o ::; ;- ; \\ < r. ; : - ;. rr WALDO EMERSON University of California Berkeley CLAIRE GIANNINI HOFFMAN COLLECTION COMPENSATION BEING AN ESSAY AS WRITTEN BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON w v ^**^ tt* DONE INTO A PRINTED BOOK BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THE SHOP, WHICH IS IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, U.S.A. MCMIV Copyright, 1903, by The Roycrofters, East Aurora, N. Y. In this God's world, with its wild-whirling eddies and mad^ foam-oceans, where men and nations perish as if without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly delayed, dost thou think that there is there- fore no justice ? * ' I tell thee again there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I find here below : the just thing, the true thing. Thomas Carlyle. COMPENSATION VER since I was a boy I have wished to write a discourse on Com- pensation; for it had 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 be- fore 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 i on Soul of this world, clean from all vestige Compensation 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, 2 when the meeting broke up they separated (Esfgap on without remark on the sermon. Compensation 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 unprin- cipled 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 cham- pagne? This must be the compensation in- tended ; 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 3 on that the bad are successful ; that justice is Compensation 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 con- victing the world from the truth ; announ- cing the Presence of the Soul; the omnipo- tence of the Will ; and so establishing 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 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 aspir- ing soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own experience, and all men feel some- times the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser than they 4 know. That which they hear in schools and <&&&w on pulpits without afterthought, if said in con- Compensation versation 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 dissatisfac- tion 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 inspira- tion and expiration of plants and animals; 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 5 on needle, the opposite magnetism takes place Compensation at the other end. If the south attracts, the north repels. To empty here, you must con- dense 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 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 sur- plusage given to one part is paid out of a reduction from another part of the same 6 creature. If the head and neck are enlarged, <&&w on the trunk and extremities are cut short. Compensation The theory of the mechanic forces is an- other 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 in- crease, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes 7 on out of the man what she puts into his Compensation 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 leveling circumstance that puts down the overbear- ing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, sub- stantially 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 get- ting along in the dame's classes at the vil- lage school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and feldspar, 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 CEggap on attributes. To preserve for a short time so Compensation 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 thou- sands, has the responsibility of overlooking. With every influx of light comes new danger. Has he light ? he must bear witness to the light, and always outrun that sym- pathy which gives him such keen satisfac- tion, 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 na- tions. It will not be balked of its end in the smallest iota. It is in vain to build or plot 9 on or combine against it. Things refuse to be Compensation mismanaged long. Res nolunt dm male ad- ministrari. 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 rev- enue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. Nothing arbitrary, nothing artifi- cial can endure. The true life and satisfac- tions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or felicities of condition, and to es- tablish themselves with great indifferency 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 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 10 made of one hidden stuff; as the naturalist (Cggap on sees one type under every metamorphosis, Compensation 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 re- peats 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 com- pend of the world and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of hu- man 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, appe- tite, 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 1! on omnipresence is that God reappears with Compensation 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. fl Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sen- timent, outside of us is a law. We feel its in- spirations; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. It is almighty. All nature feels its grasp. " It is in the world, and the world was made by it." It is eternal, but it enacts itself in time and space. Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. " The dice of God are always ready to fall." The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equa- tion, 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 pun- ished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong 12 redressed, in silence and certainty. What we dEggap on call retribution is the universal necessity by Compensation 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 sec- ondly, in the circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retri- bution. The causal retribution is in the thing and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the understand- ing; 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 13 on effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot Compengatton be severed ; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed. Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses to be disparted, we seek to act par- tially, to sunder, to appropriate ; for exam- ple, to gratify the senses we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. The ingenuity of man has been dedicated to the solution of one prob- lem, 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, with- out an other end. The soul says, Eat ; the 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. 14 The soul strives amain to live and work (E0a on through all things. It would be the only Compensation 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 gov- ern, 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 counteracted. Up to this day it must be owned no projector has had the smallest success. The parted water 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 15 on good, by itself, than we can get an inside Compensation that shall have no outside, or a light with- out 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 at- tack him in another more vital part. If he has escaped them in form and in the ap- pearance, it is because he has resisted his life and fled from himself, and the retribu- tion is so much death. So signal is the fail- ure of all attempts to make this separation of the good from the tax, that the experi- ment 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 16 see the sensual hurt; he sees the mermaid's (Etegap on head but not the dragon's tail, and thinks Compensation 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! "