Help me understand Walden

May 6, 2010 9:04 PM

What is Thoreau saying in this sentence from Walden?

"When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact of his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis."

Can someone explain the idea that this sentence is trying to communicate? Or, at least, what you think that it is saying? I've poked around online and couldn't find anyone who commented on it. It comes from the larger paragraph:

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.

posted by Suciu to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

Whoops! Quoted it wrong at the top (but not in the paragraph)... it should be:

When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact TO his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.
posted by Suciu at 9:06 PM on May 6, 2010

People continually reduce the uncertain, the mighty, the strange and mysterious, to "facts of their understanding": that is, they take what is unknown and beautiful ("a fact of the imagination") and trim it until it fits their woefully threadbare notion of what is sensible or possible. In constantly reducing imagination to what we can understand, we end up living lives that are all too sensible and unimaginative.

Thoreau was always searching for the mysteries that lay beyond humankind's thin idea of what is possible, right, or socially acceptable. Outside a man's meager lawn is a whole universe. One of my favorite passages, from "Ktaadn," explores this idea further:

It is difficult to conceive of a region uninhabited by man. We habitually presume his presence and influence everywhere. And yet we have not seen pure Nature, unless we have seen her thus vast and drear and inhuman, though in the midst of cities. Nature was here something savage and awful though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man's garden, but the unhandseled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever,—to be the dwelling of man, we say,—so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can.

We lay our lives down within a certain scope, and in the business of our daily lives hardly think to wonder about (let alone trust in) what might be above, below, or beyond that scope.
posted by cirripede at 9:25 PM on May 6, 2010

But more concisely: In the sentence you specify, Thoreau is just saying that, in the moment, we tend to reduce complexities into "facts" that we may readily apprehend. Our lives are made up of many such moments. Over the long run we live lives that are reasonable or sensible, but may not have much to do with truth.
posted by cirripede at 9:54 PM on May 6, 2010

I think the paragraph itself is a comment on how we baby ourselves in the world, when in truth our bodies and the nature of our being is already suited for it. We talk up our abilities, as if we have control over things (that we don't really have), yet we deny the most powerful thing we do have- which is a living creative presence that is occurring, and expanding exponentially each instant.

Ilya Prigogine once described the same phenomena on an essay on creativity. He contrasted the time-reversible, symmetric world of theoretical physics with irreversible, far-from equilibrium phenomena. In essence, he was drawing attention to the fact that only life can embody creative force.

Thoreau was writing about all this possibility radiating out from each discrete moment in time. The visual is like a koosh-ball, or pin-cushion. Acknowledgement of the full range of possibility, means that you are in effect out at the end of one of the pins, taking stock of all the other possibilities you could have taken instead. The only reason why you are out on that particular pin, instead of another one, is because you imagined yourself there- as a product of your own creative force, which is inherent to your nature (and which folks probably should've trusted in the first place) instead of all that 'anxiety and strain' some folks put themselves through.

Instead, they think they're going to get there, or explain how they've gotten there, through 'understanding'... as if this all can be explained by cold logic, symmetrical decision space and what-have-you. But it can't. He's saying he sees a lot of folks in the future worrying the hell out of themselves, needlessly, because their creative future, their greatest strength, is already inside of them.

By the end of the paragraph the dude's poor readers never know if he's calling them dumb or smart! Given the sentence prior, it would be funny if he were screwing with us, because you're right, the ideas are flowing well enough but then at the end the language stops making sense.
posted by iiniisfree at 10:30 PM on May 6, 2010

An attempt at exegesis of the paragraph, which admittedly in its original tends to wander:

I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.
Tr: one should trust one's intuition more, for it corresponds with nature...

We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.
Tr: we have to "let go" somewhat, lest we needlessly fight the changes inherent to nature...

Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength.
Tr: nature responds to our "letting go" in a positive way...

The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease.
Tr: stop fighting with the changes of nature, "let go" so that it might allow you to breathe...

We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick?
Tr: We're not that important in the grand scheme of things...

How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties.
This is a very difficult sentence to parse, especially the uncertainties, but here's my read: we try to outsmart life and nature, we don't really believe our prayers (our faith), and b/c we don't believe it we are actually afraid to explore the uncertainties of life we wish to will away.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change.
Tr: we are too stubborn, habituated in our lives in such a way that we are unable to allow nature and the mystery of her changes guide us.

This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre.
Tr: be flexible in order to allow nature's changes guide us; do not try to force things.

All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Tr: change is at the heart of nature, and is the very mystery which we must allow into our lives.

Confucius said, "To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."
Tr: similar to the Socratic doctrine (wisdom as the clarity to admit one's ignorance about the ultimate), it is best to see that most of what is, is that which we cannot control through rational will.

When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.
Tr: the primacy of intuition and the imagination is more important than the reductive instincts of intellection and cognitive understanding, even though most people prefer the false certainties of the latter; allow imagination to act as the irreducible guide to the changes inherent in nature. The life closest to the truth is the one that does not attempt to reduce the imagination to mere understanding. Also, curiously, the language in this last sentence (the one you asked about) seems to suggest Kant (i.e. Kant's notion of understanding), but I have no idea if Thoreau read Kant (I assume he did), or (more importantly) if this is any way an attempt to either argue against the conceptualism of Kant, or perhaps for Kant's notion of the thing-in-itself (for Thoreau nature would seem to be in some sense fundamentally unknowable and numinous, only glimpsed through deep Tao-like immersion in her changes).
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 10:46 PM on May 6, 2010

Put another way: there is value in uncertainty, value in not knowing, value in admitting ignorance, and value in not insisting on attempting to reduce through rationality the infinite dexterity of the imagination (which we need in order to cope with life's and nature's continual flux).
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 10:59 PM on May 6, 2010

But the actual quote isn't only saying that "a fact of the imagination" is reduced by being converted to "understanding," but that once it has been done, it's contagious and others will now have to do it as well.
posted by Obscure Reference at 3:56 AM on May 7, 2010

When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.

Another way to look at this is as an observation that people, over time, tend to forget that they have invented and imagined the particular worlds they find themselves in and the roles they play in them, and that the niches they've dug for themselves are each only one of an infinite number of possible niches. Our focus on the lives and roles we've chosen becomes so deeply ingrained that we forget that these things were choices at all; we become numb to other possibilities, and our own roles seem ever more important than they really are.
posted by jon1270 at 4:14 AM on May 7, 2010

"When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis."

I guess it I want to start my short interpretation by saying that our imagination is greater than our understanding--or, that it could be. In that little snippet Thoreau talks about at least one person who does use their (probably superior) innate faculties of imagination. I think Thoreau is expressing a rather humanistic concern for the many, that they will not attempt imagination with the productions of the one, the only imaginative one of the many, readily at hand.

That one brought out some thing, idea, or whatever, by imaginative process, from the limitless possibilities of nature, then shaped it, 'reduced' it to bring it into cohesion with our limited understanding(but, thereby altering it slightly), to benefit all men(or just themselves, if that person was a selfish bastard).

Whatever 'fact' came about is but another step forward for that person who continually presses the boundaries of our understanding farther out. The 'basis' of his life lies in the exploration of the possibilities of imagination: clearer insight into human character(especially, our own), more precise knowledge of the natural world, technological advances, or what have you.

In contrast, the of the people's lives are based on these facts of understanding, the bounded, rigid distilliation of the greater reality. While it isn't wrong that other people benefit, it is a tragedy that people who could create and imagine, don't. They stop at the understanding that is handed to them. And, this unimaginativeness(laziness, really) and (Hear the shrieks of all the alternative kids in high schools across America.) unoriginality furtheretards their perception of a living(read: constantly changing) world around them and what they can know about it.
posted by honeybunny at 4:58 AM on May 7, 2010

When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.

I am confused by the logical structure of the sentence. What is the word "when" doing? My brain wants to read it as "if" or "because," but that's probably a mistake.

IF one man has reduced a fact of the imagination ... THEN I foresee that all men ..."

BECAUSE one man has ... IT FOLLOWS THAT all men ..."

Why would concluding that ONE man does something imply something about ALL men?

Or am I totally misunderstanding the logic?
posted by grumblebee at 6:40 AM on May 7, 2010

grumblebee, you are reading it correctly. Thoreau could just as well have said "if" and "then," but that might have been a bit too lucid for him! However, this phrasing does not strike me as unusual for nineteenth-century American prose. It was a gnarly time.

The construction he uses—through one man's choices we may divine a broader law of human affairs—is very typical of Thoreau, as Emerson noted with some annoyance in his memoir of their friendship:

The tendency to magnify the moment, to read all the laws of Nature in the one object or one combination under your eye, is of course comic to those who do not share the philosopher's perception of identity. To him there was no such thing as size. The pond was a small ocean; the Atlantic, a large Walden Pond. He referred every minute fact to cosmical laws.

posted by cirripede at 4:54 PM on May 7, 2010

I'd read that graph to say broadly: We think we know ourselves and what is possible. But, we are capable of so much more if only we would stop insisting that what we are in our view of ourselves is all that we are or ever can be. Somebody who learns to transcend the limitations that we place upon ourselves will be a leader of men.
posted by willnot at 5:20 PM on May 7, 2010