University of Virginia Library

Thinking Alone

And this was Thoreau's biggest
blind spot. Yes, as Dante Germino
has written, "We think as we die,
alone." But that thinking is not
wholly our own. The "State" is
more than our government: it refers
also to the climate of opinion
which shrouds every human word -
if only because it is a word - and
every human thought that is
expressed in words.

Listen to the deacon if you see
the play, for he reminds us that
Thoreau's pupils are not his but the
state's - and not deliberately by
some plot, but by the order of
social things. Unlike Thoreau, most
of us live in town, and unlike
Thoreau most of us are aware of
that fact. We know that the state
can never be just our "neighbor." It
has a visible claim to our taxes and
an invisible claim to our consciences.

Yet Thoreau's image of the
thoroughly individual man - if it
must be only a dream - remains
also, I think, a rather sad reminder
of something which perhaps ought
to be but cannot: like Rousseau's
Geneva: le temps perdu, but which
was not even lost: it never was.