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Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience

Henry David Thoreau · 1845-1851 (Walden, 1845-1847; Civil Disobedience, 1849; combined in later printings) primary

passage 219 of 221 · (219/221)

↪ you wandered here via “internal honor in conscience” — the connecting lines are tinted below

in brief
He wrestles with the moral temptation to excuse neighbors as ignorant, argues that overwhelming mass demand still allows appeal to God and to conscience, and says he keeps trying to find a pretext for conformity.

we alienate Out love of industry from doing it honor, We must respect effects and teach the soul Matter of conscience and religion, And not desire of rule or benefit.”

I believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work of this sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better patriot than my fellow-countrymen. Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable, and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all?

However, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.

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topics: duty, conscience, and obligation · greed and the love of money · justice as a virtue

Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience · Henry David Thoreau · 1845–1851