Walden | Page 8

I find
by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc.,
and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to
necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other
side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for
ten or twenty years, in order that they may live -- that is, keep comfortably warm -- and
die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm,
but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course a la mode.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not
indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to
luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the
poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than
which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not
much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is
true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an
impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should
call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or
commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not
philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a
philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to

love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence,
magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically,
but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like
success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically
as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men. But why
do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury
which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own
lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is
not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a
philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?
When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want
next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more
splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter
fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is
another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now,
his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the
seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with
confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in
the same proportion into the heavens above? -- for the nobler plants are valued for the
fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the
humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have
perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not
know them in their flowering season.
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own
affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend
more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how
they live -- if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find
their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and
cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers -- and, to some extent, I reckon
myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever
circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; -- but mainly to the
mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of
the times, when they might improve them. There