True Transcendentalism: Thoreau's Walden and Nature

Introduction: Thoreau as the True Transcendentalist

Although the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson is often considered the father of the American Transcendentalist movement, Henry David Thoreau put into practice what Emerson urged others to do only in words. Thoreau left the comforts of society and went to live in the woods. He did so to live closer to nature and to live a more natural life. He wished to be self-reliant. By living apart from other human beings and fending for himself, Thoreau felt that he discovered what it truly meant to be human, and to be an American enjoying the democratic pleasures provided by the natural world.

Living Deliberately: Slowing Down and Returning to Basics

On his farm, Thoreau resolved to till the soil and relieve himself of the petty cares and false, fast pace of modern life. In the woods, he hoped to find transcendence: "When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime" (Thoreau, Chapter 2, Paragraph 21). By slowly cultivating his own food, building his own home, and living almost like a primitive man, Thoreau hoped to slow his life down and connect to the essential aspects of what it meant to be a human animal alive in nature.

Through active living — not merely contemplating life in his study — he believed he would find wisdom. But true transcendental wisdom was not the wisdom of books; rather, it was a return to basics in a Romantic and pastoral sense: "Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure" (Thoreau, Chapter 2, Paragraph 21). Children are more truthful because they are less bound to the rules of society, according to Thoreau. Rather than trying to lose one's childhood sense of freedom and become civilized, it is actually more important to unlearn what civilization dictates.

Solitude, Nature, and the Cure for Loneliness

In Chapter 5, tellingly entitled "Solitude," Thoreau writes that he feels best "when the whole body is one sense," as he walks in nature "and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself" (Thoreau, Chapter 5, Paragraph 1). This, he implies, is impossible in society. Thoreau stresses that although he is alone, he is never lonely. In fact, it is society — and living away from nature — that creates a sense of loneliness and hatred for one's own species: "I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still" (Thoreau, Chapter 5, Paragraph 4).

People only long for what they do not have when they can see other people who seem to be living better lives. Alone and in nature, the longing for material goods and a superficially large circle of friends disappears. The presence of nature alone quiets the senses, and the innocent, natural company of the woods is available to everyone in a democratic fashion.

Works Cited

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. 1854.