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By Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) A Study Guide | |||
. Study Guide Prepared by By Michael J. Cummings...© 2011 Type of Work .......Walden is a book-length series of essays centering on the ideas and activities of Henry David Thoreau during his residence at Walden Pond in northeastern Massachusetts, near Concord, from July 1845 to September 1847. .......The Boston firm of Ticknor and Fields published the work in 1854 under the title Walden, or Life in the Woods. Thoreau shortened the title to Walden upon publication of the second edition of the work in 1862. .......Thoreau writes of his experiences at and near Walden Pond, a lake about twenty miles west of Boston and two miles south of Concord. There, he built a small dwelling on the northern shore of the pond. If one walked around the pond, he would cover 1.7 miles. Thoreau frequently ventured into the woods in the vicinity and often visited the nearby town of Concord for news and supplies. .......Thoreau uses first-person point of view and frequently switches to second-person point of view to address the readers, as the following passage from Chapter 1, "Economy," demonstrates: Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he needed.Tone .......The tone of Walden ranges from lighthearted to deeply serious. Thoreau delights in the activities of a partridge or mouse in one chapter, expresses awe at the marvels of nature in another chapter, and soberly comments on morality, philosophy, religion, and related subjects in another chapter. Henry David Thoreau:
Author of Walden and a native of Concord, Massachusetts.
.......Thoreau
opens Walden with a message for his readers: Live your life according to
your convictions; have the courage to be different, regardless of what
other people say.
The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, nawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. ("Where I Lived, and What I Lived for").......But Thoreau retains the desire to for a place in a secluded rural setting. His purpose in fulfilling this desire at Walden, he says, is 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. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my text. ("Where I Lived, and What I Lived for").......Thoreau spends part of his time at Walden reading books. He keeps a copy of Homer's Illiad on a table in his house. Occasionally, he opens the book and reads a few pages. It was not for nought, he says, that Alexander the Great took The Iliad with him wherever he went on his long marches in foreign lands. .......On some days, when the beauty of nature and a bright sun beckon, "I sat in my sunny door from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time" ("Sounds"). .......Thoreau's house sits on the side of a hill. In his front yard, plants thrive, including johnswort, shrub oaks, goldenrod, sandcherry, and groundnut. The sounds are pleasant to listen to—hawks, pigeons, small ground animals. But there are also the sounds of civilization—in particular, from a little more than a third of a mile to the south, the sounds of the Fitchburg Railroad. Thoreau says, The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer's yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country traders from the other side. As they come under one horizon, they shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heard sometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay . . . When I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology I don't know), it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. ("Sounds").......The railroad becomes a familiar sight in society. It brings commerce, tells men the correct time, takes people to far off places, and disturbs Thoreau's sleep. After a train passes, Walden becomes serenely quiet again—save for the sounds of nature, such as the song of a whippoorwill, or "the faint rattle of a carriage" ("Sounds") on a distant road. Thoreau loves to hear the screech owls—"their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside"—and the hoot owls. The latter make "the most melancholy sound in nature," he says ("Sounds"). .......One evening, Thoreau enjoys a walk along the shore of the pond even though it is cloudy, windy, and cool. Bullfrogs croak, the whippoorwill sings, the leaves flutter, and the pond ripples with little waves. On some nights when he returns from walks, he finds tokens visitors have left—flowers picked nearby, an evergreen wreath, or a walnut chip or leaf bearing a name written in pencil. .......Most of the time he is alone at Walden. ......."I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself," he says ("Solitude"). .......Being alone with nature does not make him melancholy or lonely, however. Even when it rains, he is happy. For storms make music, and rain makes his crops grow. When violent weather comes, he enjoys the cozy protection of his little house. He does not miss the hubbub at "the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, or busy sections of big cities" ("Solitude"). .......Thoreau says, "I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers" ("Solitude"). .......Though he enjoys solitude, Thoreau does not eschew visitors, and occasionally one comes his way. One of them is an escaped slave on his way to Canada. Thoreau helps him. .......Meanwhile, Thoreau's bean crop thrives. He has such a bounty of beans that he sells a goodly part of his crop for $8.71 and uses the money to meet many of his needs. .......Thoreau goes into Concord every day or two—generally in the afternoon, after spending the morning reading, writing, or doing outdoor work. In town, he takes in the latest gossip. ......."In homoeopathic doses, [the gossip] was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs," he says ("The Village"). .......During his visits to town, he also buys necessities such as rye and Indian meal. One afternoon when he goes to Concord to pick up a shoe at the cobbler's, he is arrested and jailed because "I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its senate-house" ("The Village"). He is released the next day after someone pays his back taxes, then gets his shoe and goes home. .......Government representatives are the only people who ever bother him, he notes. Others respect him and his abode. ......."The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire," he says, "the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper" ("The Village"). .......Thoreau does not always eat indoors. Often, he dines in woods or along a road. The fare is huckleberries and blueberries picked fresh when they are in full flavor. ......."It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them," he says. "The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender" ("The Ponds"). .......Fish from Walden Pond is a frequent entree when he dines in. Sometimes he fishes in a boat with a neighbor, and sometimes—after returning from town in the evening—he fishes by the light of the moon while "serenaded by owls and foxes, and hearing, from time to time, the creaking note of some unknown bird close at hand" ("The Ponds"). .......The pond—about a half-mile long—is deep and pure, he says. Having no detectable inlet, it receives its water from the clouds and from evaporation. The water is so clear that one can see the bottom in some places. While fishing for pickerel through a hole in the ice in the winter, he says, he accidentally dropped an axe through the hole. But thanks to the clarity of the water, he was able to see and retrieve it with a slip knot on the end of a long birch pole. .......There are three other ponds in the vicinity: Flint's Pond, Goose Pond, and White Pond. But only White Pond has the same crystal-clear water characteristic of Walden Pond. It is two-and-a-half miles to the west. .......Among the fish in Walden Pond, besides pickerel, are perch, pouts, shiners, chivins, and eels. In addition, there are a few mussels. In and around the pond are frogs, turtles, minks, muskrats, ducks, geese, kingfishers, and fish hawks. .......One day while walking through the woods, Thoreau passes through Pleasant Meadow, part of the Baker farm. Thoreau had once considered purchasing the farm. Rain begins to pour, forcing him to take shelter under a pine tree for half-an-hour. Soon he is standing in a pool of water, just as thunder rumbles. He makes a dash for a hut, which supposedly is uninhabited. But when he enters it, he finds John Field, an Irishman, along with his wife and children. Field is a hard-working farmhand who makes very little money for his effort—$10 to dig up an acre of land for a local farmer, along with the right to use the land for a year. Thoreau tries to persuade him to build his own place. If he imitated Thoreau—who does not rely on meat, butter, and milk as his main fare and does not drink coffee or tea—he could get along well. Field could catch plenty of fish for his family and harvest wild-growing fruits. However, Field wants to pursue the American dream his own way. But Thoreau doubts whether he will ever graduate from his hard labor in the fields. .......During his stay at Walden, Thoreau realizes that fishing and hunting spring from man's primitive side as opposed to his spiritual side. He begins to make progress in moving away from his primitive side. "There is unquestionably this instinct in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation," he says; yet with every year I am less a fisherman . . . " ("Higher Laws"). .......He develops an aversion to animal food, explaining that. The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth. ("Higher Laws").......Thoreau also prefers water to coffee, tea, and especially alcoholic beverages. If he has to be intoxicated by anything, he says, it should be by the air he breathes. .......As to morality, he says, "Goodness is the only investment that never fails" ("Higher Laws"). He also says, Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. ("Higher Laws").......One day, Thoreau "visits" himself, becoming a hermit and a poet who talk to each other. The hermit comments on the silence in the woods. He has not heard a locust for three hours; the pigeons apparently are all asleep. Then he hears rustling in the leaves. He wonders, "Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain?" ("Brute Neighbors"). .......He asks the poet how the world is treating him. The poet says the great sight he has beheld so far on this day is the clouds, which show up in all the old paintings. The poet and the hermit go off to catch fish. .......Thoreau then discusses animals, which he calls his "brute neighbors." A strange kind of mouse inhabits his house. It can climb the sides of the room like a squirrel. When Thoreau finishes his meals, it comes over and eats the crumbs, showing no fear. On one occasion, it runs up his leg and onto his sleeve. He sends one of these strange creatures to a naturalist, who finds it interesting to study. .......Thoreau becomes interested in the habits of partridges, in particular the way the young observe their mother's calls to evade humans. If a person approaches, the mother signals them to disperse, and they become part of the landscape—resembling dried leaves or twigs—making them difficult to detect. He also studies birds and otters and witnesses an all-out battle between red ants and blacks ants. These insects are fighting fiercely to the death, literally tearing one another limb from limb. He takes into the house a wood chip on which three ants are locked in combat and places it under a microscope. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. . . .I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door. ("Brute Neighbors")Thoreau ends his discussion of his brute neighbors with a description of the wild sound of the loon and the ways ducks escape the guns of hunters. .......The leaves begin taking on their autumn colors in September, and in October wasps by the thousands begin taking refuge in Thoreau's cottage from the coming cold weather. Moles find a home in his cellar, along with Thoreau's store of potatoes, which they nibble on. .......Meanwhile, he builds a chimney from old bricks after studying masonry. He also plasters the walls of his house, making it warmer. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family . . . must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory. I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. ("House-Warming").......Thoreau tells of blacks who once lived in the region. One was Cato Ingraham, the slave of Duncan Ingraham, of Concord, who constructed a house for Cato in Walden woods east of what is now Thoreau's bean field. Cato may have come from Guinea. Another was Zilpha, who made linen for Concord residents and was noted for her excellent singing voice. English troops burned her house—which was at the corner of Thoreau's property—during the War of 1812. A third was Brister Freeman, the slave of Squire Cummings, who lived just down the road. The apple trees he planted continue to bear fruit. His wife, Fenda, was a fortuneteller. .......Occasionally, Thoreau has visitors. Sometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I returned from my walk at evening I crossed the deep tracks of a woodchopper leading from my door, and found his pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my house filled with the odor of his pipe. Or on a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to have a social "crack"; one of the few of his vocation who are "men on their farms";(13) who donned a frock instead of a professor's gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We talked of rude and simple times, when men sat about large fires in cold, bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest shells are commonly empty. ("Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors").......A poet also visits Thoreau, sometimes traipsing through deep snow or tempests to reach Walden. So does Ellery Channing, a minister who organized groups to oppose slavery, war, and drunkenness. .......During the cold months of winter, Thoreau spends most of his time alone except for the animals that entertain him—muskrats, owls, mice, squirrels, foxes hunting for partridge, red squirrels, rabbits. Sometimes Thoreau puts out sweet corn for the animals. There are birds, too, that catch his attention, such as chickadees and jays. .......At times, there is a great deal of activity at Walden Pond from laborers cutting blocks of ice for merchants. .......When spring thaws the pond and the countryside, Thoreau enjoys another show, the rebirth of nature. .......Thoreau concludes the recounting of his stay at Walden Pond with these observations: I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now. ("Conclusion")  .
Themes Discovery and Enlightenment .......In Chapter 2 ("Where I Lived, and What I Lived for") Thoreau enunciates the main theme, discovery and enlightenment, when he explains why he decided to live alone in the woods for a time. 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. . . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it . . . .Self-Reliance .......In choosing to live alone in the woods, Thoreau also chose to rely primarily on himself to sustain his body and his mind. He devoted substantial portions of the book to how he built his house, how he planted and harvested his crops, how he obtained supplementary food through fishing and foraging, how he entertained himself and enriched his life by observing nature and forest life, how he educated himself through books and contemplation, and how he remained active in the world through visits to Concord and through positions he took on major issues of the day, such as slavery, and activities he undertook to promote his positions. Respect for Nature and Wildlife .......Throughout Walden, Thoreau exhibits respect for nature and its wildlife. His experience at Walden, in fact, breeds in him a desire to give up his gun and fishing pole. Of Walden Pond, he says in "The Ponds": I am its stony shore,Opposition to Slavery .......Thoreau makes many references to the inhumanity of slavery in Walden, written before President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. When Thoreau encountered a runaway slave at Walden, "I helped [him] toward the northstar," he says. Living Simply .......Less is more, Thoreau declares in Walden. Living simply frees you of worry about material possessions and rewards you with more time for what really counts in life. Throughout his book, Thoreau returns again and again to the theme of a simple life. Following are quotations from the first chapter, "Economy," that focus on this theme. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward.Encroachment of Technology .......Thoreau acknowledges the importance of technological advancement, represented in Chapter 4 ("Sounds") by the railroad. But he also bemoans its detrimental effect on the environment and on his peaceful existence at Walden. Disturbed that the railroad carries trees stripped from forests, he writes, "Warned by the whizzing sound [of a train], I look up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which has winged its way over the Green Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township within ten minutes." He then comments that " I will not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by [the locomotive's] smoke and steam and hissing." Social Criticism Thoreau criticizes American society for not doing more to improve itself. For example, in the following paragraph, Thoreau criticizes the town of Concord for failing to take the necessary steps to improve its educational system. We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked, —goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure—if they are indeed so well off—to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. ("Reading")Writing Approach and Style .......While
living at Walden Pond, Thoreau wrote notes for use in Walden and
other works. Then he pieced together his notes, memories, impressions,
and so on to write of his days at Walden and the thoughts he incubated
there on social, moral, and other issues. He did not necessarily want the
reader to imitate his lifestyle; rather, he wanted to prod the reader into
thinking independently.
Example 1.......Allusions and obscure references occur frequently in Walden. An example is this passage in "Economy": It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them. (In Greek mythology, Deucalion was the son of Prometheus, who created humankind. Pyrrha was Deucalion's wife. The king of the gods, Zeus, decided to destroy humanity in a great flood, but Deucalion and Pyrrha survived on an ark they constructed. After the ark came to rest on a mountain, they created a new crop of humans by throwing stones of Mother Earth backward, over their shoulders. Deucalion's stones became males; Pyrrha's became females.) .......Thoreau was deft at fashioning quotable and pithy axioms. Here are examples:
.......Thoreau frequently uses anaphora, a figure of speech in which a word or group of words occurs at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences. Following are examples. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. .
Symbols .......Examples of symbols in Walden are the following: Walden Pond: (1) Thoreau's self-reliance, implied by the fact that the pond has no detectable inlet; (2) the depth of Thoreau's convictions. Regarding the latter, note the following passage in "The Pond in Winter": I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder before the water got underneath to help me. The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet; to which may be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol.Ice Cutters: Society's invasion of nature for profit. The icemen cut away ten thousand tons of ice for commercial use. Railroad: (1) Progress; (2) technology's invasion of the countryside; technology's unwholesome effects on civilization. Spring: Rebirth. Thoreau begins "giving birth" to Walden in the spring of 1845. War of the Ants: The brutality of war between humans. The Bean-Field: Thoreau's connection with the earth and nature. Note the following passage in the chapter entitled "The Bean-Field": "I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus." (In Greek mythology, Antaeus was a Libyan giant who challenged all passers-by to a wrestling match. He was unbeatable so long as his feet touched the earth, his mother. Hercules defeated him by lifting him off the ground and crushing him with his arms. July 4: Date of Thoreau's personal declaration of independence. (He moved into his new home at Walden Pond on July 4, 1845.) .......In
late summer during Thoreau's first year at Walden Pond, he was arrested
when he was in Concord to pick up a shoe at a cobbler's. "I was seized
and put into jail," Thoreau says, because, as I have elsewhere related,
I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which
buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its
senate-house."
.......Thoreau
believed every human being has inborn knowledge that enables him to recognize
and understand moral truth without benefit of knowledge obtained through
the physical senses. Using this inborn knowledge, an individual can make
a moral decision without relying on information gained through everyday
living, education, and experimentation. One may liken this inborn knowledge
to conscience or intuition.
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Study Questions and Essay Topics
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