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“May we not see God?”: Henry David Thoreau’s Doctrine of Spiritual Senses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2021

Lydia Willsky-Ciollo
Lydia Willsky-Ciollo*
Affiliation:
Fairfield University; [email protected]
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Abstract

This article argues that Henry David Thoreau believed in the essential unity of the five senses and privileged each as a source of wild and divine knowledge, which, when combined, created a full picture that might result in a true approximation of God in and beyond nature—the hallmark of Thoreau’s fundamentally incarnational theology. Thoreau treated each sense not only as a source of divine knowledge but as a site of theological discourse: for touch, the relationship between sin and grace; for smell, the conundrum of an eternal divinity acting in historical time; for taste, the efficacy of sacraments; for hearing, the possibility of continuing revelation; and for sight, the ability for human beings to actually see God. The senses were the practical entry point to Thoreau’s theological system, which was concerned with the discovery and redemption of internal “wildness” and reconnection to the mysterious, divine source of that wildness, to the unaccountable in nature.

Keywords

Henry David ThoreauTranscendentalismspiritual sensesincarnationwildnessthe Fall
Type
Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 114 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 265 - 287
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College

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References

1 Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) 382 (italics in original).

2 Edward Fiske Mooney, “Thoreau’s Translations: John Brown, Apples, Lilies,” The Concord Saunterer 16 (2008) 59–83, at 59–60.

3 David M. Robinson, Natural Life: Thoreau’s Worldly Transcendentalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004) 35; Henry David Thoreau, “Inspiration (‘Whate’er we leave to God, God does’),” in Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems (ed. Elizabeth Hall Witherell; New York: Literary Classics of the United States; Library of America, 2001) 556–59, at 557.

4 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Thoreau,” in Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. Stephen E. Whicher; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957) 379–95, at 388.

5 In doing so, scholars have often used Aristotle’s ranking of senses as a foil. It was Aristotle who originated the “fivefold division of senses,” which he proceeded to rank: from lowest to highest, touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, introduction to The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (ed. Paul. L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) 1–19, at 8.

6 Margy Thomas Horton, “Embodiment, Spirituality, and the Tactile Perception of Air in Thoreau’s Walden,” The Concord Saunterer 19/20 (2011–12) 223–48, at 227.

7 Jonathan Bishop, “The Experience of the Sacred in Thoreau’s Week,” ELH 33 (1966) 80–81; Alan D. Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) 66–91, at 76.

8 Robert M. Thorson, Walden’s Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014) 207.

9 Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness, 132; Rebecca Kneale Gould, “Henry David Thoreau,” Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature (ed. Bron Raymond Taylor et al.; 2 vols.; New York: Thoemmes Continuum, 2005) 2:1634–35, at 1635.

10 Christopher A. Dustin, “Thoreau’s Religion,” in A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau (ed. Jack Turner; Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2009) 256–93, at 276.

11 Ibid., 281; Rebecca Kneale Gould, At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) 60, 128, 224.

12 Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995) 129; Gould, “Henry David Thoreau,” 2:1635; Gould, At Home in Nature, 3, 127.

13 Catherine L. Albanese, Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990) 9.

14 Matthew R. Lootens, “Augustine,” in The Spiritual Senses (ed. Gavrilyuk and Coakley) 56–70, at 66.

15 Ibid., 16, 20; Robert Sattelmeyer, Thoreau’s Reading: A Study in Intellectual History with Bibliographical Catalogue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), and Kenneth Cameron, “Books Thoreau Borrowed from Harvard College Library,” in Emerson the Essayist: An Outline of His Philosophical Development through 1836 with Special Emphasis on the Sources and Interpretation of Nature (ed. Kenneth Cameron; 2 vols.; Hartford, CT: Transcendental Books, 1945).

16 Sattelmeyer, Thoreau’s Reading, 21.

17 Arthur Versluis, American Transcendentalism and Asian Religions (New York: Oxford University Press) 95; Laura Dassow Walls, Henry David Thoreau: A Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017) 382.

18 Joel Porte, Consciousness and Culture: Emerson and Thoreau Reviewed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) 164; Laura Dassow Walls, Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural Science (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995) 27–36, 54–61, 76.

19 Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature,” in Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. Whicher) 21–56, at 50; Robinson, Natural Life, 15.

20 Henry David Thoreau, “July 16, 1851,” in The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau (ed. Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen; 14 vols.; New York: Dover, 1962) 2:306–7.

21 Barbara L. Packer, The Transcendentalists (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2007) 49.

22 Sharon Talley, “Following Thoreau’s ‘Tracks in the Sand’: Tactile Impressions in ‘Cape Cod,’ ” American Imago 62 (Spring 2005) 7–34, at 7.

23 Among the scientific texts he read were Lyell’s Principles of Geology, newly minted Harvard professor Lewis Agassiz’s Essay on Classification, Agassiz and A. A. Gould’s Principles of Zoology, Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species, and more. Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 42, 45, 95, 129–30, 145.

24 Robert Richardson, Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) 205.

25 Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 33, 134.

26 Porte, Consciousness and Culture, 160, 166; Thoreau, Walden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) 97; Walls, Thoreau: A Life, 264.

27 Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) 71; Henry David Thoreau to H. G. O. Blake, “November 16, 1857,” in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau (New York: New York University Press, 1958) 498.

28 Christopher A. Dustin, “Thoreau on the Strange Relation of Matter and Spirit,” The Concord Saunterer 21 (2013) 53–76, at 53–54; Thoreau, Walden, 135.

29 Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 78, 80, 85–86, 90; Brian R. Harding, “Swedenborgian Spirit and Thoreauvian Sense: Another Look at Correspondence,” Journal of American Studies 8 (April 1974) 65–79, at 73–75; Lance Newman, “Thoreau’s Materialism: From Walden to Wild Fruits,” in More Day to Dawn: Thoreau’s “Walden” for the Twenty-first Century (ed. Sandra Harbert Petrulionis and Laura Dassow Walls; Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007) 100–126, at 102; Robinson, Natural Life, 118.

30 Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 50.

31 Moncure Daniel Conway, “Thoreau (1866),” in Thoreau in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates (ed. Sandra Harbert Petrulionis; Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2012) 68–75, at 72; Harding, “Swedenborgian Spirit,” 71.

32 Rick Anthony Furtak, “The Value of Being: Thoreau on Appreciating the Beauty of the World,” in Thoreau’s Importance for Philosophy (ed. Rick Anthony Furtak, Jonathan Ellsworth, and James D. Reid; New York: Fordham University Press, 2012) 112–26, at 114–15; idem, “Skepticism and Perceptual Faith: Henry David Thoreau and Stanley Cavell on Seeing and Believing,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 43 (Summer 2007) 542–61, at 545; Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 172.

33 Emerson, “Thoreau,” 395.

34 Thoreau, “October 11, 1840,” Journal, 1:512.

35 Thoreau, “June 7, 1851,” Journal, 2:229.

36 Lootens, “Augustine,” 63.

37 Conway, “Thoreau (1866),” 69–70.

38 Boyd Taylor Coolman, “Alexander of Hales,” in The Spiritual Senses (ed. Gavrilyuk and Coakley) 121–39, at 134.

39 As quoted in Boyd Taylor Coolman, Knowing God by Experience: The Spiritual Senses in the Theology of William of Auxerre (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004) 151.

40 Henry David Thoreau, “Wild Apples,” in Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems (ed. Witherell) 444–67, at 449.

41 Henry David Thoreau, Wild Fruits: Thoreau’s Rediscovered Last Manuscript (ed. Bradley Dean; New York: Norton, 2000) 242.

42 Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004) 68.

43 Nina Baym, “English Nature, New York Nature, and Walden’s New England Nature,” in Transient and Permanent: The Transcendentalist Movement and Its Contexts (ed. Charles Capper and Conrad Edick Wright; Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society; Northeastern University Press, 1999) 168–86, at 168.

44 Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” in Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems (ed., Witherell) 225–55, at 239.

45 Thoreau, The Maine Woods, 70–71.

46 Horton, “Embodiment, Spirituality,” 239, 229–30.

47 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 157.

48 Benjamin E. Zeller, “Religion as Embodied Taste: Using Food to Rethink Religion,” Body and Religion 1 (2017) 10–30, at 18.

49 Thoreau, “May 7, 1852,” Journal, 4:32; idem, “September 24, 1859,” Journal, 12:349.

50 Henry David Thoreau, “Slavery in Massachusetts,” in Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems (ed. Witherell) 333–47, at 346.

51 Thoreau, “May 8, 1852,” Journal, 4:38.

52 Thoreau, “1845,” Journal, 1:373.

53 Thorson, Walden’s Shore, 201; Thoreau, “Wild Apples,” 447, 452.

54 See “Thoreau’s Kalendar,” ed. Kristen Case, http://www.thoreauskalendar.org/index.html.

55 Robinson, Natural Life, 147; Thoreau, “July 2, 1852,” Journal, 4:174–75.

56 Thoreau, A Week, 355.

57 Thorson, Walden’s Shore, 227.

58 Thoreau, “June 11, 1852,” Journal, 4:89; James McHugh, Sandalwood and Carrion: Smell in Indian Religion and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 6.

59 Thoreau, A Week, 257.

60 Porte, Consciousness and Culture, 175.

61 See David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).

62 Coolman, Knowing God by Experience, 218–19, 220–22, 229. This, of course, would only be possible for the faithful individual; consuming the host without proper intention and without faith could have the opposite effect than intended: rather than distributing grace, it could distribute condemnation.

63 Frederick D. Aquino, “Maximus the Confessor,” in The Spiritual Senses (ed. Gavrilyuk and Coakley) 104–20, at 112.

64 Zeller, “Religion as Embodied Taste,” 11, 17, 12.

65 Albanese, Nature Religion, 87; Thoreau, “1845,” Journal, 1:372.

66 Thoreau, “Walking,” 240; idem, Walden, 210, 218, 220.

67 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 52.

68 Jim Minick, “Picking with Henry,” Thoreau Society Bulletin 271 (Summer 2010) 1–3, at 1–2.

69 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 52.

70 Newman, “Thoreau’s Materialism,” 113–14, 116.

71 Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness, 114, 116–17, 128.

72 Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 220.

73 Thoreau, “September 12, 1853,” Journal, 5:424. This passage is also replicated in Wild Fruits.

74 Walls, Thoreau: A Life, 204; Thoreau, Walden, 214–15.

75 Thoreau, Walden, 61, 65; Emerson, “Thoreau,” 384; Kathryn Cornell Dolan, “Local Beans, Apples, and Berries,” in Beyond the Fruited Plain: Food and Agriculture in U.S. Literature, 1850-1905 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014) 67–101, at 74 and 76.

76 Thoreau, Walden, 215, 173; Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 205; Dolan, “Local Beans, Apples, Berries,” 88; Thoreau, “August 23, 1853,” Journal, 5:395.

77 Thoreau, “July 31, 1840,” Journal, 1:492.

78 Thoreau, “August 15, 1851,” Journal, 2:391; idem, “June 22, 1853,” Journal, 5:292-3; idem, “December 31, 1853,” Journal, 6:39.

79 Sherman Paul, “The Wise Silence: Sound as the Agency of Correspondence in Thoreau,” The New England Quarterly 22 (1949) 511–27, at 514–15, 517, and 520; Thoreau, Walden, 123; Thoreau, “August 10, 1838,” Journal, 1:53; Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness, 88.

80 Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness, 76; Walls, Thoreau: A Life, 44.

81 Thoreau, “July 21, 1851,” Journal, 2:330; idem, “July 5, 1852,” Journal, 4:190; Harding, “Swedenborgian Spirit,” 69.

82 Thoreau, “June 15, 1852,” Journal, 4:106; idem, “November 18, 1837,” Journal, 1:12.

83 Thoreau, “December 5, 1837,” Journal, 1:15.

84 Thoreau, “October 12, 1851,” Journal, 3:68; idem, A Week, 173–75.

85 Thoreau, “January 8, 1853,” Journal, 4:458–59; see also idem, “April 12, 1853,” Journal, 6:193–94.

86 Thoreau, Walden, 115–27.

87 Thoreau, The Maine Woods, 38, 99–100.

88 Thorson, Walden’s Shore, 223–24; idem, Walden, 310; Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness, 79–80.

89 Thoreau, “December 15, 1838,” Journal, 1:66; Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness, 76.

90 Thoreau, A Week, 296, 391–92, 46.

91 Thoreau, “December 15, 1838,” Journal, 1:64.

92 Jane Bennett, “Thoreau’s Techniques of the Self,” in A Political Companion to Henry David Thoreau, 294–325, at 302–3; Paul, “The Wise Silence,” 513.

93 Quoted in Walls, Thoreau: A Life, 128; Lawrence Buell, Literary Transcendentalism: Style and Vision in the American Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973) 234; Hodder, Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness, 85–87, 231.

94 Mooney, “Thoreau’s Translations,” 63–64; Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 142.

95 Thoreau, “Inspiration,” 567.

96 Quoted in Walls, Thoreau: A Life, 43.

97 Thoreau, “March 23, 1853,” Journal, 5:45.

98 Thoreau, Cape Cod, 152; Thoreau, “Autumnal Tints,” in Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems (ed. Witherell) 367–95, at 368.

99 Thoreau, October 28, 1858, Journal, 11:257. This passage was reprinted in Wild Fruits.

100 Coolman, Knowing God by Experience, 132–33, 137.

101 Thoreau, A Week, 361.

102 Lootens, “Augustine,” 64–65.

103 Gould, At Home in Nature, 58; Walls, Thoreau: A Life, 308.

104 Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 172, 174; Thoreau, “November 11, 1850,” Journal, 2:94–95.

105 Dustin, “Thoreau’s Religion,” 259, 272; Christopher A. Dustin and Joanna E. Ziegler, Practicing Mortality: Art, Philosophy, and Contemplative Seeing (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005) 36, 40.

106 Thoreau, “Wild Apples,” 462.

107 Thoreau, A Week, 157.

108 Bishop, “The Experience of the Sacred,” 86.

109 Thoreau, A Week, 188, for example.

110 Thoreau, The Maine Woods, 65, 240.

111 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 27.

112 Richard J. Schneider, Henry David Thoreau (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987) 66–67, 70; Dustin and Ziegler, Practicing Mortality, 39.

113 Amos Bronson Alcott, “Journal and Epistolary Remarks on Thoreau, 1847–1859,” in Thoreau in His Own Time (ed. Petrulionis) 6–12, at 11.

114 Conway, “Thoreau (1866),” 83.

115 Schneider, Thoreau, 59.

116 Ibid., 63; Robinson, Natural Life, 25.

117 Walls, Seeing New Worlds, 10.

118 Thoreau, “June 26, 1852,” Journal, 4:150; Thorson, Sensing Walden, 212–13; Richardson, Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, 265.

119 Thoreau, “October 11, 1840,” Journal, 1:512.