Compensation : $b Being an essay as written by Ralph Waldo EmersonEmerson, Ralph Waldo
Philosophy
Compensation : $b Being an essay as written by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
American essays -- 19th century
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 inter-penetration 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 neighbor 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, the great and universal and the petty
and particular, all unjust accumulations of property and power, are
avenged in the same manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity,
and the herald of all revolutions. One thing he always 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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