Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation! Every Friday at Noon EST (Join here), Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for Reading & the Good Life; a space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living! This week concludes our exploration of the writings of Transcendentalists.
Check out our bookshelf below for previous and future reading!
What is Transcendentalism?
Transcendentalism is an American literary, philosophical, religious, and political movement of the early nineteenth century centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson. Another important transcendentalist was Henry David Thoreau. Stimulated by English and German Romanticism, the transcendentalists understood that a new era was at hand. They criticized their contemporary society for its unthinking conformity and urged that each person find, in Emerson’s words, “an original relation to the universe.” Emerson and Thoreau sought this relation in solitude amidst nature and in their writing.
***Read previous: How to Think Like a Transcendentalist, The Wisdom of Walden, The Wisdom of Simplicity, and The Wisdom of Nature.
Who is Henry David Thoreau?
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was an American philosopher, poet, environmental scientist, and political activist whose major work, Walden, draws upon these various identities in meditating upon the concrete problems of living in the world as a human being. He sought to revive a conception of philosophy as a way of life, not only a mode of reflective thought and discourse. An eclectic variety of sources informed Thoreau’s work. He was well-versed in classical Greek and Roman philosophy (and poetry), from pre-Socratics to Hellenistic schools. He was also an avid student of the ancient scriptures and wisdom literature of various Asian traditions.
On Leaving the Woods
Everything ends. Even Thoreau’s venture into the woods came to a close. “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live…,” wrote Thoreau. How do we know when it is time to change our course?
Thoreau observed,
It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!
We are creatures of habit. Our steps and thoughts create paths. It is interesting to contemplate what types of paths our steps and thoughts are actually creating.
Selected Passages
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. […]
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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