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
Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses to be disparted, 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, 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_, without
an _other 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 amain 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 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 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 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 good, by itself, than we can get an
inside that shall have no outside, or a light without a shadow. “Drive
out nature with a fork, she comes running back.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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