Thoreau's conscience

Henry David Thoreau’s speech, “Civil Disobedience,” is one of the most influential pieces of writing in history, inspiring great thinkers like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. It was inspired by Thoreau’s belief in the morality of the individual conscience and his opposition to majority thinking. The piece probably would never have happened if it weren’t for the day that Thoreau spent in jail as a result of not paying his war tax. Much of the speech is about the freedoms of acting for one’s self and not for the mindless benefit of the majority, as Thoreau experienced in this situation. His actions and thoughts have inspired many great ideas, and many questions as well.
Thoreau speaks of the conscience as if it is inherently good in every man, and that the majority corrupts this goodness by forcing laws and taxes on people, but is every conscience good? One might argue that no, every conscience is not good. If one was raised in a society that taught its children that lying, cheating, and stealing was acceptable, then his/her conscience would, by our standards, be considered bad. But I believe that Thoreau meant something different when he spoke of good conscience. A good conscience is not measured by the standards of the society in which it was cultured. Everyone’s conscience is different. What separates us is how often we can follow our conscience and stray from the thinking of the majority. What Thoreau is saying is that if you follow your conscience you can’t be wrong no matter what it’s telling you, because to you it’s right. If you were going against your conscience and with the majority, even if others believed your conscience to be wrong and the majority to be right, it would be wrong to you, and therefore would be inherently wrong. The reason Thoreau is saying that the conscience is always right is because he is really saying that if one can think for his/herself and see past the majority, then he/she can’t be wrong.
Thoreau spent a day in jail because he refused to pay a tax funding the Mexican war. He did not refuse to pay because he simply had better things to do with his money, or because he wasn’t a soldier, so he didn’t care. He refused to pay because he was morally opposed to the majority. This is slightly misleading because he states, “One must not fund that to which he is opposed,” which may lead some to believe that taxes shouldn’t be paid if they aren’t convenient to the citizen, but this is where the conscience comes back into the argument. The conscience must be used to distinguish, based on individual (and therefore inherently right) morals, what taxes are funding injustice, what taxes are funding the everyday life of the citizen, and what taxes are funding necessities for the good of the country, even if they may not be for the immediate benefit of the tax paying citizen.
It is important to look at Thoreau’s life and remember that he is a transcendentalist. While he does have definite beliefs on the subjects he speaks about, like slavery and the Mexican war, he is not a representative for absolute thought. He knows that everyone thinks differently, which is why he gives this speech in the first place. “Civil Disobedience” encourages individual thought. It is a call for the people of America to take back there lives and be wary of the majority and the government.