Alex Kannel
ENH 241
In The Spirit of Thinking


“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds ... A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Devine Soul which also inspires all men” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).
In the early 19th century a group of scholars began a movement that pushed individualized thinking. This would later come to be known as Transcendentalism, these men and women even went as far as to form a group that not only focused a literature but it became a culture and a way of living. They philosophized, wrote poetry, essays, and made speeches to each other. “They believed that the spiritual state would be realized through the individual’s intuition” (Wikipedia). They also related closely to English Romantics who also derived their thinking from the inner and spiritual human. Transcendentalists were strong in their thinking and connected with people and nature in their very influential ways, they really believed in personal identity and connecting with that.
Henry David Thoreau is a well known Transcendentalist best known for his book Walden; he was a very famous poet and philosopher as well. He was mentored by another famous transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom he actually names in his text in Walden. Walden is compromised of eighteen chapters describing Thoreau’s life while living at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts where he supported himself for two years. He talks about living off the land by planting a bean field to make a little money, so he could build himself his cabin. Thoreau spends much of his attention on the nature and surroundings that become his life in these two years and the influence they have over his spiritual being.
“Certainly self-reliance is economic and social in Walden Pond: it is the principle that in matters of financial and interpersonal relations, independence is more valuable than neediness” (Sparknotes 1). Many critics believe that Thoreau was putting into experiment exactly what Emerson had written in his essay Self-Reliance. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Walden). Here Thoreau even tells us that these were exactly his intentions. He wanted to live by only the means necessary to know that when the end came he had fulfilled everything he had been set here on Earth to do. He had been as close to nature as he could. This is also a good example of self-confidence which can be defined as “feeling comfortable with the uncertainty and not knowing what the outcome might be” (Definition).
Webster's online dictionary defines identity as, "the distinguishing character or personality of an individual." This theme is heavily influential throughout Walden and many of the other Transcendentalist writers. This is what they were striving for in their ideas, individuality. “These come to me days and nights and go from me again, but they are not the me myself. Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am” (Whitman). In this example from Whitman’s Song of Myself he has just described all of these events that go in and out of his life and have affected him; however, what is left in the end is still himself and that is the important part. These events might have pushed him back and forth, but his identity is still the same. This is the same idea in Thoreau’s Walden; he take’s a step back from society to gain more independence and remember what is really important in life. He determines the value of the individual’s character is what matters not the monetary status or material things. “It’s not worth while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar” (Walden). He comes to the conclusion that no matter where you go you will still be in the company of yourself, so that is who you have to come to terms with.