Walking
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~12,200 words · 58 passages
Cite this work
- APAHenry David Thoreau. (n.d.). Walking. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/walking
- MLAHenry David Thoreau. Walking. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/walking.
- ChicagoHenry David Thoreau. Walking. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/walking.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The lecture Thoreau gave for ten years and revised until the last week of his life: the essay in which he says that in wildness is the preservation of the world.
Context and history
It was published in 1862, shortly after his death. It opens with an invented etymology — 'saunterer', one who strolls, as though from 'sainte terre', one who goes to the Holy Land — and the tone seems light, but the argument is not: Thoreau holds that civilisation needs what it has not yet tamed, and that a culture which cuts down every wood is left without what feeds it. The sentence 'in wildness is the preservation of the world' is among the most quoted in the environmental movement, and is often misquoted as 'wilderness'; what he says is wildness, the quality of being wild, not the place. It is the shortest way into Thoreau, and probably the best.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
tells us that “in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New World, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World.... The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader.” This statement will do at least to set against Buffon’s account of this part of the world and its productions. Linnæus said long ago, “Nescio quæ facies læta, glabra plantis Americanis” (I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect of American plants); and I think that in this country there are no, or at most very few, Africanæ bestiæ, African beasts, as the Romans called them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation of man. We are told that within three miles of the center of the East Indian city of Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually carried off by tigers; but the traveler can lie down in the woods at night almost anywhere in North America without fear of wild beasts. These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man—as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires.…