No More Learning

It comes only by the grace of God. It
requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to become a Walker.
You must be born into the family of the Walkers. Ambulator
nascitur, non fit. Some of my townsmen, it is true, can remem-
ber and have described to me some walks which they took ten
-


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HENRY D. THOREAU
14899
years ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves
for half an hour in the woods; but I know very well that they
have confined themselves to the highway ever since, whatever
pretensions they may make to belong to this select class. No
doubt they were elevated for a moment as by the reminiscence
of a previous state of existence, when even they were foresters
and outlaws.
"When he came to grene wode,
In a mery mornynge,
There he herde the notes small
Of byrdes mery syngyng.
―
"It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,
That I was last here:
Me lyste a lytell for to shote
At the donne dere. "
I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless
I spend four hours a day at least-and it is commonly more
than that-sauntering through the woods and over the hills and
fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
You may
safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds.
When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shop-
keepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the
afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them,— as if
the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon,
-I think that they deserve some credit for not having all com-
mitted suicide long ago.
I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without
acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for
a walk at the eleventh hour, or four o'clock in the afternoon, too
late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already
beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I
had committed some sin to be atoned for,-I confess that I am
astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral
insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops
and offices the whole day for weeks and months-aye, and
years almost-together. I know not what manner of stuff they
are of, sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as
if it were three o'clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk
of the three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing to
the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the


## p. 14900 (#478) ##########################################

14900
HENRY D. THOREAU
afternoon, over against one's self whom you have known all the
morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by
such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time-or
say between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, too late for
the morning papers and too early for the evening ones- there
is not a general explosion heard up and down the street, scatter-
ing a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to
the four winds for an airing-and so the evil cure itself.
How womankind, who are confined to the house still more
than men, stand it, I do not know; but I have ground to sus-
pect that most of them do not stand it at all. When, early in a
summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the village
from the skirts of our garments, making haste past those houses
with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an air of
repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about
these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that
I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which
itself never turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping
watch over the slumberers.
No doubt temperament, and above all, age, have a good deal
to do with it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and
follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his
habits as the evening of life approaches; till at last he comes
forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he
requires in half an hour.
But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to
taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at
stated hours, -as the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is
itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get
exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man's
swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bub-
bling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!
Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be
the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveler
asked Wordsworth's servant to show him her master's study, she
answered, "Here is his library, but his study is out of doors. "
Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt
produce a certain roughness of character,-will cause a thicker
cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as
on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands
of some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on


## p. 14901 (#479) ##########################################

HENRY D. THOREAU
14901
the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness, not to
say thinness, of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to
certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to
some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth,
if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and
no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick
and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off
fast enough; that the natural remedy is to be found in the pro-
portion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the
summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more
air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the
laborer are more conversant with the finer tissues of self-respect
and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fin-
gers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by
day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of expe-
rience.
When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what
would become of us if we walked only in a garden or a mall?
Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of im
porting the woods to themselves, since they did not go to the
woods. "They planted groves and walks of platanes," where
they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos open to the air. Of
course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they
do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I
have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there
in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my
morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it some-
times happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The
thought of some work will run in my head, and I am not where
my body is, I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain
return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I
am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself
and cannot help a shudder, when I find myself so implicated even
in what are called good works,- for this may sometimes happen.
My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so
many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for
several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An abso-
lutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get
this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me
to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farm-
house which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the


## p. 14902 (#480) ##########################################

14902
HENRY D. THOREAU
dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of
harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape
within a circle of ten miles' radius, or the limits of an afternoon
walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will
never become quite familiar to you.
Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called,— as the
building of houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all
large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more
and more tame and cheap. A people who would begin by burn-
ing the fences and let the forest stand! I saw the fences half
consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and some
worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while
heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the
angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in
the midst of Paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in
the middle of a boggy Stygian fen, surrounded by devils; and he
had found his bounds without a doubt,- three little stones, where
a stake had been driven: and looking nearer, I saw that the
Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.
I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles,
commencing at my own door, without going by any house, with-
out crossing a road except where the fox and the mink do: first
along by the river, and then the brook, and then the meadow
and the woodside. There are square miles in my vicinity which
have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see civilization and
the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their works are scarcely
more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and his
affairs, Church and State and school, trade and commerce, and
manufactures and agriculture,- even politics, the most alarming
of them all, I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in
the landscape. Politics is but a narrow field, and that still nar-
rower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveler
thither. If you would go to the political world, follow the great
road, follow that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and
it will lead you straight to it; for it too has its place merely,
and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean-
field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half-hour I can
walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a man
does not stand from one year's end to another; and there, conse-
quently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke of
a man.
-
-


## p. 14903 (#481) ##########################################

HENRY D. THOREAU
14903
The village is the place to which the roads tend; a sort of
expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body,
of which roads are the arms and legs, a trivial or quadrivial
place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travelers. The word is
from the Latin villa, which together with via, a way, or more
anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, be-
cause the villa is the place to and from which things are carried.
They who got their living by teaming were said vellaturam
facere. Hence too the Latin word vilis and our vile; also villain.
This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to.
They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them,
without traveling themselves.
Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few
walk across-lots. Roads are made for horses and men of busi-
ness. I do not travel in them much, comparatively, because I
am not in a hurry to get to any tavern or grocery or livery-
stable or depot to which they lead. I am a good horse to travel,
but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the
figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of
my figure. I walk out into a Nature such as the old prophets
and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in.
You may
name it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Ves-
pucius, nor Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it.
There is a truer account of it in mythology than in any history
of America, so called, that I have seen.
What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine
whither we will walk ? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism
in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us
aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There
is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and
stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that
walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is
perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the
interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it
difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist
distinctly in our idea.
When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet
whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct
to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may
seem, that I finally and inevitably settle southwest, toward some
particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that


## p. 14904 (#482) ##########################################

14904
HENRY D. THOREAU
direction. My needle is slow to settle,-varies a few degrees,
and does not always point due southwest, it is true, and it has
good authority for this variation,- but it always settles between
west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and
the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. The
outline which would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but
a parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have
been thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening
westward, in which my house occupies the place of the sun.
turn round and round irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an
hour, until I decide, for a thousandth time, that I will walk into
the southwest or west. Eastward I go only by force; but west-
ward I go free. Thither no business leads me. It is hard for
me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or sufficient wild-
ness and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited
by the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the for-
est which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly
toward the setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of
enough consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on
this side is the city, on that the wilderness; and ever I am leav-
ing the city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilder-
ness. I should not lay so much stress on this fact, if I did not
believe that something like this is the prevailing tendency of my
countrymen. I must walk toward Oregon and not toward Europe.
And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that man-
kind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have
witnessed the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the
settlement of Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde move-
ment, and judging from the moral and physical character of the
first generation of Australians, has not yet proved a successful
experiment. The eastern Tartars think that there is nothing
west beyond Thibet. "The world ends there," say they; "beyond
there is nothing but a shoreless sea. " It is unmitigated East
where they live.
We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art
and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward
as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.
The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we
have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its insti-
tutions. If we do not succeed this time, there is perhaps one
more chance for the race left before it arrives on the banks of


## p. 14905 (#483) ##########################################

HENRY D. THOREAU
14905
the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the Pacific, which is three
times as wide.
I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence
of singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his
pettiest walk with the general movement of the race; but I know
that something akin to the migratory instinct in birds and quad-
rupeds - which in some instances is known to have affected the
squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and mysterious move-
ment, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the broadest
rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail raised for a sail,
and bridging narrower streams with their dead—that something
like the furor which affects the domestic cattle in the spring,
and which is referred to a worm in their tails, affects both
nations and individuals, either perennially or from time to time.
Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some
extent unsettles the value of real estate here; and if I were a
broker, I should probably take that disturbance into account.
"Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken strange strondes. "
Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to
go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun
goes down.
He appears to migrate westward daily, and tempt
us to follow him. He is the Great Western Pioneer whom the
nations follow. We dream all night of those mountain-ridges in
the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which were last
gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands and
gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear
to have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mys-
tery and poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when look-
ing into the sunset sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the
foundation of all those fables?
Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any
before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and
Leon. The herd of men in those days scented fresh pastures
from afar.
"And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the western bay;
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. "


## p. 14906 (#484) ##########################################

14906
HENRY D. THOREAU
I would not have every man nor every part of a man culti-
vated, any more than I would have every acre of earth culti-
vated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow
and forest; not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a
mold against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vege-
tation which it supports.
There are other letters for the child to learn than those which
Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express
this wild and dusky knowledge: Gramática parda, tawny gram-
mar,—a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to
which I have referred.
-
-
We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power; and the like.
Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Ignorance,-what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a
knowledge useful in a higher sense; - for what is most of our
boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something,
which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What
we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our
negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and read-
ing of the newspapers - for what are the libraries of science
but files of newspapers? — a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays
them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his
life he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he as
it were goes to grass like a horse, and leaves all his harness be-
hind in the stable. I would say to the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge, sometimes, Go to grass. You have eaten
hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop.
The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the
end of May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who
kept his cow in the barn and fed her on hay all the year round.
So, frequently, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowl-
edge treats its cattle.
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beau-
tiful; while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than
useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with:
he who knows nothing about a subject, and—what is extremely
rare - knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows
something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to
bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial


## p. 14907 (#485) ##########################################

HENRY D. THOREAU
14907
and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowl-
edge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this
higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel.
and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of
all that we called Knowledge before,— a discovery that there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy. It is the lighting-up of the mist by the sun. Man
cannot know in any higher sense than this, any more than he
can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun:
Ὡς τὶ νοῶν, οὐ κεῖνον νοήσεις,— «You will not perceive that, as per-
ceiving a particular thing," say the Chaldean Oracles.
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law
which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and
for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law. It is
an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds.
us where we did not know before that we were bound. Live
free, child of the mist,- and with respect to knowledge we are
all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live
is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the law-
maker. "That is active duty," says the 'Vishnu Purana,' « which
is not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our lib-
eration: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other
knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist. "
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He
is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing
life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the
cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated.
That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty
and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His
philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There
is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,- the gos-
pel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has
got up early and kept up early; and to be where he is, is to
be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression
of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,
healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the
Muses, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives, no
fugitive-slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master
many times since last he heard that note?
The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
-


## p. 14907 (#486) ##########################################

14906
HENRY D. THOREAU
I would not have every man nor every part of a man culti-
vated, any more than I would have every acre of earth culti-
vated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow
and forest; not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a
mold against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vege
tation which it supports.
There are other letters for the child to learn than those which
Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express
this wild and dusky knowledge: Gramática parda, tawny gram-
mar,- -a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to
which I have referred.
We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power; and the like.
Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Ignorance,- what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a
knowledge useful in a higher sense; -for what is most of our
boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something,
which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What
we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our
negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and read-
ing of the newspapers-for what are the libraries of science
but files of newspapers? -a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays
them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his
life he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he as
it were goes to grass like a horse, and leaves all his harness be-
hind in the stable. I would say to the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge, sometimes, Go to grass. You have eaten
hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop.
The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the
end of May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who
kept his cow in the barn and fed her on hay all the year round.
So, frequently, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowl-
edge treats its cattle.
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beau-
tiful; while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than
useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with:
he who knows nothing about a subject, and what is extremely
rare knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows
something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to
bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial
―――――
-


## p. 14907 (#487) ##########################################

HENRY D. THOREAU
14907
and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowl-
edge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this
higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel
and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of
all that we called Knowledge before,— a discovery that there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy. It is the lighting-up of the mist by the sun.
Man
cannot know in any higher sense than this, any more than he
can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun:
Ὡς τὶ νοῶν, οὐ κεῖνον νοήσεις,— «You will not perceive that, as per-
ceiving a particular thing,"-say the Chaldean Oracles.
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law
which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and
for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law. It is
an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds.
us where we did not know before that we were bound. Live
free, child of the mist, and with respect to knowledge we are
all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live
is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the law-
maker. "That is active duty," says the 'Vishnu Purana,' «which
is not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our lib-
eration: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other
knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist. "
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He
is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing
life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the
cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated.
That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty
and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His
philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There
is something suggested by it that is a newer testament, the gos-
pel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has
got up early and kept up early; and to be where he is, is to
be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression
of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,
-healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the
Muses, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives, no
fugitive-slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master
many times since last he heard that note?
The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to
-
-


## p. 14907 (#488) ##########################################

14908
HENRY D. THOREAU
laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure morn-
ing joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness
of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or perchance a watcher
in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near,
I think to myself, "There is one of us well, at any rate," — and
with a sudden gush return to my senses.
-
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was
walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the
sun at last, just before setting after a cold gray day, reached a
clear stratum in the horizon; and the softest, brightest morning
sunlight fell on the dry grass, and on the stems of the trees in
the opposite horizon, and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the
hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow east-
ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a
light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the
air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to
make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this
was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that
it would happen forever and ever an infinite number of evenings,
and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was
more glorious still.
The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is
visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities,
and perchance as it has never set before; where there is but
a solitary marsh-hawk to have his wings gilded by it, or only
a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little
black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to
meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked
in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and
leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never
bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to
it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like
the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like
a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun
shall shine more brightly than ever he has done; shall perchance
shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives
with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as
on a bank-side in autumn.


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ww
060
THUCYDIDES.
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14909
THUCYDIDES
(471 ? -400? B. C. )
BY HERBERT WEIR SMYTH
OETHE'S aphorism that the ancients are children is less true of
Thucydides than of any other Greek historian. Herodotus
looked on the world with the open-eyed wonder of the
child; Thucydides subjects it to the critical scrutiny of the man.
After the age of story-telling, which finds as much delight in its
art as in the truth, comes the age of sober investigation. The first
step in Greek history was to record the past, the second was to nar-
rate the events of the writer's own time. Thucydides is the first
writer of contemporaneous history, as he is the first critical historian
in the literature of Europe.
The author of the History of the Peloponnesian War' is our only
authority for the few facts that are known concerning his life. He
tells us that his father's name was Olorus; that he was a person of
local importance from his ownership of mines in Thrace; that he was
attacked by the plague which ravaged Athens; and that in 424 his
ill success in his military command was the cause of his exile from
Athens for twenty years. As one of the generals of the Athenian
forces, he was summoned from Thasus by his colleague Eucles to
assist him in holding Amphipolis against Brasidas. Though he made
all speed, he failed to reach that city in time to prevent its surren-
der; while his successful defense of Eion failed to mitigate the anger
of his countrymen at the loss of their chief stronghold in the north.
It was not till long after Thucydides's death that interest was
awakened in the lives of the great literary artists. In order to satisfy
the craving for anecdote and novelty, students of literature had to
piece out the facts of tradition by fanciful inferences, by confusing
persons of the same name, and by downright fabrications in the
interest of picturesqueness. This process is illustrated in the story
that when Herodotus was giving a public recital of his history at
Athens, the youthful Thucydides, as if to presage his future distinc-
tion as a historian, burst into tears. "Olorus," said the Father of
History, "thy son has a natural impulse toward knowledge. " A sift-
ing of the material in the 'Life' by Marcellinus, and in other late
writers, yields little that is trustworthy.


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THUCYDIDES
·
14910
Thucydides was born in the deme Halimus, on the coast of Attica,
near Phalerum. The date of his birth is uncertain. It was roughly
referred to 471 by Apollodorus, who calculated that in 431 the his-
torian would have reached the age of forty,- the period of intel-
lectual prime. By others the date was brought down as low as
454. We must rest content with the historian's statement that at
the outbreak of the war in 431 he had attained an age that permit-
ted maturity of judgment. His death probably took place before 399;
certainly before 396, since he fails to take account of an eruption of
Ætna in that year.
Like Demosthenes and Aristotle, Thucydides had northern non-
Hellenic blood in his veins. His father Olorus was no doubt an
Athenian citizen; but he was a descendant, probably the grandson,
of the Thracian prince of that name, whose daughter Hegesipyle
became the mother of Cimon by Miltiades, the victor at Marathon.
It may not be a fanciful suggestion that a severe love of truth was
a part of Thucydides's intellectual inheritance; for he is the only
Greek historian who prefers that truth shall be unrefracted by the
medium of poetry through which the naïve Hellene loved to view
the history of his race. By birth Thucydides was, as we have seen,
connected with Cimon, the leader of the aristocracy, whose policy
guided Athens until the rise of Pericles. His youth and early man-
hood may have been spent partly in Athens, and at a time when the
city which had taken the lead in rolling back the tide of Persian
invasion was filled with the dreams of an external empire and the
vision of a new culture in which reason and beauty were to make
life richer than it had ever been before; when Sophocles was
exhibiting his 'Antigone,' and Pheidias working at the Parthenon;
when Pericles was fashioning those ideals which were to make his
city renowned as the home of the highest possibilities of his race.
The Sophists were grappling with the problem of the relation be-
tween words and things; Anaxagoras was opening new vistas to
thought, in proclaiming the doctrine that it was mind which created
the order and harmony of the universe. Who the actual teachers
of Thucydides were, we do not know; nor did the ancients busy
themselves with the question until the 'History' had been canonized
in the first century B. C. But we may safely conjecture that the
youth felt himself under the spell of the time, and animated by that
free intellectual life on which the Athenian State rested its claims to
superiority.
When the war broke out in 431, believing that it was to exceed
in importance any other known in history, Thucydides set himself
to collect the materials for his work,-a determination that shows
him to have been rather a man of letters than a man of affairs.


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THUCYDIDES
14911
We do not hear of his holding office before 424, the year of his gen-
eralship and of his banishment. The fatal tendency of the fierce
democracy of Athens to punish their generals whose only fault was
ill success, afforded the historian the opportunity to acquaint himself
with the policy and operations of both sides; and by withdrawing
him from further share in the conflict, made possible in a man of
his judicial mood an unprejudiced inquiry into the events of the
time. Whether Thucydides was indeed culpable at Amphipolis we
cannot discover, because of his customary reticence in personal mat-
ters. But it is hazardous to assume that his dislike for Cleon is due
to the agency of that demagogue in bringing about the sentence of
condemnation.
During his exile, the historian made excursions to the Pelopon-
nese,- perhaps even to Sicily and Italy,-in order to gather trust-
worthy accounts of the war. He is thought to have been present at
the battle of Mantinea in 418. The vividness of his narrative, the
detailed picture of intricate military operations, are evidence that
he depended on the testimony of his own eyes or on the words of
credible witnesses. He himself tells us that the search for truth
was attended by labor; and that he did not rely on hearsay from
any chance informant, nor presume to set down the facts of the war
on his own assumption as to their probability. The hand of death
overtook him before he had brought the narrative of the war beyond
the oligarchical revolution and the battle of Cynossema, in 411,
the twenty-first year of the contest that lasted twenty-seven years.
Whether he died peaceably, or was killed by robbers in Thrace or
in Athens (the biographers are ready with their conjectures), we
do not know. Polemon saw his grave about 200 B. C. , in the family
vault of Cimon at Athens.
The current division of the 'History' into eight books is not that
of the author, but the work of Alexandrine scholars. We hear of two
other arrangements, into nine and thirteen books respectively. As it
stands, the work falls into three parts. First, the 'Archæology,' or
masterly survey of ancient history; the causes of the final rupture
between Athens and Sparta; and the history of the ten years to
the Peace of Nicias in 421 (i. -v. 25). Secondly, the doubtful truce,
the struggle for allies in the Peloponnese, the battle of Mantinea
(v. 26–116), and the Sicilian Expedition (vi. , vii. ), where the historian
attains his highest excellence in sustained, brilliant, and vigorous
composition. Thirdly, the Decelean War down to 411 (viii. ), where
the story breaks off abruptly. That the work is a torso is evident.
A final revision would have smoothed out the inequalities and given
greater unity to the whole. The treaties inserted in the text as it
now stands do not square in all particulars with the narrative, or the


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14912
THUCYDIDES
narrative with the treaties. Repetitions occur; and the eighth book,
which alone contains no speeches, bears numerous marks of incom-
pleteness.
The genesis of the History' has caused scholars almost as much
difficulty as the evolution of Plato's philosophy. Some conclude that
Thucydides thought the war had come to an end in 421; and that
his narrative down to that point constituted the original deposit, to
which were added the later accretions due to the unexpected renewal
of the war. Others with more probability maintain that he began
to compose the 'History' after the war was over, though certain por-
tions - such as the Ten Years' War and the Sicilian Expedition -
had before this received comparatively final treatment.
―――――
Thucydides's 'History' is pre-eminently a military history, a chron-
icle by summers and winters of the events of the war. Everything
is subordinate to the main theme. Sophocles, Euripides, Aristoph-
anes, may be holding Athens captive by their dramas, Socrates may
be shaking the foundations of the old philosophy,-to Thucydides
discussions on literature, philosophy, and art are of less immediate
importance than some petty foray in Acarnania. Nor will he touch
on social conditions, or State policy, unless they have to deal with
the course and conduct of the war. To this method he surren-
ders himself with rigid severity, except in a few instances; such as the
early history of Sicily, and the corrective account of the assassina-
tion of Hipparchus in Book vi. ,- which seems to represent a separate
investigation that has there found an inorganic resting-place.
But under the hand of an artist to whom motives mean more than
things, his story rises above the level of a vivid recital of campaigns.
It becomes a tragic drama of incomparable interest, in which the
Athenian ideal is matched against the Spartan ideal,-expansive
intellect against vigorous self-restraint, a drama which is to close
with the eclipse of the supremacy of his native city. The events of
these years, so pregnant with change to the national life of Greece,
are passed in review before a cold and penetrating intellect. The
drama becomes a philosophy of life. Unlike Herodotus, Thucydides
sees in human affairs, not the immanence of Providence, but the
calculation of man unsustained of God. It is the intellect, not the
gods, that holds the master-keys of life. Oracles and prophecies
are to this ancient skeptic the lure of the foolish, not the support of
the reverent. Whatever statesmen may say, Thucydides scarcely
ever substitutes chance for the logic of events. He compels complex
motives to the sincerity of the elemental law of selfishness,-let him
get and keep who can. He strips off the cloak of pretense, and
makes men disclose their real purposes. Man is misled by fatal pas-
sion, and unexpected success breeds wanton hope. In this world of
-


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THUCYDIDES
14913
calculating logic it is the emotive forces that disturb the judgment.
The Athenian boasts of his superior acuteness, and his wisdom turns
to folly. Thucydides is no moralist, and moral conventions play no
part in the struggle he depicts. Virtue may vaunt itself, but it may
often be resolved into mere generous shame. The nobility of simple-
minded sincerity is the butt of unscrupulous cleverness; justice and
self-interest have not acknowledged the identity to be set forth by
philosophy; suspicion, born of a suicidal over-acuteness, inaugurates a
reign of distrust. No doubt the picture of society in Thucydides is
that of an organism tainted by the moral poison of war-times. Man
tramples under foot his creation, law. But between abstinence from
moral judgment, and cynicism, there is a gulf; nor must we look,
with some, for the sardonic smile of the cynic when the historian
relates some new sad reversal of fortune. It did not lie in Thucydi-
des's purpose to let fly the shafts of a sava indignatio, when in the
very pity of all these atrocities, these treasons, these travesties of
justice, lay their tragic pathos, needing no word of his to interpret.
them. To be the apostle of an evangel of a higher ethical code while
narrating the miseries of a war fruitful in miseries, is more than we
can demand of any Greek historian.
Thucydides gives us the impression of a man of noble character,
and of a powerful intellect ripened by converse with enlightened
men. He possessed a soul capable of rising to the greatness of his
theme. The most authentic bust (belonging to the Earl of Leicester)
displays, according to Professor Mahaffy, those qualities of sternness,
strength, and modernness which stamp the character of the history.
He is distinguished by dignity, elevation, and calm. He disdains.
trivialities, the accidental sides of personality. Gossip and scandal he
puts aside, as he finds no place for those kindly familiarities which
awaken interest at the expense of elevation. He looks at men and
things with a large vision. Raised above a traditional prejudice for
aristocracy, while he recognizes the wisdom of Pericles, whose policy
his work may be said to vindicate, he confesses that Athens was never
better governed than under the oligarchy of 411 B. C. He is a
master in the art of suppressing his emotions. "Under the marble
exterior of Greek literature," says Jowett - and the remark is true
of Thucydides -" was concealed a soul thrilling with spiritual emo-
tion. " Probably no other writer possesses the tremendous reserve
force of Thucydides, in recounting disasters that must have been
heart-breaking to a patriot. Rarely indeed do we find such an expres-
sion as "sufferings too great for tears," used when he is describing -
the disasters of the Athenians before Syracuse. He may even affect
us with the hostility of impatience, as in the bald narration of the
utter brutality of the Athenian policy toward the Melians.
But as
XXV-933


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14914
THUCYDIDES
his inquiry must not be liable to assault on the ground of bias, he
withdraws his personality to a safe distance from the scene. From
personal judgment he abstains, except when his readers might be
tempted to form false conclusions.
If in the narration of contemporary events Thucydides is the
most objective of the ancient historians, from the point of view of
style he is, with the possible exception of Tacitus, the most subject-
ive of all. When he began to write, Attic prose was in its infancy.
His predecessors were the Ionic chroniclers, whose easy-flowing, un-
periodic style was ill suited to a theme demanding a powerful and
compressed idiom. The problem before Thucydides was to chisel
out of the rough marble of Attic speech a form of expression that
would comport with the gravity of his subject and the philosophic
character of his mind. Tragedy could be called upon to augment his
vocabulary; the formal rhetoric of the Sophists could supply him
with devices for varying his native power of plain but vigorous
description. The chief difficulty was to find adequate expression
for the new and pregnant political and philosophical ideas of the time.
Here he had to create a style from the stubborn material of an
unsettled speech; and here it is that we find the chief examples
of his austerity. When Thucydides was exiled, men had only just
been awakened to the power that lies in the artistic arrangement of
words in prose. The result was a conventional and high-strung rhet-
oric, which Thucydides in his exile could not unbend by contact
with the newer teachers. When he returned to Athens, his style, like
his ideals, had become irrevocably fixed. Meantime, at Athens, the
process of adjusting. expression to the spirit of the age had resulted
in the plain and ungarnished style of Lysias. While much of Thu-
cydides's harshness may be ascribed to the unformed condition of nas-
cent Attic speech, and some part of his irregularities may be charged
to the account of the copyists, enough remains to show that the pe-
culiarities of his diction are largely individual. When he wishes, he
can write simply and nervously ("The lion laughs," says an ancient
commentator), as in the description of the siege of Platea. When
we come from the reading of Plato or Demosthenes, we feel that it
is from his very striving after clearness that Thucydides becomes
obscure. His particularity is too minute. He uses high where we
should use low relief. Naturally terse, his brevity leads him to pack
a paragraph into a sentence, a sentence into a single word. The
very words seem to pant for air. He hurries us on to a new thought
before we have grasped the one that preceded ("semper instans sibi,**
says Quintilian). He is especially fond of antithesis, -a mark of the
«* Ever pressing close upon his own heels. "


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THUCYDIDES
14915
time. He differentiates synonyms as if Prodicus were at his elbow.
Formal grammar he rarely violates, and verbal association will gen-
erally explain the apparent irregularities. If the style is rugged it.
is never mean; it often attains a noble beauty and grandeur; and
throughout, it mirrors the deep moral earnestness of the man. Irony
he possesses, but no humor.
The peculiarities of this style are most marked in the speeches;
which are either deliberative (including the hortatory addresses to
the soldiers), panegyrical as in the famous oration of Pericles, or
judicial. They are usually arranged in pairs, so as to set forth the
interest and policy of the conflicting parties. It is interesting to
note, however, that no speaker voices the opposition to Pericles. In
one case, instead of two speeches, we have a dialogue between the
Athenians and the Melians; placed with fine dramatic irony at that
point where the recital of Athenian insolence is to be succeeded
by the story of Athens's downfall. The speeches serve not only to
relieve the monotony of annalistic narration: they illuminate the
character of the great personages; they personify a national cause;
and they enable us to realize with intense vividness the policy of the
leading statesmen of the time. Not that they are authentic. Thu-
cydides says that he has merely put into the mouth of each speaker
the sentiments proper to the occasion, expressed as he thought the
speaker would be likely to express them, while at the same time he
has endeavored to embody the substance of what was actually said.
The idealized and majestic form is undoubtedly Thucydidean, though
some attention has been given to differentiating the styles of the
speakers. The speech of the ephor Sthenelaïdas has a laconic brev-
ity; that of Alcibiades is as full of metaphors as it is of egotism.
All the speeches, even that of Cleon the tanner, show an elevated
style. The longer orations display a subtle acquaintance with the
character of the speakers, and are truly Thucydidean in keeping our
intellectual faculties on the stretch. In inserting these public har-
angues, Thucydides set the type which becomes merely artificial in
imitators like Sallust and others. In him they are a natural product
of that period in the growth of Attic prose when prose writing was
almost entirely confined to oratory.
The Greek standard in matters of literary indebtedness was not
the modern standard. Failure to acknowledge one's debt in ancient
times is generally to be regarded as merely evidence of agreement;
and Thucydides passes over the name of Stesimbrotus who wrote
on Themistocles, and of Antiochus of Syracuse to whose work he was
largely indebted. Allusion to a predecessor serves only as an oppor-
tunity to bring him to penance. Herodotus castigates Hecatæus,
Thucydides castigates Herodotus and Hellanicus. How far is Thu-
cydides himself invulnerable?


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14916
THUCYDIDES
If we consider the difficulties of composing contemporaneous his-
tory in ancient times, when inscriptions were the only written records,
we shall not wonder if Thucydides may have blundered here and
there.