Walden Chapter 11 Notes - Higher Laws

Walden Chapter 11 Notes - Higher Laws

1. The author finds himself having an instinct toward a higher, or as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and the author respects both.

   • We are conscious of animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers.

2. People who work in the woods get to really appreciate and experience nature more than a poet who comes into nature with expectation.

   • Author sees a change coming where people are now being more humane when hunting.
     • Author used to not care about hunting and fishing but now he is more humane about it.
       • No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds it life by the same tenure that he does.
         • People who hunted as boys but do not anymore should go to heaven.
         • Author believes as the human race improves, eating animals will not continue.

3. Author describes how for his diet he prefers eating just simple bread and potatoes over cooked animal because it did not sit well with him.

   • Author has worked in a kitchen before so he does have experience on the topic of diet.
   • Who has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no share?
     • It sometimes feels like food helps to fuel genius.

4. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.

5. Author believes that water is the only drink for a wise man.

6. Our whole life is startlingly mortal

7. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us.

   • All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one
     • The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity.
     • We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature.
     • Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his now.
     • If you take the time to really think about life, you should let your mind descend into your body and redeem the body, and treat yourself with ever increasing respect (live simply).