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,[140] never a Pessimism.

Man's life is a progress, and not a station. His instinct is trust.
Our instinct uses "more" and "less" in application to man, of the
_presence of the soul_, and not of its absence; the brave man is
greater than the coward; the true, the benevolent, the wise, is more a
man, and not less, than the fool and knave. There is no tax on the
good of virtue; for that is the incoming of God himself, or absolute
existence without any comparative. Material good has its tax, and i