Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
and mowed and gibbered over government and property. That obscene[129]
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,[130] 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[131] 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
anything 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.[132] 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.[133] 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 skillful 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 everything 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 anything without its price,--is not less
sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states, in
the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and reaction of
nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws which each man sees
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,[134] 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,[135] 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 everything 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, offense,
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[136] 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 punished, 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 anyone but himself,[137] as for a thing to be and not to be
at the same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains.
The nature and soul of things takes on itself the guaranty of the
fulfillment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to
loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God
in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid. The longer the payment is
withholden,[138] 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[139] 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. Everything 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