Thoreau begins Civil Disobedience by saying that he agrees with the motto, "That government is best which governs

least." Indeed, he says, men will someday be able to have a government that does not govern at all. As it is, government rarely proves useful or efficient. It is often "abused and perverted" so that it no longer represents the will of the people. The Mexican-American War illustrates this phenomenon. The American government is necessary because "the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have." However, the only times when government has been useful has been when it has stood aside. Thoreau says that government does not, in fact, achieve that with which we credit it: it does not keep the country free, settle the West, or educate. Rather, these achievements come from the character of the American people, and they would have been even more successful in these endeavors had government been even less involved. Thoreau also complains about restrictions on trade and commerce. However, Thoreau then says that speaking "practically and as a citizen," he is not asking for the immediate elimination of government. Rather, for the moment, he is asking for a better government. Thoreau argues that by answering to the majority, democracies answer the desires of the strongest group, not the most virtuous or thoughtful. A government founded on this principle cannot be based on justice. Why can't there be a government where right and wrong are not decided by the majority but by conscience? Thoreau writes, "Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward." He asserts that it is more important to develop a respect for the right, rather than a respect for law, for people's obligations are to do what is right. Too much respect for law leads people to do many unjust things, as war illustrates: Soldiers become only a shadow of their humanity; the government shapes them into machines. Soldiers have no opportunity to exercise moral sense, reduced to the existence comparable to that of a horse or dog. Yet these men are often called good citizens. Similarly, most legislators and politicians do not put moral sense first, and those few who do are persecuted as enemies. The question then becomes how to behave toward the American government. Thoreau's answer is to avoid associating with it altogether. He declares, "I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also." Thoreau says that while everyone recognizes the right to revolution

when faced with an intolerably tyrannical or inefficient government, most people say that such a revolution would not be warranted under current conditions. However, Thoreau argues that we have not only the right, but indeed the duty, to rebel. The enslavement of one sixth of the population and the invasion of Mexico represent tremendous injustices that we must not allow to continue. Thoreau criticizes the attitude that civil obligation should be maintained for the sake of expediency and that government should be obeyed simply to preserve the services we enjoy. Expediency does not take precedence over justice; people must do what justice requires regardless of cost--indeed, even if the cost is one's own life. Thus, Thoreau writes, "If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself." The people of the United States must stop slavery and the war with Mexico, even if it costs them their existence as a people. In practice, the opponents to reform in Massachusetts are not the Southern politicians everyone blames for extreme conservativism. Rather, they are the people who passively tolerate the status quo: merchants and farmers in Massachusetts who are not willing to fight for justice at any cost. Many argue that the majority of U.S. citizens would be unprepared for the societal changes that slavery would bring about. Thoreau responds to this by saying that we need only a few wise people to educate the majority and, thus, prepare them for these changes. There are thousands of people who oppose slavery and war with Mexico and yet do nothing, waiting for others to take action. It is this passive waiting that Thoreau condemns. Thoreau's essay is both an abstract work of political theory and a practical and topical work addressing the issues of the day. Both aspects appear in this first section. On the one hand, Thoreau is making several theoretical claims about the nature of democracy and the relationship between citizen and government. For example, Thoreau argues that government should be based on conscience and that citizens should cease associating with an unjust government. Thus, Thoreau's work must be considered as a work of political philosophy, invoking ideals and making claims about the way government and society should be structured. However, Thoreau writes not only about theory; his essay is also very much an appeal to his fellow Massachusetts residents about the current issues of the day. He discusses slavery and the war with Mexico as very real issues in their lives, and he impels his readers to action. Thus, he uses theory to posit how people should behave generally, and then applies this to current events. One's duties are inextricable from the world one lives in, and Thoreau is deeply concerned with the injustices of his own time.

One of the most important themes throughout Thoreau's work is the notion of individualism. Deeply skeptical of government, Thoreau rejects the view that a person must sacrifice or marginalize her values out of loyalty to her government. Furthermore, he argues that if an individual supports the government in any way--even by simply respecting its authority as a government-- then that person is complicit in injustices forwarded by the government. This lays an extremely heavy responsibility on the individual: to compromise, negotiate, or passively accept is to betray one's integrity and commit a crime. But, consider how unstable a community would be if it followed this viewpoint: Can a society function if everybody is a "man first and a subject afterwards"? But, even if Thoreau's principle does become implausible when universalized, does this mean that it cannot pertain to a particular person's actions? Thoreau would say "no." Indeed, Thoreau knew that not everybody was going to follow his individualistic values; he argued that his duty was to set a standard for himself. This attitude can be understood as either imprudent or brave. It is worth noting, though, that a strong sense of individualism and skepticism toward government has served as the basis for many important reform movements; they are particularly American values and have allowed America to become a nation of relative freedom. While living at Walden, Thoreau had been a "conscientious objector." For a number of years he had refused to pay any poll tax on the ground that it was exclusively for the benefit of a government he did not approve of. On a July evening in 1846, Thoreau was put under house arrest and sent to jail. Before the night in jail was over, his Aunt Maria had paid the tax, and by morning Henry was free. Brief as his prison hours were, they led to his best-known and most influential essay "Civil Disobedience". It was ignored until four years after Thoreau's death. "Civil Disobedience" is the most complete theoretical statement of Thoreau's basic assumptions. He attacked democracy, because it was weak. The American Government he wrote, "has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will" and "under a government which imprisons any man unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." Thoreau's expression of the doctrine of civil disobedience moved people around the world to practice it against local and national tyrannies . "Civil Disobedience" has had a universal appeal because it dealt with the issue of moral law in conflict government law. Thoreau argued that "it is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right." The law is not to be respected merely because it is the law, but

only because it is right and just. If unjust laws exist, civil disobedience is an effective way to oppose and change them. It was in October 1908 while Gandhi was in South Africa that he refused to pay the tax of twenty-five pounds imposed on all Indians by the South African Govt. This led to the arrest of Gandhi. Like Gandhi seventy-five other Indians preferred the prison to taxes. It was a remarkable coincidence that Gandhi found Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience" while he himself was undergoing a jail term. He at once took a liking for it. Gandhi's account of life and reflections in jail has many things similar to Thoreau's reflections during brief hours in jail. According to Gandhi jail has its good sides: there is only one warden, whereas in the free life there are many; there is no worry about food; work keeps the body healthy; no "vicious habits"; "the prisoner's soul is thus free" and he has time to pray to God. "The real road to happiness," Gandhi said, "lies in going to jail and undergoing sufferings and privations there in the interest of one's country and religion." Gandhi's reflections in jail ends with a quotation from Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience": "I saw", Thoreau wrote, "that if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar...." "As they could not reach me," Thoreau continued, "they had resolved to punish my body... I saw that the state was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it and pitied it." "The only obligation which I have a right to assume," Thoreau declared, "is to do at any time what I think right." To be right, he insisted, is more honorable than to be law-abiding. Democracy for Thoreau was the cult of the minority. "Why does (the government) not cherish its wise minority" he cried, "why does it always crucify Christ?" It was l848. Thoreau was thinking of the slavery and the invasion of Mexico. The majority which tolerated these measures was wrong, and he was right. Could he obey a government that committed such sins? Gandhi, however, was not satisfied with the term civil disobedience. He first called it civil resistance and finally coined the famous Sanskrit name of Satyagraha. Satya is truth, which equals love; and agraha is firmness of force. Satyagraha therefore means truth-force or love-force. Truth and love are attributes of the soul. This then became Gandhi's target: to be

strong not with the strength of the brute but with the strength of the spark of god. Satyagraha, Gandhi said, is "the vindication of truth not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but on one's self." This requires self-control. The weapons of the Satyagrahi are within him. Satyagraha is peaceful. If words fail to convince the adversary perhaps purity, humility, and honesty will. The opponent must be "weaned from error by patience and sympathy' weaned, not crushed; converted, not annihilated, Satyagraha is the exact opposite of the policy of an-eye-for-an-eye-foran-eye which ends in making every one blind. You cannot inject new ideas into a man's head by chopping it off; neither will you infuse a new spirit into his heart by piercing it with a dagger. Gandhi derived his doctrine of Satyagraha from many sources. It can be traced essentially to the Bhagavad-Gita, but also to Jesus Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and recently to the writings of Thoreau, Ruskin and more especially Tolstoy. But his practical application of it in the social and political spheres was entirely his own. The difference, then between Thoreau and Gandhi, is that Gandhi made Satyagraha a vehicle of he masses. It was no longer an individual force as Thoreau saw it, but it became a force in which the majority could participate. As a majority activity, Satyagraha may take various forms: It may take the form of non-cooperation; when it does, it is not non-cooperation with the evildoer but with his evil deed. Satyagraha may take the form of fasting; fasting should be undertaken, according to Gandhi, only when one is thoroughly convinced of the rightness of one's stand, when all the other methods have failed. It should be in the nature of prayer for purity and strength and power from God. Satyagraha may also take the form of mass resistance on a nonviolent basis against the Government when negotiations and constitutional methods have failed. There can be no doubt that in developing Satyagraha in its various forms as a practical means of overcoming violence, more especially in group life, Gandhi established a new milestone in the history of the human race in its march towards peace on earth and goodwill among men. Gandhi's message of peace and nonviolence becomes especially important to the modern world torn with strife, bloodshed, hatred and war. Tolstoy in Russia, Gandhi in South Africa and India, the resistance movement against Nazi-occupied Europe, the freedom riders and sitdowners from New York to Mississippi, the Rev. Martin Luther King,Jr., the antinuclear war pickets in England have all responded to the words uttered in Concord about a hundred and fifty years ago.