“Ever since I was a boy, I have wished to write a discourse on Compensation: for it seemed to me when very young, that on this subject life was ahead of theology, and the people knew more than the preachers taught. The documents, too, from which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always before me, even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm, and the dwelling-house, greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influence of character, the nature and endowment of all men.” Lecture in an essay form by Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist, philosopher, and poet, the most thought-provoking American cultural leader of the mid-19th century, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement.