COMPENSATION
My name is Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ever since I was a boy, I 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 from which the doctrine is to be drawn charmed my fancy by their endless variety and lay always before me even in sleep, for they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm and the dwelling house, the greetings, the relations, the debts and credits, the influence of character, the nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to me, also, that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of the soul of this world clean from all vestige of tradition. And so the heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal love, 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 offense 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 the last hereafter by giving them the like gratifications another day? Bank stock and balloons, 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 tomorrow. 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 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 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 dogmatized in mixed company on providence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence that conveys well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement.
I shall attempt in this [essay] to record some facts that indicate the path of the law of compensation, happy beyond my expectation if I shall truly draw the smallest ark of this circle. Polarity or action and reaction we meet in every part of nature in darkness and light, in heat and cold, in the ebb and flow of waters, in male and female, in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals, in the systole and diastole of the heart, in the undulations of fluids and of sound, in the centrifugal and centrical gravity, in electricity Galvanism and chemical affinity, super-induced 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, bi-sex 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, yay/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 something 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 creature is our favorite, but a certain compensation balances every gift and every defect, a surplus that’s 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 caught 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, and does not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions.
ENTREPRENEUR TIP
The dualism Emerson talks about here is present everywhere, even in your business. Take five minutes to jot down the ebbs and flows you have noticed in your entrepreneurial journey, or even in your day-to-day business activities. How do those ebbs and flows affect your productivity, the habits you create, and the goals you set?
The same dualism underlies the nature and condition of man. Every excess causes a defect; every defect, an excess. Every sweet has its sour. Every evil, its good. Every faculty, which is a receiver of pleasure, has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It is to answer for its moderation with its life. For every grain of wit, there is a grain of folly. For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased—but use them. If a gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man, which he 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 and the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves. There is always some leveling 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 fears for society and by temper and position a bad citizen, a morose ruffian with a dash of a pirate in him. Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters who were getting along in the Dames 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 fells bar, takes the bore 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 in appearance before the world; he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne. Or do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He, who by force of will or of thought is great and overlooks thousands; has the responsibility of overlooking 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 fatefuln
ess to his truth and become a byword and a hissing. This law writes the laws of the cities and nations. It will not be bought of its end in the smallest iota. It is in vain to build or plot or combine against. The things refuse to be mismanaged long. Though no checks to a new evil appear, the checks exist and will appear. If the government is cruel, the Governor’s life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will not convict. Nothing arbitrary, nothing artificial can endure the true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost rigors or facilities of condition and to establish themselves with great indifference 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. Everything in nature contains all the powers of nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff as the natural it sees one type under every metamorphosis and regard 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 ability, 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 inspirations. 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, a just gets balance in all parts of life. 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—no more, no 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, whatever 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 two-fold manner. First, in the thing or in real nature and secondly, in the circumstance or in the parent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution; the casual retribution is the thing and is seen by the soul. The retribution and 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 strikes may follow late after the offense, but they follow because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspectedly 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 pre-exists in the means. The fruit [is] in the seed.
Whilst dust the world will be whole and refuses to be discarded, we seek to act partially, to sunder, to appropriate. For example, to gratify the senses, we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs of the character. The ingenuity of man has been dedicated to the solution of one problem—how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the sensual bright, etc. from the moral sweet of the moral deep, the moral fair. That is, again, the contrived to cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it bottomless. To get one end without another 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 a main 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 tuck and haggle for a private good and in particular, to ride that he may ride, a 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 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 reunites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of pleasant things. Profit out of profitable things, power out of strong things; the moment seeks to separate them from the whole. We can no more have things and get the sensual good by itself than we can get an inside that you’ll have no outside or a light without a shadow. Drive out nature with a fork. She comes running back. Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another brags that he does not know; brags that they do not touch him. But the brag is on his lips; the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part, they attack him in another more vital part. If he has escaped them in form and in the appearance, it’s because he has resisted his life and fled from himself and the retribution is so much death. So signal is the favor of all attempts to make the separation of the good from the tax, that the experiment would not be tried since who trieth 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, oh 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 call 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. Theseus knows one secret which Job 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 open the solid doors within whose vaults his thunders sleep. A plain confession of the inworking of the all and of its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in the same ethics and indeed it would seem impossible for any fable to be invented and get any currency which was not moral. There is a crack in everything God has made. Always it would seem there is this vindictive circumstance dealing in at unawares even into the wild policy in which the human fancy attempted to make the bold holiday and shake itself free of the old laws.
This backstroke, 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 Nemathus, who keeps watch on the university and lets no offense go unchastised. The furies, they said, are attendance on justice and if the son in heaven should transgress his path, they would punish h
im. The poets related that stone walls and iron swords and leather palms had sympathy with the wrongs of their owners.
That was the belt which Ajax gave Hector that dragged the Trojan hero over the field and the wheels of the car of Achilles. And the sword which Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax fell. They recorded it when the Faizaan erected the statue to Theogenius, 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 least he removed it from its pedestal and was crushed to death beneath its fall.
This voice of fable has in it something 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 is the best part of each, which he does know. That, which flowed out of his constitution and not from his two active inventions, 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.
ENTREPRENEUR TIP
One point Emerson makes in this essay is that you get out of the universe what you put into it. You can experience that cause and effect when you provide guidance or mentorship to employees or up-and-coming colleagues in your industry. Think about what you can do to put out something positive into your working world. Set up a mentorship program at your company. Take a junior colleague out to lunch. Give a talk to a college business class. Put your business know-how and energy out into the world through simple, everyday acts.
Napoleon Hill's Success Masters Page 5
