The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn America in Search Of a Conscience IF there was ever a country devoted to piling up dollars and making a show, this is it. If there ever was a man opposed to...
...If there ever was a man opposed to spending his life in dollar-chasing, that man was Henry David Thoreau...
...This book is a dry sort of thing...
...Karl Marx, who wrote at the same time, tried to save the world by changing the form of society...
...He was never scared...
...In 1901 Tolstoy included Thoreau in a short list of American writers who had helped him and added: "I should like to ask the American people why they do not pay more attention to these voices (hardly to be replaced by those of financiers and industrial millionaires or successful generals or admirals...
...He stood up...
...But literary style is not enough to take a man around the world...
...This man, who was so modest, so unnoticed during his life, is now one of the most influential writers and thinkers...
...It is A Thoreau Handbook by Walter Harding (New York University Press...
...It is made up of thousands of references to books, magazines, letters and addresses...
...His whole way of living and writing was so special that it was taken for granted that he would never get out of his little rut and his tiny reputation...
...To the men of his day he was a queer duck...
...America is definitely in search of a conscience...
...Gandhi wrote: "Thoreau's ideas influenced me greatly...
...He gathered up thoughts wherever he found them—in India, in Germany, in England...
...As I go through this book, I come upon the opinion of critics who feel sure that Thoreau was not much of a philosopher...
...Now from these pages one can gather an astounding fact...
...In the main, this worldwide influence of Thoreau is not, I would say, the result of his purely literary gifts...
...He said what he thought no matter what the great and important part of his community said and thought...
...Nearly a century has passed since this man died...
...I adopted some of them and recommended the study of Thoreau to all of my friends who were helping me in the cause of Indian independence...
...To express his opposition to a slave-holding, war-making government he went to jail...
...In life he was quiet, observant, gentle, undemanding...
...But he had style and in his thought he hewed to his own line...
...These thoughts were most effectively expressed in Walden Pond and Civil Disobedience...
...But this man who was against bigness and numbers and show is right now more influential than he ever was and is growing in importance year by year...
...I suspect that a large part of his still growing influence arises from the fact that men everywhere sense his deep sincerity...
...The fact that this doctrine, so quietly presented, steadily gains power in our apparently thoughtless and materialistic world is surely a fact of some importance...
...But he had two basic convictions—that the main purpose of human life is not to pile up wealth and make a show, and that every man should live straightforwardly from inside out, should not allow hydra-headed mass opinion to crush him down and beat him into line...
...If Tolstoy were here now, he would feel encouraged, for there is now a tremendous interest in Thoreau, especially among the young intellectuals in the universities...
...To show that a man could live happily without a fine house, stylish clothes and elaborate food, he moved to Walden Pond, built his own cottage and grew the stuff from which he cooked his own food...
...He had a keen ear for style and at his best he is very good...
...It is something of which writers in search of popularity should take account...
...These critics are right, of course...
...With him action always went with printed language...
...Our shy and modest New Englander sought a similar end by appealing to individuals to live according to their consciences...
...4.50...
...But Thoreau did not limit himself to words...
...He was our chief representative of the old American standard of plain living and high thinking...
...But I get inspiration from it because it gives me a picture of the slowly but persistently expanding thrust of this writer against the crassness of our civilization...
...Thoreau has always seemed to me a very special sort of writer for a rather special type of reader...
...But the man's sharp and rather plain way of ex-pressing himself, his somewhat countrified New England manner, may have had something to do with carrying his thought...
...We know that he is right, that what he is calling us to is a higher and better sort of life...
...It is impossible here to give any account of Thoreau's increasing influence...
...He is our conscience and he will not let us rest...
...Thoreau did not originate any thought or theory...
...It doesn't give him a seat among the advisers to the great...
...And right now, when we need it most, a book is off the press which gives us not merely the source materials of Thoreau's life, but notes about everything connected with his reputation and influence down to the present time...
Vol. 42 • November 1959 • No. 40
