The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me.
The passage goes to Thoreau's almost complete lack of parochialism, the universalness of his view. It's strange to say this, in a sense, when we consider his Concord chauvinism, but really there is no contradiction. Concord was as good as any place in the world, he was sure of that, but he had the solid proof of it. And its people really had nothing to do with its high status; it was only as
bad as any other place in that regard.
Thoreau always encourages us to see beyond our narrow personal interests. So my "bad" weather will be good for other people, other creatures. (Didn't he say something like, "There is no such thing as bad weather?") He even encourages us to see beyond our narrow
human interests. It is this last part that presents the greatest, probably insurmountable, challenge for us. For we are convinced that anything we do to advance the human project must be good. Thoreau would have strongly disagreed, I believe. To name one instance, he would have been aghast at the thought of an industry devoted to medical experimentation on animals. To name another, he would have hated the taking away of liberties for the purpose of making us "safe." To truly live as but one species among the millions of others, we would have to rein in our own species' development, and this we are loath to do. No one with an ounce of political power is proposing it.
Some of the writing seems to display that extravagance (extra-
vagance) that Thoreau wishes his work to attain (see last chapter). If it attains to true obscurity, so much the better.
5.6 Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
Probably my favorite extravagance:
5.11 With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.
I wonder if this ability to walk beside himself also helps him to separate his merely personal interests from the greater good, as mentioned above. Also, in the last sentence quoted, is he saying that this ability to abstract himself from himself is what makes him too, what, unspontaneous? to be a good friend or neighbor? Is this a veiled apology for his lack of sociability?
5.17 The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature -- of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter -- such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?
Another example of Romantic identification with nature and belief in its "benificence." Thoreau may here go a little beyond conventional thinking in the last sentence, in which there is a true
organic identity between humans and nature, not just a spiritual one. There is a passage from
The Maine Woods that provides an interesting counterpoint to the view of nature as beneficent. Thoreau there appreciates it in a different way, on a hike to the cloud-shrouded summit of Mt. Katadin.
Vast, Titanic, inhuman Nature has got him at disadvantage, caught him alone, and pilfers him of some of his divine faculty. She does not smile on him as on the plains. She seems to say sternly, Why came ye here before your time? This ground is not prepared for you...Shouldst though freeze or starve, or shudder thy life away, here is no shrine, nor altar, nor any access to my ear.
We arent' in Concord anymore, Henry.
DWill