Chapter 5 Transcendentalism in Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”
5.1 Historical Background
5.2.4 The Over-Soul: Access to the Universe, Nature, and Others
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5.2.3 “I Must Get off Him First”: Access to Others
Believing that individual souls can understand one another, Thoreau displays his sympathy for others in the case of not “sitting upon another man’s shoulders” (153).
He wishes to avoid making himself complicit in injustice. He claims:
“If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too” (153).
Thoreau refuses to seek pleasure at the expense of his social inferiors or to take advantage of those who bear unfair burdens. He sympathizes with the suffering of others and does not want to be an oppressor; he exhibits his consideration by refusing to participate the wickedness that deprives others of their freedom and rights, viewing mutual consideration and sympathetic tolerance as fundamental to treating others well. Without accessing others, one unconsciously participates in atrocity and
disgrace; by accessing others, one can forge links between individual souls and to the Soul. The ability to understand one another is a vital component of the Over-Soul; by refusing to add to the burdens other bear and thereby allowing them to pursue their goals, Thoreau demonstrates and exercises the spirit of sympathy and accessing others.
5.2.4 The Over-Soul: Access to the Universe, Nature, and Others
As a mystical dimension of Transcendentalism, the principle of the Over-Soul emphasizes the direct link between the universal soul and individual souls, facilitating access to the Universe, Nature, and other people. In writing about access to the
Universe, Thoreau inverts the conventional view of imprisonment, asserting that physical incarceration cannot deter him from pursuing spiritual freedom. In his explanation of the access to Nature, he endows the huckleberrying expedition with a
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double meaning: prioritization of Nature over civilization and an enactment of alternative politics. In his discussion of access to others, he highlights sympathy and consideration for other people as the basis for his refusal to implicate himself in oppressive behaviors. With faith in the Over-Soul, Thoreau unconstrainedly connects the Universe, Nature, and others. Thoreau’s description of his night in jail and the huckleberrying excursion and his explanation of his commitment to sympathetic identification exemplify the mystical dimensions of Transcendentalism, giving “Civil Disobedience” greater profundity and richness.
5.3 “A Higher Law Than I”: Inner Divinity in “Civil Disobedience”
In this section, I examine Thoreauvian civil disobedience through the second Transcendentalist Principle – Inner Divinity – a moral belief in the innate divinity of all individuals. I first discuss Thoreauvian conscience and then proceed to
Thoreauvian Higher Law. I argue that Thoreau’s belief in Inner Divinity leads him to emphasize conscience and warn that those who ignore their consciences will bleed spiritually. I also contend that Thoreau uses discussions of the law, tribute-money, and taxation to concretize the spiritual notion of Higher Law. Thus, in explaining the importance of conscience and Higher Law, Thoreau integrates the notion of Inner Divinity to “Civil Disobedience.”
5.3.1 “Why Has Every Man a Conscience?”: Thoreauvian Conscience
Whereas Emerson optimistically celebrates individual holiness, Thoreau focuses on how this divinity manifests as the conscience on both personal and communal levels, demonstrating people’s prevailing unwillingness to abide by the dictates of conscience. For Thoreau, the belief that everyone is sacred implies that everyone possesses a conscience. He contends that, on a personal level, only when individuals exert their consciences do they qualify as citizens; on a communal level, only when
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societies are comprised of honest people can they be conscientious. Thoreau also points out that the failure to act according to one’s Inner Divinity compromises individual morality. Juxtaposing soldiers who serve the state with their bodies, officials who serve the state with their minds, and heroes who serve the state with their consciences, Thoreau explains that reputation is not necessarily equal to
morality; being conscientious remains the priority no matter what position one holds.
5.3.1.1 “Be Men First, and Subjects Afterward”: the Importance of Conscience I theorize the importance of Thoreauvian conscience into three levels: conscience 1) manifests divine humanity on a general level, 2) reflects an individual’s duty on a personal level, and 3) contributes to society on a communal level. On a general level, Thoreau believes that conscience defines humanity: it enables individuals to
distinguish right from wrong, and thereby differentiates humans from animals. On a personal level, exerting conscience is an individual privilege and duty, and thus individuals should not elevate laws above conscience because laws are not necessarily conscientious. Thoreau writes: “I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward” (147). Thoreau’s distinction between men (individuals) and subjects comes down to conscience; to be a man requires a conscience whereas to be a subject
requires obedience. Individuals who act according to their consciences demonstrate their Inner Divinity: “Must the citizen ever for a moment . . . resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then?” (147). Thoreau contends that Inner Divinity makes acting conscientiously a moral responsibility, and an individual should not surrender this responsibility to legislation or authority. On a communal level, Thoreau views acting according to one’s conscience as a societal duty. Only a collection of honest people can make an upright society: “It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a
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corporation with a conscience” (147). Organizations are lifeless and inorganic, dependent on the people that comprise and manipulate them; thus, unconscientious individuals create indifferent communities, whereas upright individuals create fair ones. To build a conscientious state, citizens must understand their responsibility to enact their Inner Divinity.
5.3.1.2 “A Sort of Blood Shed”: the Wounded Conscience
In addition to describing the benefits of acting conscientiously, Thoreau details the three negative phases of failing to follow one’s conscience: indifference,
unmorality, and the wounded conscience. Many people who ignore their consciences commit wrongdoings, deviating from their inherent divinity and undergoing a gradual moral decay to which they become accustomed. This begins with a change in
mentality. When people violate their consciences for the first time, they feel the
“blush of sin” (153), a sense of guilt slowly replaced by an attitude of numb
“indifference” (153). This indifferent attitude causes people to swerve away from their Inner Divinity. A change in opinion regarding issues of morality follows the shift in mentality. People start to treat the “immoral” (153) as the “unmoral” (153): the former refers to something unconscientious, whereas the latter denotes something completely unrelated to the conscience. For example, slaveholding contradicted Thoreau’s belief in equal human rights for all, and he treated it as a moral issue, but some of his contemporaries regarded slavery as unrelated to conscience, merely a matter of politics and law about which that they could do nothing. In other words, by attributing the injustice (immoral) to legislation (unmoral), those people abdicated moral responsibility. Finally, people who regard immoral affairs as irrelevant to their consciences abandon the track of Inner Divinity, and this departure makes their “real manhood and immortality flow out” (158), wounding their consciences. “Is there not a
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sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?” (158), Thoreau asks. Once an individual deviates from his or her Inner Divinity, he or she bleeds spiritually, which is worse than a physical wound. In short, people who ignore their consciences undergo consequences in three stages: first, they adopt indifferent attitudes; second, they develop unmoral opinions; and, finally, they inflict wounds on their consciences.
5.3.1.3 Cases of Wounded and Healthy Conscience
Thoreau juxtaposes soldiers, politicians, and heroes to exemplify the differences between failed and healthy consciences. First, he claims that public servants – “the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables” (148) – exert the least conscience but receive the most praise for being “good citizens” (148). Soldiers, for example, may be “peaceably inclined” (147), but they cannot freely exercise their consciences because they must obey their superiors, carry out military duties, and be complicit in violence, which runs “against their common sense and consciences” (147). That soldiers are considered good even though they ignore their consciences is, in Thoreau’s view, ironic. He contends that the quality of one’s citizenship should be defined according to how strongly one adheres to one’s conscience rather than according to one’s level of obedience. If a soldier cannot act according to his conscience, he is not a good citizen; the more unconscientious tasks a soldier performs, the more he wounds his conscience.
Second, Thoreau contends that “legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders” (148) – namely, officials in a broad sense – do not follow their
consciences either. He argues that they “rarely make any moral distinctions” (148) and unintentionally “serve the devil . . . as God” (148). Unlike soldiers who mostly serve the state with their bodies, officials serve it “chiefly with their heads” (148). Soldiers give up their consciences and deviate from Inner Divinity passively and
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unconsciously, whereas officials use their heads but still choose to yield to “policy and expediency” (168), and thus actively, consciously, and deliberately depart from Inner Divinity. However, despite their lack of conscientiousness, many people regard officials as “benefactor[s] and philanthropist[s]” (148). Soldiers and officials are the same when it comes to their failure to act conscientiously and their complicity with violence; they ironically receive the most praise for their good citizenship – praise that is incompatible with their degree of conscientiousness.
Thoreau’s third category of people, heroes, who serve as counterexamples to the previous two categories. They are highly conscientious individuals who typically have poor reputations during their lives and only receive accurate appraisals posthumously.
The “heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers” (148) serve their nations conscientiously, but are misunderstood as “useless and selfish” (148) by their contemporaries and treated as “enem[ies]” (148) of their states. Examples include Jesus Christ, Nicolas Copernicus, Martin Luther, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington (154).
Thoreau juxtaposes the three groups to demonstrate that reputation does not necessarily correspond to conscientiousness: soldiers and officials earn worldly praise, but bleed spiritually, whereas heroes incur criticism, but their consciences shine. Thoreau thus shows that earthly reputation is exterior, transient, and temporal, but conscientiousness is an interior, permanent, and universal form of moral action.
5.3.2 “A Higher Law Than I”: Thoreauvian Higher Law
Thoreau prioritizes Higher Law over civil law when the two conflict. He connects civil law with the ignorant masses and Higher Law with divine spirituality.
“What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I”
(162). The multitude tends to follow the civil law and to compel others to do the same, but Thoreau thinks independently and follows the spiritual law. In “Slavery in
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Massachusetts,” he claims, “What is wanted is men . . . who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority” (184). As an adherent to the notion of Inner Divinity, Thoreau disavows civil law and only recognizes Higher Law.
Higher Law refers to a spiritual law that functions as a regulator of the world and a guide for conscientious individuals. I contend that Thoreau’s discussions of the law, tribute-money, and taxes in “Civil Disobedience” explain his conception of Higher Law. By comparing and contrasting 1) Caesarian coin and Jesus’s coin and 2) poll taxes and spiritual taxes, Thoreau distinguishes Higher Law from civil law and articulates his view of spiritual responsibility.
Thoreau refers to the Biblical episode in which Jesus discusses Caesarian coins to distinguish between physical and spiritual laws. In Matthew 22: 17-21, Jesus asks his followers to show him tribute money; one displays a penny with an image of Caesar, which represents earthly sovereignty. Jesus refuses this coin, requesting, instead, spiritual tribute. Thoreau interprets this episode as follows:
If you use money which has the image of Caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Caesar’s government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it; “Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God those things which are God’s.” (159)
The Caesarian coin is physical money and thus symbolizes civil law and human civilization, emerging from tradition and expediency. On the other hand, Jesus’s coin is metaphysical, expressing a spiritual code derived from Inner Divinity. Whereas the Caesarian kingdom and currency are artificial, temporal, and local, their spiritual counterparts are sacred, permanent, and universal. Thoreau agrees with Jesus that there are two kinds of coins, and he prefers the spiritual one to the physical one, just as he favors Higher Law to civil law.
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Besides distinguishing between physical and metaphysical coin, Thoreau also differentiates between substantial and spiritual taxes. Regarding his disobedience to an unjust law, Thoreau says: “I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax”
(161). Although he refused to pay the poll tax in the material world, he paid a spiritual tax in the immaterial world. By refusing to pay the poll tax, he disobeyed the state and risked incarceration; however, Thoreau prioritized spiritual duty, considering the penalty of physical taxation lighter than spiritual taxation: “It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State, than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case” (160). The price of disobedience to a secular authority is substantial money and temporary loss of physical freedom, but the cost of violating Higher Law is the decay of Inner Divinity. By disobeying civil law and following Higher Law, Thoreau pays his spiritual tax.