August 8, 2014
5 A.M. –– Awoke into a rosy fog. I was enveloped by the skirts of Aurora.
The small dewdrops rest on the Asclepias pulchra by the roadside like gems and the flower has lost half its beauty when they are shaken off,
I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections, and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.
I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections, and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.
No man ever makes a
discovery, even an observation of the least importance, but he is advertised of
the fact by a
joy that surprises him.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1852
Doubleness. See A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers:
Walden (Solitude) ("With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the driftwood in the steam, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. ") See also
"My life has been the poem I would have writ,
But I could not both live and utter it."
I see my shadow
as a second person who
sits down on this rock.
June 11, 1851
August 17, 1851 ("How can that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself reflected?"); November 18, 1851 ("A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going."); April 28, 1860 (" Now that the hum of insects begins to be heard []You seem to have a great companion with you. . . as if it were the noise of your own thinking.")
The tragedy of life - a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only. See December 15, 1852 ("But is this fact of "our life " commonly but a puff of air, a flash in the pan, a smoke, a nothing? It does not afford arena for a tragedy.")
Discovery/ perception of truth. See 2/27/1851 ("a novel and grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we had called knowledge before; an indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.”); April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. When the phenomenon was not observed, it was not at all. I think that no man ever takes an original or detects a principle, without experiencing an inexpressible, as quite infinite and sane, pleasure, which advertises him of the dignity of that truth he has perceived.”). See also September 4-7, 1851(" All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.”); September 24 1854("The perception of truth, as of the duration of time, etc., produces a pleasurable sensation”) November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it.”); January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. His observations make a chain. He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”); August 22, 1860 ("I never find a remarkable Indian relic but I have first divined its existence, and planned the discovery of it. Frequently I have told myself distinctly what it was to be before I found it.")
"I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me…." Charles Darwin, Autobiography 99 (Norton paperback edition reissued 2005)"It is impossible to solve a difficulty except by discovering a truth." Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8
I am conscious of
my double to whom I am
a kind of fiction.
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau"A book, each page written in its own season,out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2024
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