COMPENSATION
[93] These lines are printed under the title of Compensation in Emerson's collected poems. He has also another poem of eight lines with the same title.
[94] Documents, data, facts.
[95] This doctrine, which a little observation would confute, is still taught by some.
[96] Doubloons, Spanish and South American gold coins of the value of about $15.60 each.
[97] Polarity, that quality or condition of a body by virtue of which it exhibits opposite or contrasted properties in opposite or contrasted directions.
[98] Systole and diastole, the contraction and dilation of the heart and arteries.
[99] They are increased and consequently want more.
[100] Intenerate, soften.
[101] White House, the popular name of the presidential mansion at Washington.
[102] Explain the phrase eat dust.
[103] Overlook, oversee, superintend.
[104] Res nolunt, etc. Translated in the previous sentence.
[105] The world ... dew. Explain the thought. What gives the earth its shape?
[106] The microscope ... little. This statement is not in accordance with the facts, if we are to understand perfect in the sense which the next sentence would suggest.
[107] Emerson has been considered a pantheist.
[108]Oἱ κύβοι, etc. The translation follows in the text. This old proverb is quoted by Sophocles, (Fragm. lxxiv. 2) in the form:
Ἀεὶ γὰρ εὖ πίπτουσιν οἱ Διὸς κύβοι,
Emerson uses it in Nature in the form "Nature's dice are always loaded."
[109] Amain, with full force, vigorously.
[110] The proverb is quoted by Horace, Epistles, I, x. 24:
"Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret."
A similar thought is expressed by Juvenal, Seneca, Cicero, and Aristophanes.
[111] Augustine, Confessions, B. I.
[112] Jupiter, the supreme god of the Romans, the Zeus of the Greeks.
[113] Tying up the hands. The expression is used figuratively, of course.
[114] The supreme power in England is vested in Parliament.
[115] Prometheus stole fire from heaven to benefit the race of men. In punishment for this Jupiter chained him to a rock and set an eagle to prey upon his liver. Some unknown and terrible danger threatened Jupiter, the secret of averting which only Prometheus knew. For this secret Jupiter offered him his freedom.
[116] Minerva, goddess of wisdom, who sprang full-armed from the brain of Jupiter. The secret which she held is told in the following lines.
[117] Aurora, goddess of the dawn. Enamored of Tithonus, she persuaded Jupiter to grant him immortality, but forgot to ask for him immortal youth. Read Tennyson's poem on Tithonus.
[118] Achilles, the hero of Homer's Iliad. His mother Thetis, to render him invulnerable, plunged him into the waters of the Styx. The heel by which she held him was not washed by the waters and remained vulnerable. Here he received a mortal wound.
[119] Siegfried, hero of the Nibelungenlied, the old German epic poem. Having slain a dragon, he bathed in its blood and became covered with an invulnerable horny hide, only one small spot between his shoulders which was covered by a leaf remaining vulnerable. Into this spot the treacherous Hagen plunged his lance.
[120] Nemesis, a Greek female deity, goddess of retribution, who visited the righteous anger of the gods upon mortals.
[121] The Furies or Eumenides, stern and inexorable ministers of the vengeance of the gods.
[122] Ajax and Hector, Greek and Trojan heroes in the Trojan War. See Homer's Iliad. Achilles slew Hector and, lashing him to his chariot with the belt which Ajax had given Hector, dragged him round the walls of Troy. Ajax committed suicide with the sword which Hector had presented to him.
[123] Thasians, inhabitants of the island of Thasus. The story here told of the rival of the athlete Theagenes is found in Pausanias' Description of Greece, Book VI. chap. xi.
[124] Shakespeare, the greatest of English writers, seems to have succeeded entirely or almost entirely in removing the personal element from his writings.
[125] Hellenic, Greek.
[126] Tit for tat, etc. This paragraph is composed of a series of proverbs.
[127] Edmund Burke (1729?-1797), illustrious Irish statesman, orator, and author.
[128] Pawns, the pieces of lowest rank in chess.
[129] What is the meaning of obscene here? Compare the Latin.
[130] Polycrates, a tyrant of Samos, who was visited with such remarkable prosperity that he was advised by a friend to break the course of it by depriving himself of some valued possession. In accordance with this advice he cast into the sea an emerald ring which he considered his rarest treasure. A few days later a fisherman presented the monarch with a large fish inside of which the ring was found. Soon after this Polycrates fell into the power of an enemy and was nailed to a cross.
[131] Scot and lot, "formerly, a parish assessment laid on subjects according to their ability. Now, a phrase for obligations of every kind regarded collectively." (Webster.)
[132] Read Emerson's essay on Gifts.
[133] Worm worms, breed worms.
[134] Compare the old proverb "Murder will out." See Chaucer, N.P.T., 232 and 237, and Pr. T., 124.
"Et semel emissum volat irrevocabile verbum."
Horace, Epist., I. XVIII. 65.
[136] Stag in the fable. See Æsop, lxvi. 184, Cerva et Leo; Phædrus I. 12. Cervus ad fontem; La Fontaine, vi. 9, Le Cerf se Voyant dans l'eau.
[137] See the quotation from St. Bernard farther on.
[138] Withholden, old participle of withhold, now withheld.
[139] What is the etymology of the word mob?
[140] Optimism and Pessimism. The meanings of these two opposites are readily made out from the Latin words from which they come.
[141] St. Bernard de Clairvaux (1091-1153), French ecclesiastic.
[142] Jesus. Holmes writes of Emerson: "Jesus was for him a divine manifestation, but only as other great human souls have been in all ages and are to-day. He was willing to be called a Christian just as he was willing to be called a Platonist.... If he did not worship the 'man Christ Jesus' as the churches of Christendom have done, he followed his footsteps so nearly that our good Methodist, Father Taylor, spoke of him as more like Christ than any man he had known."
[143] The first his refers to Jesus, the second to Shakespeare.
[144] Banyan. What is the characteristic of this tree that makes it appropriate for this figure?