Walden: Higher Laws Summary & Analysis

Once, Thoreau says, when a woodchuck crossed his path, he had the urge to kill and eat it. He finds in himself a spiritual life and a savage life, and he loves and respects both sides. He believes, however, that eating animal food is unclean and does not really feed the soul, and that living by preying on animals is a low way for men to live. Instead, they need a more wholesome diet, limiting what one drinks to water, the only thing a wise man should drink. He advocates that boys be taught to shoot, but as sportsmen, not hunters, who will one day leave the gun and finishing pole behind to become men of intellect.

What defiles a man is not food, however, but the appetite with which he consumes it, Thoreau believes; the animal inside a man wakes insofar as his higher faculties sleep. By living a pure life and controlling one's appetites, all of which are linked, one may commune with God, he believes, and keep sacred the temple that is one's own body. From work comes virtue, while from laziness comes vice and ignorance, he says.