56 
WALDEN. 
this , for the students, or those who desire to he bene¬ 
fited by it, even to lay the foundation themselves. The 
student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement 
by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man 
obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defraud¬ 
ing himself of the experience which alone can make leis¬ 
ure fruitful. “ But/’ says one, “ you do not mean that 
the students should go to work with their hands instead 
of their heads ? ” I do not mean that exactly, but I mean 
something which he might think a good deal like that; I 
mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, 
while the community supports them at this expensive 
game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How 
could youths better learn to live than by at once trying 
the experiment of living? Methinks this would exer¬ 
cise their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished 
a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, 
for instance, I would not pursue the common course, 
which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of 
some professor, where any thing is professed and prac¬ 
tised but the art of life; — to survey the world through a 
telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural 
eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is 
made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to 
discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the 
motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite 
himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm 
all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a 
drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the 
most at the end of a month, — the boy who had made 
his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and 
smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this, 
— or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy 
