drive for SquireMake-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowersand sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nordivine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, afame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant comparedwith our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that itis which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy andimagination -- what Wilberforce is there to bring that about?Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushionsagainst the last day, not to betray too green an interest in theirfates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is calledresignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city yougo into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with thebravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconsciousdespair is concealed even under what are called the games andamusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comesafter work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to dodesperate things.
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is thechief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means oflife, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common modeof living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestlythink there is no choice left. But alert and healthy naturesremember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give upour prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, canbe trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silencepasses by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow,mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that wouldsprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say youcannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people,and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once,perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new peopleput a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globewith the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phraseis. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructoras youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One mayalmost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolutevalue by living. Practically, the old have no very important adviceto give the young, their own experience has been so partial, andtheir lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons,as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith leftwhich belies that experience, and they are only less young than theywere. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yetto hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice frommy seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell meanything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a greatextent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have triedit. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure toreflect that this my Mentors said nothing about.
One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable foodsolely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so hereligiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system withthe raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind hisoxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumberingplow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are reallynecessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased,which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still areentirely unknown.
The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been goneover by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, andall things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wiseSolomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; andthe Roman praetors have decided how often you may go into yourneighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it withouttrespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." Hippocrates haseven left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even withthe ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedlythe very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted thevariety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man'scapacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what hecan do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever havebeen thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for whoshall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?"
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, forinstance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at oncea system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it wouldhave prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which Ihoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles!What distant and different beings in the various mansions of theuniverse are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Natureand human life are as various as our several constitutions. Whoshall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greatermiracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes foran instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour;ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! -- Iknow of no reading of another's experience so startling andinforming as this would be.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestowelsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to ourstrength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nighincurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importanceof what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what ifwe had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to liveby faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at nightwe unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves touncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled tolive, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change.This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as therecan be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle tocontemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place everyinstant. Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, andthat we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact tohis understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish theirlives on that basis.
Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble andanxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it isnecessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. It would besome advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in themidst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are thegross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtainthem; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, tosee what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, whatthey stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For theimprovements of ages have had but little influence on the essentiallaws of man's existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to bedistinguished from those of our ancestors.
By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all thatman obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or fromlong use has become, so important to human life that few, if any,whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt todo without it. To many creatures there is in this sense but onenecessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a fewinches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks theShelter of the forest or the mountain's shadow. None of the brutecreation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries oflife for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributedunder the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; fornot till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the trueproblems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man hasinvented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possiblyfrom the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and theconsequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessityto sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same secondnature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain ourown internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is,with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookeryproperly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of theinhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who werewell clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm,these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to hisgreat surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoingsuch a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes nakedwith impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is itimpossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with theintellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, man'sbody is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internalcombustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less.The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease anddeath take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, orfrom some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course thevital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much foranalogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that theexpression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression,animal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keepsup the fire within us -- and Fuel serves only to prepare that Foodor to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without --Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thusgenerated and absorbed.