f
it came without desert or sweat, has no root in me, and the next wind
will blow it away. But all the good of nature is the soul's, and may
be had, if paid for in nature's lawful coin, that is, by labor which
the heart and the head allow. I no longer wish to meet a good I do not
earn; for example, to find a pot of buried gold, knowing that it
brings with it new burdens. I do not wish more external
goods,--neither possessions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. The
gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no tax on the
knowledge that the compensation exists, and that it is not desirable
to dig up treasure. Herein I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. I
contract the boundaries of possible mischief. I learn the wisdom of
St. Bernard,[141]--"Nothing can, work me damage except myself; the
harm, that I sustain I carry about with me, and never am a real
sufferer but by my own fault."

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. If I feel overshadowed and outdone by
great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and he that
loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves. Thereby I make the
discovery that my brother is my guardian, acting for me with the
friendliest designs, and the estate I so admired and envied is my own.
It is the nature of the soul to appropriate all things. Jesus[142] and
Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and
incorporate them in my own conscious domain. His[143] virtue,--is not
that mine? His wit,--if it cannot be made mine, it is not wit.

Such, also, is the natural history of calamity. The changes which
break up at short intervals the prosperity of men are advertisements
of a nature whose law is growth. Every soul is by this intrinsic
necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home,