Thoreau and Conservation

Thoreau and Conservation

By Matthew Brinton

Henry David Thoreau

           Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in the town of Concord, Massachusetts, to his parents John and Cynthia Thoreau. His father and his mother lived well into his adult life, and he also had a sister and brother, both of whom he outlived. The forests and meadowlands of Concord gave Thoreau much food for his imaginative and philosophical mind, which was already beginning to develop in him as a young boy. He would ask the most ingenious questions about the natural world, and would philosophize about the sun, moon, sky, stars, and all the different species of plants, flowers and animals around him. He wondered how and why the natural systems in the world worked the way they did and would draw his own fascinating conclusions regarding it. He was scientifically minded, even as a young child, but in his spirit, he always transcended the dry reason and logicality of science. While many scientists in his day where beginning to take a more materialistic approach to science, he saw spirit, life and divine brilliance in all of nature. His code of ethics was largely derived from this transcendent mindset, and it would grow into fuller and fuller maturity as he aged.

           In 1828 Thoreau and his brother, John, entered the Concord Academy where Thoreau would pen some of his first manuscripts on naturalism. He wrote an essay entitled, “Seasons,” which addressed questions such as “Why do seasons change?” and “Why are seasons marked by specific signs?” He would then go into a long enchanting discourse on these questions and attempt to answer them in a most thorough, insightful way. He continued his education at Harvard where he would sometimes attend lectures by the famous poet and transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Though the two of them had not yet met in person, Emerson prophesied the course Thoreau’s life would take in one of those lectures: “The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all; it is for you to dare all… We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe; we will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.” These were Emerson’s famous words at the Brattle Street church the day after Thoreau graduated from Harvard. Thoreau indeed was a type of rebel in that he didn’t buy into society’s cherished norms and dogmas. Generally held beliefs he questioned rigorously, and often found them fallacious according to a much more perceptive standard of measurement. He was like a “holy fool” who believed that the group is always wrong while the sincerely seeking individual is always right.

           As a student, Thoreau’s classmates considered him shy and antisocial around other boys. In reality, he was anything but shy or antisocial. He just had his mind set on “a more earnest purpose and remained unseen by most of his contemporaries." This “more earnest purpose” could be summed up by the words of Emerson, stated above. Thoreau’s real character at Harvard could be stated as thus: he had “an animus against materialism, a wholehearted admiration for following one’s inner calling, a deep respect for solitude, he championed energetic engagement with the physical world with an ascetic withdrawal from the worldly, and had a love of plain speaking.” He also felt that most men only sought to meet expectations placed upon them by others, rather than creating their own. He, however, did not make the modus operandi of most men his own.  

          Thoreau was drawn to religion, philosophy and all types of poetic and prose literature. He was well acquainted with the idea of Pan – the Universal Spirit within Nature. He was able to see way beyond the mere scientific in nature, into nature’s deep spiritual essence. He was well acquainted with different natural/spiritual notions such as alchemy, magnetism, the existence of faeries, the great “Ether,” Sympathy, and other Spiritualist and Occultist phenomena. He always sided with the angels in these things rather than with the demons, however. This was more than most men in his day could say for themselves. He had a childlike simplicity which kept him uncorrupted by demonic forces. He saw all of nature (and all of life for that matter) through the eyes of a wondering little child, and could even “see” faeries in nature as these little children also could. The children would often gather around him as he would tell them stories about faeries and about mythical heroes. More than any other literature, perhaps, Thoreau was most captured by the Greek poets, Homer and Aeschylus. He would draw from their writings and retell their stories to the little ones in his own way, putting it all into his own peculiar context. Even though he was a highly cultivated and intelligent adult, Thoreau could easily relate to children on their level (as they could also relate to him in many ways) and he was one with them in spirit. Childlikeness is one of the best ways to safeguard oneself against the powers of the occult. Thoreau was wise in this matter.

          Thoreau became friends with Emerson shortly after graduating from Harvard, as well as with other Transcendentalists such as Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne and several others. They all formed what became known as “The Transcendentalist Club” – a political force which sought atonement, or “at-one-ment.” In other words, they sought to reconcile humankind with its original relation to the universe. Transcendentalists were of the opinion that “nature is the arbiter of truth” and they combined religion, philosophy, and various other spiritual methods into one all-consuming ideology. This ideology was based more on intuition and the various processes of thought than on naked logic. The transcendentalists were often divided by the emphases they placed on different components of their ideology. Thoreau was always a proponent of the particularly more wholesome elements of transcendentalism; he shied away from anything having to do with the occult or wizardry. Out of all the transcendentalists, Thoreau was closest to Emerson, though the two of them often converged in their ideological approaches to life.

          One thing Thoreau was best known for was his astonishing poetry. The muse of his poems was always bound tightly to his natural/spiritual dialectic. His verses flowed beautifully and simply out of a pure and chaste heart, and they drew its reader deep into his intricate transcendental world. Thoreau’s poetry, perhaps more than anything else, best expresses his spiritual intuition of all natural phenomena.

          Thoreau was also a little rebellious and militaristic in his nature. He thought of himself as a “soldier training to do battle with immorality and injustice in the social arena.” He critiqued the commercial spirit in America, saying that “it would become a ruling spirit that would lead to selfishness in domestic relations, patriotism and religion… [and also he believed that] getting one’s living should be the means but not the end of life.” He valued very highly an individual’s right to follow his own higher calling, and believed that calling to be largely disconnected from the spirit of materialism and commercialism. Rather, it was something found in the intimacy of one’s own spirit and in nature.

          Thoreau had a universal love for all of mankind and believed that friendship should be extended not just to one’s friends and relatives, but to all humans. And not just to humans only, but to all the various living and non-living beings in nature. His visitors to his cabin on Walden Pond were never praised nor condemned for their lifestyles. He only considered himself bound to them by the mere virtue of their humanity. He was also very observant and imaginative in his love. He went way beyond an abstract concept of love into the infinity of all of love’s particulars. In his love and in his life, he aspired for the highest truth, the highest goodness, the highest beauty – and he often felt himself being enveloped by divine sunlight.

          At one point in his life, he was in love with a girl named Ellen Sewell. Though he probably loved her more sincerely and demonstratively than most men love their sweethearts, she rejected his proposal of marriage. This devastated him deeply, but also, it allowed him to concentrate all of his love on the creator and the creation, a task which he was unquestionably meant for. Thoreau’s love of nature was very much intertwined with the life he lived inwardly, that is, in his spirit and in his soul. “Even as he was entering more and more into the physical world, he valued its gifts only to the degree that they passed intensely through the crucible of his consciousness. ‘It is more proper for a spiritual fact to have suggested an analogous natural one, than for the natural fact to have preceded the spiritual in our minds.’” This statement clearly reveals Thoreau’s abhorrence of materialism and his proclivity to understand science in a spiritual light.

          Thoreau seemed to be taking on “God’s croft” as his own. “I seem to find my own kith and kin in the lichens on the rocks more than in any books.” As much as he was a man of letters, he was more one with nature (undiluted by man’s account of nature) than with all the volumes of literature that inspired him to a lesser extent. In this sense, he was a wild man, propped up by God in his wildness. 

          Thoreau took a keen interest in the stars and firmly believed that they played a significant role in the individual and collective fates of men. He had a strange affinity for the number seven, and almost deduced mathematically how everything in his own life, in nature, and in history, cycles around in sevens. As regarding his own life, in August of 1839, he went on a rivering excursion with his brother, John, which proved to be one of the most significant events in his life. On January 1, 1842, John died, causing Thoreau the deepest pain he had ever experienced. Both of these events, as well as many other major events in his life, happened on a septennial or half-septennial anniversary, including when he first had his revelation that he should live alone for two years on Walden Pond. He also recognized how different natural occurrences happen on the seventh minute of every hour or on the seventh hour of every day, and many other similar things related to the number seven. 

          In the 1840s there was a tremendous influx of the new religion, Mormonism, on the heartland and soul of America. This religion was clearly rooted in demonology and in the occult. Along with the strangeness of this new religion, the practice of Mesmerism was also capturing America’s imagination. Mesmerism could be defined as the so-called “key to unlock every mystery worth knowing.” It was a philosophy that attempted to scientize everything hitherto considered mystical or incomprehensible. Many astrologists hailed the discovery of the planet Neptune (which had just been discovered in the 1840s) as symbolic of natural science turning materialistic. The Greek god, Neptune, represented the sea in Greek mythology, and Thoreau (as well as others) interpreted this whole mesmerism chimera as “modern man’s attempt to see through to the murky depths of Mother Nature” – an attempt Thoreau believed to be utterly futile. With the influx of mesmerism, Mormonism, and also the strange, bizarre and hidden activities of the Free-Masons, there was a haze covering everybody’s spiritual vision. Thoreau sought refuge at Walden Pond in order to better acquaint himself with a purer gospel concerning nature’s forces. He, perhaps more than the vast majority of men, could clearly see man’s steady decline from reality into all sorts of ridiculous shams. In his sacred refuge at Walden, Thoreau felt himself entrenched in the true and the real. While his contemporaries were all trying to find reality hidden behind the farthest star, he was finding it in the present moment, “confronted with the bare essentials of life.” He believed that “God himself, culminates in the present moment, and [that He] will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages”. With all the delusion and falseness America was falling for in the 1840s, Thoreau had found concrete reality simply by working, dwelling, listening, praying and musing on his abode at Walden. “He lived to the rhythms of both the natural and spiritual world, feeling their pulse.” In the serenity and simplicity of nature, he rendered invalid the crazes of his generation.

          Thoreau spent 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days living on Walden Pond, and while there, he sought to bring mankind back to its natural home. The book Walden, in many respects, was an outline of how men should and ought to live. He used Walden Pond as a model for bringing men and life back to their simplicity – and also to expose the errors of 19th century ways. Society had become a dry and dead thing according to Thoreau, even in all of its materialistic hubris and far-flung spiritualism. In Walden, Thoreau discerned it all and offered a remedy. The book ends with the line “Only the day dawns to which we are awake.” It was his hope that some future generation would come across his solution, be enlightened by it, and thus change their ways.

          Shortly after his stay at Walden, Thoreau would be visited by a “mother nature goddess” while nature bathing. Some of the things he wrote about her are absolutely stunning. It reveals Thoreau’s keen perception of the spiritual forces acting on nature and the passionate love affair that he, himself, had with nature. These occurrences happened after his sister Helen died and there were several of them.

          To best sum up Thoreau’s non-materialistic view of science, he made this comment – “Science applies a finite rule to the infinite.” He firmly opposed the attempt of mesmerism to scientifically quantify everything supernatural. To him, the mysteries of life could be wondered at and even explained a little but they couldn’t be scientifically quantified. Thoreau’s journals were very descriptive about natural phenomena and he was indeed a “scientist” of sorts, perhaps more than he would like to have been, but his “science” was always interpreted through the lens of the nonmaterial – things like love and morality. Whether he was writing about how flowers reproduce sexually, the sounds of crickets, the cock’s crow, or the way birds fly, he always superimposed a beautiful moral light into it all. “Thoreau’s science demanded that all phenomena be seen from the point of view of ‘wonder and awe.’” He saw love as the greatest active force within nature.

          Thoreau was also fascinated by Darwin and had a great appreciation for the man. But the way Darwin described the different functions of plants and animals, only gave Thoreau more impetus for his belief that plants and animals have something of the divine in them. Darwin was like the penultimate materialist who tried to erase everything divine from nature and from man. Thoreau, on the other hand, believed that the material of heaven is in the natural world and that God exists just as man is divine. 

          Thoreau’s 35th year saw him embarking on the most “scientific” phase of his life. He had already written “A Natural History of Massachusetts” and several articles for different scientific journals. Now, at this particular juncture in his life, he was going full force into science’s empirical realm. Recent generations of critics understood this sudden change in him as his abandoning of transcendentalism for materialism. But this is wholly unsupported by what is contained in his journals. One such journal entry stated that “the man of science, who is not seeking for expression but for fact to be expressed merely, studies nature as a dead language.” This was written after his 35th birthday and there are many other similar journal entries. He had also been getting away from poetry at this time, but his cataloguing of the empirical world took on a poetic form of its own. “The facts themselves had become poetry.” In all his documenting of natural phenomena, Thoreau showed us how even the most trained naturalist sees only but half of the natural world. So much goes beneath our notice – the empirical as well as all its spiritual underpinnings. Thoreau expressed this truth perhaps better than anyone. 

          Thoreau had an interesting view of the native peoples of America. At first, he was much like most Americans in that he had a weak appreciation for them. But after researching them a little further, he found that many of their “nature concepts” were similar to his own. He was also opposed to the idea of “manifest destiny,” the pursuit of gold, and the conquering of new territory. He felt that these things were only a manifestation of mankind’s hubris, their worship of “mammon,” and their prodigality concerning their flight from their true spiritual and natural home. Thoreau contented himself to stay in Massachusetts where his spiritual home was discovered and defined. He shunned the false god, “mammon,” and actually lived much like a native – certainly much more than your average businessman or entrepreneur would. His connection with the forests, hills, ponds, and rivers of Massachusetts helped him to live in a much “more real world” than the so-called “real world” that entrepreneurs then and today live in. 

          Toward the end of his life, while Thoreau was making an accounting of everything he observed in nature, he began to clearly see how mankind’s true wealth is discovered in things like “withered goldenrod” – how it grows in the spring, flourishes in the summer, decays in the fall, and how different organisms depend on it for their food and life-source – than in the stocks and bonds you invest in when you walk into banks made of granite. He realized, before everything had come to what it has come to today, that the worship of mammon would destroy the human race. This concept is largely Christian and largely religious in the broader sense as well. J.R.R. Tolkien, in his Lord of the Rings series, showed how the ring represents the worship of wealth and mankind’s doom. I venture to say that it also represents the doom of the Earth’s environment. How is that so? The whole idea embraced by many conservatives, that it is impossible to have a healthy economy and to strive for sustainable development at the same time, is largely the reason. The attitude that short-term economic benefits are more important than the long-term ability for humans to live safely on this Earth, is a very sad, disconcerting, and in my opinion, immoral thing.

          Throughout the rest of Thoreau’s life, he remained an assiduous student of nature. His journals are a record of all his observations and their moral underpinnings. Thoreau actually became quite a staunch moralist toward the end of his life. He was thoroughly disgusted with the mediocrity that nearly all of his compatriots settled for. He, himself, strove all the more heartily to earn a higher heaven. He felt that eternal life was something to be earned by undertaking greater and greater enterprises. As regards nature, his final synthesis of it, was that though science can accurately measure all empirical phenomena, it cannot, in any way, give us an accurate measurement of the “Absolute.” Poetry and the deep luring force of religion are needed to help us better apprehend that – but even they are only like spectacles, giving us less cloudy spiritual vision. The “Absolute” is a mystery so high and wonderful, that one must content oneself being a seeker of it and a philosopher. Throughout Thoreau’s life, he was a philosopher of the most excellent sort, and all of his scientific measurements were done in service of that Absolute. 

          Thoreau died on May 6, 1862, at the tender age of 44, due to a bout with influenza. He left the world a posthumous essay which explained what he considered to be the “true manifest destiny.” He defined it as a holy pilgrimage, beginning with America, but which was the true path and possession of all who dared to take on a higher calling in life. The conventional idea of “manifest destiny” – the one overshadowed by a lust for gold and power – he repudiated as he always did. He repudiated it not only in this essay, but in everything else he had written, and also, by the upright, truthful, pure, and sincere life he lived. His gravestone was a 14” by 12” rock which merely said “HENRY” on it. This is clear proof that he did not want to be remembered by pomp, but by a life that humbly returned to its natural roots, thus fulfilling the goal of Transcendentalism.

Ethics, Religion, and Conservation

            If the political mission of Transcendentalism is not a feasible goal in our modern world that has gone technologically haywire, there is still personal and political action we can take in order to preserve our safe havens and the natural resources they provide. These are the things that make life possible and enjoyable for everyone. Who can put a price tag on the aesthetic wonders of our planet – things that cause our spirits to repose, reflect, and return to their natural origins? And who can put a price tag on every living being’s right to exist, thrive, and be happy? In my opinion, conservation of natural resources is certainly an ethical matter, not just a scientific one. And it most definitely is not just a matter of the mere “material.” This is what helps make the argument for conservation all the more convincing.

          In order for policy makers to be morally responsible, they must abide by the old adage – Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you. They must take into account future generations' right to live on a healthy, clean earth. Not only that, but they must also take into account people's right to clean air, water, food, and other life-sustaining tangible and intangible resources. All of this can be taken away if our policy makers are morally irresponsible. If little or no action is taken, we may open up the doors wide for human extinction. On ethical grounds, such thoughtless political maneuvers (or lack of maneuvers) make no sense whatsoever. Our own personal decisions also play a great role when it comes to conservation. If a person is honest with him or herself, what does their conscience tell them when they carelessly throw litter to the side of the road, or when they throw plastic bottles into the garbage disposal? What does it tell them when they vote for someone who isn’t environmentally conscious? If their conscience is sensitive, it will surely condemn such actions. Religion offers a good explanation for the matters of conscience, morality, and ethics. All religions give basically good explanations for how these psychological forces work, as the transcendentalism of Thoreau also does.

          I would now like to draw a comparison between transcendentalism and the Chinese religion of Taoism. In Taoism there is a Universal force – the Tao – inherent in all material and nonmaterial phenomena. The Tao in a healthy state I liken to the fulfillment of the transcendentalist mission – to reunite man with his natural and spiritual roots. Modern man, with the rise of the media and many types of technology, has become numb and so far removed from his roots that it is disgusting. You could say that we are now living in the era of the Tao of Degradation. But still, I believe our situation is not hopeless. We can change things if we put our heads together and start taking positive action. We can rehabilitate our own individual selves, as well as collectively implement the right policies – ones that will benefit all of mankind as well as the Earth and its resources. We can strive individually and collectively to attain a Tao of Moral Rectitude and Environmental Abundance.

          Now to Christianity. Christianity differs from transcendentalism and other world religions in that it displaces the so-called divinity of man and elevates Christ as the only divine being. The Christian’s duty is to submit all of his thoughts, beliefs, feelings and actions to the will of the Divine Christ. When the original humans ate of the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened and they became as gods, knowing good and evil. According to many theologians, this was the birth of all non-Christian religions – mankind's attempt to appease a righteous God by his own moral rectitude. The Christian solution differs fundamentally from the solutions of all the other religions – it is by grace alone that a person is saved. Though Christianity could be considered the antithesis of all these other religions, it also demands a higher moral performance than them all. It beckons the believer to eat of the Tree of Life, which enables them to fulfill the most rigorous program of saintliness. This is often true only in theory, however. There are many Christians who are Christian in name only and live a more reckless life than your average unbeliever. In any case, Christian morality does coincide with having a healthy respect for our environment and its ecosystems. One of the most obvious passages of Scripture that deals directly with this is Genesis 2:15 – “And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” How many environmental questions does this verse raise? I will mention only a few: How should we go about doing forestry? Is it right to spray fruits and vegetables with pesticides? Should we dump trash into the ocean? How should we go about disposing of waste? What economic policies should we enact in order to preserve our natural resources? How should we vote? All of these questions and more are Christianly relevant to the environmental problems we are now facing today. The age-old Christian adage – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – is also a Christian argument for environmentalism. Luke 10:27 says basically the same thing when it states that a man is to “love his neighbor as himself.” Both of these statements are very telling of how Jesus indirectly deals with the question of conservation. Take toxic colonialism for instance. If corporate officials from a wealthy country offer people from a poorer country money to dump toxic wastes onto their shores – how is that loving one’s neighbor? To me it is nothing more than a high level of corruption. These corporate officials just want to rid themselves of their inconvenient toxic waste so they offer people in desperate financial straits cash to dump it on their coasts. It sounds like bribery to me. The result is that these poor people get sick and die. These types of things and many others are departures from the moral teachings of Christ.

          Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism also contain elements of environmentalism in their codes of ethics. “The Koran teaches that ‘each being exists by virtue of the truth and is also owed it’s due according to nature,’ a view that extends moral rights and value to all other creatures. Hinduism and Buddhism teach ahimsa, or the practice of not harming other living creatures, because all living beings are divinely connected.” Some religious people even wear masks in order not to contaminate the air with CO2. Tibetan Buddhists also have a goddess named Tara, which “represents compassion for all beings.” The creature-divine connection in these religions certainly coincides with Thoreau’s attempt to fuse the natural and spiritual worlds.

          One of the central themes of the biographical portion of this essay, was the inclination of Thoreau to see beyond the mere matter, logic, and mathematics of science, and into science’s divine realm. He found a way to incorporate the nonmaterial in his cataloguing of the material. Two things that are most definitely nonmaterial in their nature, are ethics and religion. The basis of my project was to show how conservation of natural resources is an ethical matter, using Henry Thoreau as my model. I feel like I have chosen a good model because, though Thoreau was certainly a most scrupulous scientist, he interpreted all his science through a spiritual lens. When you take a spiritual concept like ethics and apply it to the need for environmental justice, you build a much stronger case for environmental justice. Certainly much stronger than relying on the material components of science alone.

Transcendent Science 

Some say the Earth is warming  

Some say it’s just the left’s ploy to be distracting 

Does pure logic lie to the heart but not to the mind?

Or am I a partisan of my preferred kind?

Objective science – the road better to take

Until the point of the great break

The point where plumbing knowledge’s depths

Ends with a deep gasp of breath

The heart understanding the great beyond

Of the mind’s failure to sing “Absolute’s” song

And sing it I now do in awe

My voice ascending above every natural law

-by Matthew Brinton (written two days before our first Conservation of Natural Resources class, Fall 2020. Strangely, it coincides very well with this essay on Thoreau which was written afterwards.)

SOURCES

1. Kevin Dann, Expect Great Things

2. Emerson, “The American Scholar,” Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. Henry David Thoreau, Walden

4. Holy Bible

5. Cunningham, Environmental Science – A Global Concern

6. Thoreau’s journals