'Henry David Thoreau: Transcendentalist Essay\r'

'enthalpy David Thoreau spent much m studying character and applying those studies to the merciful condition. His Transcendentalist ideas sh bingle through in his writings and his life. In â€Å"Economy” he asks, â€Å"Why has man root himself thus firmly in the earth, scarce that he may rise in the same harmonize into the heavens above” (Thoreau 58). He asks this question in response to man’s ever change magnitude need to arrest to a greater extent than the basic necessities of life. In other words, if we have state of warmth, food, water, and clothing what map does added prodigality serve.\r\nThoreau reinforces this later when he writes, â€Å"When I have met an immigrant totter under a bundle which contained his all in all †facial expression like an enormous wen which had grown turn out of the nape of his neck †I have pitied him, non because that was his all, but because he had all that to carry” (Thoreau 110). In Thoreau’s opinion these things plainly hamper one’s top executive to rise above a mundane existence. Moving to the pond and living send off what it supplied helped him in that quest.\r\nReading on into â€Å"Where I Lived” he says, â€Å"I went to the woodlands because I wished to live deliberately, to front line further the essential facts of life, and come over if I could non learn what it had to nurture, and non, when I came to die, disc everywhere that I had non lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is dear, nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was sort of necessary” (Thoreau 135). This is an extremely telling state manpowert. Thoreau is speaking of his commit custodyt to finding truth in nature. The real travesty, for him, would be to neglect this opportunity to learn what nature has to teach him or die never the wiser.\r\nHe frankly believed nature to be the highest physical reality on Earth and only by understanding it c ould a person understand oneself. Living in consent with nature was the first and best way to understand the truths of human nature. He furthers these ideas later in â€Å"Sounds” by asking what is gained by earnestly listening to what is closely you: The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the fatality of being forever on the alert.\r\nWhat is a line of descent of history or philosophy, or poetry, no bailiwick how rise up selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking endlessly at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a prophesier? (Thoreau 156). He had not read any books over his first summer at Walden in elevate of give waying his land and keeping other operable matters in order. The sounds of the natural world, as well as the opportunities he afforded himself to sit in the sun, offered a erratic opportunity to for inner reflection.\r\nWhile he essential have gotten much joy from reading and acquire he understood that true understanding could only come from observing what nature offered. He continued, â€Å"…I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like maize in the night, and they were far better than any work of the reach would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my regular allowance” (Thoreau 157). How beautiful it must have been for him to have this time to search within himself through nature.\r\n penetrating and understanding that nature provides an environment to grow spiritually allowed Mr. Thoreau to learn his place in the world and turn out it happily. This utilization of his natural surroundings helped him focus inwardly. feeling at his isolation as a collapse he wrote, â€Å"Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the abju re or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless hollering and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves” (Thoreau 177).\r\nThe solitude he put at Walden, on a ghastly rainy day that may have found others in different depressed states, he utilise to ponder the idea of loneliness and how it had such a small effect on him. To Thoreau, loneliness was only possible for those who had to be contented by expending time with others in endeavors that did nothing to increase the human spirit or give way to a heightened perception of one’s self. It seems that, above all, Thoreau tangle that mankind devoted too much of itself to laborious to compete, impress, and just generally keep up with itself. The mix-up of the government in Thoreau’s time did not serve to better this opinion.\r\nThis was the time of the Mexican war a nd slavery was a growing issue in the United States. Thoreau had come to a point that his organized religion in government was lost as well as his faith in those that followed it. â€Å"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines with their bodies” (Thoreau 388). He felt all those employed by the state had lost the ability to make rational moral judgments and the citizens were deprived of a true say in government. He argues that by doing this, â€Å"…they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can maybe be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well.\r\nSuch command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt” (Thoreau 388). To Thoreau, people of the time were blindly following a government that put its have-to doe with ahead of the peoples. What was even worse was that the people could see the truth if only they would look. The answers to these problems at the time did not necessarily have to be revolution. In Thoreau’s mind a man could make a dramatic statement by washing his hands of the whole mess and therefore making a powerful statement to others.\r\n'