October 4, 2020
When I have made a visit where my expectations are not met, I feel as if I owed my hosts an apology for troubling them so. If I am disappointed, I find that I have no right to visit them. I have always found that what are called the best of manners are the worst, for they are simply the shell without the meat. They cover no life at all. They are the universal slaveholders, who treat men as things. Nobody holds you more cheap than the man of manners. They are marks by the help of which the wearers ignore you and remain concealed themselves. Are they such great characters that they feel obliged to make the journey of life incognito? Sailors swear; gentlemen make their manners to you.
All men sympathize by their lower natures; the few, only, by their higher. The appetites of the mistress are commonly the same as those of her servant, but her society is commonly more select. The help may have some of the tenderloin, but she must eat it in the kitchen.
P. M. — To Conantum.
How interesting now, by wall-sides and on open springy hillsides, the large, straggling tufts of the dicksonia fern above the leaf-strewn greensward, the cold fall-green sward! They are unusually preserved about the Corner Spring, considering the earliness of this year.
Long, handsome lanceolate green fronds, pointing in every direction, recurved and full of fruit, intermixed with yellowish and sere brown and shrivelled ones. The whole clump, perchance, strewn with fallen and withered maple leaves and overtopped by now withered and unnoticed osmundas.
Their lingering greenness so much the more noticeable now that the leaves (generally) have changed. They affect us as if they were evergreen, such persistent life and greenness in the midst of their own decay.
Their lingering greenness so much the more noticeable now that the leaves (generally) have changed. They affect us as if they were evergreen, such persistent life and greenness in the midst of their own decay.
I do not notice them so much in summer. No matter how much withered they are, with withered leaves that have fallen on them, moist and green they spire above them, not fearing the frosts, fragile as they are.
Their greenness so much the more interesting because so many have already fallen and we know that the first severer frost will cut off them too. In the summer greenness is cheap; now it is something comparatively rare and is the emblem of life to us.
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be.
In what book is this world and its beauty described?
Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty?
You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are, and you will have no communication to make to the Royal Society.
If it were required to know the position of the fruit-dots or the character of the indusium, nothing could be easier than to ascertain it; but if it is required that you be affected by ferns, that they amount to anything, signify anything, to you, that they be another sacred scripture and revelation to you, helping to redeem your life, this end is not so surely accomplished.
In the one case, you take a sentence and analyze it, you decide if it is printed in large [sic] primer or small pica; if it is long or short, simple or compound, and how many clauses it is composed of; if the i's are all dotted, or some for variety without dots; what the color and composition of the ink and the paper; and it is considered a fair or mediocre sentence accordingly, and you assign its place among the sentences you have seen and kept specimens of. But as for the meaning of the sentence, that is as completely overlooked as if it had none. This is the Chinese, the Aristotelean, method.
But if you should ever perceive the meaning you would disregard all the rest. So far science goes, and it punctually leaves off there, — tells you finally where it is to be found and its synonyms, and rests from its labors.
This is a fine and warm afternoon, Indian-summer like, but we have not had cold enough before it.
Birds are now seen more numerously than before, as if called out by the fine weather, probably many migrating birds from the north. I see and hear probably flocks of grackles with their split and shuffling note, but no red-wings for a long time; chip-birds (but with out chestnut crowns; is that the case with the young ?), bay-wings on the walls and fences, and the yellow-browed sparrows.
Hear the pine warblers in the pines, about the needles, and see them on the ground and on rocks, with a yellow ring round the eye (!), reddish legs, slight whitish bar on wings. Going over the large hill side stubble-field west of Holden Wood, I start up a large flock of shore larks; hear their sveet sveet and sveet sveet sveet, and see their tails dark beneath. They are very wary, and run in the stubble for the most part invisible, while one or two appear to act the sentinel on rock, peeping out behind it perhaps, and give their note of alarm, when away goes the whole flock.
Such a flock circled back and forth several times over my head, just like ducks reconnoitring before they alight. If you look with a glass you are surprised to see how alert these spies are. When they alight in some stubbly hollow they set a watch or two on the rocks to look out for foes. They have dusky bills and legs.
The birds seem to delight in these first fine days of the fall, in the warm, hazy light, — robins, bluebirds (in families on the almost bare elms), phcebes, and probably purple finches.
I hear half-strains from many of them, as the song sparrow, bluebird, etc., and the sweet phe-be of the chickadee.
Now the year itself begins to be ripe, ripened by the frost, like a persimmon.
The maidenhair fern at Conantum is apparently unhurt by frost as yet.
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be.
In what book is this world and its beauty described?
Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty?
You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are, and you will have no communication to make to the Royal Society.
If it were required to know the position of the fruit-dots or the character of the indusium, nothing could be easier than to ascertain it; but if it is required that you be affected by ferns, that they amount to anything, signify anything, to you, that they be another sacred scripture and revelation to you, helping to redeem your life, this end is not so surely accomplished.
In the one case, you take a sentence and analyze it, you decide if it is printed in large [sic] primer or small pica; if it is long or short, simple or compound, and how many clauses it is composed of; if the i's are all dotted, or some for variety without dots; what the color and composition of the ink and the paper; and it is considered a fair or mediocre sentence accordingly, and you assign its place among the sentences you have seen and kept specimens of. But as for the meaning of the sentence, that is as completely overlooked as if it had none. This is the Chinese, the Aristotelean, method.
But if you should ever perceive the meaning you would disregard all the rest. So far science goes, and it punctually leaves off there, — tells you finally where it is to be found and its synonyms, and rests from its labors.
This is a fine and warm afternoon, Indian-summer like, but we have not had cold enough before it.
Birds are now seen more numerously than before, as if called out by the fine weather, probably many migrating birds from the north. I see and hear probably flocks of grackles with their split and shuffling note, but no red-wings for a long time; chip-birds (but with out chestnut crowns; is that the case with the young ?), bay-wings on the walls and fences, and the yellow-browed sparrows.
Hear the pine warblers in the pines, about the needles, and see them on the ground and on rocks, with a yellow ring round the eye (!), reddish legs, slight whitish bar on wings. Going over the large hill side stubble-field west of Holden Wood, I start up a large flock of shore larks; hear their sveet sveet and sveet sveet sveet, and see their tails dark beneath. They are very wary, and run in the stubble for the most part invisible, while one or two appear to act the sentinel on rock, peeping out behind it perhaps, and give their note of alarm, when away goes the whole flock.
Such a flock circled back and forth several times over my head, just like ducks reconnoitring before they alight. If you look with a glass you are surprised to see how alert these spies are. When they alight in some stubbly hollow they set a watch or two on the rocks to look out for foes. They have dusky bills and legs.
The birds seem to delight in these first fine days of the fall, in the warm, hazy light, — robins, bluebirds (in families on the almost bare elms), phcebes, and probably purple finches.
I hear half-strains from many of them, as the song sparrow, bluebird, etc., and the sweet phe-be of the chickadee.
Now the year itself begins to be ripe, ripened by the frost, like a persimmon.
The maidenhair fern at Conantum is apparently unhurt by frost as yet.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 4, 1859
In what book is this world and its beauty described? See September 7, 1851 ("I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this afternoon.")
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know . . . simply to perceive that such things are. See November 21, 1850(" I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it ."); February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see"); November 30, 1858 (""In my account of this bream I cannot go a hair's breadth beyond the mere statement that it exists.").
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be. In what book is this world and its beauty described? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty? You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are, and you will have no communication to make to the Royal Society. . . .
In what book is this world and its beauty described? See September 7, 1851 ("I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this afternoon.")
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know . . . simply to perceive that such things are. See November 21, 1850(" I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it ."); February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see"); November 30, 1858 (""In my account of this bream I cannot go a hair's breadth beyond the mere statement that it exists.").
It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be. In what book is this world and its beauty described? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty? You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are, and you will have no communication to make to the Royal Society. . . .
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