5.12.2014

world-ridden
...Thoreau's Journal: 12-May-1857

How rarely I meet with a man who can be free, even in thought! We live according to rule. Some men are bedridden; all world-ridden. I take my neighbor, an intellectual man, out into the woods and invite him to take a new and absolute view of things, to empty clean out his thoughts all institutions of men and start again; but he can’t do it, he sticks to his traditions and his crotchets. He thinks that governments, colleges, newspapers, etc., are from everlasting to everlasting.

The Salix cordata, var. Torreyana is distinguished by its naked ovaries more or less red-brown, with flesh-colored stigmas, with a distinct slender wholly rachis and conspicuous stalks, giving the ament a loose and open appearance.

When I consider how many species of willow have been planted along the railroad causeway within ten years, of which no one knows the history, and not one in Concord beside myself can tell the name of one, so that it is quite a discovery to identify a single one in a year, and yet within this period the seeds of all these kinds have been conveyed from some other locality to this, I am reminded how much is going on that man wots not of.

6 comments:

Jeanette said...

How truly I often feel "world ridden". In spite of my attempts at peaceful existence.

ikiru said...

One of the things I love about Thoreau is he seeks a view of things that isn't always anthropocentric. We are more provincial than we realise.

Thoreau was more of a true philosopher: questions were more important than simple unambiguous answers. At best, most people seek not philosophia-- they seek only to cling to some ideology or other.

Geoff said...

I think the word is crotchets, not crochets. Our man is concerned with "odd or whimsical notions," not with knitting.

michael jameson said...

man knows his little world and how to survive within it!,if man goes to the forest or a new world he will change and relearn to live within it!, man can change himself to be at peace in all worlds! it is no matter how the world see's you, its how you see yourself and the world your in!,for it is your self that makes your world for you! see your world as you want it for you!. michael jameson oldantiqueguy@hotmail.com

michael jameson said...

if i am to be judged as a man on my spelling in this world! let me not live in this world ! michael jameson oldantiqueguy@hotmail.com

son rivers said...

crotchets it should be (and now is)