1826] COMPENSATION 75 class of facts lie at the foundation of our faith in God's being and providence. I say that sin is ignorance, that the thief steals from himself; that he who practices fraud is himself the dupe of the fraud he practices, that whoso borrows runs in his own debt; and whoso gives to another benefits himself to the same amount. Our nature has a twofold aspect, towards self and towards society; and the good or evil, the riches or poverty of a man, is to be measured, of course, by its relation to these two. And in the view of individual, unconnected character, as a moral being having duties to fulfil and a character to earn in the sight of God, am I impoverished that I have given my goods to feed the poor, that I have hazarded half my estate in the hands of my friend in yielding to calls of moral sentiment which made a part of my highest nature? Am I the richer in my own just estimation that I have unjustly taken or withheld from my fellow man his good name, his rights, or his property? Am I the richer that I have tied up my own purse and borrowed for my needs of the treasure of my friends? Shall I count myself richer that I have received an hundred favours and rendered none? Myself -the man within the breast-am the sole judge of this question and there is no appeal from the decisive negative. The daily mistake of thousands and tens of thousands who jump to make any pitiful advantage of their neighbour must not be quoted against this tribunal. . . It is not the true estimate of a man's actual value that is made from the balance of figures that stands in his favour on his ledger. This is to be corrected from the book of Life within him. If it is the reward of honest industry and skill, to which, said the ancient philosopher, the gods have sold all things, his estimate is correct, his doings are respected in heaven and in earth. Each man knows . . . what is his just standing, whether he is indebted or whether he has rendered others rich and happy. We have, we trust, made it apparent, that in the aspect of self, our doctrine that nothing in the intercourse of men can be given, is sound. The doctrine is no less true, no less important in its respect to our social nature. If a man steals, is it not known? If he borrows, is it not known? If he receives gifts, is it not known? If I accept important benefits from another, in secret or in public, there arises of course from the deed a secret acknowledgment of benefit 1826] LETTER TO HIS AUNT 77 on his part and of debt on mine, or, in other words, of superiority and of inferiority. (From Cabot's Q) LETTER TO MISS EMERSON January, 1826. The name of Hume, I fancy, has hardly gathered all its fame. His Essays are now found all over Europe and will take place doubtless in all Pyrrhonian bosoms of all other freethinkers of England or France. German theology will prop itself on him, and suggest to its lovers a sort of apology and consolation in his mild and plausible epicureanism. He is one of those great limitary angels to whom power is given for a season over the minds and history of men, not so much to mislead as to cast another weight into the contrary scale in that vast and complex adjustment of good and evil to which our understandings are accommodated and through which they are to escape by the fine clue of moral perception. For me, I hold fast to my old faith, that to each soul is a solitary law, a several universe. The colours to our eyes may be different, your red may be my green. My innocence, to one of more opportunity, shall be guilt. To in like manner, Christianity is a stern one age, dogmatical and ritual religion, but it answers their prayers and does also fulfil its Divine purposes. To the next generation it is a gentle and intellectual faith, for its disciples are men of minds and manners, and it likewise doth God's will to them. New England is now the most reading community in the world, and, of course, has the love of knowledge, and lust of change. In the supposed case of the external evidences being shaken down of Christianity, will there be any hope beyond the experiment of the morals of Seneca and Antonine on an improved age? Shall we not be safer for Butler's "Analogy "? Suppose we could lose our hold on the foundations of Christianity, would there be nothing satisfying in esteeming it also a great permitted engine of most exact and benign adaptation to the wants of many past ages, and so, yielding to an offensive aphorism, that what is absolutely false may be relatively true? Judgment must be measured to a man of Bagdad on a compound regard to the law of Conscience and the law of Mahomet. If the secrets of external nature were disclosed, there were no science to discipline our minds. If every candle were a sun, we should be blind. If every doubt were solved, we should be listless clods. Presently the door will be un 1826] VERSES 79 bolted at which we daily knock, and some of us shudder. [GREATNESS] It is doleful consolation to those who aspire in vain, to see how imperfect is greatness;Buonaparte finding his greatest felicity in bed, in a bed; Byron attributing his poetic inspiration to gin; Charles XII dozing and boasting away an insignificant manhood in the provinces of Turkey. Richard III is respectable when he says, "Slave, I have set my life upon a cast, Whoso, alas! is young, And being young is wise And deaf to saws of gray Advice, Hath listened when the Muses sung And heard with joy when on the wind the shell of Clio rung.' I The last two lines, in different form, occur among later poetical fragments, apropos of the greater charms History had for the youth than Metaphysics : Slighted Minerva's learned tongue, |