Author Bibliography (in progress)
Miscellanies (1863)
AUTHOR: Thoreau, Henry David
KEYWORDS: animals, nature, reform, Transcendentalism
Thoreau, Henry David. A Yankee in Canada
Emerson describes Thoreau’s vegetarianism as intersectional, part of a larger resistance to the system: “He was bred to no profession; he never married; he lived alone; he never went to church; he never voted; he refused to pay a tax to the State; he ate no flesh, he drank no wine, he never knew the use of tobacco ; and, though a naturalist, he used neither trap nor gun” (4). Emerson eulogizes Thoreau's general frugality and temperance, his preference for indigenous plants and a Native American way of life versus civilization, and what could be described as the "becoming-animal" of Thoreau: “He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own. He knew every track in the snow or on the ground, and what creature had taken this path before him” (18) and “'either he had told the bees things or the bees had told him.' Snakes coiled round his legs; the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them out of the water; he pulled the woodchuck out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his protection from the hunters” (21). “His senses were acute, and he remarked that by night every dwelling-house gives out bad air, like a slaughter-house” (30). Finally, Emerson upholds Thoreau as a model: “His soul was made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home” (33).
“Paradise (To Be) Regained” (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen):
Thoreau reviews J. A. Etzler’s text, The Paradise within the Reach of all Men, without Labor, by Powers of Nature and Machinery (1842), concluding that “...there is a transcendentalism in mechanics as well as in ethics” (40).
On reform, Thoreau critiques the superficiality and anthropocentrism of many efforts: “What is the part of magnanimity to the whale and the beaver? Should we not fear to exchange places with them for a day, lest by their behavior they should shame us? Might we not treat with magnanimity the shark and the tiger, not descend to meet them on their own level, with spears of sharks’ teeth and bucklers of tiger’s skin? We slander the hyena; man is the fiercest and cruellest animal. Ah! He is of little faith; even the erring comets and meteors would thank him, and return his kindness in their kind” (42-43). He continues, “How meanly and grossly do we deal with nature! Could we not have a less gross labor? ... Can we not do more than cut and trim the forest, – can we not assist in its interior economy, in the circulation of the sap? Now we work superficially and violently. We do not suspect how much might be done to improve our relations to animated nature even; what kindness and refined courtesy there might be” (43).
Much of his discussion of Etzler's idea focus on power. Connected with the theme of animal abuse in A Yankee in Canada, is Thoreau's description of a "butter-churning dog": “We saw last summer, on the side of a mountain, a dog employed to churn for a farmer’s family, traveling upon a horizontal wheel, and those he had sore eyes, an alarming cough, and withal a demure aspect, yet their bread did get buttered for all that. Undoubtedly, in the most brilliant successes, the first rank is always sacrificed” (44). Three kinds of natural power are analyzed by Etzler: wind, water, and sun. While Thoreau questions Ertzler’s comparison between wind power and the power of a horse, Thoreau finds that humans do not make enough use of wind power: “here is an almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it. It only serves to turn a few mills, blow a few vessels across the ocean, and a few trivial ends besides. What a poor compliment do we pay to our indefatigable and energetic servant!” (47). An extended discussion of the advantages of tidal and water power follows: “But man, slow to take nature’s constant hint of assistance, makes slight and irregular use of this [tidal] power, in careening ships and getting them afloat when aground” (48). The advantages of solar power he imagines applied to “the boiling of water and production of steam. So much for these few and more obvious powers, already used to a trifling extent. But there are innumerable others in nature, not described nor discovered” (50). Thoreau theorizes a few ideas for how agriculturists could use these sources of energy and explores how architecture would change if humans took more advantage of the elements. He agrees with Etzler that “[t]he character of the architecture is to be quite different from what it ever has been hitherto” (54). Among the utopian transformations that Thoreau imagines is the creation of a plant-based leather substitute for human clothing: “Clothed, once for all, in some ‘flexible stuff,’ more durable than George Fox’s suit of leather, composed of ‘fibres of vegetables,’ ‘glutinated’ together by some ‘cohesive substances,’ and made into sheets, like paper, of any size or form, man will put far from him corroding care and the whole host of ills” (56).
Thoreau criticizes Etzler’s theory that men must be united to make changes; Thoreau believes that “Nothing can be effected but by one man. He who wants help wants everything. … We must first succeed alone, that we may enjoy our success together” (62). Where Etzler provides a comprehensive account of the material conditions necessary to the regaining of Paradise, Thoreau points out that "Even a greater than this physical power must be brought to bear upon that moral power. Faith, indeed, is all the reform that is needed; it is itself a reform. Doubtless, we are as slow to conceive of Paradise as of Heaven, of a perfect natural as of a perfect spiritual world" (63-64).
“A Plea for Capt. John Brown” (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen):
In this essay Thoreau offers a brief biography of Brown, remarking of Brown’s eating habits: “He was a man of Spartan habits, and at sixty was scrupulous about his diet at your table, excusing himself by saying that he must eat sparingly and fare hard, as became a soldier, or one who was fitting himself for difficult enterprises, a life of exposure” (202).
“Life without Principle” (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):
Thoreau explores the morality of human labor and its relations – extractive, exploitative, harmonious – to nature. His starting point is a scathing diagnosis of the status quo: “This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! […] There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. […] I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business” (254-255). Thoreau lambasts the extractive understanding of nature as pure resource, which simultaneously denigrates non-exploitative relations to nature as nothing but idleness: “If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day,” Thoreau writes, “he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!” (256).
This attitude also characterizes the laborer who understands work as means to earn a living and thus labor becomes immoral. Thoreau prefers “[c]old and hunger” over the “methods which men have adopted and advise to ward them off” (262). Turning to an analogy with the animal world, he remarks: “The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company” (264). For Thoreau, the hog lives a more ethical life than the human fortune-seeker; “[a] man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread” (270). America can only become truly moral if it purges itself of the utilitarian thought that governs how one is supposed to live one's life, earn one's living, and, ultimately, think one's thoughts. While claiming to be the vanguard of freedom, America is still provincial. Chattel slavery, and the commercial breeding of human slaves, is a particularly damning aspect of this extractivist thought. Thoreau underlines his indictment of this commercialized, utilitarian attitude towards life by using another image drawn from the animal realm: “[T]here 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” (283).
POEMS:
"To a Stray Fowl" (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):
The poem laments the degeneration of animals as a consequence pf domestication and, at the same time, celebrates the powers of natural animal instinct, which is so strong as to survive even in domestic animals. A stray fowl is forced to pass the night outside its coop. The speaker notes that the bird will have to “fall back upon old instinct now, / Well-nigh extinct under man's fickle care,” thus emphasizing that human intervention – domestication and selective breeding – is responsible for the sorry state in which the bird finds itself. The speaker then wonders whether animal instinct, instilled by nature “[s]o long ago,” will still be able to meet the bird's “small want tonight.” Even though the bird is “brave” it is also “anxious” due to the approaching night and its “nightly foes.” The speaker explicitly notes that domestication and imprisonment might have curbed the animal's survival skills: “I fear imprisonment has dulled thy wit, / Or ingrained servitude extinguished it.” However, the “dim memory of the days of yore” prompts the bird to seek shelter in “friendly trees,” just as its wild ancestors did, “by Indus' banks and the far Ganges.” The poem thus celebrates the powers of nature, embodied in the domesticated bird's instincts.
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