I think it means, essentially, that you can’t escape justice in the end. Ralph Waldo Emerson uses the saying in his essay ‘Compensation’, a term which he uses synonymously with karma. (In its widespread, secular use of today.) But basically, I just like the phrase & had been writing about something using a craps analogy and decided to play with the pic.
‟︎
If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation.
Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral… A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. {Oi chusoi Dios aei enpiptousi}, — The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What we call retribution is the universal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind… Men call the circumstance the retribution. The causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the understanding; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a long time, and so does not become distinct until after many years. The specific stripes may follow late after the offence, but they follow because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
„︎
• ‘Compensation’ RWE; Essays, Second Series •
(It’s a great little essay, actually. It presages both Darwin and microbiology. I never agree with Emerson one-hundred percent, but I still really enjoy him.) https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/compensation.html
serene 
You mean … the game is fixed?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think it means, essentially, that you can’t escape justice in the end. Ralph Waldo Emerson uses the saying in his essay ‘Compensation’, a term which he uses synonymously with karma. (In its widespread, secular use of today.) But basically, I just like the phrase & had been writing about something using a craps analogy and decided to play with the pic.
‟︎
If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation.
Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral… A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. {Oi chusoi Dios aei enpiptousi}, — The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What we call retribution is the universal necessity by which the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or a limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs is there behind… Men call the circumstance the retribution. The causal retribution is in the thing, and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the understanding; it is inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a long time, and so does not become distinct until after many years. The specific stripes may follow late after the offence, but they follow because they accompany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
„︎
• ‘Compensation’ RWE; Essays, Second Series •
(It’s a great little essay, actually. It presages both Darwin and microbiology. I never agree with Emerson one-hundred percent, but I still really enjoy him.)
https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/compensation.html
LikeLiked by 1 person