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.
ESSAY 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 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
demonstrate. 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 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
overcharge 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. {Oi chusoi
Dios aei enpiptousi}, -- 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, &c., 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!"
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
endeavoured 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
neighbour 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
instructer 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 neighbour'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 neighbour;
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
neighbour'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 endeavours 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
neighbours, 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 neighbourhoods of men.
|