Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

that farewell address to “our dearest friends”: “Who are you? Unhand me:I will be dependent no more.”Thoreau’s inability to come to terms with friendship was aggravatedby the vastness of his expectations. To this day, many an American is breakinghis life on an excessive demand for the perfect, the absolute, and theboundless in realms where it is accorded to few—in love and friendship,for example. The doctrines of moderation and the golden mean may haveflourished in Rome and in China (overcrowded and overgoverned countries),but they do not flourish here, save as counsels of despair. The injunction tobe content with your lot and in the situation where God has placed you isnot an expression of New-World thinking. We do not feel ourselves to besubject to lot and we do not cast God in the role of a civil administrator orof a feudal baron.Thoreau goes to the pond, then, to find an answer to the question,What is life? He will not admit other thinkers to his deliberations, and hisanswer will not reflect any close relation with his fellow men. With whatfrustrated passion, then, he turned to nature. Nature meant primarily theflora and fauna of the Concord River Valley, though he made some tripselsewhere. Now that region has no tigers, avalanches, coral vipers, BlackForests, deserts, or volcanoes. Margaret Fuller warned her Concord friendsof the dangers of accustoming themselves to a view of nature which omittedboth cruelty and grandeur. On his walks, Thoreau came upon somemalodorous plants (26 June 1852): “For what purpose has nature made aflower to fill the lowlands with the odor of carrion?” The question seems,to us, both biologically and philosophically, a little simpliste.Enough has already been written about the absence of a sense ofevil in the work of the Concord essayists. It is only one of the elements thatresulted in the gradually progressive grayness of the last volumes of Thoreau’sjournal. Far more important is the fact that Thoreau asked of nature agift which nature cannot, without cooperation, accord. He asked a continualrenewal of moments of youthful ecstasy. Unhappy indeed is the boy or girlwho has not known those moments of inexplicable rapture in the open air.There is a corresponding experience accorded to those in later years—awe.In ecstasy, the self is infused with happiness; in awe the self recedes beforea realization of the vastness and mystery of the non-self. Many never crossthe bridge from one to the other. Thoreau despised and dreaded science;to inquire too narrowly into the laws of nature seemed to him to threatenthose increasingly infrequent visitations of irrational joy. “If you wouldobtain insight, avoid anatomy,” he wrote. With what a sad smile Goethe213