Thoreau embraced the subjectivity of perception that followed from man's central position. He accepted that the individual's vantage point in some sense defined the universe.
If the individual enjoyed centrality in the cosmic view of things, however, Thoreau found him less fortunate in relation to human institutions. The author wrote in Walden of "an important distinction between the civilized man and the savage . . . in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed." Thoreau distrusted all threats to individuality. He perceived that the community intruded upon the individual and, similarly, that the individual guided by principle and high purpose threatened community complacency. He felt that the individual's first duty was to himself — to know and to cultivate himself and to seek knowledge of how he fit into the universal picture. Solid citizens of the community, however, saw things otherwise. Thoreau spent his life living up to his responsibilities as he understood them. The judgment of the community mattered little to him. Thoreau was aware that some of his townsmen had no idea why he moved to Walden Pond in 1845, but their opinion did not deflect him.
Thoreau's antislavery and reform writings focus on the obligations of the individual in relation to society. A person was bound to observe a higher standard of morality when obedience to temporal law would diminish his integrity or that of others. Thoreau saw that the institutions of society tended to preserve the status quo, and so it fell to the individual to speak out against the shortcomings of human government and law. Civil Disobedience, first published in 1849, was written in response to his jailing in 1846 for nonpayment of the poll tax. Thoreau refused to support a government that he felt tolerated and abetted slavery, permitting the treatment of individuals as physical property, denying their humanity and spirituality. Although Thoreau disdained politics and was not inclined to take political action under ordinary circumstances, he could not overlook the immorality of slavery and of allowing slavery to continue. He wrote explicitly of the individual's authority at the end of Civil Disobedience:
There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect. . . .
