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_ 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.
III. COMPENSATION.
Ever 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; greetings, relations, 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, conversing with that which he knows was always
and always 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 passages in our journey, that would
not suffer 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 wicked are successful; that the good are
miserable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a
compensation 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 despised; and that a
compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by
giving them the like gratifications another day,--bank-
stock and doubloons, venison 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 inference
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 shall sin by and by; we
would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we
expect our revenge to-morrow.'
The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are
successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness of
the preacher consisted in 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 establishing the standard of good and
ill, of success and falsehood.
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 related 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 their 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 demonstrate.
For men are wiser than they know. That which they hear in
schools and pulpits without afterthought, 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 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
equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the
animal body; in the systole and diastole of the heart;
in the undulations of fluids, and of sound; in the
centrifugal 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
repels. 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; odd, even; 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
these small boundaries. For example, in the animal kingdom
the physiologist has observed that no creatures are favorites,
but a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect.
A surplusage given 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 example. 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 climate and soil in political
history are another. The cold climate invigorates. The
barren soil does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers or
scorpions.
The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man.
Every excess causes a defect; every defect 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 every
thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and
for every thing 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 speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing
than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves.
There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down
the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate,
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 preserve 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 charges of that eminence. With every
influx of light comes new danger. 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 revelations of the incessant soul. He must hate father
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 byword and a hissing.
This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in
vain to build or plot or combine against it. Things refuse
to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt diu 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. If the law is too mild, private
vengeance comes in. If the government is a terrific democracy,
the pressure is resisted by an over-charge of energy in the
citizen, and life glows with a fiercer flame. The true life
and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or
felicities of condition and to establish themselves with
great indifferency under all varieties of circumstances.
Under all governments the influence of character remains
the same,--in Turkey and in New England about alike. Under
the primeval despots of Egypt, history honestly confesses
that man must have been as free as culture could make him.
These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is
represented in every one of its particles. Every thing in
nature contains all the powers of nature. Every thing is
made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist sees one type
under every metamorphosis, 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, energies
and whole system of every other. Every occupation, 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 reproduction 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 contrives
to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so
is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; 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 in the world, and the world was made
by it." Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts
its balance in all parts of life. Hoi kuboi Dios aei
eupiptousi,--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 integrates
itself, in a twofold manner; first in the thing, or in
real nature; and secondly in the circumstance, or in
apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution.
The causal retribution is in the thing and is seen by the
soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the
understanding; 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 because
they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one
stem. Punishment is a fruit that 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 effect 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 always been dedicated 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 bottomless; to get a one end, without an other
end. 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 private good; and, in particulars, to ride
that he may ride; to dress that he may be dressed; to eat
that 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 possess one side
of nature,--the sweet, without the other side, the bitter.
This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Up
to this day it must be owned no projector has had the
smallest success. The parted water reunites behind our
hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things, profit
out of profitable things, power out of strong things, as
soon as 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, 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 because 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 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!"1
1 St. Augustine, Confessions, B. I.
The human soul is true to these facts in the painting of
fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of conversation.
It finds a tongue in literature unawares. Thus the Greeks
called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but having traditionally
ascribed to him many base actions, 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 it would seem impossible for any fable to be
invented and get any currency which was not moral. Aurora
forgot to ask youth for her lover, and though Tithonus is
immortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite invulnerable;
the sacred waters did not wash the heel by which Thetis
held him. 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 must be. There is a crack
in every thing God has made. It would seem there is always
this vindictive circumstance stealing in at unawares 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 transgress his path they would punish him.
The poets related that stone walls and iron swords and
leathern thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs of
their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hector 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 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 nothing private in
it; that 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, embarrass when we come to the highest
criticism. We are to see that which man was tending to do
in a given period, and was hindered, or, if you will,
modified in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias,
of Dante, of Shakspeare, 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 literature
of reason, or the statements of an absolute truth without
qualification. Proverbs, like the sacred 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 own words, it will suffer him to
say in proverbs without contradiction. And this law of laws,
which the pulpit, the senate and the college deny, is hourly
preached in all markets and workshops by flights of proverbs,
whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent 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 venture, 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 imprecates 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 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 hurled 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 children, 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 relations
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 as two currents of air mix, with perfect diffusion and
interpenetration of nature. But as soon as there is any
departure from simplicity, and attempt at halfness, or 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, universal and particular,
all unjust accumulations 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 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 indicates
great wrongs which must be revised.
Of the like nature is that expectation of change which
instantly follows the suspension of our voluntary activity.
The terror of cloudless noon, the emerald 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
best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that a
man often pays dear for a small frugality. 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 inferiority.
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 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 nature we cannot render
benefits to those from whom 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 corrupt 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 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 credit are
signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or
stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and
virtue, cannot be counterfeited 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 defaulter, the
gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral
nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative.
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 sharpening
of a stake to the construction of a city or an epic, is
one immense illustration of the perfect compensation of
the universe. The absolute balance of Give and Take, the
doctrine that every thing has its price,--and if that
price is not paid, not that thing but something else is
obtained, and that it is impossible to get any thing
without its price,--is not less sublime in the columns
of a leger 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 implicated in those processes with which he is
conversant, 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 beautiful 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 world to hide a rogue.
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. Some
damning circumstance always 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 sureness 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
Napoleon, when he approached cast down their colors and from
enemies became friends, so disasters of all kinds, as
sickness, offence, poverty, prove benefactors:--
"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 defect that was not somewhere made
useful to him. 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 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 entertain 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. The indignation
which arms itself with secret forces does not awaken
until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed. 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 conceit; has got moderation and real
skill. The wise man throws himself on the side of his
assailants. 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 triumph,
lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame is safer than
praise. I hate to be defended in a newspaper. As long as
all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain
assurance of success. But as soon as honeyed 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 selfishness 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 fulfilment 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 payment is withholden, the better for you; for compound
interest on compound interest is the rate and usage of this
exchequer.
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors 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 tyrant or a mob. 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. 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 prank of boys, who run with fire-engines 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. Hours of sanity and consideration are
always arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the
truth is seen and the martyrs are justified.
Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances.
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 compensation is not the doctrine of
indifferency. The 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 compensation, to
wit, its own nature. The soul is not a compensation, but
a life. The soul is. Under all this running sea of
circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with perfect
balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence,
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,
Falsehood, 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 judgment anywhere in
visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his
nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted
the law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie
with him he so far deceases from nature. In some manner
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 Nothing 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 limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never
a Pessimism.
His life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is
trust. Our instinct uses "more" and "less" in application
to man, 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 no tax on the good of virtue, for
that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute existence,
without any comparative. Material 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 is, by labor which the heart and the head allow.
I no longer wish to meet a good I do not earn, for example
to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it brings with it
new burdens. I do not wish more external goods,--neither
possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The gain
is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the
knowledge 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. Bernard,--"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 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. He almost shuns their eye; he fears they will
upbraid God. What should they do? It seems a great injustice.
But see the facts nearly and these mountainous inequalities
vanish. Love reduces them 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
brother and my brother is me. If I feel overshadowed 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 nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus
and Shakspeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I
conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious 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 prosperity of men
are advertisements of a nature whose law is growth. 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
transparent fluid membrane through which the living form
is seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated heterogeneous
fabric of many dates and of no settled character, in which
the man is imprisoned. Then there can be enlargement, and
the man of to-day scarcely 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 estate,
resting, not advancing, resisting, not cooperating 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 recreate 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 again 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 evermore!'
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 intervals of time.
A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, 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 underlies all facts. The death of a
dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing
but privation, somewhat 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
occupation, 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 influences that
prove of the first importance to the next years; and the
man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower,
with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its
head, by the falling 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. _
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