PS 1615 1906 *w*° % * <\ *o.*« o v " j \ ■-•■-. . . ** ** -jwf* ^ ^ ! EMERSON'S ESSAY ON C OMPENSATION WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LEWIS NATHANIEL CHASE 1906 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF SEWANEE TENNESSEE .14 I have nothing charactered in my brain that outlives this word Compensation. The Journal. June 2Q, i8ji. INTRODUCTION JIIiMerson's was a varied life. His name is associ- ated with many movements. Of some of them he was the vital force. Consequently to those who knew him well nothing about the man impressed them more deeply than the dimensions of his interests and influ- ences. It is this, perhaps, that marks the widest gulf between him and all others of his generation. He was the first to make the outside world aware that there was such a thing as American letters. And at home he became in his own life time a cult in the broad sense, like Carlyle, like Browning. Compared with his influence as a social factor there is somewhat ephemeral in the brilliant careers of his platform con- temporaries. Compared with his influence as an idol for the rising generation there is somewhat narrowly literary about Hawthorne and Poe for example: as there is about Stevenson and Pater and Arnold com- pared with Browning and Carlyle. The variety of Emerson's accomplishments is no longer remembered for its own sake but only in the light of historical association. That many-sided gen- ius which made him a leader in several departments of the world's work, has now passed, except in so far as it is perpetuated in his written word. It seemed vi INTRODUCTION at one time, when the movements with which his name was connected gradually dwindled, that there would still be left to him a permanent double place in philosophy and literature. Now the former has shut her doors upon him, and literature claims him for her own. He is bereft for present and future time of the auxiliaries of environment which made him the most important private American of his day. But these auxiliaries have proved themselves mere adornments. The man remains the same. Now, as then, the dimensions of his interests are impres- sive. Whenever it serves his purpose, Emerson, like Shakespeare, always repeats. No dissertation on the sources of his later writings would be complete which did not assign a foremost place to his own earlier work. He is not so inconsistent as he himself would be willing to admit. Put him to the test, and he the matter will re-preach of "the present action of the soul of this world, clean from all vestage of tradition." The weight of their significance in his mind at the time of writing determined the subjects of his themes. Whatever Emerson wrote was felt with such intensity of conviction that it represented his best thoughts on what was then uppermost in his mental and spiritual life. The result is — Emerson: even as "the world globes itself in a drop of dew. ' ' It follows that the essay of the following pages miniatures the man inasmuch as there was nothing INTRODUCTION vii charactered in his brain that outlived the word Com- pensation. The Latin saying comes naturally to the mind in speaking of Emerson's breadth: — nothing foreign to man was foreign to him. "Compensation" is typical of this in that the writer delivers himself of his inmost and for the most part his abiding thoughts on many matters: among them religion and government and art. It is not pertinent here that he elsewhere shifts his position or qualifies his statements. In theology Emerson's attitude was negatively a protest against New England Protestantism, against the "base tone in the popular religious works of the day." It seemed to him that "our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced." His positive position was one of unfailing belief in the dignity of man. Men are better than their dogma. "Their daily life gives it the lie. * * * For men are wiser than they know." At least on the subject of compensa- tion life is, according to him, ahead of theology, and the people know more than the preachers teach. Em- erson was a pantheist and an optimist : "The universe is represented in every one of its particles. Every- thing in nature contains all the powers of nature. * * * The true doctrine of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb." "The soul refuses limits, and affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism." In his "pantheis- viii INTRODUCTION tic optimism" he parts company for once and all with formal philosophy. Emerson's theology has contrib- uted to the working faith of thousands of Americans. Perfectibility of the race is the hope and creed of de- mocracy. Optimism is our habit of mind as a people. In politics Emerson was theoretically a pure demo- crat. "Nature hates monopolies and exceptions." The result of inequality is fear. "Fear is * * * the herald of all revolutions. One thing he teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. * * * Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our culti- vated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over government and property. * * * He indicates great wrongs which must be re- vised." Revolutionists may dwell on this passage, but there is no sympathy with lawlessness: "A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast." Penetrating epigrams on letters as on life — "Prov- erbs are the sanctuary of the intuitions" — are not wanting. But of far deeper import to art and litera- ture is the one brief paragraph which deals with the " voice of fable." It is, indeed, a declaration of the fundamental principle on which is based some of the firmest and most significant criticism of recent years. "That is the best part of each writer which has nothing private in it. * * * that which in the study of a single artist you might not find, but in INTRODUCTION ix the study of many, you would abstract as the spirit of them all." These thoughts on government, religion, and art alike, are colored by democracy. "The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself in striving to shut out others." The best part of a writer has "nothing pri- vate in it." Emerson is the codifier and the most distinguished champion of American ideals. By means of such subjects as art, government, and religion in the ordinary sense Emerson gets his au- dience, becomes comprehensible to numbers of men, and touches them nearly. But his interests were broader and deeper than theirs. His own truest life was lived apart, and was characterized by devotion to two things — the intellect and the soul. The mere fact of his devotion to the former, and the purity of his devotion to the latter differentiates him from the run of men. The dominant note of the main part of "Compensa- tion" is intellectual, the delight in the continuous and connected exposition of a principle, the idea of Nemesis. Its author was not a thinker in the sense of offering an original contribution. But he was a thinker in the sense that one of his strongest passions was for tracing the processes of universal laws. Such x INTRODUCTION tracing is, of necessity, mainly intellectual. And he differed from more pronounced mystics in that he re- sorted to mysticism only as the final step, after severe training and straining of the logical faculties. He did not contemn the reasoning power. On the con- trary, there are few passages in his works in which he writes with more sympathetic eloquence than where he hails "the high-priesthood of the pure reason, the Trismegisti, the expounders of the prin- ciples of thought from age to age. ' ' When he speaks of "the innocent serenity with which these babe-like Jupiters sit in their clouds," who is there that does not picture the Sage of Concord as one of them ! The concluding pages of "Compensation" are con- cerned with "the present action of the soul of this world." This was always and ever the nearest and dearest of Emerson's interests. He had, in truth, but one enthusiasm, and that was for the spirit. The paradox suggested is unreal. To him, everything was spiritual. EMERSON'S ESSAY ON COMPENSATION COMPENSATION The wings of Time are black and white, Pied with morning and with night. Mountain tall and ocean deep Trembling balance duly keep. In changing moon, in tidal wave, Glows the feud of Want and Have. Gauge of more and less through space Electric star and pencil plays. The lonely Earth amid the balls That hurry through the eternal halls, A makeweight flying to the void, Supplemental asteroid, Or compensatory spark, Shoots across the neutral Dark. Man 's the elm and Wealth the vine Stanch and strong the tendrils twine: Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, None from its stock that vine can reave. Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There 's no god dare wrong a worm. Laurel crowns cleave to deserts And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; And all that Nature made thy own, Floating in air or pent in stone, Will rive the hills and swim the sea And, like thy shadow, follow thee. EMERSON'S ESSAY ON COMPENSATION JlLver since I was a boy, I have wished to write a discourse on Compensation ; for, it seemed to me when very young, that, on this subject, Life was ahead of theology, and the people knew more than the preachers taught. The documents, too, from which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always before me, even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm, and the dwelling-house, the greetings, the relations, the debts and credits, the influence of character, the nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to me, also, that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of the Soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradition, and so the heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal love, con- versing with that which he knows was always and al- ways must be, because it really is now. It appeared, moreover, that if this doctrine could be stated in terms with any resemblance to those bright intuitions in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a star in many dark hours and crooked pas- 2 EMERSON'S ESSAY sages in our journey that would not surfer us to lose our way. I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing a sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed that judgment is not executed in this world ; that the wick- ed are successful; that the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a compen- sation to be made to both parties in the next life. No offence appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. As far as I could observe, when the meeting broke up, they separated without remark on the sermon. Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life ? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and de- spised; and that a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifica- tions another day, — bank-stock and doubloons, veni- son and champagne? This must be the compensation intended ; for, what else ? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate infer- ence the disciple would draw, was: "We are to have such a good time as the sinners have now;" — or, to push it to its extreme import: — "You sin now; we ON COMPENSATION 3 shall sin by-and-by; we would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we expect our revenge to-mor- row. ' ' The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are successful ; that justice is not done now. The blindness of the preacher consisted of deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth ; announcing the Presence of the Soul; the omnipotence of the Will: and so estab- lishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood, and summoning the dead to its present tribunal. I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasionally they treat the re- lated topics. I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better than this theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own experience; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demon- strate. For men are wiser than they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits without after- thought, if said in conversation, would probably be questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to 4 EMERSON'S ESSAY an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement. I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record some facts that indicate the path of the law of Compensation; happy beyond my expectation, if I shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals ; in the systole and diastole of the heart ; in the undulations of fluids, and of sound ; in the centrif- ugal and centripetal gravity ; in electricity, galvanism and chemical affinity. Superinduce magnetism at one end of a needle; the opposite magnetism takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the north re- pels. To empty here, you must condense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole ; as spirit, matter; man, woman; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay. Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of its parts. The entire system of things gets represented in every particle. There is somewhat that resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal tribe. The reaction, so grand in the elements, is repeated within ON COMPENSATION 5 these small boundaries. For example, in the animal kingdom, the physiologist has observed that no crea- tures are favorites, but a certain compensation bal- ances every gift and every defect. A surplusage giv- en to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part of the same creature. If the head and neck are enlarged, the trunk and extremities are cut short. The theory of the mechanic forces is another exam- ple. What we gain in power is lost in time, and the converse. The periodic or compensating errors of the planets is another instance. The influences of cli- mate and soil in political history is another. The cold climate invigorates. The barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. The same dualism underlies the nature and condi- tion of man. Every excess causes a defect ; every de- fect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the sea do not more speed- ily seek a level from their loftiest tossing than the 6 EMERSON'S ESSAY varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the for- tunate, substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad citizen, — a morose ruffian with a dash of the pirate in him? — Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters who are getting along in the dame's classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance true. The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace and the best of his manly attributes. To pre- serve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the. real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or, do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius ? Neither has this an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought is great, and overlooks thousands, has the responsibility of over- looking. With every influx of light, comes new dan- ger. Has he light? he must bear witness to the light, and always outrun that sympathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by his fidelity to new rev- elations of the incessant soul. He must hate father ON COMPENSATION 7 and mother, wife and child. Has he all that the world loves and admires and covets ? — he must cast behind him their admiration, and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth, and become a by-word and a hissing. This Law writes the laws of cities and nations. It will not be baulked of its end in the smallest iota. It is in vain to plot or build or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt din male administrari. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist and will appear. If the government is cruel, the governor's life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. Nothing arbitrary, nothing artificial can endure. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condi- tion, and to establish themselves with great indiffer- ency under all varieties of circumstance. Under all governments the influence of character remains the same, — in Turkey and New England about alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt, history hon- estly confesses that man must have been as free as culture could make him. These appearances indicate the fact that the uni- verse is represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the powers of na- ture. Everything is made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type under every metamorpho- 8 EMERSON'S ESSAY sis, and regards a horse as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, hindrances, ener- gies, and whole system of every other. Every occu- pation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world, and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man, and recite all his destiny. The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduc- tion that take hold on eternity, — all find room to consist in the small creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe con- trives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repul- sion; if the force, so the limitation. Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. It is almighty. All nature feels its grasp. "It is in the world and ON COMPENSATION 9 the world was made by it." It is eternal, but it en- acts itself in time and space. Justice is not post- poned. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in ail parts of life. 'Aet yap ev irlTnovaiv ol Ato? kv(Sol. The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What we call retribution, is the universal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind. Every act rewards itself, or, in other words, inte- grates itself in a twofold manner; first, in the thing, or, in real nature; and, secondly, in the circum- stance, or, in apparent nature. Men call the cir- cumstance the retribution. The causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen by the soul. The retri- bution in the circumstance is seen by the under- standing; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a long time and so does not become distinct until after many years. The specific stripes may follow late after the offence, but they follow be- cause they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that io EMERSON'S ESSAY unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed ; for the ef- fect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed. Whilst thus the world will be whole, and refuses to be disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate; for example, — to gratify the senses we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. The ingenuity of man has been ded- icated always to the solution of one problem, — how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bot- tomless; to get a one aid without an other aid. The soul says, Eat ; the body would feast. The soul says, The man and woman shall be one flesh and one soul; the body would join the flesh only. The soul says, Have dominion over all things to the ends of virtue; the body would have the power over things to its own ends. The soul strives amain to live and work through all things. It would be the only fact. All things shall be added unto it, — power, pleasure, knowledge, beauty. The particular man aims to be somebody ; to set up for himself; to truck and higgle for a pri- vate good; and, in particulars, to ride, that he may ride; to dress, that he may be dressed; to eat, that ON COMPENSATION n he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. Men seek to be great ; they would have offices, wealth, power and fame. They think that to be great is to get only one side of nature — the sweet, without the other side — the bitter. Steadily is this dividing and detaching counter- acted. Up to this day, it must be owned, no pro- jector has had the smallest success. The parted wa- ter re-unites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things, the moment we seek to separate them from the whole. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. "Drive out nature with a fork, she comes running back." Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know, brags that they do not touch him; — but the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part, they attack him in another more vital part. If he has escaped them in form and in the appearance, it is that he has resisted his life, and fled from himself, and the retribution is so much death. So signal is the failure of all attempts to make this separation of the good from the tax, that the experiment would not be tried, — since to try it is to be mad, — but for the circumstance that when the disease began in the 12 EMERSON'S ESSAY will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at once infected, so that the man ceases to see God whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual allurement of an object, and not see the sensual hurt; he sees the mermaid's head, but not the dragon's tail; and thinks he can cut off that which he would have from that which he would not have. "How secret art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in silence, O thou only great God, sprinkling with an unwearied Providence certain penal blindnesses upon such as have unbridled desires ! ' ' The human soul is true to these facts in the paint- ing of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of con- versation. It finds a tongue in literature unawares. Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but having traditionally ascribed to him many base ac- tions, they involuntarily made amends to Reason, by tying up the hands of so bad a god. He is made as helpless as a king of England. Prometheus knows one secret, which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, another. He cannot get his own thunders; Minerva keeps the key of them : " Of all the gods I only know the keys That ope the solid doors within whose vaults His thunders sleep." A plain confession of the in-working of the All, and of its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics ; and indeed it would seem impossi- ble for any fable to be invented and get any currency ON COMPENSATION 13 which was not moral. Aurora forgot to ask youth for her lover, and so, though Tithonus is immortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable ; for Thetis held him by the heel when she dipped him in the Styx, and the sacred waters did not wash that part. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back whilst he was bathing in the Dragon's blood, and that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it always is. There is a crack in everything God has made. Always, it would seem, there is this vindictive circumstance stealing in at un- awares, even into the wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to make bold holiday, and to shake itself free of the old laws, — this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certifying that the law is fatal ; that in Nature nothing can be given; all things are sold. This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who keeps watch in the Universe, and lets no offence go unchastised. The Furies, they said, are attendants on Justice, and if the sun in heaven should trans- gress his path, they would punish him. The poets related that stone walls, and iron swords, and leath- ern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hec- tor dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the wheels of the car of Achilles ; and the sword which Hector gave Ajax, was that on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded that when the Thasians erected a statue to Theagenes, a victor in the games, one of 14 EMERSON'S ESSAY his rivals went to it by night, and endeavored to throw it down by repeated blows, until at last he moved it from its pedestal and was crushed to death beneath its fall. This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It came from thought above the will of the writer. That is the best part of each writer, which has noth- ing private in it. That is the best part of each, which he does not know; that which flowed out of his constitution, and not from his too active invention; that which in the study of a single artist you might not easily find, but in the study of many, you would abstract as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that early Hellenic world, that I would know. The name and circumstance of Phidias, however convenient for history, embarass when we come to the highest criticism. We are to see that which man was tending to do in a given pe- riod, and was hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at the moment wrought. Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the proverbs of all nations, which are always the lit- erature of Reason, or the statements of an absolute truth without qualification. Proverbs, like the sa- cred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the Intuitions. That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his ON COMPENSATION 15 own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs with- out contradiction. And this law of laws, which the pulpit, the senate and the college deny, is hourly preached in all markets and all languages by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omni- present as that of birds and flies. All things are double, one against another. — Tit for tat ; an eye for an eye ; a tooth for a tooth ; blood for blood; measure for measure; love for love. — Give and it shall be given you. — He that watereth shall be watered himself. — What will you have? quoth God ; pay for it and take it. — Nothing ven- ture, nothing have. — Thou shalt be paid exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less. — Who doth not work shall not eat. — Harm watch, harm catch. — Curses always recoil on the head of him who impre- cates them. — If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own. — Bad counsel confounds the adviser. — The Devil is an ass. It is thus written because it is thus in life. Our action is overmastered and characterized above our will by the law of nature. We aim at a petty end quite aside from the public good, but our act arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of the world. A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will, or against his will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word. Every 16 EMERSON'S ESSAY opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread- ball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains in the thrower's bag. Or, rather, it is a harpoon thrown at the whale, unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, and if the harpoon is not good, or not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in twain, or to sink the boat. You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. "No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and ninepins, and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. The senses would make things of all persons ; of women, of chil- dren, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, "I will get it from his purse or get it from his skin," is sound philosophy. All infractions of love and equity in our social re- lations are speedily punished. They are punished by Fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. We meet as water meets water, or a current of air meets another, with perfect diffusion and interpen- etration of nature. But as soon as there is any de- parture from simplicity and attempt at halfness, or ON COMPENSATION 17 good for me that is not good for him, my neighbor feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; there is war between us; there is hate in him and fear in me. All the old abuses in society, the great and univer- sal and the petty and particular, all unjust accumula- tions of property and power, are avenged in the same manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity, and the herald of all revolutions. One thing he always teaches, that there is rottenness where he appears. He is a carrion crow, and though you see not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our cultivated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded and mowed and gibbered over government and property. That obscene bird is not there for nothing. He in- dicates great wrongs which must be revised. Of the like nature is that expectation of change which instantly follows the suspension of our volun- tary activity. The terror of cloudless noon, the emer- ald of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the instinct which leads every generous soul to impose on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious virtue, are the tremblings of the balance of justice through the heart and mind of man. Experienced' men of the world know very well that it is always best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a man often pays dear for a small frugality. 18 EMERSON'S ESSAY The borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained any thing who has received a hundred favors and rendered none? Has he gained by borrowing, through indolence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, or horses, or money ? There arises on the deed the instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part, and of debt on the other; that is, of superiority and in- feriority. The transaction remains in the memory of himself and his neighbor; and every new transaction alters, according to its nature, their relation to each other. He may soon come to see that he had better have broken his own bones than to have ridden in his neighbor's coach, and that "the highest price he can pay for a thing is to ask for it." A wise man will extend this lesson to all parts of life, and know that it is always the part of prudence to face every claimant, and pay every just demand on your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; for, first or last, you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise, you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for every benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is great who confers the most benefits. He is base, — and that is the one base thing in the' universe, — to receive favors and render none. In the order of na- ture we cannot render benefits to those from whom ON COMPENSATION 19 we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast cor- rupt and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application of good sense to a common want. It is best to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied to gardening; in your sailor, good sense applied to navigation ; in the house, good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. But because of the dual constitution of all things, in labor as in life there can be no cheating. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and cred- it are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they repre- sent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be coun- terfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the default- er, the gambler cannot extort the benefit, cannot ex- tort the knowledge of material and moral nature 20 EMERSON'S ESSAY which his honest care and pains yield to the opera- tive. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power; but they who do not the thing have not the power. Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharp- ening of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect com- pensation of the universe. Everywhere and always this law is sublime. The absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that everything has its price; and if that price is not paid, not that thing but some- thing else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get anything without its price, — this doctrine is not less sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states, in the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees ever implicated in those processes with which he is con- versant, the stern ethics which sparkle on his chisel- edge, which are measured out by his plumb and foot- rule, which stand as manifest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history of a state, — do recommend to him his trade, and though seldom named, exalt his business to his imagination. The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beau- tiful laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide ON COMPENSATION 21 world to hide a rogue. There is no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. Always some damning circumstance transpires. The laws and substances of nature, — water, snow, wind, gravitation, — become penalties to the thief. On the other hand, the law holds with equal sure- ness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good man has absolute good, which like fire turns every- thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do him any harm ; but as the royal armies sent against Na- poleon, when he approached, cast down their colors and from enemies became friends, so do disasters of all kinds, as sickness, offence, poverty, prove bene- factors : " Winds blow and waters roll Strength to the brave, and power and deity, Yet in themselves are nothing." The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a de- fect that was not somewhere made useful to him. 22 EMERSON'S ESSAY The stag in the fable admired his horns and blamed his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs to thank his faults. As no man thoroughly understands a truth until first he has contended against it, so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the hindrances or talents of men, until he has suffered from the one, and seen the triumph of the other over his own want of the same. Has he a defect of temper that unfits him to live in society? Thereby he is driven to en- tertain himself alone, and acquire habits of self-help; and thus, like the wounded oyster, he mends his shell with pearl. Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not un- til we are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, awak- ens the indignation which arms itself with secret forces. A great man is always willing to be little. Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of con- ceit; has got moderation and real skill. The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assail- ants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls off from him like a dead skin, and when they would tri- umph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is ON COMPENSATION 23 safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a news- paper. As long as all that is said, is said against me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as soon as honied words of praise are spoken for me, I feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. In general, every evil to which we do not succumb, is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the temptation we resist. The same guards which protect us from disaster, defect, and enmity, defend us, if we will, from self- ishness and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the fulfillment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the pay- ment is withholden, the better for you; for com- pound interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer. The history of persecution is a history of endeav- 24 EMERSON'S ESSAY ors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the actors be many or one, a tryant or a mob. A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving them- selves of reason and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the pranks of boys who run with fire-en- gines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house enlightens the world ; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side. The minds of men are at last aroused ; reason looks out and justifies her own, and malice finds all her work vain. It is the whipper who is whipped, and the tyrant who is undone. Thus do all things preach the indifferency of cir- cumstances. The man is all. Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of com- pensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. The ON COMPENSATION 25 thoughtless say, on hearing these representations, — What boots it to do well ? there is one event to good and evil; if I gain any good, I must pay for it; if I lose any good, I gain some other; all actions are indifferent. There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensa- tion, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a com- pensation, but a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect balance, lies the original abyss of real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation, or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, parts and times, within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the same. Nothing, False- hood, may indeed stand as the great Night or shade, on which, as a background, the living universe paints itself forth ; but no fact is begotten by it ; it cannot work; for it is not. It cannot work any good; it cannot work any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is worse not to be than to be. We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because the criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy and does not come to a crisis or judg- ment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stun- ning confutation of his nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the law? In- asmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie with 26 EMERSON'S ESSAY him, he so far deceases from nature. In some man- ner there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the understanding also; but should we not see it, this deadly deduction makes square the eternal account. Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action I properly am; in a virtuous act, I add to the world; I plant into deserts conquered from Chaos and Noth- ing, and see the darkness receding on the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love; none to knowledge; none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the purest sense. The soul refuses all limits. It affirms in man always an Optimism, never a Pessimism. His life is a progress and not a station. His in- stinct is trust. Our instinct uses "more" and "less" in application to man, always of the presence of the soul, and not of its absence ; the brave man is greater than the coward ; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a man and not less, than the fool and knave. There is, therefore, no tax on the good of virtue; for that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute exist- ence, without any comparative. All external good has its tax, and if it came without desert or sweat, has no root in me and the next wind will blow it away. But all the good of nature is the soul's, and may be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that ON COMPENSATION 27 is, by labor which the heart and the head allow. I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for ex- ample, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it new responsibility. I do not wish more external goods, — neither possessions, nor hon- ors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the knowl- edge that the compensation exists, and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of St. Ber- nard, "Nothing can work me damage except myself; the harm that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real sufferer but by my own fault. ' ' In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequalities of condition. The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction of More and m Less. How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel indignation or malevolence towards More? Look at those who have less faculty, and one feels sad, and knows not well what to make of it. Almost he shuns their eye; almost he fears they will upbraid God. What should they do? It seems a great injustice. But face the facts, and see them nearly, and these mountainous inequalities vanish. Love reduces them all, as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea. The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases. His is mine. I am my broth- er, and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed 28 EMERSON'S ESSAY and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love ; I can still receive ; and he that loveth, maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with the friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and envied, is my own. It is the eternal nature of the soul to appropriate and make all things its own. Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own con- scious domain. His virtue, — is not that mine? His wit, — if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit. Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The changes which break up at short intervals the pros- perity of men are advertisements of a nature whose law is growth. Evermore it is the order of nature to grow, and every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In proportion to the vigor of the individual, these revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant, and all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming, as it were, a transpar- ent fluid membrane through which the living form is seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated heterogen- eous fabric of many dates, and of no settled charac- ter, in which the man is imprisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and the man of to-day scarcely ON COMPENSATION 29 recognizes the man of yesterday. And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed es- tate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperat- ing with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks. We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or re- create that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. We cannot find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, "Up and onward for ever more!" We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the New; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look backwards. And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long inti- vals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disap- pointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that under- 3 o EMERSON'S ESSAY lies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, broth- er, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, some- what later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupa- tion, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influ- ences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have re- mained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the fall- ing of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. SP - 3.2 - v n DOBBS BROS. LIBHARr IINOINO ST. AUGUSTINE 1%\ FLA. '^!>ftO/