1803-1882

Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was born in Boston in 1803, was descended from a family of ministers, "eight generations of culture,” as Holmes once expressed it. He was educated at the Boston Latin School and at Harvard, where he graduated in 1821 without attracting much attention at the time. He then taught school for a while, studied divinity and became a minister himself in turn, preaching to the congregation of the Second Unitarian Church of Boston with great acceptance. In 1832, however, he resigned because he felt unable to agree with his congregation on an important point of doctrine. The next year he went abroad, meeting, among other celebrated men, Carlyle, with whom he formed a friendship that deeply influenced them both, and which is one of the most famous friendships of great literary men. Returning home, he settled in Concord in the "Old Manse," which had been for a time the residence of Hawthorne. He now began to support himself and his family by lecturing. In 1836 he wrote his immortal "Concord Hymn," and published his first essay, "Nature," of which, however, less than five hundred copies were sold in ten years. In 1837 Emerson delivered his famous address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard on "The American Scholar," in which he made a strong plea for the emancipation of American thought. "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds." This striving after originality is characteristic of Emerson. "Think for yourself," he says again and again. Believe your own thought." The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke, not what men, but what they, thought."

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In 1841 the first volume of the "Essays" appeared, followed by the second in 1844. In these two volumes are included the most notable and representative of all his writings. In any one of these essays may be found the germ of the whole of Emerson's philosophy, and any one of them may be taken as fully representative of his style. The titles do not, except in the most general way, give an indication of their contents. In each of these essays, whether it be the one on History," on Self-Reliance," on " Compensation," on "Love," on "Friendship," or on "The Over-Soul," we shall find the same intellectual merits and shortcomings, the same literary beauties and defects. In 1847 Emerson again visited Europe, where he delivered a series of lectures afterwards published in the volume entitled "Representative Men." Gradually the lofty character of his genius came to be recognized, and when he published his "Conduct of Life" twenty-five hundred copies were sold in two days. Toward the close of life his mind became clouded, but he continued his work to the very end, dying in Concord in 1882 at the age of seventy-nine.

Emerson's high place in American literature is undisputed. He is the foremost thinker this country has produced. As a French critic remarked, "In this North America, which is pictured to us as so materialistic, I find the most ideal writer of our times." Emerson was noted also as a poet, though as a poet he is lacking in perfection of form. It is as an essayist and philosopher that he is pre-eminent. His literary style is distinctly characteristic of the man. His sentences are short and epigrammatic, Saxon words usually predominating. Some of his passages are difficult of interpretation, but in Emerson, as in Shakespeare and in all writers of the highest genius, there will always remain greater depths to be revealed, and loftier beauties to be discovered with each reading.

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COMPENSATION

OVER 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, 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 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

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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, 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 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 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; 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 everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for

everything 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 smooth 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 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 faithfulness to his truth, and become a by-word and a hissing.

This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It will not be balked of its end in the smallest iota. 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.