"The mass of men serve the State, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies." Thoreau is describing the daily life of an American soldier. Contrary to what you guys seem to think, it's not a bad thing. These men and women do a job that is much needed and appreciated by any true American, and to say that "a strong military isn;t needed" would just make me and a lot of other people call you an idiot. If we didn;t have these men and women willing to relinquish themselves, and YES they are WILLING to do it, therw would be no America. We would have been destroyed hundreds of years ago, and if not by then, we most certainly wouldn't have survived the 1940's if we had no defensive and offensive military. This Thoreau guy just made me mad when he talks about our GI's as lumps of dirt and straw. He should have been hanged.
"Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?" Here Th is expressing that laws are evolutionary, he does NOT want an Anarchist society so you people need to get that notion out of your head. He realizes that to simply abloish a law altogether if a problem should arise within it would be societal suicide. Without the order of Law and the prevailing justice, there would be chaos. You cannot live in free nature, Thoreau knows this. Thomas Hobbes described free nature as "Nasty, Brutish, and short" and he is exactly right, if there is no formal order, there is life, but don;t expect to see fifty or more likely even 35. You cannot have an Anarchist state, it will never/ has never worked, and Thoreau knows this, AS SHOULD ALL OF YOU. It is the most ineffective and ridiculous ideology ever developed.