Henry David Thoreau

"one of his first memories was of staying awake at night "looking through the stars to see if I could see God behind them." One might say he never stopped looking into nature for ultimate Truth."http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/

I thought this was a very interesting quote about Henry David Thoreau; it is an image that captures the unflinching and piercing quality of his gaze and the depth of his thinking when contemplating the big truths about man and God and justice and duty that he examines in his essay "Resistance to Civil Government."

In this essay he is taking the principles and ideals laid out in his friend Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" and applying them very passionately to a practical matter. He makes the argument that principled people have not only a right, but a duty to resist a government that is guilty of immoral acts. The immoral acts which concern him in this essay are the war on Mexico, and the issue of slavery, which in fact are very closely related, as the war is understood by him and others as an attempt to expand the territory in which slavery is tolerated. He lays out a very carefully constructed and scathing condemnation of the machinations that the government uses to justify and promote its evil deeds. But he makes it clear that if the citizens would stand up for what they profess to believe the government would be powerless to subvert the will of the people. There is so much that could be quoted from this essay as examples of the powerful and uncompromising exhortation for people to stand up for what is true and right. I really like this description of the timid, passive citizen, which is so apt today as well:

"There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves to be children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of a patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret." (p. 1861)