No man writes on lichens without having something to say.

March 1.

March 1, 2019

Linnæus, speaking of the necessity of precise and adequate terms in any science, after naming some which he invented for botany, says, “Termini praeservarunt Anatomiam, Mathesin, Chemiam, ab idiotis; Medicinam autem eorum defectus conculcavit.” (Terms (well defined) have preserved anatomy, mathematics, and chemistry from idiots; but the want of them has ruined medicine.)

But I should say that men generally were not enough interested in the first-mentioned sciences to meddle with and degrade them.

There is no interested motive to induce them to listen to the quack in mathematics, as they have to attend to the quack in medicine; yet chemistry has been converted into alchemy, and astronomy into astrology.

However, I can see that there is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses, for instance. No one masters them so as to use them in writing on the subject without being far better informed than the rabble about it.

New books are not written on chemistry or cryptogamia of as little worth comparatively as are written on the spiritual phenomena of the day.

No man writes on lichens, using the terms of the science intelligibly, without having something to say, but every one thinks himself competent to write on the relation of the soul to the body, as if that were a phænogamous subject.

After having read various books on various subjects for some months, I take up a report on Farms by a committee of Middlesex Husbandmen, and read of the number of acres of bog that some farmer has redeemed, and the number of rods of stone wall that he has built, and the number of tons of hay he now cuts, or of bushels of corn or potatoes he raises there, and I feel as if I had got my foot down on to the solid and sunny earth, the basis of all philosophy, and poetry, and religion even.

I have faith that the man who re deemed some acres of land the past summer redeemed also some parts of his character. I shall not expect to find him ever in the almshouse or the prison. He is, in fact, so far on his way to heaven.

When he took the farm there was not a grafted tree on it, and now he realizes something handsome from the sale of fruit. These, in the absence of other facts, are evidence of a certain moral worth.

 H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 1, 1852

There is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses. See August 20, 1851 ("Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system."); January 15, 1853 ("I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it, and it has suggested less to me and I have made less use of it. I now first feel as if I had got hold of it.")); March 23, 1853 ("One studies books of science merely to learn the language of naturalists , — to be able to communicate with them."); August 29, 1858 ( "With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of 'the thing."); Compare March 5, 1858 ("Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race."); February 12, 1860 ("Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term which always our ignorance has imposed on it. Natural objects and phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us. "). 

 [On Feb 3 Thoreau had checked out Linnaeus' Philosophia botanica by Carl von Linnaeus from Harvard Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 290).] 

No man writes on lichens without having something to say. See February 7, 1859 ("I expect that the lichenist will have the keenest relish for Nature in her every-day mood and dress.. . . To study lichens is to get a taste of earth and health, to go gnawing the rails and rocks. This product of the bark is the essence of all times. The lichenist extracts nutriment from the very crust of the earth. A taste for this study is an evidence of titanic health, a sane earthiness. It makes not so much blood as soil of life. It fits a man to deal with the barrenest and rockiest experience. . . . — so the lichenist loves the tripe of the rock, — that which eats and digests the rocks. He eats the eater. “Eat-all” may be his name. A lichenist fats where others starve. His provender never fails."),