Bradford Books

This book should be in every epistemologist's "Must Read" pile. Sutton defends an unorthodox account of justified belief according to which a belief is justified iff that belief amounts to knowledge. He defends (successfully, I'd say) the view from a variety of internalist criticisms and does a better job incorporating genuine internalist insights into his treatment of justified belief than competing externalist accounts manage to do (Here, I have in mind various forms of reliabilism or proper functionalism). There's no denying that his account of justification, his treatment of testimony, or solution to the Preface Paradox are unorthodox, but I think that even those who can't bring themselves to accept the conclusions of the book will admit that his work serves as a much needed corrective in that it scrutinizes a number of assumptions largely taken for granted in the current literature.

This book contains Thoreau's personal journals from 1850 until September 15, 1851. In addition to the journal entries, it also includes black-and-white photographic plates taken by H.W. Gleason around the Concord area from 1899-1906 (first snow, Fair Haven Pond from the cliffs, November woods, midwinter, Town Brook, Plymouth).

It was in this volume where Thoreau became aware of his path in life, when he writes "My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking places." (Sept. 7, 1851) On simplicity and living deliberately, Thoreau comments "My greatest skill has been to want but little." (July 19, 1851). "Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to undertake no enterprise, but such as you can endure to give an account of yourself. Live thus deliberately for the most part." (Aug. 23, 1851) Thoreau was never a fond of big government, and during a visit to Canada, he notes "That certainly is the best government where the inhabitants are least often reminded of the government." (Aug. 20, 1851) About travel writing, he observes, "The discoveries which we make abroad are special and particular; those which we make at home are general and significant. The further off, the nearer the surface. The nearer home, the deeper." (Sept. 7, 1851)

Thoreau also commented on his own writing process and the writing of others in several journal entries. He quips, "The intellect of most men is barren....It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination." (Aug. 20, 1851) "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow....The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical, wooden, dull to read." (Aug. 19, 1851) "Do not tread on the heels of your experience....Poetry puts an interval between the impression and the expression, --waits till the seed germinates naturally. (July 23, 1851). "It is the fault of some excellent writers...that they express themselves with too great fullness and detail. They give the most faithful, natural, and lifelike account of their sensations, mental and physical, but they lack moderation and sententiousness. They do not affect us by an ineffectual earnestness and a reserve of meaning, ...; they say all they mean. Their sentences are not concentrated and nutty. Sentences which suggest far more than they say, which have an atmosphere about them, which do not merely report an old, but make a new, impression; sentences which suggest as many things and are as durable as a Roman aqueduct; to frame these; that is the art of writing." (Aug. 22, 1851) "It is wise to write on many subjects, to try many themes, that so you may find the right and inspiring one." (Sept. 4, 1851)

Thoreau put very little value on keeping up with day-to-day affairs of the world. He writes "With a certain wariness, but now without a slight shudder oftentimes, I perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, as a case at court; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, --to permit idle rumors, tales, incidents, even of an insignificant kind, to intrude upon what should be the sacred ground of the thoughts....There is inspiration, the divine gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven; there is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the individual determines to which source chiefly it shall be open and to which it closed. I believe that the mind can be profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality...I think that we should treat our minds as innocent and ingenuous children whose guardians we are, --be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living truth.... Be ever so little distracted, your thoughts so little confused, your engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence so mundane, that in all places and in all hours you can hear the sound of crickets in those season whey they are to be heard. It is a mark of serenity and health of mind when a person hears this sound much,--in streets of cities as well as in fields." (July 7, 1851)

This volume also includes a powerful statement about self-improvement, a beautiful prayer: "That I am innocent to myself! That I love and reverence my life! That I am better fitted for a lofty society to-day than I was yesterday! To make my life a sacrament!...May I treat myself with more and more respect and tenderness...May I not cease to love purity. May I go to my slumbers as expecting to arise to a new and more perfect day...May I treat myself tenderly as I would treat the most innocent child whom I love; may I treat children and my friends as my newly discovered self. Let me forever go in search of myself; never for a moment think that I have found myself; be as a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one is to me whom I love, a dear and cherished object. What temple, what fane, what sacred place can there be but the innermost part of my own being?...It is the love of virtue makes us young ever. That is the fountain of youth, the very aspiration after the perfect. " (July 16, 1851).

This book contains Thoreau's journals from September 16, 1851 to April 30, 1852. In addition to the journal entries, it also includes black-and-white photographic plates of Saw Mill Brook, from Conantum Cliff in September, a large boulder at Nonesuch Road, snow-laden pitch pines, and Nut Meadow Brook, all taken by H.W. Gleason from 1899-1906.

One of the issues that Thoreau was pondering in this volume was his decision to set up housekeeping at Walden Pond, and then to return to live at his parents' home again: "I must say that I do not know what made me leave the pond. I left it as unaccountably as I went to it. To speak sincerely, I went there because I had got ready to go; I left it for the same reason." (Jan. 22, 1852) "But why I changed? Why I left the woods? I do not think that I can tell. I have often wished myself back. I do not know any better how I ever came to go there. Perhaps it is none of my business, even if it is yours. Perhaps I wanted a change. There was a little stagnation, it may be. (Jan. 21, 1852)

It was during this year that Thoreau noted: "For the first time I perceive this spring that the year is a circle. I see distinctly the spring arc thus far. It is drawn with a firm line. Every incident is a parable of the Great Teacher." (April 18, 1852) Thoreau looked to the natural world for guidance: "Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your own moods, be weather-wise. He whom the weather disappoints, disappoints himself." (Jan. 26, 1852) "Obey the spur of the moment. These accumulated it is that make the impulse and the impetus of the life of genius. These are the spongioles or rootlets by which its trunk is fed. If you neglect the moments, if you cut off your fibrous roots, what but a languishing life is to be expected. Let the spurs of countless moments goad us incessantly into life. I feel the spur of the moment thrust deep into my side. The present is an inexorable rider. The moment always spurs either with a sharp or a blunt spur... Let us trust the rider, that he knows the way, that he knows when speed and effort are required....Let us preserve religiously, secure, protect the coincidence of our life with the life of nature. Else what are heat and cold, day and night, sun, moon, and stars to us?" (Jan. 26, 1852) "We sometimes find ourselves living fast,--unprofitably and coarsely even,--as we catch ourselves eating our meals in unaccountable haste. But in one sense we cannot live too leisurely. Let me now live as if time was short. Catch the pace of the seasons; have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain every thought that comes to you. Let your life be a leisurely progress through the realms of nature, even in guest-quarters." (Jan. 11, 1852) "I sometimes think that I may go forth and walk hard and earnestly, and live a more substantial life and get a glorious experience; be much abroad in heat and cold, day and night; live more, expend more atmospheres, be weary often, etc. etc. But then swiftly the thought comes to me, Go not so far out of your way for a truer life; keep strictly onward in that path alone which your genius points out. Do the things which lie nearest to you, but which are difficult to do. Live a purer, a more thoughtful and laborious life, more true to your friends and neighbors, more noble and magnanimous, and that will be better than a wild walk. To live in relations of truth and sincerity with men is to dwell in a frontier country. What a wild and unfrequented wilderness that would be!" (Jan. 11, 1852)

Although many remember Thoreau for his travel writing, he felt strongly rooted to home: "Dear to me to lie in, this sand; fit to preserve the bones of a race for thousands of years to come. And this is my home, my native soil; and I am a New-Englander. Of thee, O earth, are my bone and sinew made; to thee, O sun, am I brother...To this dust my body will gladly return as to its origin. Here have I my habitat. I am of thee." (Nov. 7, 1851) "What need to travel? There are no sierras equal to the clouds in the sunset sky. And are not these substantial enough?" (Jan. 8, 1852) "I am afraid to travel much or to famous places, lest it might completely dissipate the mind. Then I am sure that what we observe at home, if we observe anything, is of more importance than what we observe abroad. The far-fetched is of the least value. What we observe in travelling are to some extent the accidents of the body, but [what] we observe when sitting at home, are, in the same proportion, phenomena of the mind itself."

Thoreau was very outspoken on the need for writing to be based on direct experience, rather than lofty philosophizing: "The forcible writer stands bodily behind his words with his experience. He does not make books out of books, but he has been there in person." (Feb. 3, 1852) "Write while the heat is in you. When the farmer burns a hole in his yoke, he carries the hot iron quickly from the fire to the wood, for every moment it is less effectual to penetrate (pierce) it. It must be used instantly, or it is useless. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience." (Feb. 9, 1852)

This book contains Thoreau's journals from May 1 1852 to February 27, 1853. In addition to the journal entries, it also includes black-and-white photographic plates of cow's in Emerson's pasture, anemones, Concord River in June, the mountains from Ponkawtasset Hill, and Walden Pond in winter, all taken by H.W. Gleason from 1899-1906.

Thoreau termed this his "year of observation," (July 2, 1852). He set out to learn about the world and universe by studying nature: "How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts! Nature never lost a day, nor a moment. As the planet in its orbit and around its axis, so do the season, so does time, revolve, with a rapidity inconceivable. In the moment, in the aeon, well employed, time ever advances with this rapidity." (Sept. 13, 1852)

His love for nature was all encompassing: "If a man travelling from world to world were to pass through this world at such a moment [sunset], would he not be tempted to take up his abode here?" (Aug. 7, 1852) "I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this. None of the joys she supplies is subject to his rules and definitions. What he touches he taints. In thought he moralizes. One would think that no free, joyful labor was possible to him...The joy which Nature yields is like [that] afforded by the frank words of one we love.
Man, man is the devil,
The source of all evil.
... I have a room all to myself; it is nature. It is a place beyond the jurisdiction of human governments..." (Jan. 3, 1853) "There are from time to time mornings, both in summer and winter, when especially the world seems to begin anew, beyond which memory need not go, for not behind them is yesterday and our past life; when, as in the morning of a hoar frost, there are visible the effects of a certain creative energy, the world has visibly been recreated in the night. Mornings of creation, I call them. In the midst of these marks of a creative energy recently active, while the sun is rising with more than usual splendor, I look back,--I look back for the era of this creation, not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough. A morning which carries us back beyond the Mosaic creation, where crystallizations are fresh and unmelted. It is the poet's hour. Mornings when men are new-born, men who have the seeds of life in them." (Jan. 26, 1853)

Thoreau also had a keen eye for the people around him: "My friend is one whom I meet, who takes me for what I am. A stranger takes me for something else than I am." (Oct. 22, 1852) "The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them." (July 14, 1852) "A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance. Observe how the greatest minds yield in some degree to the superstitions of their age." (Jan. 30, 1853) "One sensible act will be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon." (June 26, 1852)

Thoreau observed how one's relation to nature affects health, noting: "How wholesome these fogs which some fear! They are cool, medicated vapor baths, mingled by Nature, which bring to our senses all the medical properties of the meadows. The touchstones of health. Sleep with all your windows open, and let the mist embrace you." (July 7, 1852) "Both for bodily and mental health, court the present. Embrace health wherever you find her." (Dec. 22, 1852)

Thoreau was also outspoken about how people should approach work and living: "The motive of the laborer should be not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work. A town must pay its engineers so well that they shall not feel that they are working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely but for scientific ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love, and pay him well." (June 15, 1852) "In my experience nothing is so opposed to poetry--not crime--as business." (June 29, 1852) "One's life, the enterprise he is here upon, should certainly be a grand fact to consider, not a mean or insignificant one. A man should not live without a purpose, and that purpose must surely be a grand one." (Dec. 14, 1852)

Although not a church-goer, Thoreau was deeply religious. "The bells are particularly sweet this morning. I hear more methinks, than ever before. How much more religion in their sound, than they ever call men together to! Men obey their call and go to the stove-warmed church, though God exhibits himself to the walker in a frosted bush to-day, as much as in a burning one to Moses of old." (Jan. 2, 1853) He sensed a grander form of being that transcended individuals: "Men commonly talk as if genius were something proper to an individual. I esteem it but a common privilege, and if one does not enjoy it now, he may congratulate his neighbor that he does. There is not place for man-worship. We understand very well a man's relation, not to his genius, but to the genius." (Dec. 2, 1852)

This book contains Thoreau's journals from August 16, 1856 to August 7, 1857. In addition to the journal entries, it also includes black-and-white photographic plates by Gleason of Hubbard's Bridge and water lilies, coral fungus, shrub oak leaves, Bateman's Pond, and Highland Light, Cape Cod, all taken around 1900.

During this year, Thoreau observes, "Both a conscious and an unconscious life are good. Neither is good exclusively, for both have the same source. The wisely conscious life springs out of an unconscious suggestion....Indeed, it is by obeying the suggestions of a higher light within you that you escape from yourself and, in the transit, as it were see with the unworn sides of your eye, travel totally new paths." (Aug. 30, 1856)

Thoreau notes, ""We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always." (Dec. 29, 1856) "A great part of our troubles are literally domestic or originate in the house and from living indoors." (April 26, 1857) Later, he goes on to write, "It is very rare that I hear one express a strong and imperishable attachment to a particular scenery, or to the whole of nature,--I mean such as will control their whole lives and characters. Such seem to have a true home in nature, a hearth in the fields and woods...How rarely a man's love for nature becomes a ruling principle with him, like a youth's affection for a maiden, but more enduring! All nature is my bride." (April 23, 1857)

On the injustice of consuming more than one's share of fuel, Thoreau points out, "What right has my neighbor to burn ten cords of wood, when I burn only one? Thus robbing our half-naked town of this precious covering. Is he so much colder than I? It is expensive to maintain him in our midst.... He who burns the most wood on his hearth is the least warmed by the sight of it growing.... Let men tread gently through nature." (April 26, 1857)

On economy and making proper use of one's time, Thoreau muses, "It is well to find your employment and amusement in simple and homely things. These wear best and yield most." (Oct. 5, 1856) "It is foolish for a man to accumulate material wealth chiefly, houses and land. Our stock in life, our real estate, is that amount of thought which we have had, which we have thought out." (May 1, 1857) "It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all. I find it invariably true, the poorer I am, the richer I am. What you consider my disadvantage, I consider my advantage. While you are pleased to get knowledge and culture in many ways, I am delighted to think that I am getting rid of them." (Dec. 5, 1856)

During this year, Thoreau made one of his most remarkable statements of his religious beliefs, noting, "It would imply the regeneration of mankind, if they were to become elevated enough to truly worship stocks and stones... If I could, I would worship the parings of my nails....I would fain improve every opportunity to wonder and worship, as a sunflower welcomes the light. The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become." (Aug. 30, 1856) But he notes, "We are wont foolishly to think that the creed which a man professes is more significant than the fact he is." (Dec. 1, 1856)

Thoreau also reflected on his writing, this year, observing, "If the writer would interest readers, he must report so much life, using a certain satisfaction always as a point d'appui. However mean and limited, it must be a genuine and contented life that he speaks out of."' (Dec. 23, 1856) "I would fain make two reports in my Journal, first the incidents and observations of to-day; and by tomorrow I review the same and record what was omitted before, which will often be the most significant and poetic part." (March 27, 1857) "Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember." (March 28, 1857)

On Friendship, he notes, "I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it." (Dec. 23, 1856) "I demand of my companion some evidence that he has travelled further than the sources of the Nile, that he has seen something, that he has been out of town, out of the house. Not that he can tell a good story, but that he can keep a good silence. Has he attended to a silence more significant than any story? Did he ever get out of the road which all men and fools travel? You call yourself a great traveller, perhaps, but can you get beyond the influence of a certain class of ideas?" (Jan. 11, 1857) Nevertheless, he notes, "Friendship is the fruit which the year should bear; it lends is fragrance to the flowers, and it is in vain if we get only a large crop of apples without it." (July 13, 1857)

This book contains Thoreau's journals from March 5, 1853 to November 30, 1853. In addition to the journal entries, it also includes black-and-white photographic plates of Conantum Pool, the leaning hemlocks, river fog from Nawshawtuct Hill, wild roses, butterfly on Joe-Pye-weed, and Fair Haven Bay through the woods, all taken around 1900 by Gleason.

During this year, Thoreau pondered the relative values of means of employment. He noted: "How trivial and uninteresting and wearisome and unsatisfactory are all employments for which men will pay you money! The ways by which you may get money all lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle. If the laborer gets no more than the wages his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. Those services which the world will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render." (Aug. 6, 1853) The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body....You must get your living by loving. (March 12, 1853) "If a man walks in the woods for love of them and [to] see his fellows with impartial eye afar, for half his days, he is esteemed a loafer; but if he spends his whole days as a speculator, shearing off those woods, he is esteemed industrious and enterprising---making earth bald before its time." (June 17, 1853)

One evening, he observed a man gathering driftwood at the river's edge, and meditated on the correctness of such behavior: "One-eyed John Goodwin, the fisherman, was loading into a hand-cart and conveying home the piles of driftwood which of late he had collected with his boat. It was a beautiful evening, and a clear amber sunset lit up all the eastern shores; and that man's employment, so simple and direct... charmed me unspeakably....If I buy one necessary of life, I cheat myself to some extent, I deprive myself of the pleasure, the inexpressible joy, which is the unfailing reward of satisfying any want of our nature simply and truly.
No trade is simple, but artificial and complex. It postpones life and substitutes death. `If I go to Boston every day and sell tape from morning till night,' says the merchant,...'Some time or other I shall be able to buy the best of fuel without stint.' Yes, but not the pleasure of picking it up by the riverside which, I may say, is of more value than the warmth it yields, for it but keeps the vital heat in us that we may repeat such pleasing exercises. It warms us twice, and the first warmth is the most wholesome and memorable, compared with which the other is mere coke. It is to give no account of my employment to say that I cut wood to keep me from freezing, or cultivate beans to keep me from starving. Oh, no, the greatest value of these labors is received before the wood is teamed home, or the beans are harvested." (Oct. 22, 1853) He concluded: "What other liberty is there worth having, if we have not freedom and peace in our minds,--if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool....A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread." (Oct. 26, 1853)

On the topic of food, Thoreau advocated adjusting one's diet to the season: "Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each...In August live on berries, not dried meats and pemmican, as if you were on shipboard making your way through a waste ocean, or in a northern desert....Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with autumn....Let Nature do your bottling and your pickling and preserving. For all Nature is doing her best each moment to make us well. She exists for no other need. Do not resist her...Some men think that they are not well in spring, or summer, or autumn or winter; it is only because they are not well in them." (Aug. 23, 1853) This year also contained one of his most beautiful entries on berry picking: "The berries of the Vaccinium vacillans are very abundant and large this year on Fair Haven...Nature does her best to feed man...The field and hills are a table constantly spread. Wines of all kinds and qualities, of noblest vintage, are bottled up in the skins of countless berries, for the taste of men and animals. To men they seem offered no so much for food as for sociality, that they may picnic with Nature...We pluck and eat in remembrance of Her. It is a sacrament, a communion. The not-forbidden fruits, which no serpent tempts us to taste. Slight and innocent savors, which relate us to Nature, make us her guests and entitle us to her regard and protection." (July 24, 1853)

This book contains Thoreau's journals from December 1, 1853 to August 31, 1854. In addition to the journal entries, it also includes black-and-white photographic plates of summer foliage, Walden Pond, the leaning hemlocks in winter, shad-bush in blossom, great fringed orchid, and ferns in Clintonia Swamp, all taken around 1900 by Gleason.

One of Thoreau's chief tasks this year was polishing his Walden manuscript for publication. He writes in his journal: "In criticising your writing, trust your fine instinct. There are many things which we come very near questioning, but do not question. When I have sent off my manuscripts to the printer, certain objectionable sentences or expressions are sure to obtrude themselves on my attention with force, though I had not consciously suspect them before. My critical instinct then at once breaks the ice and comes to the surface." (March 30, 1854) "I find that I can criticise my composition best when I stand at a little distance from it,--when I do not see it, for instance. I make a little chapter of contents which enables me to recall it page by page to my mind, and judge it more impartially when my manuscript is out of the way. The distraction of surveying enables me rapidly to take new points of view. A day or two surveying is equal to a journey." (April 8, 1854) "In correcting my manuscripts, which I do with sufficient phlegm, I find that I invariably turn out much that is good along with the bad, which it is then impossible for me to distinguish--so much for keeping bad company; but after the lapse of time, having purified the main body and thus created a distinct standard for comparison, I can review the rejected sentences and easily detect those which deserve to be readmitted." (March 1, 1854) On writing style, he muses: "There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must be subjective. The sum of what the writer of whatever class has to report is simply some human experience, whether he be poet or philosopher or man of science...It matters not where or how far you travel...but how much alive you are. If it is possible to conceive of an event outside to humanity, it is not of the slightest significance, though it were the explosion of a planet.... All that a man has to say or do that can possibly concern mankind, is in some shape or other to tell the story of his love,--to sing; and, if he is fortunate and keeps alive, he will be forever in love. This alone is to be alive to the extremities." (May 6, 1854)

Thoreau also still felt the need to justify his choice of lifestyle: "The farmer hoeing is wont to look with a scorn and pride on a man sitting in a motionless boat a while half-day, but he does not realize that the object of his own labor is perhaps merely to add another dollar to his heap, nor through what coarseness and inhumanity to his family and servants he often accomplishes this." (June 1, 1854) On the acquisition of material goods, he comments ""I bought me a spy-glass some weeks since. I buy but few things, and those not toll long after I begin to want them, so that when I do get them I am prepared to make a perfect use of them and extract their whole sweet." (April 9, 1854) On lifestyle, he writes, "It would be worth the while to ask ourselves weekly, Is our life innocent enough? Do we live inhumanely, toward man or beast, in thought or act? To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe. The least conscious and needless injury inflicted on any creature is to its extent a suicide. What peace--or life--can a murder have?" (May 28, 1854) "So behave that the odor of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that, when I behold or scent a flower, I may not be reminded how inconsistent are your actions with it; for all odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality." (June 16, 1854)

The arrest and return of a fugitive slave led him to a state of moral outrage--one of the few times in ten years when the details of a news item were reflected in the pages of his journal. He declares: "The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable,--of a bad government, to make it less valuable...Every man in New England capable of the sentiment of patriotism must have lived the last three weeks with the sense of having suffered a vast, indefinite loss. I had never respected this government, but I had foolishly thought that I might manage to live here, attending to my private affairs, and forget it." (June 16, 1854) The quality of Thoreau's moral thinking becomes clear as he writes: "The judges and lawyers, and all men of expediency, consider not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but whether it is what they call constitutional. They try the merits of the case by a very low and incompetent standard. Pray, is virtue constitutional, or vice? Is equity constitutional, or iniquity? It is as impertinent, in important moral and vital questions like this, to ask whether a law is constitutional or not, as to ask whether its profitable or not. They persist in being the servants of man, and the worst of men, rather than the servants of God." (June 17, 1854)

This book contains Thoreau's journals from September 1, 1854 to October 30, 1855. In addition to the journal entries, it also includes black-and-white photographic plates of Kalmia glauca, Sam Barrett's mill-pond, snow statuary, barn swallows, and Provincetown, all taken around 1900 by Gleason.

The positive reception to the publication of "Walden" greatly increased interest in Thoreau on the lecture circuit. Although this long-wished for success helped Thoreau towards his dream of becoming a professional writer, he found that fame also came at a cost: "Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter, I realized how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long (and may still perhaps enjoy). I thought with what more than princely, with what poetical, leisure I had spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free. I have given myself up to nature; I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have thrived on solitude and poverty! I cannot overstate this advantage. I do not see how I could have enjoyed it, if the public had been expecting as much of me as there is danger now that they will. If I go abroad lecturing, how shall I ever recover the lost winter? It has been my vacation, my season of growth and expansion, a prolonged youth." (Sept. 19, 1854) But it seems the public weren't easy to please, as Thoreau notes, "After lecturing twice this winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself by trying to become a successful lecturer, i.e. to interest my audiences. I am disappointed to find that most that I am and value myself for is lost, or worse than lost, on my audience. I fail to get even the attention of the mass. I should suit them better if I suited myself less. I feel that the public demand an average man,--average thoughts and manners,--not originality, nor even absolute excellence. You cannot interest them except as you are like them and sympathize with them. I would rather that my audience come to me than that I should go to them, and so they be sifted; i.e. I would rather write books than lectures." (Dec. 6, 1854)

During this time, Thoreau also began an intense experiment in learning to appreciate supplying his own needs with his own labor directly, and not through complex trade arrangement. Following the example of a neighbor who dragged home driftwood for fuel, and wreckers he observed on Cape Cod, he began getting his fuel by gathering scraps from here and there, noting: "Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel,--one oak rail, on which fishers had stood in wet ground at Bittern Cliff, a white pine rider with a square hole in [it] made by a woodpecker anciently, so wasted the sap as to leave the knots projecting, several chestnut rails; and obtained behind Cardinal Shore, a large oak stump which I know to have been bleaching there for more than thirty years, with three great gray prongs sprinkled with lichens....It would be a triumph to get all my winters' wood thus. How much better than to buy a cord coarsely from a farer, seeing that I get my money's worth! Then it only affords me a momentary satisfaction to see the pile tipped up in the yard. Now I derive a separate and peculiar pleasure from every stick that I find. Each has its history, of which I am reminded when I come to burn it, and under what circumstances I found it." (Sept. 24, 1855) "Thus one half the value of my wood is enjoyed before it is housed, and the other half is equal to the whole value of an equal quantity of the wood which I buy.
Some of my acquaintances have been wondering why I took all these pains, bringing some nearly three miles by water, and have suggested various reasons for it. I tell them in my despair of making them understand me that it is a profound secret,--which it has proved,--yet I did hint to them that one reason was that I wanted to get it. I take some satisfaction in eating my food, as well as in being nourished by it. I feel well at dinner-time as well as after it. The world will never find out why you don't love to have your bed tucked up for you,--why you will be so perverse....I like best the bread which I have baked, the garment which I have made, the shelter which I have constructed, the fuel which I have gathered." (Oct. 20, 1855)

He suggests to all "Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. Wherever a man separates from the multitude and goes his own way, there is a fork in the road, though the travellers along the highway see only a gap in the paling." (Oct. 18, 1855)

This book contains Thoreau's journals from November 1, 1855 to August 15, 1856. In addition to the journal entries, it also includes black-and-white photographic plates by Gleason of Concord elms, frost-crystals on ice, skunk-cabbage, lady's slippers, and Baker Farm and Fair Haven Pond, all taken around 1900.

Thoreau mused much this year on how one gets the most out of life and its experiences. He observes "Men prefer foolishly the gold to that of which it is the symbol,--simple, honest, independent labor. Can gold be said to buy food, if it does not buy an appetite for food? It is fouler and uglier to have too much than not to have enough." (Nov. 18, 1855) He noted, "I deal so much with my fuel,--what with finding it, loading it, conveying it home, sawing and splitting it,--get so many values out of it, am warmed in so many ways by it, ... and yet most of mankind, those called most successful in obtaining the necessaries of life,--getting their living,--obtain none of this, except a mere vulgar and perhaps stupefying warmth." (Nov. 9, 1855) "The pleasure, the warmth, is not so much in having as in a true and simple manner getting these necessaries." (Nov. 18, 1855) "It is interesting to me to talk with Rice, he lives so thoroughly and satisfactorily to himself. He has learned that rare art of living, the very elements of which most professors do not know...He gets more out of any enterprise than his neighbors, for he helps himself more and hires less. Whatever pleasure there is in it he enjoys. By good sense and calculation he has become rich and invested his property well, yet practices a fair and neat economy, dwells not in untidy luxury. It costs him less to live, and he gets more out of life, than others. To get his living, or keep it, is not a hasty or disagreeable toil. He works slowly but surely, enjoying the sweet of it." (Nov. 16, 1855) Thoreau also recognizes the injustice in consuming more than one's fair share of fuel, "One man thinks that he has a right to burn his thirty cords in a year because he can give a certain sum of money in exchange for them, but that another has no right to pick up the fagots which else nobody would burn. They who will remember only this kind of right do as if they stood under a shed and affirmed that they were under the unobscured heavens" (Nov. 18, 1855) Thoreau also advocates the use of technology as a means to lessen consumption: "So of the warmth which food, shelter, and clothing afford, or might afford, if we used economical stoves. We might burn the smoke which now puts our eyes out." (Nov. 18, 1855)

On wealth, Thoreau notes, ""In my experience I have found nothing so truly impoverishing as what is called wealth, i.e. the command of greater means than you had before possessed, though comparatively few and slight still, for you thus inevitably acquire a more expensive habit of living, and even the very same necessaries and comforts costs you more than they once did. Instead of gaining, you have lost some independence, and if your income should be suddenly lessened, you would find yourself poor, though possessed of the same means which once made you rich." (Jan. 20, 1856)

It was in this volume that Thoreau included a few biographical notes of where he lived, commenting "It is a true history or biography, of how little consequence those events of which so much is commonly made! For example, how difficult for a man to remember in what towns or houses he has lived, or when! Yet one of the first steps of his biographer will be to establish these facts, and he will thus give an undue importance to many of them. I find in my Journal that the most important events in my life, if recorded at all, are not dated." (Dec. 26, 1855) Two days later, he provides a list of the houses where he lived and when. Thoreau also provides an excellent description of what he thought should be the purpose of a journal: "A journal is a record of experiences and growth, not a preserve of things well done or said... ere I cannot afford to be remembering not what I said or did, my scurf cast off, but what I am and aspire to become." (Jan. 24, 1856)

Thoreau also explores the topic of true learning this year, noting "Had a dispute with Father about the use of my making this sugar when I knew it could be done and might have bought sugar cheaper at Holden's. He said it took me from my studies. I said I made it my study; I felt as if I had been to a university." (March 20, 1856) Thoreau has also begun to achieve enough volume of natural observations to begin to make general ecological observations, noting ""It is evident that it depends on the character of the season whether this flower or that is the most forward; whether there is more or less snow or cold or rain, etc." (April 2, 1856) He also comments "Again, as so many times, I [am] reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one,--seeing with the side of the eye. The poet will so get visions which no deliberate abandonment can secure. The philosopher is so forced to recognize principles which long study might not detect. And the naturalist even will stumble upon some new and unexpected flower or animal." (April 28, 1856)

This book contains Thoreau's journals from August 8, 1857 to June 29, 1858. In addition to the journal entries, it also includes black-and-white photographic plates by Gleason of nature's decoration of an old pine stump, the Easterbrooks country, Curly-Pate Hill, willow catkins, and a turtle dove's nest, all taken around 1900.

This year, Thoreau writes, "How meanly and miserably we live for the most part!...What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor?" (Aug. 10, 1857) "Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? free from fear, from perturbations, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves. How many can exercise the highest human faculties? He is the man truly--courageous, wise, ingenious--who can use his thoughts and ecstasies as the material of fair and durable creation...The mass of men do not know how to cultivate the fields they traverse. The mass glean only a scanty pittance where the thinker reaps an abundant harvest. What is all your building, if you do not build with thought? No exercise implies more real manhood and vigor than joining thought to thought. How few men can tell what they have thought!" (May 6, 1858) "I think that men generally are mistaken with regard to amusements....I know of no such amusement,--so wholesome and in every sense profitable,--for instance, as to spend an hour or two in a day picking some berries or other fruits which will be food for the winter, or collecting driftwood from the river for fuel, or cultivating the few beans or potatoes which I want. Theatres and operas, which intoxicate for a season, are as nothing compared to these pursuits. As so it is with all the true arts of life. Farming and building and manufacturing and sailing are the greatest and wholesomest amusements that were ever invented (for God invented them), and I suppose that the farmers and mechanics know it, only I think they indulge to excess generally, and so what was meant for a joy becomes the sweat of the brow." (Oct. 29, 1857)

On the outdoor life, Thoreau comments, "The naturalist accomplishes a great deal by patience, more perhaps than by activity. He must take his position, and then wait and watch." (April 15, 1858) "It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you." (Jan. 23, 1858) Thoreau also observes, "I doubt if men do every simply and naturally glorify God in the ordinary sense, but is remarkable how sincerely in all ages they glorify nature. The praising of Aurora, for instance, under some form in all ages is obedience to as irresistible an instinct as that which impels the frogs to peep." (April 9, 1858)

Thoreau was concerned about health this year, and notes, "To insure health, a man's relation to Nature must come very near to a personal one; he must be conscious of a friendliness in her; when human friends fail or die, she must stand in the gap to him. I cannot conceive of any life which deserves the name, unless there is a certain tender relation to Nature. This it is which makes winter warm, and supplies society in the desert and wilderness. Unless Nature sympathizes with and speaks to us, as it were, the most fertile and blooming regions are barren and dreary" (Jan. 23, 1858) "Sympathy with nature is an evidence of perfect health. You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind." (Nov. 18, 1857)

On science and writing, Thoreau comments, "I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you." (Nov. 5, 1857) "In books, that which is most generally interesting is what comes home to the most cherished private experience of the greatest number. It is not the book of him who has travelled the farthest over the surface of the globe, but of him who has lived the deepest and been the most at home. If an equal emotion is excited by a familiar homely phenomenon as by the Pyramids, there is no advantage in seeing the Pyramids. It is on the whole better, as it is simpler, to use the common language. We require that the reporter be very permanently planted before the facts which he observes, not a mere passer-by; hence the facts cannot be too homely. A man is worth most to himself and to others, whether as an observer, or poet, or neighbor, or friends where he is most himself, most contented and at home. There his life is the most intense and he loves the fewest moments. Familiar and surrounding objects are the best symbols and illustrations of his life. If a man who has had deep experiences should endeavor do describe them in a book of travels, it would be to use the language of a wandering tribe instead of a universal language....The man who is often thinking that it is better to be somewhere else than where he is excommunicates himself. If a man is rich and strong anywhere, it must be on his native soil....We only need travel enough to give our intellects an airing." (Nov. 20, 1857) "You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake. You must be able to extract nutriment out of a sandheap. You must have so good an appetite as this, else you will live in vain." (Jan. 24, 1858)

And finally, "Ah, my friends, I know you better than you think, and love you better, too. The day after never, we will have an explanation." (Nov. 8, 1857)