Thus do all things preach the indifferency of circumstances. The man is
all. Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has
its tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of compensation is
not the doctrine of indifferency. The thoughtless say, on hearing these
representations,--What boots it to do well? there is one event to good
and evil; if I gain any good I must pay for it; if I lose any good I
gain some other; all actions are indifferent.

There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own
nature. The soul is not a compensation, but a life. The soul is. Under
all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and flow with
perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of real Being. Essence,
or God, is not a relation or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast
affirmative, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all
relations, parts and times within itself. Nature, truth, virtue, are
the influx from thence. Vice is the absence or departure of the same.
Nothing, Falsehood, may indeed stand as the great Night or shade on
which as a background the living universe paints itself forth, but no
fact is begotten by it; it cannot work, for it is not. It cannot work
any good; it cannot work any harm. It is harm inasmuch as it is worse
not to be than to be.

We feel defrauded of the retribution due to evil acts, because the
criminal adheres to his vice and contumacy and does not come to a crisis
or judgment anywhere in visible nature. There is no stunning confutation
of his nonsense before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the
law? Inasmuch as he carries the malignity and the lie with him he so far
deceases from nature. In some manner there will be a demonstration of
the wrong to the understanding also; but, should we not see it, this
deadly deduction makes square the eternal account.

Neither can it be said, on the other hand, that the gain of rectitude
must be bought by any loss. There is no penalty to virtue; no penalty
to wisdom; they are proper additions of being. In a virtuous action I
properly am; in a virtuous act I add to the world; I plant into deserts
conquered from Chaos and Nothing and see the darkness receding on
the limits of the horizon. There can be no excess to love, none to
knowledge, none to beauty, when these attributes are considered in the
purest sense. The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism,
never a Pessimism.

His li