bitterness ceases
his, mine – I am my brother
my brother is me
In the nature of the soul is the compensation for the inequalities of condition.
The radical tragedy of nature seems to be the distinction of More and Less.
How can Less not feel the pain; how not feel indignation or malevolence towards More?
Look at those who have less faculty, and one feels sad, and knows not well what to make of it. He almost shuns their eye; he fears they will upbraid God.
What should they do?
It seems a great injustice.
But see the facts nearly, and these mountainous inequalities vanish.
Love reduces them, as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea.
The heart and soul of all men being one, this bitterness of His and Mine ceases.
His is mine.
I am my brother, and my brother is me.
From the essay Compensation (written in 1841) – as published in Compensation, self-reliance, and other essays, by Ralph Waldo Emerson; Boston, Houghton Mifflin and company, 1907.
Wikipedia states, “As a lecturer and orator, Emerson — nicknamed the Sage of Concord — became the leading voice of intellectual culture in the United States. There is little disagreement that Emerson was the most influential writer of 19th-century America, though these days he is largely the concern of scholars.“
As CS Lewis writes in the Screwtape letters, “Only the learned read old books.“
Make sense.
Who would listen to anyone on TV today who said “Love reduces them [these mountainous inequalities], as the sun melts the iceberg in the sea.“
What might be said about such a message today?
Remember how the Mark Twain’s “The War Prayer” ends?
Twain’s last line is, “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”
Easy to read the words.
Harder to put into effect.
Maybe that is why Mr. Emerson was labeled a transcendentalist.
No Haiku For You 