你能把你的心安靜下來嗎？如果你的心並沒有安靜下來，我說，你也許最好是先把你的心安靜下來，然後你再打開這本書，否則你也許會讀不下去，認為它太濃縮，難讀，艱深，甚至會覺得它莫明其妙，莫知所云。
這個中譯本的第一版是1949年在上海出版的。那時正好舉國上下，熱氣騰騰。解放全中國的偉大戰爭取得了輝煌勝利，因此註意這本書的人很少。
但到了五十年代，在香港卻有過一本稍稍修訂了它的譯文的，署名吳明實（無名氏）的盜印本，還一再再版，再版達六版之多。
這個中譯本的在國內再版，則是在初版之後三十二年的1982年，還是在上海，經譯者細加修訂之後，由譯文出版社出第二版的。這次印數一萬三千册。幾年前，《外國古典文學名著叢書》編委會决定，將它收入這套叢書，要我寫一篇新序。那時我正好要去美國，參加一個“國際寫作計劃”，有了可能去訪問馬薩堵塞州的康科德城和瓦爾登湖了。在美國時，我和好幾個大學的中外教授進行了關於這本書的交談，他們給了我很多的幫助。於今回想起來，是十分感謝他們的。
對這第二版的譯文我又作了些改進，並訂正了一兩處誤譯，衹是這一篇新序卻總是寫不起來。1985年寫了一稿，因不滿意，收回重寫。然一連幾年，人事倥傯，新序一直都沒有寫出來。為什麽呢？最近找出了原因來，還是我的心沒有安靜下來。就是國為這個了，這回可找到了原因，就好辦了。心真正地安靜了下來，這總是可以做到的。就看你自己怎麽安排了。為何一定要這樣做？因為這本《瓦爾登湖》是本靜靜的書，極靜極靜的書，並不是熱熱鬧鬧的書。它是一本寂寞的書，一本孤獨的書。它衹是一本一個人的書。如果你的心沒有安靜下來，恐怕你很難進入到這本書裏去。我要告訴你的是，在你的心靜下來以後，你就會思考一些什麽。在你思考一些什麽問題時，你纔有可能和這位亨利，戴維·梭羅先生一起，思考一下自己，更思考一下更高的原則。
這位梭羅先生是與孤獨結伴的。他常常衹是一個人。他認為沒有比孤獨這個伴兒更好的伴兒了。他的生平十分簡單，十分安靜。1817年7月12日梭羅生於康科德城；就學並畢業於哈佛大學（1833-1837年）；回到家乡，執教兩年（1838-1840年）。然後他住到了大作傢、思想傢拉爾夫·沃爾多·愛默生傢裏（1841-1843年），當門徒，又當助手，並開始嘗試寫作。到1845年，他就單身衹影，拿了一柄斧頭，跑進了無人居住的瓦爾登湖邊的山林中，獨居到1847年纔回到康城。1848年他又住在愛默生傢裏；1849年，他完成了一本叫作《康科德河和梅裏麥剋河上的一星期》的書。差不多同時，他發表了一篇名為《消極反抗》（On Civil Disobedience）的極為著名的、很有影響的論文，按字面意義，這也可以譯為“民的不服從權利”。後面我們還要講到它。然後，到了1854年，我們的這本文學名著《瓦爾登湖》出版了。本書有了一些反響，但開始的時候並不大。隨時間的推移，它的影響越來越大。1859年，他支持了反對美國蓄奴制度的運動；當這個運動的領導人約翰·布朗竟被逮捕，且被判絞刑處死時，他發表了為布朗辯護和呼籲的演講，並到教堂敲響鐘聲，舉行了悼念活動。此後他患了肺病，醫治無效，於1862年病逝於康城，終年僅44歲。他留下了《日記》39捲，自有人給他整理，陸續出版，已出版有多種版本和多種選本問世。
他的一生是如此之簡單而馥鬱，又如此之孤獨而芬芳。也可以說，他的一生十分不簡單，也毫不孤獨。他的讀者將會發現，他的精神生活十分豐富，而且是精美絶倫，世上罕見，和他交往的人不多，而神交的人可就多得多了。
他對自己的出生地，即馬省的康城，深感自豪。康城是爆發了美國獨立戰爭的首義之城。他說過，永遠使他驚喜的是他“出生於全世界最可尊敬的地點”之一，而且“時間也正好合適”，適逢美國知識界應運而生的、最活躍的年代。在美洲大陸上，最早的歐洲移民曾居住的“新英格蘭”六州，正是美國文化的發祥之地。而正是在馬省的康城，點燃起來了美國精神生活的輝耀火炬。小小的康城，風光如畫。一下子，那裏出現了四位大作傢：愛默生，霍桑，阿爾考特，和他，梭羅。1834年，愛默生定居於康城，曾到哈佛大學作了以《美國學者》為題的演講。愛默生演講，撰文，出書，宣揚有典型性的先知先覺的卓越的人，出過一本《卓越的人》，是他的代表作。他以先驅者身份所發出的號召，給了梭羅以深刻的影響。
梭羅大學畢業後回到康城，正好是他二十歲之時。1837年10月22日，那天他記下了他的第一篇日記：
“‘你現在在於什麽？’他問。‘你記日記嗎？’好吧，我今天開始，記下了這第一條。
“如果要孤獨，我必須要逃避現在——我要我自己當心。在羅馬皇帝的明鏡大殿裏我怎麽能孤獨得起來呢？我寧可找一個閣樓。在那裏是連蜘蛛也不受幹擾的，更不用打掃地板了，也用不到一堆一堆地堆放柴火。”
那個條文裏面的“他”，那個發問的人就是愛默生，這真是一槌定了音的。此後，梭羅一直用日記或日志的形式來記錄思想。日記持續了二十五年不斷。正像盧梭寫的《一個孤獨的散步者的思想》一樣，他寫的也是一個孤獨者的日記。而他之要孤獨，是因為他要思想，他愛思想。
稍後，在1838年2月7日，他又記下了這樣一條：
“這個斯多噶主義者（禁欲主義者）的芝諾（希臘哲人）跟他的世界的關係，和我今天的情況差不多。說起來，他出身於一個商人之傢——有好多這樣的人傢呵！——會做生意，會講價錢，也許還會吵吵嚷嚷，然而他也遇到過風浪，翻了船，船破了，他漂流到了皮拉烏斯海岸，就像什麽約翰，什麽湯麥斯之類的平常人中間的一個人似的。
“他走進了一傢店鋪子，而被色諾芬（希臘軍人兼作傢）的一本書（《長徵記》）迷住了。從此以後他就成了一個哲學家。一個新我的日子在他的面前升了起來……儘管芝諾的血肉之軀還是要去航海呵，去翻船呵，去受鳳吹浪打的苦呵，然而芝諾這個真
正的人，卻從此以後，永遠航行在一個安安靜靜的海洋上了。”
這裏梭羅是以芝諾來比擬他自己的，並也把愛默生比方為色諾芬了。梭羅雖不是出生於一個商人之傢，他卻是出身於一個商人的時代，至少他也得適應於當時美國的商業化精神，梭羅的血肉之軀也是要去航海的，他的船也是要翻的，他的一生中也要遇到風吹和浪打的經歷的，然而真正的梭羅卻已在一個安安靜靜的海洋上，他嚮往於那些更高的原則和卓越的人，他是嚮往於哲學家和哲學了。
就在這篇日記之後的第四天，愛默生在他自己的日記上也記着：“我非常喜歡這個年輕的朋友了。仿佛他已具有一種自由的和正直的心智，是我從來還未遇到過的。”過了幾天，愛默生又在自己的日記裏寫：“我的亨利·梭羅可好呢，以他的單純和明晰的智力使又一個孤獨的下午溫煦而充滿了陽光，”四月中，愛默生還記着：“昨天下午我和亨利·梭羅去爬山，霧蒙蒙的氣候溫暖而且愉快，仿佛這大山如一座半圓形的大劇場，歡飲下了美酒一樣，”在愛默生的推動之下，梭羅開始給《日晷》雜志寄詩寫稿了。但一位要求嚴格的編輯還多次退了他的稿件。梭羅也在康城學院裏作了一次題為《社會》的演講，而稍稍引起了市民的註意。到1841年，愛默生就邀請了梭羅住到他傢裏去。當時愛默生大事宣揚他的唯心主義先驗論，聚集了一班同人，就像辦了個先驗主義俱樂部似的。但梭羅並不認為自己是一個先驗主義者。在一段日記中他寫着：“人們常在我耳邊叮嚀，用他們的美妙理論和解决宇宙問題的各種花言巧語，可是對我並沒有幫助。我還是回到那無邊無際，亦無島無嶼的汪洋大海上去，一刻不停地探測着、尋找着可以下錨，緊緊地抓住不放的一處底層的好。”
本來梭羅的傢境比較睏難，但還是給他上了大學，並念完了大學。然後他傢裏的人認為他應該出去闖天下了。可是他卻寧可國家乡，在康城的一所私立中學教教書。之後不久，衹大他一歲的哥哥約翰也跑來了。兩人一起教書。哥哥教英語和數學，弟弟教古典名著、科學和自然史。學生們很愛戴他們倆。亨利還帶學生到河上旅行，在戶外上課、野餐，讓學生受到以大自然為課堂，以萬物為教材的生活教育。一位朋友曾稱羅梭為“詩人和博物學家”，並非過譽。他的生活知識是豐富，而且是淵博的。當他孤獨時，整個大自然成了他的伴侶。據愛默生的弟弟的回憶，梭羅的學生告訴過他：當梭羅講課時，學生們靜靜地聽着，靜得連教室裏掉下一支針也能聽得清楚。
1839年7月，一個十七歲的少女艾倫·西華爾來到康城，並且訪問了梭羅這一傢子。她到來的當天，亨利就寫了一首詩。五天後的日記中還有了這麽一句：“愛情是沒有法子治療的，惟有愛之彌甚之一法耳。”這大約就是為了艾倫的緣故寫的。不料約翰也一樣愛上了她，這就使事情復雜化了。三人經常在一起散步，在河上划船。登山觀看風景，進入森林探險，他們還在樹上刻下了他們的姓氏的首字。談話是幾乎沒完沒了的，但是這個幸福的時間並不長久。
這年春天，哥兒倆曾造起了一條船。八月底，他們乘船沿着康科德河和梅裏麥剋河上作了一次航行。在旅途上，一切都很好，衹是兩人之間已有着一些微妙的裂紋，彼此都未言明，實際上他們已成了情敵。後來約翰曾嚮她求婚而被她拒絶了。再後來，亨利也給過她一封熱情的信，而她回了他一封冷淡的信。不久後，艾倫就嫁給了一個牧師。這段插麯在亨利心頭留下了創傷。但接着發生了一件絶對意想不到的事，1842年的元旦，約翰在一條皮子上磨利他的剃刀片刀刃時，不小心劃破了他的左手中指一他用布條包紮了，沒有想到兩三天後化膿了，全身疼痛不堪。趕緊就醫，已來不及，他得了牙關緊閉癥，敗血病中之一種。他很快進入了彌留狀態。十天之後，約翰竟此溘然長逝了。
突然的事變給了亨利一個最沉重的打擊。他雖然竭力保持平靜，回到傢中卻不言不語。一星期後，他也病倒了，似乎也是得了牙關緊閉癥。幸而他得的並不是這種病，是得了由於心理痛苦引起來的心身病狀態。整整三個月，他都在這個病中，到四月中他又出現在園子裏了，纔漸漸地恢復過來。
那年亨利寫了好些悼念約翰的詩。在《哥哥，你在哪裏》這詩中，他問道：“我應當到哪裏去／尋找你的身影？／沿着鄰近的那條小河，／我還能否聽到你的聲音？”答復是他的兄長兼友人，約翰，已經和大自然融為一體了。他們結了綢繆，他已以大自然的容顔為他自己的容顔了，以大自然的表情表達了他自己的意念……大自然已取走了他的哥哥，約翰已成為大自然的一部分。
從這裏開始，亨利纔恢復了信心和歡樂。他在日記中寫着：“眼前的痛苦之沉重也說明過去的經歷的甘美。悲傷的時候，多麽的容易想起快樂！鼕天，蜜蜂不能釀蜜，它就消耗已釀好的蜜。”這一段時間裏，他是在養病，又養傷；在蟄居之中，為未來作準備，在蓄勢，蓄水以待開閘了放水，便可以灌溉大地。
在另一篇日記中，他說：“我必須承認，若問我對於社會我有了什麽作為，對於人類我已緻送了什麽佳音，我實在寒酸得很。無疑我的寒酸不是沒有原因的，我的無所建樹也並非沒有理由的。我就在想望着把我的生命的財富獻給人們，真正地給他們最珍貴的禮物。我要在貝殼中培養出珍珠來，為他們釀製生命之蜜，我要陽光轉射到公共福利上來。要沒有財富要隱藏。我沒有私人的東西。我的特異功能就是要為公衆服務。惟有這個功能是我的私有財産。任何人都是可以天真的，因而是富有的。
我含藴着，並養育着珍珠，直到它的完美之時。
恢復健康以後的梭羅又住到了愛默生傢裏。稍後，他到了紐約，住在市裏的斯丹頓島上，在愛默生弟弟的傢裏。他希望能開始建立起他的文學生涯來。恰恰因為他那種獨特的風格，並不是能被人，被世俗社會所喜歡的，想靠寫作來維持生活也很不容易，不久之後，他又回到了家乡。有一段時間，他幫助他父親製造鉛筆，但很快他又放棄了這種尚能營利的營生。
於是到了1844年的秋天，愛默生在瓦爾登湖上買了一塊地。當這年過去了之後，梭羅得到了這塊土地的主人的允許，可以讓他“居住在湖邊”。終於他跨出了勇敢的一步，用他自己的話來說：
“1845年3月尾，我藉來一柄斧頭，走到瓦爾登湖邊的森林裏，到達我預備造房子的地方，開始砍伐一些箭矢似的，高聳入雲而還年幼的白鬆，來做我的建築材料……那是愉快的春日、人們感到難過的鼕天正跟凍土一樣地消溶，而蟄居的生命開始舒伸了。”
7月4日，恰好那一天是獨立日，美國的國慶，他住進了自己蓋起來的湖邊的木屋。在這木屋裏，這湖濱的山林裏，觀察着，傾聽着，感受着，沉思着，並且夢想着，他獨立地生活了兩年又多一點時間。他記錄了他的觀察體會，他分析研究了他從自然界裏得來的音訊、閱歷和經驗。决不能把他的獨居湖畔看作是什麽隱士生涯。他是有目的地探索人生，批判人生，振奮人生，闡述人生的更高規律。並不是消極的，他是積極的。並不是逃避人生，他是走嚮人生，並且就在這中間，他也曾用他自己的獨特方式，投身於當時的鬥爭。
那發生於一個晚上，當他進城去到一個鞋匠傢中，要補一雙鞋，忽然被捕，並被監禁在康城監獄中。原因是他拒絶交付人頭稅。他之拒付此種稅款已經有六年之久。他在獄中住了一夜，毫不在意。第二天，因有人給他付清了人頭稅，就被釋放，出來之後，他還是去到鞋匠傢裏，等補好了他的鞋，然後穿上它，又和一群朋友跑到幾裏外的一座高山上，漫遊在那兒的什麽州政府也看不到的越桔叢中——這便是他的有名的入獄事件。
在1849年出版的《美學》雜志第一期上，他發表了一篇論文，用的題目是《對市政府的抵抗》。在1866年（他去世已四年）出版的《一個在加拿大的美國人，及其反對奴隸製和改革的論文集》收入這篇文章時，題目改為《民的不服從權利》。此文題目究竟應該用哪一個，讀書界頗有爭論，並有人專門研究這問題。我國一般地慣用了這個《消極反抗》的題名，今承其舊，不再改變。文中，梭羅並沒有發出什麽行動的號召，這毋寧說正是他一貫倡導的所謂“更高的原則”中之一項。他認為政府自然要做有利於人民的事，它不應該去幹擾人民。但是所有的政府都沒有做到這一點，更不用說這個保存了奴隸制度的美國政府了，因此他要和抵抗這一個政府，不服從這一個政府。他認為，如果政府要強迫人民去做違背良心的事，人民就應當有消極抵抗的權利，以抵製它和抵抗它。這篇《消極抵抗》的論文，首先是給了英國工黨和費邊主義者以影響，後來又對於以絶食方式反對英帝國主義的印度聖雄甘地的“不合作運動”與“非暴力主義”有很大的作用，對於1960年馬丁·路德·金，在非洲爭取民權運動也有很大的作用，對托爾斯泰的“勿以暴抗暴”的思想也有影響，以及對羅曼·羅蘭也有一些影響。
梭羅是一生都反對蓄奴制度的，不止一次幫助南方的黑奴逃亡到自由的北方。在1845年的消極反抗之後，他還寫過《馬省的奴隸製》（1854年）一文，他和愛默生一起支持過約翰·布朗。1859年10月，布朗企圖襲擊哈潑斯渡口失敗而被捕，11月刑庭判處布朗以絞刑，梭羅在市會堂裏發表了《為約翰·布朗請願》的演說。布朗死後，當地不允許給布朗開追悼會時，他到市會堂敲響大鐘，召集群衆舉行了追悼會。梭羅關於布朗的一係列文章和行動都是強烈的言行。
這期間，梭羅患上了肺結核癥，健康明顯地變壞。雖然去明尼蘇達作了一次醫療性的旅行，但病情並無好轉。他自知已不久人世了。在最後的兩年裏，他平靜地整理日記手稿，從中選出一些段落來寫成文章，發表在《大西洋月刊》上。他平靜安詳地結束了他的一生，死於1862年5月6日，未滿四十五歲。
梭羅生前，衹出版了兩本書。1849年自費出版了《康科德河和梅裏麥剋河上的一星期》，這書是他在瓦爾登湖邊的木屋裏著寫的，內容是哥兒倆在兩條河上旅行的一星期中，大段大段議論文史哲和宗教等等。雖精雕細刻，卻晦澀難懂，沒有引起什麽反響。印行一千册，衹售出一百多册，送掉七十五册，存下七百多册，在書店倉庫裏放到1853年，全部退給作者了。梭羅曾詼諧他說，我傢裏大約藏書九百册，自己著的書七百多册。
他的第二本書就是《瓦爾登湖》了，於1854年出版。也沒有受到應有的註意，甚至還受到詹姆斯·洛厄爾以及羅勃特·路易斯·斯蒂文生的譏諷和批評。但喬治·艾略特在1856年元月，卻在《西敏寺周報》上給他以“深沉而敏感的抒情”和“超凡入聖”的好評。那些自以為是的，衹知道要按照他們的規範，來規規矩矩地生活的人，往往受不了他們毫不理解的事物的價值，自然要把梭羅的那種有歷史意義的行為，看作不切實際的幻夢虛妄了。
隨着時光的流逝，這本書的影響是越來越大，業已成為美國文學中的一本獨特的，卓越的名著。他一生所寫的39捲手稿，是他的日記或日志，其中記錄着他的觀察、思維、理想和信念。他在世時的，在報刊上發表過的文章，他去世後己收集、整理好，出版了的計有《旅行散記》（1863年）、《緬因森林》（1864年）、《科德角》（1865年）三種。他的全集出版有《梭羅文集》，有1906年的和1971年的兩種版本。此外是他的日記，有《梭羅：一個作傢的日記》、《梭羅日記》兩捲本、《梭羅日記之心》的精選本等。以上衹是梭羅生平的一個簡單的介紹。下面再說一點他的這本書。
對於《瓦爾登湖》，不須多說什麽，衹是還要重複一下，這是一本寂寞、恬靜、智慧的書。其分析生活，批判習俗，有獨到處。自然頗有一些難懂的地方，作者自己也說過，“請原諒我說話晦澀，”例如那失去的獵犬，粟色馬和斑鳩的寓言，愛默生的弟弟愛德華問過他是什麽意思。他反問：“你沒有失去嗎？”卻再也沒有回答了。有的評論傢說，梭羅失去過一個艾倫（斑鳩），一個約翰（獵犬），可能還失去了一個拉爾夫（慄色馬）。誰個又能不失卻什麽呢？
本書內也有許多篇頁是形象描繪，優美細緻，像湖水的純潔透明，像山林的茂密翠緑；有一些篇頁說理透徹，十分精闢，有啓發性。這是一百多年以前的書，至今還未失去它的意義。在自晝的繁忙生活中，我有時讀它還讀不進去，似乎我異常喜歡的這本書忽然又不那麽可愛可喜了，似乎覺得它什麽好處也沒有，甚至弄得將信將疑起來。可是黃昏以後，心情漸漸的寂寞和恬靜下來，再讀此書，則忽然又頗有味，而看的就是白天看不出好處辨不出味道的章節，語語驚人，字字閃光，沁人心肺，動我衷腸。到了夜深人靜，萬籟無聲之時，這《瓦爾登湖》毫不晦澀，清澄見底，吟誦之下，不禁為之神往了。
應當指出，這本書是一本健康的書，對於春天，對於黎明，作了極其動人的描寫。讀着它，自然會體會到，一股嚮上的精神不斷地將讀者提升、提高。書已經擺在讀者面前了，我不必多說什麽了，因為說得再好，也比不上讀者直接去讀了。
人們常說，作傢應當找一個僻靜幽雅的去處，去進行創作：信然，然而未必盡然。我反而認為，讀書確乎在需要一個幽靜良好的環境，尤其讀好書，需要的是能高度集中的精神條件。讀者最需要有一個樸素淡泊的心地。讀《瓦爾登湖》如果又能引起讀者跑到一個山明水秀的、未受污染的地方去的興趣，就在那樣的地方讀它，就更是相宜了。
梭羅的這本書近年在西方世界更獲得重視。嚴重污染使人們又嚮往瓦爾登湖和山林的澄淨的清新空氣。梭羅能從食物、住宅、衣服和燃料，這些生活之必需出發，以經濟作為本書的開篇，他崇尚實踐，含有樸素的唯物主義思想。
譯者曾得美國漢學家費正清先生暨夫人鼓勵；譯出後曾編入《美國文學叢書》，1949年出了第一版。1982年再版時，參考了香港吳明實的版本。譯文出版社在第二版的編審過程中，對譯文進行了一次全面的校訂工作。對所有這些給過我幫助的人們，就在這裏，深緻感謝。
譯者
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.
I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars -- even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them:--
Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,
Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.
Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,--
"From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care, Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."
So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance -- which his growth requires -- who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South. It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination -- what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about.
One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.
The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman praetors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?"
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! -- I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be.
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man -- you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind -- I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.
Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain's shadow. None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, man's body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us -- and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without -- Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed.
這個中譯本的第一版是1949年在上海出版的。那時正好舉國上下，熱氣騰騰。解放全中國的偉大戰爭取得了輝煌勝利，因此註意這本書的人很少。
但到了五十年代，在香港卻有過一本稍稍修訂了它的譯文的，署名吳明實（無名氏）的盜印本，還一再再版，再版達六版之多。
這個中譯本的在國內再版，則是在初版之後三十二年的1982年，還是在上海，經譯者細加修訂之後，由譯文出版社出第二版的。這次印數一萬三千册。幾年前，《外國古典文學名著叢書》編委會决定，將它收入這套叢書，要我寫一篇新序。那時我正好要去美國，參加一個“國際寫作計劃”，有了可能去訪問馬薩堵塞州的康科德城和瓦爾登湖了。在美國時，我和好幾個大學的中外教授進行了關於這本書的交談，他們給了我很多的幫助。於今回想起來，是十分感謝他們的。
對這第二版的譯文我又作了些改進，並訂正了一兩處誤譯，衹是這一篇新序卻總是寫不起來。1985年寫了一稿，因不滿意，收回重寫。然一連幾年，人事倥傯，新序一直都沒有寫出來。為什麽呢？最近找出了原因來，還是我的心沒有安靜下來。就是國為這個了，這回可找到了原因，就好辦了。心真正地安靜了下來，這總是可以做到的。就看你自己怎麽安排了。為何一定要這樣做？因為這本《瓦爾登湖》是本靜靜的書，極靜極靜的書，並不是熱熱鬧鬧的書。它是一本寂寞的書，一本孤獨的書。它衹是一本一個人的書。如果你的心沒有安靜下來，恐怕你很難進入到這本書裏去。我要告訴你的是，在你的心靜下來以後，你就會思考一些什麽。在你思考一些什麽問題時，你纔有可能和這位亨利，戴維·梭羅先生一起，思考一下自己，更思考一下更高的原則。
這位梭羅先生是與孤獨結伴的。他常常衹是一個人。他認為沒有比孤獨這個伴兒更好的伴兒了。他的生平十分簡單，十分安靜。1817年7月12日梭羅生於康科德城；就學並畢業於哈佛大學（1833-1837年）；回到家乡，執教兩年（1838-1840年）。然後他住到了大作傢、思想傢拉爾夫·沃爾多·愛默生傢裏（1841-1843年），當門徒，又當助手，並開始嘗試寫作。到1845年，他就單身衹影，拿了一柄斧頭，跑進了無人居住的瓦爾登湖邊的山林中，獨居到1847年纔回到康城。1848年他又住在愛默生傢裏；1849年，他完成了一本叫作《康科德河和梅裏麥剋河上的一星期》的書。差不多同時，他發表了一篇名為《消極反抗》（On Civil Disobedience）的極為著名的、很有影響的論文，按字面意義，這也可以譯為“民的不服從權利”。後面我們還要講到它。然後，到了1854年，我們的這本文學名著《瓦爾登湖》出版了。本書有了一些反響，但開始的時候並不大。隨時間的推移，它的影響越來越大。1859年，他支持了反對美國蓄奴制度的運動；當這個運動的領導人約翰·布朗竟被逮捕，且被判絞刑處死時，他發表了為布朗辯護和呼籲的演講，並到教堂敲響鐘聲，舉行了悼念活動。此後他患了肺病，醫治無效，於1862年病逝於康城，終年僅44歲。他留下了《日記》39捲，自有人給他整理，陸續出版，已出版有多種版本和多種選本問世。
他的一生是如此之簡單而馥鬱，又如此之孤獨而芬芳。也可以說，他的一生十分不簡單，也毫不孤獨。他的讀者將會發現，他的精神生活十分豐富，而且是精美絶倫，世上罕見，和他交往的人不多，而神交的人可就多得多了。
他對自己的出生地，即馬省的康城，深感自豪。康城是爆發了美國獨立戰爭的首義之城。他說過，永遠使他驚喜的是他“出生於全世界最可尊敬的地點”之一，而且“時間也正好合適”，適逢美國知識界應運而生的、最活躍的年代。在美洲大陸上，最早的歐洲移民曾居住的“新英格蘭”六州，正是美國文化的發祥之地。而正是在馬省的康城，點燃起來了美國精神生活的輝耀火炬。小小的康城，風光如畫。一下子，那裏出現了四位大作傢：愛默生，霍桑，阿爾考特，和他，梭羅。1834年，愛默生定居於康城，曾到哈佛大學作了以《美國學者》為題的演講。愛默生演講，撰文，出書，宣揚有典型性的先知先覺的卓越的人，出過一本《卓越的人》，是他的代表作。他以先驅者身份所發出的號召，給了梭羅以深刻的影響。
梭羅大學畢業後回到康城，正好是他二十歲之時。1837年10月22日，那天他記下了他的第一篇日記：
“‘你現在在於什麽？’他問。‘你記日記嗎？’好吧，我今天開始，記下了這第一條。
“如果要孤獨，我必須要逃避現在——我要我自己當心。在羅馬皇帝的明鏡大殿裏我怎麽能孤獨得起來呢？我寧可找一個閣樓。在那裏是連蜘蛛也不受幹擾的，更不用打掃地板了，也用不到一堆一堆地堆放柴火。”
那個條文裏面的“他”，那個發問的人就是愛默生，這真是一槌定了音的。此後，梭羅一直用日記或日志的形式來記錄思想。日記持續了二十五年不斷。正像盧梭寫的《一個孤獨的散步者的思想》一樣，他寫的也是一個孤獨者的日記。而他之要孤獨，是因為他要思想，他愛思想。
稍後，在1838年2月7日，他又記下了這樣一條：
“這個斯多噶主義者（禁欲主義者）的芝諾（希臘哲人）跟他的世界的關係，和我今天的情況差不多。說起來，他出身於一個商人之傢——有好多這樣的人傢呵！——會做生意，會講價錢，也許還會吵吵嚷嚷，然而他也遇到過風浪，翻了船，船破了，他漂流到了皮拉烏斯海岸，就像什麽約翰，什麽湯麥斯之類的平常人中間的一個人似的。
“他走進了一傢店鋪子，而被色諾芬（希臘軍人兼作傢）的一本書（《長徵記》）迷住了。從此以後他就成了一個哲學家。一個新我的日子在他的面前升了起來……儘管芝諾的血肉之軀還是要去航海呵，去翻船呵，去受鳳吹浪打的苦呵，然而芝諾這個真
正的人，卻從此以後，永遠航行在一個安安靜靜的海洋上了。”
這裏梭羅是以芝諾來比擬他自己的，並也把愛默生比方為色諾芬了。梭羅雖不是出生於一個商人之傢，他卻是出身於一個商人的時代，至少他也得適應於當時美國的商業化精神，梭羅的血肉之軀也是要去航海的，他的船也是要翻的，他的一生中也要遇到風吹和浪打的經歷的，然而真正的梭羅卻已在一個安安靜靜的海洋上，他嚮往於那些更高的原則和卓越的人，他是嚮往於哲學家和哲學了。
就在這篇日記之後的第四天，愛默生在他自己的日記上也記着：“我非常喜歡這個年輕的朋友了。仿佛他已具有一種自由的和正直的心智，是我從來還未遇到過的。”過了幾天，愛默生又在自己的日記裏寫：“我的亨利·梭羅可好呢，以他的單純和明晰的智力使又一個孤獨的下午溫煦而充滿了陽光，”四月中，愛默生還記着：“昨天下午我和亨利·梭羅去爬山，霧蒙蒙的氣候溫暖而且愉快，仿佛這大山如一座半圓形的大劇場，歡飲下了美酒一樣，”在愛默生的推動之下，梭羅開始給《日晷》雜志寄詩寫稿了。但一位要求嚴格的編輯還多次退了他的稿件。梭羅也在康城學院裏作了一次題為《社會》的演講，而稍稍引起了市民的註意。到1841年，愛默生就邀請了梭羅住到他傢裏去。當時愛默生大事宣揚他的唯心主義先驗論，聚集了一班同人，就像辦了個先驗主義俱樂部似的。但梭羅並不認為自己是一個先驗主義者。在一段日記中他寫着：“人們常在我耳邊叮嚀，用他們的美妙理論和解决宇宙問題的各種花言巧語，可是對我並沒有幫助。我還是回到那無邊無際，亦無島無嶼的汪洋大海上去，一刻不停地探測着、尋找着可以下錨，緊緊地抓住不放的一處底層的好。”
本來梭羅的傢境比較睏難，但還是給他上了大學，並念完了大學。然後他傢裏的人認為他應該出去闖天下了。可是他卻寧可國家乡，在康城的一所私立中學教教書。之後不久，衹大他一歲的哥哥約翰也跑來了。兩人一起教書。哥哥教英語和數學，弟弟教古典名著、科學和自然史。學生們很愛戴他們倆。亨利還帶學生到河上旅行，在戶外上課、野餐，讓學生受到以大自然為課堂，以萬物為教材的生活教育。一位朋友曾稱羅梭為“詩人和博物學家”，並非過譽。他的生活知識是豐富，而且是淵博的。當他孤獨時，整個大自然成了他的伴侶。據愛默生的弟弟的回憶，梭羅的學生告訴過他：當梭羅講課時，學生們靜靜地聽着，靜得連教室裏掉下一支針也能聽得清楚。
1839年7月，一個十七歲的少女艾倫·西華爾來到康城，並且訪問了梭羅這一傢子。她到來的當天，亨利就寫了一首詩。五天後的日記中還有了這麽一句：“愛情是沒有法子治療的，惟有愛之彌甚之一法耳。”這大約就是為了艾倫的緣故寫的。不料約翰也一樣愛上了她，這就使事情復雜化了。三人經常在一起散步，在河上划船。登山觀看風景，進入森林探險，他們還在樹上刻下了他們的姓氏的首字。談話是幾乎沒完沒了的，但是這個幸福的時間並不長久。
這年春天，哥兒倆曾造起了一條船。八月底，他們乘船沿着康科德河和梅裏麥剋河上作了一次航行。在旅途上，一切都很好，衹是兩人之間已有着一些微妙的裂紋，彼此都未言明，實際上他們已成了情敵。後來約翰曾嚮她求婚而被她拒絶了。再後來，亨利也給過她一封熱情的信，而她回了他一封冷淡的信。不久後，艾倫就嫁給了一個牧師。這段插麯在亨利心頭留下了創傷。但接着發生了一件絶對意想不到的事，1842年的元旦，約翰在一條皮子上磨利他的剃刀片刀刃時，不小心劃破了他的左手中指一他用布條包紮了，沒有想到兩三天後化膿了，全身疼痛不堪。趕緊就醫，已來不及，他得了牙關緊閉癥，敗血病中之一種。他很快進入了彌留狀態。十天之後，約翰竟此溘然長逝了。
突然的事變給了亨利一個最沉重的打擊。他雖然竭力保持平靜，回到傢中卻不言不語。一星期後，他也病倒了，似乎也是得了牙關緊閉癥。幸而他得的並不是這種病，是得了由於心理痛苦引起來的心身病狀態。整整三個月，他都在這個病中，到四月中他又出現在園子裏了，纔漸漸地恢復過來。
那年亨利寫了好些悼念約翰的詩。在《哥哥，你在哪裏》這詩中，他問道：“我應當到哪裏去／尋找你的身影？／沿着鄰近的那條小河，／我還能否聽到你的聲音？”答復是他的兄長兼友人，約翰，已經和大自然融為一體了。他們結了綢繆，他已以大自然的容顔為他自己的容顔了，以大自然的表情表達了他自己的意念……大自然已取走了他的哥哥，約翰已成為大自然的一部分。
從這裏開始，亨利纔恢復了信心和歡樂。他在日記中寫着：“眼前的痛苦之沉重也說明過去的經歷的甘美。悲傷的時候，多麽的容易想起快樂！鼕天，蜜蜂不能釀蜜，它就消耗已釀好的蜜。”這一段時間裏，他是在養病，又養傷；在蟄居之中，為未來作準備，在蓄勢，蓄水以待開閘了放水，便可以灌溉大地。
在另一篇日記中，他說：“我必須承認，若問我對於社會我有了什麽作為，對於人類我已緻送了什麽佳音，我實在寒酸得很。無疑我的寒酸不是沒有原因的，我的無所建樹也並非沒有理由的。我就在想望着把我的生命的財富獻給人們，真正地給他們最珍貴的禮物。我要在貝殼中培養出珍珠來，為他們釀製生命之蜜，我要陽光轉射到公共福利上來。要沒有財富要隱藏。我沒有私人的東西。我的特異功能就是要為公衆服務。惟有這個功能是我的私有財産。任何人都是可以天真的，因而是富有的。
我含藴着，並養育着珍珠，直到它的完美之時。
恢復健康以後的梭羅又住到了愛默生傢裏。稍後，他到了紐約，住在市裏的斯丹頓島上，在愛默生弟弟的傢裏。他希望能開始建立起他的文學生涯來。恰恰因為他那種獨特的風格，並不是能被人，被世俗社會所喜歡的，想靠寫作來維持生活也很不容易，不久之後，他又回到了家乡。有一段時間，他幫助他父親製造鉛筆，但很快他又放棄了這種尚能營利的營生。
於是到了1844年的秋天，愛默生在瓦爾登湖上買了一塊地。當這年過去了之後，梭羅得到了這塊土地的主人的允許，可以讓他“居住在湖邊”。終於他跨出了勇敢的一步，用他自己的話來說：
“1845年3月尾，我藉來一柄斧頭，走到瓦爾登湖邊的森林裏，到達我預備造房子的地方，開始砍伐一些箭矢似的，高聳入雲而還年幼的白鬆，來做我的建築材料……那是愉快的春日、人們感到難過的鼕天正跟凍土一樣地消溶，而蟄居的生命開始舒伸了。”
7月4日，恰好那一天是獨立日，美國的國慶，他住進了自己蓋起來的湖邊的木屋。在這木屋裏，這湖濱的山林裏，觀察着，傾聽着，感受着，沉思着，並且夢想着，他獨立地生活了兩年又多一點時間。他記錄了他的觀察體會，他分析研究了他從自然界裏得來的音訊、閱歷和經驗。决不能把他的獨居湖畔看作是什麽隱士生涯。他是有目的地探索人生，批判人生，振奮人生，闡述人生的更高規律。並不是消極的，他是積極的。並不是逃避人生，他是走嚮人生，並且就在這中間，他也曾用他自己的獨特方式，投身於當時的鬥爭。
那發生於一個晚上，當他進城去到一個鞋匠傢中，要補一雙鞋，忽然被捕，並被監禁在康城監獄中。原因是他拒絶交付人頭稅。他之拒付此種稅款已經有六年之久。他在獄中住了一夜，毫不在意。第二天，因有人給他付清了人頭稅，就被釋放，出來之後，他還是去到鞋匠傢裏，等補好了他的鞋，然後穿上它，又和一群朋友跑到幾裏外的一座高山上，漫遊在那兒的什麽州政府也看不到的越桔叢中——這便是他的有名的入獄事件。
在1849年出版的《美學》雜志第一期上，他發表了一篇論文，用的題目是《對市政府的抵抗》。在1866年（他去世已四年）出版的《一個在加拿大的美國人，及其反對奴隸製和改革的論文集》收入這篇文章時，題目改為《民的不服從權利》。此文題目究竟應該用哪一個，讀書界頗有爭論，並有人專門研究這問題。我國一般地慣用了這個《消極反抗》的題名，今承其舊，不再改變。文中，梭羅並沒有發出什麽行動的號召，這毋寧說正是他一貫倡導的所謂“更高的原則”中之一項。他認為政府自然要做有利於人民的事，它不應該去幹擾人民。但是所有的政府都沒有做到這一點，更不用說這個保存了奴隸制度的美國政府了，因此他要和抵抗這一個政府，不服從這一個政府。他認為，如果政府要強迫人民去做違背良心的事，人民就應當有消極抵抗的權利，以抵製它和抵抗它。這篇《消極抵抗》的論文，首先是給了英國工黨和費邊主義者以影響，後來又對於以絶食方式反對英帝國主義的印度聖雄甘地的“不合作運動”與“非暴力主義”有很大的作用，對於1960年馬丁·路德·金，在非洲爭取民權運動也有很大的作用，對托爾斯泰的“勿以暴抗暴”的思想也有影響，以及對羅曼·羅蘭也有一些影響。
梭羅是一生都反對蓄奴制度的，不止一次幫助南方的黑奴逃亡到自由的北方。在1845年的消極反抗之後，他還寫過《馬省的奴隸製》（1854年）一文，他和愛默生一起支持過約翰·布朗。1859年10月，布朗企圖襲擊哈潑斯渡口失敗而被捕，11月刑庭判處布朗以絞刑，梭羅在市會堂裏發表了《為約翰·布朗請願》的演說。布朗死後，當地不允許給布朗開追悼會時，他到市會堂敲響大鐘，召集群衆舉行了追悼會。梭羅關於布朗的一係列文章和行動都是強烈的言行。
這期間，梭羅患上了肺結核癥，健康明顯地變壞。雖然去明尼蘇達作了一次醫療性的旅行，但病情並無好轉。他自知已不久人世了。在最後的兩年裏，他平靜地整理日記手稿，從中選出一些段落來寫成文章，發表在《大西洋月刊》上。他平靜安詳地結束了他的一生，死於1862年5月6日，未滿四十五歲。
梭羅生前，衹出版了兩本書。1849年自費出版了《康科德河和梅裏麥剋河上的一星期》，這書是他在瓦爾登湖邊的木屋裏著寫的，內容是哥兒倆在兩條河上旅行的一星期中，大段大段議論文史哲和宗教等等。雖精雕細刻，卻晦澀難懂，沒有引起什麽反響。印行一千册，衹售出一百多册，送掉七十五册，存下七百多册，在書店倉庫裏放到1853年，全部退給作者了。梭羅曾詼諧他說，我傢裏大約藏書九百册，自己著的書七百多册。
他的第二本書就是《瓦爾登湖》了，於1854年出版。也沒有受到應有的註意，甚至還受到詹姆斯·洛厄爾以及羅勃特·路易斯·斯蒂文生的譏諷和批評。但喬治·艾略特在1856年元月，卻在《西敏寺周報》上給他以“深沉而敏感的抒情”和“超凡入聖”的好評。那些自以為是的，衹知道要按照他們的規範，來規規矩矩地生活的人，往往受不了他們毫不理解的事物的價值，自然要把梭羅的那種有歷史意義的行為，看作不切實際的幻夢虛妄了。
隨着時光的流逝，這本書的影響是越來越大，業已成為美國文學中的一本獨特的，卓越的名著。他一生所寫的39捲手稿，是他的日記或日志，其中記錄着他的觀察、思維、理想和信念。他在世時的，在報刊上發表過的文章，他去世後己收集、整理好，出版了的計有《旅行散記》（1863年）、《緬因森林》（1864年）、《科德角》（1865年）三種。他的全集出版有《梭羅文集》，有1906年的和1971年的兩種版本。此外是他的日記，有《梭羅：一個作傢的日記》、《梭羅日記》兩捲本、《梭羅日記之心》的精選本等。以上衹是梭羅生平的一個簡單的介紹。下面再說一點他的這本書。
對於《瓦爾登湖》，不須多說什麽，衹是還要重複一下，這是一本寂寞、恬靜、智慧的書。其分析生活，批判習俗，有獨到處。自然頗有一些難懂的地方，作者自己也說過，“請原諒我說話晦澀，”例如那失去的獵犬，粟色馬和斑鳩的寓言，愛默生的弟弟愛德華問過他是什麽意思。他反問：“你沒有失去嗎？”卻再也沒有回答了。有的評論傢說，梭羅失去過一個艾倫（斑鳩），一個約翰（獵犬），可能還失去了一個拉爾夫（慄色馬）。誰個又能不失卻什麽呢？
本書內也有許多篇頁是形象描繪，優美細緻，像湖水的純潔透明，像山林的茂密翠緑；有一些篇頁說理透徹，十分精闢，有啓發性。這是一百多年以前的書，至今還未失去它的意義。在自晝的繁忙生活中，我有時讀它還讀不進去，似乎我異常喜歡的這本書忽然又不那麽可愛可喜了，似乎覺得它什麽好處也沒有，甚至弄得將信將疑起來。可是黃昏以後，心情漸漸的寂寞和恬靜下來，再讀此書，則忽然又頗有味，而看的就是白天看不出好處辨不出味道的章節，語語驚人，字字閃光，沁人心肺，動我衷腸。到了夜深人靜，萬籟無聲之時，這《瓦爾登湖》毫不晦澀，清澄見底，吟誦之下，不禁為之神往了。
應當指出，這本書是一本健康的書，對於春天，對於黎明，作了極其動人的描寫。讀着它，自然會體會到，一股嚮上的精神不斷地將讀者提升、提高。書已經擺在讀者面前了，我不必多說什麽了，因為說得再好，也比不上讀者直接去讀了。
人們常說，作傢應當找一個僻靜幽雅的去處，去進行創作：信然，然而未必盡然。我反而認為，讀書確乎在需要一個幽靜良好的環境，尤其讀好書，需要的是能高度集中的精神條件。讀者最需要有一個樸素淡泊的心地。讀《瓦爾登湖》如果又能引起讀者跑到一個山明水秀的、未受污染的地方去的興趣，就在那樣的地方讀它，就更是相宜了。
梭羅的這本書近年在西方世界更獲得重視。嚴重污染使人們又嚮往瓦爾登湖和山林的澄淨的清新空氣。梭羅能從食物、住宅、衣服和燃料，這些生活之必需出發，以經濟作為本書的開篇，他崇尚實踐，含有樸素的唯物主義思想。
譯者曾得美國漢學家費正清先生暨夫人鼓勵；譯出後曾編入《美國文學叢書》，1949年出了第一版。1982年再版時，參考了香港吳明實的版本。譯文出版社在第二版的編審過程中，對譯文進行了一次全面的校訂工作。對所有這些給過我幫助的人們，就在這裏，深緻感謝。
譯者
I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.
I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders "until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach"; or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars -- even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra's head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them:--
Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,
Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.
Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,--
"From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care, Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are."
So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.
Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance -- which his growth requires -- who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.
I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both North and South. It is hard to have a Southern overseer; it is worse to have a Northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination -- what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me anything to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about.
One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.
The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, "the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman praetors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor." Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, "be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?"
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! -- I know of no reading of another's experience so startling and informing as this would be.
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man -- you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind -- I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.
Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or at least careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man's existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain's shadow. None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, "to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting." So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, man's body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us -- and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without -- Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed.
當我寫後面那些篇頁，或者後面那一大堆文字的時候，我是在孤獨地生活着，在森林中，在馬薩諸塞州的康科德城，瓦爾登湖的湖岸上，在我親手建築的木屋裏，距離任何鄰居一英裏，衹靠着我雙手勞動，養活我自己。在那裏，我住了兩年又兩個月。目前，我又是文明生活中的過客了。
要不是市民們曾特別仔細地打聽我的生活方式，我本不會這般唐突，拿私事來讀請讀者註意的。有些人說我這個生活方式怪僻，雖然我根本不覺得怪僻，考慮到我那些境遇，我衹覺得非常自然，而且合情合理呢。有些人則問我有什麽吃的；我是否感到寂寞，我害怕嗎，等等。另下些人還好奇得很，想知道我的哪一部分收入捐給慈善事業了，還有一些人，傢大口闊，想知道我贍養了多少個貧兒。所以這本書在答復這一類的問題時，請對我並無特殊興趣的讀者給以諒解。許多書，避而不用所謂第一人稱的“我”字；本書是用的；這本書的特點便是“我”字用得特別多。其實，無論什麽書都是第一人稱在發言，我們卻常把這點忘掉了。如果我的知人之深，比得上我的自知之明，我就不會暢談自我，談那麽多了。不幸我閱歷淺陋，我衹得局限於這一個主題。但是，我對於每一個作傢，都不僅僅要求他寫他聽來的別人的生活，還要求他遲早能簡單而誠懇地寫出自己的生活，寫得好像是他從遠方寄給親人似的；因為我覺得一個人若生活得誠懇，他一定是生活在一個遙遠的地方了。下面的這些文字，對於清寒的學生，或許特別地適宜。至於其餘的讀者，我想他們是會取其適用的。因為，沒有人會削足適履的；衹有合乎尺寸的衣履，才能對一個人有用。
我樂意訴說的事物，未必是關於中國人和桑威奇島人，而是關於你們，這些文字的讀者，生活在新英格蘭的居民，關於諸君的遭遇的，特別是關於生逢此世的本地居民的身外之物或環境的，諸君生活在這個人世之間，度過了什麽樣的生活哪；你們生活得如此糟糕是否必要呢；這種生活是否還能改善改善呢？我在康科德曾到過許多地區；無論在店鋪，在公事房，在田野，到處我都看到，這裏的居民仿佛都在贖罪一樣，從事着成千種的驚人苦役。我曾經聽說過婆羅門教的教徒，坐在四面火焰之中，眼盯着太陽，或在烈火的上面倒懸着身體；或側轉了頭望青天，“直到他們無法恢復原狀，更因為脖子是扭轉的，所以除了液體，別的食品都不能流入胃囊中”，或者，終生用一條鐵鏈，把自己鎖在一株樹下：或者，像毛毛蟲一樣，用他們的身體來丈量帝國的廣袤土地；或者，他們獨腳站立在柱子頂上——然而啊，便是這種有意識的贖罪苦行，也不見得比我天天看見的景象更不可信，更使人心驚肉跳。赫拉剋勒斯從事的十二個苦役跟我的鄰居所從事的苦役一比較，簡直不算一回事，因為他一共也衹有十二個，做完就完了，可是我從沒有看到過我的鄰人殺死或捕獲過任何怪獸，也沒有看到過他們做完過任何苦役。他們也沒有依俄拉斯這樣的赫拉剋勒斯的忠僕，用一塊火紅的烙鐵，來烙印那九頭怪獸，它是被割去了一個頭，還會長出兩個頭來的。
我看見青年人，我的市民同胞，他們的不幸是，生下地來就繼承了田地、廬捨、𠔌倉、牛羊和農具；得到它們倒是容易，捨棄它們可睏難了。他們不如誕生在空曠的牧場上，讓狼來給他們喂奶，他們倒能夠看清楚了，自己是在何等的環境辛勤勞動。誰使他們變成了土地的奴隸？為什麽有人能夠享受六十英畝田地的供養，而更多人卻命定了，衹能啄食塵土呢？為什麽他們剛生下地，就得自掘墳墓？他們不能不過人的生活，不能不推動這一切，一個勁兒地做工，盡可能地把光景過得好些。我曾遇見過多少個可憐的、永生的靈魂啊，幾乎被壓死在生命的負擔下面，他們無法呼吸，他們在生命道上爬動，推動他們前面的一個七十五英尺長，四十英尺寬的大𠔌倉，一個從未打掃過的奧吉亞斯的牛圈，還要推動上百英畝土地，鋤地、芟草，還要放牧和護林！可是，另一些並沒有繼承産業的人，固然沒有這種上代傳下的、不必要的磨難，卻也得為他們幾立方英尺的血肉之軀，委屈地生活，拼性命地做工哪。
人可是在一個大錯底下勞動的啊。人的健美的軀體，大半很快地被犁頭耕了過去，化為泥土中的肥料。像一本經書裏說的，一種似是而非的，通稱“必然”的命運支配了人，他們所積纍的財富，被飛蛾和銹黴再腐蝕掉，並且招來了胠篋的盜賊。這是一個愚蠢的生命，生前或者不明白，到臨終，人們終會明白的，據說，杜卡利盎和彼爾在創造人類時，是拿石頭扔到背後去。詩云：
Inde genus durum sumus，experiensque laborum，
Et doeumenta damus qua simus origine nati。
後來，羅利也吟詠了兩句響亮的詩：
“從此人心堅硬，任勞任怨，
證明我們的身體本是岩石。”
真是太盲目地遵守錯誤的神示了，把石頭從頭頂扔到背後去，也不看一看它們墜落到什麽地方去。
大多數人，即使是在這個比較自由的國土上的人們，也僅僅因為無知和錯誤，滿載着虛構的憂慮，忙不完的粗活，卻不能採集生命的美果。操勞過度，使他們的手指粗笨了，顫抖得又大厲害，不適用於採集了。真的，勞動的人，一天又一天，找不到空閑來使得自己真正地完整無損；他無法保持人與人間最勇毅的關係；他的勞動，一到市場上，總是跌價。除了做一架機器之外，他沒時間來做別的。他怎能記得他是無知的呢——他是全靠他的無知而活下來的——他不經常絞盡腦汁嗎？在評說他們之前，我們先要兔費地使他穿暖、吃飽，並用我們的興奮劑使他恢復健康。我們天性中最優美的品格，好比果實上的粉霜一樣，是衹能輕手輕腳，纔得保全的。然而，人與人之間就是沒有能如此溫柔地相處。
讀者之中，這些個情況我們都知道，有人是窮睏的，覺得生活不容易，有時候，甚而至於可以說連氣也喘不過來。我毫不懷疑在本書的讀者之中，有人不能為那吃下了肚的全部飯食和迅速磨損或已經破損的衣着付出錢來，好容易忙裏偷了閑，才能讀這幾頁文字，那還是從債主那裏偷來的時間。你們這許多人過的是何等低卑、躲來躲去的生活啊，這很明顯，因為我的眼力已經在閱歷的磨刀石上磨利了；你們時常進退維𠔌，要想做成一筆生意來償清債務，你們深陷在一個十分古老的泥沼中，拉丁文的所謂aes alienum——別人的銅幣中，可不是有些錢幣用銅來鑄的嗎；就在別人的銅錢中，你們生了，死了，最後葬掉了；你們答應了明天償清，又一個明天償清，直到死在今天，而債務還未了結；你們求恩，乞憐，請求照顧，用了多少方法總算沒有坐牢；你們撒謊，拍馬，投票，把自己縮進了一個規規矩矩的硬殼裏，或者吹噓自己，擺出一副稀薄如雲霧的慷慨和大度的模樣，這纔使你們的鄰人信任你，允許你們給他們做鞋子，製帽子，或上衣，或車輛，或讓你們給他們代買食品；你們在一隻破箱籠裏，或者在灰泥後面的一隻襪子裏，塞進了一把錢幣，或者塞在銀行的磚屋裏，那裏是更安全了；不管塞在哪裏，塞多少，更不管那數目是如何地微少，為了謹防患病而籌錢，反而把你們自己弄得病倒了。
有時我奇怪，何以我們如此輕率，我幾乎要說，竟然實行了罪惡昭彰的、從外國帶進黑奴來的奴役制度。有那麽多苛虐而熟練的奴隸主，奴役了南方和北方的奴隸。一個南方的監守人是毒辣的，而一個北方的監守人更加壞，可是你們自己做起奴隸的監守人來是最最壞的。談什麽——人的神聖！看大路上的趕馬人，日夜嚮市場趕路，在他們的內心裏，有什麽神聖的思想在激蕩着呢？他們的最高職責是給驢馬飼草飲水！和運輸的贏利相比較，他們的命運算什麽？他們還不是在給一位繁忙的紳士趕驢馬？他們有什麽神聖，有什麽不朽呢？請看他們匍伏潛行，一整天裏戰戰兢兢，毫不是神聖的，也不是不朽的，他們看到自己的行業，知道自己是屬於奴隸或囚徒這種名稱的人。和我們的自知之明相比較，公衆這暴戾的君主也顯得微弱無力。正是一個人怎麽看待自己，决定了此人的命運，指嚮了他的歸宿。要在西印度的州省中談論心靈與想象的自我解放，可沒有一個威勃爾福司來促進呢。再請想一想，這個大陸上的婦人們，編織着梳妝用的軟墊，以便臨死之日用，對她們自己的命運絲毫也不關心！仿佛磋跎時日還無損於永恆呢。
人類在過着靜靜的絶望的生活。所謂聽天由命，正是肯定的絶望。你從絶望的城市走到絶望的村莊，以水貂和麝鼠的勇敢來安慰自己。在人類的所謂遊戲與消遣底下，甚至都隱藏着一種凝固的、不知又不覺的絶望。兩者中都沒有娛樂可言，因為工作之後才能娛樂。可是不做絶望的事，纔是智慧的一種表徵。
當我們用教義問答法的方式，思考着什麽是人生的宗旨，什麽是生活的真正的必需品與資料時，仿佛人們還曾審慎從事地選擇了這種生活的共同方式，而不要任何別的方式似的。其實他們也知道，捨此而外，別無可以挑選的方式。但清醒健康的人都知道，太陽終古常新。拋棄我們的偏見，是永遠不會來不及的。無論如何古老的思想與行為，除非有確證，便不可以輕信。在今天人人附和或以為不妨默認的真理，很可能在明天變成虛無縹緲的氤氳，但還會有人認為是烏雲，可以將一陣甘霖灑落到大地上來。把老頭子認為辦不到的事來試辦一下，你往往辦成功了。老人有舊的一套，新人有新的一套。古人不知添上燃料便可使火焰不滅：新人卻把幹柴放在水壺底下：諺語說得好：“氣死老頭子”，現在的人還可以繞着地球轉，迅疾如飛鳥呢。老年人，雖然年紀一把，未必能把年輕的一代指導得更好，甚至他們未必夠得上資格來指導；因為他們雖有不少收穫，卻也已大有損失。我們可以這樣懷疑，即使最聰明的人，活了一世，他又能懂得多少生活的絶對價值呢。實際上，老年人是不會有什麽極其重要的忠告給予年輕人的。他們的經驗是這樣地支離破碎，他們的生活已經是這樣地慘痛的失敗過了，他們必須知道大錯都是自己鑄成的；也許，他們還保留若幹信心，這與他們的經驗是不相符合的，卻可惜他們已經不夠年輕了。我在這星球上生活了三十來年，還沒有聽到過老長輩們一個字，可謂有價值的，堪稱熱忱的忠告的。他們什麽也沒告訴過我，也許他們是不能告訴我什麽中肯的意見了。這裏就是生命，一個試驗，它的極大部分我都沒有體驗過；老年人體驗過了，但卻於我無用。如果我得到了我認為有用的任何經驗，我一定會這樣想的，這個經驗嘛，我的老師長們可是提都沒有提起過的呢。
有一個農夫對我說：“光吃蔬菜是活不了的，蔬菜不能供給你骨骼所需要的養料；”這樣他每天虔誠地分出了他的一部分時間，來獲得那種可以供給他骨骼所需的養料；他一邊說話，一邊跟在耕牛後面走，讓這條正是用蔬菜供養了它的骨骼的耕牛拖動着他和他的木犁不顧一切障礙地前進。某些事物，在某些場合，例如在最無辦法的病人中間，確是生活的必需資料，卻在另一些場合，衹變成了奢侈品，再換了別樣的場合，又可能是聞所未聞的東西。
有人以為人生的全部，無論在高峰之巔或低陷之𠔌，都已給先驅者走遍，一切都已被註意到了。依熙愛芙琳的話：“智慧的所羅門曾下令製定樹木中間應有的距離；羅馬地方官也曾規定，你可以多少次到鄰傢的地上去揀拾那落下來的橡實而不算你亂闖的，並曾規定多少份橡實屬於鄰人。”希波剋拉底甚至傳下了剪指甲的方法，剪得不要太短或太長，要齊手指頭。無疑問的，認為把生命的變易和歡樂都消蝕殆盡的那種煩謙和憂悶，是跟亞當同樣地古老的。但人的力量還從未被衡量出來呢；我們不能根據他已經完成的事來判斷他的力量，人做得少極了。不論你以前如何失敗過，“別感傷，我的孩子，誰能指定你去做你未曾做完的事呢？”
我們可以用一千種簡單的方法來測定我們的生命；舉例以明之，這是同一個太陽，它使我種的豆子成熟，同時竟然照耀了像我們的地球之類的整個太陽係。如果我記住了這一點，那就能預防若幹的錯誤。可是我鋤草時並沒有這樣去想。星星是何等神奇的三角形的尖頂！字宙各處，有多少遠遠隔開的不同的物種在同時思考着同一事實啊！正如我們的各種體製一樣，大自然和人生也是變化多端的。誰能預知別人的生命有着什麽遠景？難道還有比一瞬之間通過彼此的眼睛來觀察更偉大的奇跡嗎？我們本應該在一小時之內就經歷了這人世的所有時代；是的，甚至經歷了所有時代中所有的世界。歷史、詩歌、神話！——我不知道讀別人的經驗還有什麽能像讀這些這樣地驚人而又詳盡的。
凡我的鄰人說是好的，有一大部分在我靈魂中卻認為是壞的，至於我，如果要有所仟悔，我悔恨的反而是我的善良品行。是什麽魔鬼攫住了我，使我品行這樣善良的呢？老年人啊，你說了那些最聰明的話，你已經活了七十年了，而且活得很光榮，我卻聽到一個不可抗拒的聲音，要求我不聽你的話。新的世代拋棄前一代的業績，好像它們是些擱淺的船。
我想，我們可以泰然相信，比我們實際上相信的，更加多的事物。我們對自己的關懷能放棄多少，便可以忠實地給別人多少的關懷。大自然既能適應我們的長處，也能適應我們的弱點。有些人無窮無盡的憂患焦慮，成了一種幾乎醫治不好的疾病。我們又生就的愛誇耀我們所做工作的重要性；然而卻有多少工作我們沒有做！要是我們病倒了，怎麽辦呢？我們多麽謹慎！决心不依照信仰而生活，我們盡可能避免它，從早到晚警戒着，到夜晚違心地析禱着，然後把自己交托給未定的運數。我們生活得這樣周到和認真，崇奉自己的生活，而否定變革的可能。我們說，衹能這樣子生活呵；可是從圓心可以畫出多少條半徑來，而生活方式就有這樣的多。一切變革，都是值得思考的奇跡，每一剎那發生的事都可以是奇跡。孔夫予曾說：“知之為知之，不知為不知，是知也。”當一個人把他想象的事實提煉為他的理論之時，我預見到，一切人最後都要在這樣的基礎上建築起他們的生活來。
讓我們思考一下，我前面所說的大多數人的憂慮和煩惱又是些什麽，其中有多少是必須憂慮的，至少是值得小心對待的呢？雖然生活在外表的文明中，我們若能過一過原始性的、新開闢的墾區生活還是有益處的，即使僅僅為了明白生活必需品大致是些什麽，及如何才能得到這些必需品，甚至翻一翻商店裏的古老的流水賬，看看商店裏經常出售些什麽，又存積哪些貨物，就是看看最雜的雜貨究竟是一些什麽也好。時代雖在演進，對人類生存的基本原則卻還沒有發生多少影響：好比我們的骨骼，跟我們的祖先的骨骼，大約是區別不出來的。
所謂生活必需品，在我的意思中，是指一切人用了自己的精力收穫得來的那種物品：或是它開始就顯得很重要，或是由於長久的習慣，因此對於人生具有了這樣的重要性，即使有人嘗試着不要它，其人數也是很少的，他們或者是由於野蠻，或是出於窮睏，或者衹是為了一種哲學的緣故，纔這麽做的。對於許多人，具有這樣的意義的生活必需品衹有一種，即食物。原野上的牛衹需要幾英寸長的可咀嚼的青草和一些冷水；除非加上了它們要尋求的森林或山蔭的遮蔽。野獸的生存都衹需要食物和蔭蔽之處。但人類，在天時中，其生活之必需品可分為：食物、住宅、衣服和燃料；除非獲有這些，我們是無法自由地面對真正的人生問題的，更無法展望成就了。人不僅發明了屋子，還發明了衣服，煮熟了食物；可能是偶然發現了火焰的熱度，後來利用了它，起先它還是奢侈品哩，而到目前，烤火取暖也是必需品了。我們看到貓狗也同樣地獲得了這個第二天性。住得合適，穿得合適，就能合理地保持體內的熱度，若住得和穿得太熱的話，或烤火烤得太熱時，外邊的熱度高於體內的熱度，豈不是說在烘烤人肉了嗎？自然科學家達爾文說起火地島的居民，當他自己一夥人穿着衣服還烤火，尚且不覺得熱，那時裸體的野蠻人站得很遠，卻使人看到了大為吃驚，他們“被火焰烘烤得竟然汗流浹背了”。同樣，據說新荷蘭人赤裸身體而泰然自若地跑來跑去，歐洲人穿了衣服還顫抖呢。這些野蠻人的堅強和文明人的睿智難道不能夠相提並論嗎？按照李比希的說法，人體是一隻爐子，食物是保持肺部內燃的燃料。冷天我們吃得多，熱天少。動物的體溫是緩慢內燃的結果，而疾病和死亡則是在內燃得太旺盛的時候發生的；或者因為燃料沒有了，或者因為通風裝置出了毛病，火焰便會熄滅。自然，我們不能把生命的體溫與火焰混為一談，我們的譬喻就到此為止。所以，從上面的陳述來看，動物的生命這一個詞語可以跟動物的體溫作為同義語用：食物，被作為內燃的燃料，——煮熟食物的也是燃料，煮熟的食物自外吞入體內，也是為增加我們體內熱量的，——此外，住所和衣服，也是為了保持這樣地産生和吸收的熱量的。
所以，對人體而言，最大的必需品是取暖，保持我們的養身的熱量。我們是何等地辛苦，不但為了食物、衣着、住所，還為了我們的床鋪——那些夜晚的衣服而辛苦着，從飛鳥巢裏和飛鳥的胸脯上，我們掠奪羽毛，做成住所中的住所，就像鼴鼠住在地窟盡頭草葉的床中一樣！可憐人常常叫苦，說這是一個冰冷的世界；身體上的病同社會上的病一樣，我們大都歸罪於寒冷。在若幹地區，夏天給人以樂園似的生活。在那裏除了煮飯的燃料之外，別的燃料都不需要；太陽是他的火焰，太陽的光綫煮熟了果實；大體說來，食物的種類既多，而且又容易到手，衣服和住宅是完全用不到的，或者說有一半是用不到的。在目前時代，在我們國內，根據我自己的經驗，我覺得衹要有少數工具就足夠生活了，一把刀，一柄斧頭，一把鏟子，一輛手推車，如此而已，對於勤學的人，還要燈火和文具，再加上兒本書，這些已是次要的必需品，衹要少數費用就能購得。然而有些人就太不聰明，跑到另一個半球上，跑到蠻荒的、不衛生的區域裏，做了十年二十年生意，為了使他們活着，——就是說，為了使他們能舒適而溫暖——，最後回到新英格蘭來，還是死了。奢侈的人不單舒適了溫暖了，而且熱得不自然；我已經在前面說過，他們是被烘烤的，自然是很時髦地被烘烤的。
大部分的奢侈品，大部分的所謂生活的舒適，非但沒有必要，而且對人類進步大有妨礙。所以關於奢侈與舒適，最明智的人生活得甚至比窮人更加簡單和樸素。中國、印度、波斯和希臘的古哲學家都是一個類型的人物，外表生活再窮沒有，而內心生活再富不過。我們都不夠理解他們。然而可驚的一點是，我們居然對於他們知道得不少呢。近代那些改革傢，各民族的救星，也都如此。唯有站在我們所謂的甘貧樂苦這有利地位上，才能成為大公無私的聰明的觀察者。無論在農業，商業，文學或藝術中，奢侈生活産生的果實都是奢侈的。近來是哲學教授滿天飛，哲學家一個沒有。然而教授是可羨的，因為教授的生活是可羨的。但是，要做一個哲學家的活，不但要有精美的思想，不但要建立起一個學派來，而且要這樣地愛智慧，從而按照了智慧的指示，過着一種簡單、獨立、大度、信任的生活。解决生命的一些問題，不但要在理論上，而且要在實踐中。大學問傢和思想傢的成功，通常不是帝王式的，也不是英豪式的，反而是朝臣式的成功。他們應付生活，往往求其與習俗相符合，像他們的父輩一般，所以一點不能成為更好的人類的始祖。可是，為什麽人類總在退化？是什麽使得那些傢族沒落的？使國傢衰亡的糜侈是什麽性質的呢？在我們的生活中，我們能否確定自己並未這樣？哲學家甚至在生活的外形上也是處在時代前列的。他不像他同時代人那樣地吃喝、居住、穿着、取暖。一個人既是哲學家，怎會沒有比別人更好的養身的保持體溫的方法呢？
人已在我所描寫的幾種方式下暖和了，其次他要幹什麽呢？當然不會是同等樣的更多的溫暖。他不會要求更多更富足的食物，更大更光耀的房屋，更豐富更精美的衣服，更多更持久更灼熱的火爐等等了。他在得到了這些生命所必需的事物之後，就不會要過剩品而要有另一些東西；那就是說免於卑微工作的假期開始了，現在他要嚮生命邁進了。泥土看來是適宜於種子的，因為泥土使它的胚根嚮下延伸，然後它可以富有自信地使莖嚮上茁長。為什麽人在泥土裏紮了根之後，不能援例嚮天空伸展呢？——因為那些更高貴的植物的價值是由遠離地面的、最後在空氣和日光中結成的果實來評定的，而不是像對待那低卑蔬菜的那樣。蔬菜就算是兩年生的植物，那也衹是被培植到生好根以後，而且常被摘去頂枝，使得許多人在開花的季節都認不得它們。
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?
When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above? -- for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season.
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live -- if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers -- and, to some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; -- but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate.
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.
So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it. If it had concerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun.
For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.
I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons.
In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off -- that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed -- he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy or living anywhere else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. I determined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender means as I had already got. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish.
I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time -- often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore; -- to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization -- taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation; -- charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier -- there is the untold fate of La Prouse; -- universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man -- such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.
I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be filled; though you must everywhere build on piles of your own driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth.
As this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this -- Who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master's premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country, where ... people are judged of by their clothes." Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman's dress, at least, is never done.
A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet -- if a hero ever has a valet -- bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soires and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes -- his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.
要不是市民們曾特別仔細地打聽我的生活方式，我本不會這般唐突，拿私事來讀請讀者註意的。有些人說我這個生活方式怪僻，雖然我根本不覺得怪僻，考慮到我那些境遇，我衹覺得非常自然，而且合情合理呢。有些人則問我有什麽吃的；我是否感到寂寞，我害怕嗎，等等。另下些人還好奇得很，想知道我的哪一部分收入捐給慈善事業了，還有一些人，傢大口闊，想知道我贍養了多少個貧兒。所以這本書在答復這一類的問題時，請對我並無特殊興趣的讀者給以諒解。許多書，避而不用所謂第一人稱的“我”字；本書是用的；這本書的特點便是“我”字用得特別多。其實，無論什麽書都是第一人稱在發言，我們卻常把這點忘掉了。如果我的知人之深，比得上我的自知之明，我就不會暢談自我，談那麽多了。不幸我閱歷淺陋，我衹得局限於這一個主題。但是，我對於每一個作傢，都不僅僅要求他寫他聽來的別人的生活，還要求他遲早能簡單而誠懇地寫出自己的生活，寫得好像是他從遠方寄給親人似的；因為我覺得一個人若生活得誠懇，他一定是生活在一個遙遠的地方了。下面的這些文字，對於清寒的學生，或許特別地適宜。至於其餘的讀者，我想他們是會取其適用的。因為，沒有人會削足適履的；衹有合乎尺寸的衣履，才能對一個人有用。
我樂意訴說的事物，未必是關於中國人和桑威奇島人，而是關於你們，這些文字的讀者，生活在新英格蘭的居民，關於諸君的遭遇的，特別是關於生逢此世的本地居民的身外之物或環境的，諸君生活在這個人世之間，度過了什麽樣的生活哪；你們生活得如此糟糕是否必要呢；這種生活是否還能改善改善呢？我在康科德曾到過許多地區；無論在店鋪，在公事房，在田野，到處我都看到，這裏的居民仿佛都在贖罪一樣，從事着成千種的驚人苦役。我曾經聽說過婆羅門教的教徒，坐在四面火焰之中，眼盯着太陽，或在烈火的上面倒懸着身體；或側轉了頭望青天，“直到他們無法恢復原狀，更因為脖子是扭轉的，所以除了液體，別的食品都不能流入胃囊中”，或者，終生用一條鐵鏈，把自己鎖在一株樹下：或者，像毛毛蟲一樣，用他們的身體來丈量帝國的廣袤土地；或者，他們獨腳站立在柱子頂上——然而啊，便是這種有意識的贖罪苦行，也不見得比我天天看見的景象更不可信，更使人心驚肉跳。赫拉剋勒斯從事的十二個苦役跟我的鄰居所從事的苦役一比較，簡直不算一回事，因為他一共也衹有十二個，做完就完了，可是我從沒有看到過我的鄰人殺死或捕獲過任何怪獸，也沒有看到過他們做完過任何苦役。他們也沒有依俄拉斯這樣的赫拉剋勒斯的忠僕，用一塊火紅的烙鐵，來烙印那九頭怪獸，它是被割去了一個頭，還會長出兩個頭來的。
我看見青年人，我的市民同胞，他們的不幸是，生下地來就繼承了田地、廬捨、𠔌倉、牛羊和農具；得到它們倒是容易，捨棄它們可睏難了。他們不如誕生在空曠的牧場上，讓狼來給他們喂奶，他們倒能夠看清楚了，自己是在何等的環境辛勤勞動。誰使他們變成了土地的奴隸？為什麽有人能夠享受六十英畝田地的供養，而更多人卻命定了，衹能啄食塵土呢？為什麽他們剛生下地，就得自掘墳墓？他們不能不過人的生活，不能不推動這一切，一個勁兒地做工，盡可能地把光景過得好些。我曾遇見過多少個可憐的、永生的靈魂啊，幾乎被壓死在生命的負擔下面，他們無法呼吸，他們在生命道上爬動，推動他們前面的一個七十五英尺長，四十英尺寬的大𠔌倉，一個從未打掃過的奧吉亞斯的牛圈，還要推動上百英畝土地，鋤地、芟草，還要放牧和護林！可是，另一些並沒有繼承産業的人，固然沒有這種上代傳下的、不必要的磨難，卻也得為他們幾立方英尺的血肉之軀，委屈地生活，拼性命地做工哪。
人可是在一個大錯底下勞動的啊。人的健美的軀體，大半很快地被犁頭耕了過去，化為泥土中的肥料。像一本經書裏說的，一種似是而非的，通稱“必然”的命運支配了人，他們所積纍的財富，被飛蛾和銹黴再腐蝕掉，並且招來了胠篋的盜賊。這是一個愚蠢的生命，生前或者不明白，到臨終，人們終會明白的，據說，杜卡利盎和彼爾在創造人類時，是拿石頭扔到背後去。詩云：
Inde genus durum sumus，experiensque laborum，
Et doeumenta damus qua simus origine nati。
後來，羅利也吟詠了兩句響亮的詩：
“從此人心堅硬，任勞任怨，
證明我們的身體本是岩石。”
真是太盲目地遵守錯誤的神示了，把石頭從頭頂扔到背後去，也不看一看它們墜落到什麽地方去。
大多數人，即使是在這個比較自由的國土上的人們，也僅僅因為無知和錯誤，滿載着虛構的憂慮，忙不完的粗活，卻不能採集生命的美果。操勞過度，使他們的手指粗笨了，顫抖得又大厲害，不適用於採集了。真的，勞動的人，一天又一天，找不到空閑來使得自己真正地完整無損；他無法保持人與人間最勇毅的關係；他的勞動，一到市場上，總是跌價。除了做一架機器之外，他沒時間來做別的。他怎能記得他是無知的呢——他是全靠他的無知而活下來的——他不經常絞盡腦汁嗎？在評說他們之前，我們先要兔費地使他穿暖、吃飽，並用我們的興奮劑使他恢復健康。我們天性中最優美的品格，好比果實上的粉霜一樣，是衹能輕手輕腳，纔得保全的。然而，人與人之間就是沒有能如此溫柔地相處。
讀者之中，這些個情況我們都知道，有人是窮睏的，覺得生活不容易，有時候，甚而至於可以說連氣也喘不過來。我毫不懷疑在本書的讀者之中，有人不能為那吃下了肚的全部飯食和迅速磨損或已經破損的衣着付出錢來，好容易忙裏偷了閑，才能讀這幾頁文字，那還是從債主那裏偷來的時間。你們這許多人過的是何等低卑、躲來躲去的生活啊，這很明顯，因為我的眼力已經在閱歷的磨刀石上磨利了；你們時常進退維𠔌，要想做成一筆生意來償清債務，你們深陷在一個十分古老的泥沼中，拉丁文的所謂aes alienum——別人的銅幣中，可不是有些錢幣用銅來鑄的嗎；就在別人的銅錢中，你們生了，死了，最後葬掉了；你們答應了明天償清，又一個明天償清，直到死在今天，而債務還未了結；你們求恩，乞憐，請求照顧，用了多少方法總算沒有坐牢；你們撒謊，拍馬，投票，把自己縮進了一個規規矩矩的硬殼裏，或者吹噓自己，擺出一副稀薄如雲霧的慷慨和大度的模樣，這纔使你們的鄰人信任你，允許你們給他們做鞋子，製帽子，或上衣，或車輛，或讓你們給他們代買食品；你們在一隻破箱籠裏，或者在灰泥後面的一隻襪子裏，塞進了一把錢幣，或者塞在銀行的磚屋裏，那裏是更安全了；不管塞在哪裏，塞多少，更不管那數目是如何地微少，為了謹防患病而籌錢，反而把你們自己弄得病倒了。
有時我奇怪，何以我們如此輕率，我幾乎要說，竟然實行了罪惡昭彰的、從外國帶進黑奴來的奴役制度。有那麽多苛虐而熟練的奴隸主，奴役了南方和北方的奴隸。一個南方的監守人是毒辣的，而一個北方的監守人更加壞，可是你們自己做起奴隸的監守人來是最最壞的。談什麽——人的神聖！看大路上的趕馬人，日夜嚮市場趕路，在他們的內心裏，有什麽神聖的思想在激蕩着呢？他們的最高職責是給驢馬飼草飲水！和運輸的贏利相比較，他們的命運算什麽？他們還不是在給一位繁忙的紳士趕驢馬？他們有什麽神聖，有什麽不朽呢？請看他們匍伏潛行，一整天裏戰戰兢兢，毫不是神聖的，也不是不朽的，他們看到自己的行業，知道自己是屬於奴隸或囚徒這種名稱的人。和我們的自知之明相比較，公衆這暴戾的君主也顯得微弱無力。正是一個人怎麽看待自己，决定了此人的命運，指嚮了他的歸宿。要在西印度的州省中談論心靈與想象的自我解放，可沒有一個威勃爾福司來促進呢。再請想一想，這個大陸上的婦人們，編織着梳妝用的軟墊，以便臨死之日用，對她們自己的命運絲毫也不關心！仿佛磋跎時日還無損於永恆呢。
人類在過着靜靜的絶望的生活。所謂聽天由命，正是肯定的絶望。你從絶望的城市走到絶望的村莊，以水貂和麝鼠的勇敢來安慰自己。在人類的所謂遊戲與消遣底下，甚至都隱藏着一種凝固的、不知又不覺的絶望。兩者中都沒有娛樂可言，因為工作之後才能娛樂。可是不做絶望的事，纔是智慧的一種表徵。
當我們用教義問答法的方式，思考着什麽是人生的宗旨，什麽是生活的真正的必需品與資料時，仿佛人們還曾審慎從事地選擇了這種生活的共同方式，而不要任何別的方式似的。其實他們也知道，捨此而外，別無可以挑選的方式。但清醒健康的人都知道，太陽終古常新。拋棄我們的偏見，是永遠不會來不及的。無論如何古老的思想與行為，除非有確證，便不可以輕信。在今天人人附和或以為不妨默認的真理，很可能在明天變成虛無縹緲的氤氳，但還會有人認為是烏雲，可以將一陣甘霖灑落到大地上來。把老頭子認為辦不到的事來試辦一下，你往往辦成功了。老人有舊的一套，新人有新的一套。古人不知添上燃料便可使火焰不滅：新人卻把幹柴放在水壺底下：諺語說得好：“氣死老頭子”，現在的人還可以繞着地球轉，迅疾如飛鳥呢。老年人，雖然年紀一把，未必能把年輕的一代指導得更好，甚至他們未必夠得上資格來指導；因為他們雖有不少收穫，卻也已大有損失。我們可以這樣懷疑，即使最聰明的人，活了一世，他又能懂得多少生活的絶對價值呢。實際上，老年人是不會有什麽極其重要的忠告給予年輕人的。他們的經驗是這樣地支離破碎，他們的生活已經是這樣地慘痛的失敗過了，他們必須知道大錯都是自己鑄成的；也許，他們還保留若幹信心，這與他們的經驗是不相符合的，卻可惜他們已經不夠年輕了。我在這星球上生活了三十來年，還沒有聽到過老長輩們一個字，可謂有價值的，堪稱熱忱的忠告的。他們什麽也沒告訴過我，也許他們是不能告訴我什麽中肯的意見了。這裏就是生命，一個試驗，它的極大部分我都沒有體驗過；老年人體驗過了，但卻於我無用。如果我得到了我認為有用的任何經驗，我一定會這樣想的，這個經驗嘛，我的老師長們可是提都沒有提起過的呢。
有一個農夫對我說：“光吃蔬菜是活不了的，蔬菜不能供給你骨骼所需要的養料；”這樣他每天虔誠地分出了他的一部分時間，來獲得那種可以供給他骨骼所需的養料；他一邊說話，一邊跟在耕牛後面走，讓這條正是用蔬菜供養了它的骨骼的耕牛拖動着他和他的木犁不顧一切障礙地前進。某些事物，在某些場合，例如在最無辦法的病人中間，確是生活的必需資料，卻在另一些場合，衹變成了奢侈品，再換了別樣的場合，又可能是聞所未聞的東西。
有人以為人生的全部，無論在高峰之巔或低陷之𠔌，都已給先驅者走遍，一切都已被註意到了。依熙愛芙琳的話：“智慧的所羅門曾下令製定樹木中間應有的距離；羅馬地方官也曾規定，你可以多少次到鄰傢的地上去揀拾那落下來的橡實而不算你亂闖的，並曾規定多少份橡實屬於鄰人。”希波剋拉底甚至傳下了剪指甲的方法，剪得不要太短或太長，要齊手指頭。無疑問的，認為把生命的變易和歡樂都消蝕殆盡的那種煩謙和憂悶，是跟亞當同樣地古老的。但人的力量還從未被衡量出來呢；我們不能根據他已經完成的事來判斷他的力量，人做得少極了。不論你以前如何失敗過，“別感傷，我的孩子，誰能指定你去做你未曾做完的事呢？”
我們可以用一千種簡單的方法來測定我們的生命；舉例以明之，這是同一個太陽，它使我種的豆子成熟，同時竟然照耀了像我們的地球之類的整個太陽係。如果我記住了這一點，那就能預防若幹的錯誤。可是我鋤草時並沒有這樣去想。星星是何等神奇的三角形的尖頂！字宙各處，有多少遠遠隔開的不同的物種在同時思考着同一事實啊！正如我們的各種體製一樣，大自然和人生也是變化多端的。誰能預知別人的生命有着什麽遠景？難道還有比一瞬之間通過彼此的眼睛來觀察更偉大的奇跡嗎？我們本應該在一小時之內就經歷了這人世的所有時代；是的，甚至經歷了所有時代中所有的世界。歷史、詩歌、神話！——我不知道讀別人的經驗還有什麽能像讀這些這樣地驚人而又詳盡的。
凡我的鄰人說是好的，有一大部分在我靈魂中卻認為是壞的，至於我，如果要有所仟悔，我悔恨的反而是我的善良品行。是什麽魔鬼攫住了我，使我品行這樣善良的呢？老年人啊，你說了那些最聰明的話，你已經活了七十年了，而且活得很光榮，我卻聽到一個不可抗拒的聲音，要求我不聽你的話。新的世代拋棄前一代的業績，好像它們是些擱淺的船。
我想，我們可以泰然相信，比我們實際上相信的，更加多的事物。我們對自己的關懷能放棄多少，便可以忠實地給別人多少的關懷。大自然既能適應我們的長處，也能適應我們的弱點。有些人無窮無盡的憂患焦慮，成了一種幾乎醫治不好的疾病。我們又生就的愛誇耀我們所做工作的重要性；然而卻有多少工作我們沒有做！要是我們病倒了，怎麽辦呢？我們多麽謹慎！决心不依照信仰而生活，我們盡可能避免它，從早到晚警戒着，到夜晚違心地析禱着，然後把自己交托給未定的運數。我們生活得這樣周到和認真，崇奉自己的生活，而否定變革的可能。我們說，衹能這樣子生活呵；可是從圓心可以畫出多少條半徑來，而生活方式就有這樣的多。一切變革，都是值得思考的奇跡，每一剎那發生的事都可以是奇跡。孔夫予曾說：“知之為知之，不知為不知，是知也。”當一個人把他想象的事實提煉為他的理論之時，我預見到，一切人最後都要在這樣的基礎上建築起他們的生活來。
讓我們思考一下，我前面所說的大多數人的憂慮和煩惱又是些什麽，其中有多少是必須憂慮的，至少是值得小心對待的呢？雖然生活在外表的文明中，我們若能過一過原始性的、新開闢的墾區生活還是有益處的，即使僅僅為了明白生活必需品大致是些什麽，及如何才能得到這些必需品，甚至翻一翻商店裏的古老的流水賬，看看商店裏經常出售些什麽，又存積哪些貨物，就是看看最雜的雜貨究竟是一些什麽也好。時代雖在演進，對人類生存的基本原則卻還沒有發生多少影響：好比我們的骨骼，跟我們的祖先的骨骼，大約是區別不出來的。
所謂生活必需品，在我的意思中，是指一切人用了自己的精力收穫得來的那種物品：或是它開始就顯得很重要，或是由於長久的習慣，因此對於人生具有了這樣的重要性，即使有人嘗試着不要它，其人數也是很少的，他們或者是由於野蠻，或是出於窮睏，或者衹是為了一種哲學的緣故，纔這麽做的。對於許多人，具有這樣的意義的生活必需品衹有一種，即食物。原野上的牛衹需要幾英寸長的可咀嚼的青草和一些冷水；除非加上了它們要尋求的森林或山蔭的遮蔽。野獸的生存都衹需要食物和蔭蔽之處。但人類，在天時中，其生活之必需品可分為：食物、住宅、衣服和燃料；除非獲有這些，我們是無法自由地面對真正的人生問題的，更無法展望成就了。人不僅發明了屋子，還發明了衣服，煮熟了食物；可能是偶然發現了火焰的熱度，後來利用了它，起先它還是奢侈品哩，而到目前，烤火取暖也是必需品了。我們看到貓狗也同樣地獲得了這個第二天性。住得合適，穿得合適，就能合理地保持體內的熱度，若住得和穿得太熱的話，或烤火烤得太熱時，外邊的熱度高於體內的熱度，豈不是說在烘烤人肉了嗎？自然科學家達爾文說起火地島的居民，當他自己一夥人穿着衣服還烤火，尚且不覺得熱，那時裸體的野蠻人站得很遠，卻使人看到了大為吃驚，他們“被火焰烘烤得竟然汗流浹背了”。同樣，據說新荷蘭人赤裸身體而泰然自若地跑來跑去，歐洲人穿了衣服還顫抖呢。這些野蠻人的堅強和文明人的睿智難道不能夠相提並論嗎？按照李比希的說法，人體是一隻爐子，食物是保持肺部內燃的燃料。冷天我們吃得多，熱天少。動物的體溫是緩慢內燃的結果，而疾病和死亡則是在內燃得太旺盛的時候發生的；或者因為燃料沒有了，或者因為通風裝置出了毛病，火焰便會熄滅。自然，我們不能把生命的體溫與火焰混為一談，我們的譬喻就到此為止。所以，從上面的陳述來看，動物的生命這一個詞語可以跟動物的體溫作為同義語用：食物，被作為內燃的燃料，——煮熟食物的也是燃料，煮熟的食物自外吞入體內，也是為增加我們體內熱量的，——此外，住所和衣服，也是為了保持這樣地産生和吸收的熱量的。
所以，對人體而言，最大的必需品是取暖，保持我們的養身的熱量。我們是何等地辛苦，不但為了食物、衣着、住所，還為了我們的床鋪——那些夜晚的衣服而辛苦着，從飛鳥巢裏和飛鳥的胸脯上，我們掠奪羽毛，做成住所中的住所，就像鼴鼠住在地窟盡頭草葉的床中一樣！可憐人常常叫苦，說這是一個冰冷的世界；身體上的病同社會上的病一樣，我們大都歸罪於寒冷。在若幹地區，夏天給人以樂園似的生活。在那裏除了煮飯的燃料之外，別的燃料都不需要；太陽是他的火焰，太陽的光綫煮熟了果實；大體說來，食物的種類既多，而且又容易到手，衣服和住宅是完全用不到的，或者說有一半是用不到的。在目前時代，在我們國內，根據我自己的經驗，我覺得衹要有少數工具就足夠生活了，一把刀，一柄斧頭，一把鏟子，一輛手推車，如此而已，對於勤學的人，還要燈火和文具，再加上兒本書，這些已是次要的必需品，衹要少數費用就能購得。然而有些人就太不聰明，跑到另一個半球上，跑到蠻荒的、不衛生的區域裏，做了十年二十年生意，為了使他們活着，——就是說，為了使他們能舒適而溫暖——，最後回到新英格蘭來，還是死了。奢侈的人不單舒適了溫暖了，而且熱得不自然；我已經在前面說過，他們是被烘烤的，自然是很時髦地被烘烤的。
大部分的奢侈品，大部分的所謂生活的舒適，非但沒有必要，而且對人類進步大有妨礙。所以關於奢侈與舒適，最明智的人生活得甚至比窮人更加簡單和樸素。中國、印度、波斯和希臘的古哲學家都是一個類型的人物，外表生活再窮沒有，而內心生活再富不過。我們都不夠理解他們。然而可驚的一點是，我們居然對於他們知道得不少呢。近代那些改革傢，各民族的救星，也都如此。唯有站在我們所謂的甘貧樂苦這有利地位上，才能成為大公無私的聰明的觀察者。無論在農業，商業，文學或藝術中，奢侈生活産生的果實都是奢侈的。近來是哲學教授滿天飛，哲學家一個沒有。然而教授是可羨的，因為教授的生活是可羨的。但是，要做一個哲學家的活，不但要有精美的思想，不但要建立起一個學派來，而且要這樣地愛智慧，從而按照了智慧的指示，過着一種簡單、獨立、大度、信任的生活。解决生命的一些問題，不但要在理論上，而且要在實踐中。大學問傢和思想傢的成功，通常不是帝王式的，也不是英豪式的，反而是朝臣式的成功。他們應付生活，往往求其與習俗相符合，像他們的父輩一般，所以一點不能成為更好的人類的始祖。可是，為什麽人類總在退化？是什麽使得那些傢族沒落的？使國傢衰亡的糜侈是什麽性質的呢？在我們的生活中，我們能否確定自己並未這樣？哲學家甚至在生活的外形上也是處在時代前列的。他不像他同時代人那樣地吃喝、居住、穿着、取暖。一個人既是哲學家，怎會沒有比別人更好的養身的保持體溫的方法呢？
人已在我所描寫的幾種方式下暖和了，其次他要幹什麽呢？當然不會是同等樣的更多的溫暖。他不會要求更多更富足的食物，更大更光耀的房屋，更豐富更精美的衣服，更多更持久更灼熱的火爐等等了。他在得到了這些生命所必需的事物之後，就不會要過剩品而要有另一些東西；那就是說免於卑微工作的假期開始了，現在他要嚮生命邁進了。泥土看來是適宜於種子的，因為泥土使它的胚根嚮下延伸，然後它可以富有自信地使莖嚮上茁長。為什麽人在泥土裏紮了根之後，不能援例嚮天空伸展呢？——因為那些更高貴的植物的價值是由遠離地面的、最後在空氣和日光中結成的果實來評定的，而不是像對待那低卑蔬菜的那樣。蔬菜就算是兩年生的植物，那也衹是被培植到生好根以後，而且常被摘去頂枝，使得許多人在開花的季節都認不得它們。
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?
When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous, incessant, and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above? -- for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season.
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live -- if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers -- and, to some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not; -- but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint "No Admittance" on my gate.
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.
So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it. If it had concerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun.
For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward.
For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.
I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle-tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons.
In short, I went on thus for a long time (I may say it without boasting), faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. "Do you wish to buy any baskets?" he asked. "No, we do not want any," was the reply. "What!" exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, "do you mean to starve us?" Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off -- that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed -- he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man's to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other's while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one's while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy or living anywhere else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. I determined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender means as I had already got. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish.
I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time -- often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore; -- to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace everywhere, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization -- taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation; -- charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier -- there is the untold fate of La Prouse; -- universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phoenicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man -- such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.
I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be filled; though you must everywhere build on piles of your own driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth.
As this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer's character, until we hesitate to lay them aside without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this -- Who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentleman's legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master's premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men which belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she "was now in a civilized country, where ... people are judged of by their clothes." Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman's dress, at least, is never done.
A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet -- if a hero ever has a valet -- bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soires and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes -- his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.