AUTHORS are very unequal. The loftiest sometimes sink lower than the
mediocre ever do; the passionate are often lifeless; and the deep
and original portrayer of character and the heart frequently utters
sententious truisms and apophthegmatic nonsense. I have lately been
perusing the writings of La Bruyere, and have been forced more than
ever to admire his masterly choice of language, his vivid wit,
and keen discrimination. Among some very acute and just remarks I
observed one so amazingly juiceless, that for a time I thought it
must have been hazarded as a kind of tantalizing puzzle--a hollow
nut for fools to crack in the hope of finding a kernel. He says,
'As we become more and more attached to those who benefit us, so
we conceive a violent hatred for those who have greatly injured
us'--that is, 'we love our friends and hate our enemies!!' A truly
profound conclusion, and one requiring long experience and deep
philosophy to discover! My efforts to detect _some_ brilliant thread
in the triteness, and _some_ savor in the jejuneness of the above
childish enunciation, gave rise to the following 'scatterings' on
aphorisms, etc., and their writers.
Proverbs have been called 'the condensed wisdom of nations.' They
may, I think, with more propriety be entitled 'an epitome of the
truths and falsehoods contained in the more extended forms of
books, and in the practical commentary of life.' Those of them
which are true, are like the rules in the practical sciences, which
the most ignorant artisan may apply, although he know nothing of
the principles on which they are based, or of the process by which
they are proved. If all these adages were true, they would prove
of infinite advantage in life; since by a slight effort of the
memory we might retain rules for our guidance through almost every
difficulty of doubt or of temptation. But the misfortune is that
here, as elsewhere, the true is mingled with the false, and only
excellent sense with an addition of long experience can inform us
which are worthy and which unworthy of reception. Now this same
good sense and experience would furnish us with the same wisdom by
the induction of our own minds, and thereby supersede the necessity
of the written or oral maxims of others. Hence it is clear that
proverbs are of little practical utility, since the very wisdom they
would teach is a prerequisite to an intelligent adoption of their
teachings. Their chief value lies in their conveying a great deal of
instruction in a portable form, and presenting it very impressively
by the energy of some brief and homely illustration.
The frequent use of aphorisms and proverbial phrases has in all
ages been regarded as a vulgarism. Many of them are strikingly true
and extremely elegant, having emanated from thoughtful and polished
minds; yet in their daily use among writers and speakers of all
classes, they become soiled and worn, familiar and profane. They
acquire the tone of cant, and are resigned to the possession of
those who cannot think and speak for themselves. In the fragments
of the old Greek comedy and in others of their familiar writers, we
find proverbs usually given up to the subordinate characters. Even
in Euripides, 'the philosopher of the scenes,' nearly all whose
personages harangue in sententious monostichs like disputants in the
Academus or declaimers from the Stoa, the proverbial style is mostly
left to messengers and attendants, pedagogues and nurses. Among the
Romans, Plautus is most profuse in adages, and with him they drop,
thick and fast, from the mouths of pimps and parasites, courtesans,
and slaves. Horace employs them seldom, save when personating some
humble character; and Cicero, even in his 'Familiar Letters,'
often prefaces their introduction by an apologetic 'ut aiunt'--'as
they say.' Every one, who has read (and who has _not_ read?) the
romance of the renowned Cid Hamet Benengeli, remembers the ludicrous
distress suffered by the knight of La Mancha in hearing his squire
discharge whole broadsides of rustic proverbs at all times and
on all subjects. The Italian language overflows with these trite
familiarities. The low characters in the early English comedies, and
the old English writers in general, abound in these homely texts,
which teach the rustic moralist to _live_. If the novelists of this
age of gas and steam-boats place in the mouths of their subaltern
heroes few of the thread-bare aphorisms so common in the works of
Smollet and Fielding, it is because the 'ignobility' of the present
day have arrived at great perfection in a peculiar dialect--a
compound of buffoonery and sentiment, of poetry and flash. In place
of the quaint proverbs and worn allusions, in which their ancestors
couched their humble thoughts, they bedizen their every-day attire
of flimsy cant and coarse burlesque with borrowed flowers of fancy
and the stolen jewelry of wit.
Writers of apophthegms, maxims, laconisms, etc., are more liable to
errors than most other authors. Their aim is to be striking rather
than consistent; and hence, in their pages you may frequently find
sentiments of the most conflicting tendency. They have conceived a
truth, and in order to illustrate it more forcibly, they clinch it
with a brilliant catch; that is, they sharpen it with a glittering
nothing, or point it with a sparkling lie. They fall into the
same category with the epigrammatists of the Martial school, who
often bore you with a long and irrelevant preface for the purpose
of introducing a smart turn at the conclusion. How infinitely
inferior, by the way, with all their wit and all their polish, are
the sharp conceits and coquettish affectations of Martial and his
successors to the severe and noble simplicity of the Greek epigram!
An ingenious thought is commonly a false one. Its very ingenuity and
uncommonness are _primâ facie_ evidence that it is neither natural
nor correct. The apophthegmatist perceives that a particular fact
is frequently associated with another fact. He immediately notes it
down, and in a shape of antithetic brevity delivers it to others as
a universal guide.
Many of these maxims are like those of Rochefoucault, on which
Bulwer and some other self-imagined dissectors of the heart appear
to have looked with an envious emulation. They are hard, cold, and
brilliant--the deductions of a long, active, and passive experience
in scenes of courtly treachery and polished heartlessness. They are
gems, that have crystallized by an infusion of selfishness in the
residuum of exhausted feeling--sparkling stalactites, formed by
continual drippings from the cells of an acute and scheming brain
upon the bottom of a cavernous and icy heart. If true at all, they
are true, thank God, only among the summits of social life, where
the scintillations of loveless intellect flash from peak to peak
through an atmosphere of frosty splendor. Even if they be better
founded and more widely applicable than I believe, their spirit
is baleful, their tendency pernicious. They sow in the warm heart
of youth the suspicions of the hackneyed worldling, and teach him
that to meet and baffle the simulations and dissimulations of his
fellows, he must sheathe his innocent spirit in the panoply of
craft, subject every movement to the guidance of consummate art,
and conceal every generous impulse and each warm emotion beneath
the ice of unchanging coldness, or behind the glittering veil of
one inscrutable, invincible, and everlasting smile. Asserting the
absolute wickedness of all men, and impressing the necessity of a
sleepless and universal doubt, they inoculate the tender nurslings
of a rising generation with that poisonous wisdom which diffuses
a moral death through the pithless trunk and leafless branches of
their riper years. When I hear one rehearsing these odious lessons,
and affirming that Virtue lives not in the heart of man, I am not
so much convinced of her non-existence in the world as I am of her
non-residence in the bosom of her slanderer. Whether the upholders
of this infamous doctrine find in their own breasts the prototype
of the unmitigated moral deformity which they attribute to their
race, I shall not attempt to decide. But it is certain that these
degraders of humanity are reduced to this dilemma. They either
have an internal consciousness of their own utter depravity, which
induces them to think all others equally devoid of worth, or from
the evidence of history and experience they infer that mankind are
entirely abandoned-devils incarnate. If the first be the basis
of their belief, they must indeed be wicked--wicked beyond hope,
and beyond redemption; for even thieves, cheats, and impostors
proceed on the conviction that there is something good, honest,
and unsuspecting in the human breast. If they draw the foul tenet
and utter the blasphemous libel from testimony and experience,
how poorly must they have read the volume of history, how blindly
have moved on the theatre of life, not to have seen that humanity
is a mixture of good and evil, and that its eventful records are
often bright with kindness, and faithfulness, and every virtue,
though oftener alas! black with cruelty, and treachery, and crime!
Leave, dear youth, leave 'Timon of Athens' and all others, who have
outlived, or fooled away their capacities of enjoyment, to gnash
their toothless rage at a world they have abused, and, believe me,
you may find on the written and unwritten page of human action a
thousand deeds of noblest daring and most unswerving love--deeds
whose touching moral beauty will thrill through all your frame,
causing your eyes to glisten, your flesh to quiver, and your heart
to swell.
The aphorisms of Epictetus, Antoninus, Seneca, and others of that
class are not, indeed, of the same heartless and freezing character
with those of Rochefoucault, and the Chesterfieldian school; yet
they are mostly of too Stoical and superhuman a cast to be of
much practical benefit to poor human nature. They counsel you,
for instance, to bear the gout with patience, by considering that
many have had it before you, have it now, and will have it after
you; that impatience will not ease your pain; that your were born
for suffering and must expect to suffer, and that, at the worst,
it cannot last for ever. All mighty, true, and philosophical, no
doubt; but the twinged and wincing sufferer cannot extract one
grain of comfort from any of these considerations but the last.
Sometimes they bid you reflect whether your sorrows are not the
consequences of your own crime or folly. The affusion of _this_ 'oil
of consolation' is literally the casting of oil upon the fire. It is
a sedative for grief resembling a handful of red-pepper thrown into
inflamed eyes. It is adding to the agonies of the previous torture
the rage of remorse and the bitterness of self-contempt.
These calm and rational exhortations to 'take it coolly,' and 'never
to cry for spilled milk,' are all very good till they are needed.
They are extremely salutary before the fever kindles or the milk is
spilled; but in the presence of pain, or on the advent of disaster,
to all but those who are gifted with fortitude by nature, or have
been disciplined in the school of affliction, they are about as
effectual as whistling in the teeth of a nor'wester. Their utter
impotence in the storm of passion reminds me of the directions given
by a good New-England deacon to his choleric son. 'Whenever you feel
your _dander_ rising,' said he, 'be sure to say the Lord's prayer,
my son, or else the alphabet clean through; and long before you git
to the eend on't, you'll be as cool as a cucumber, or an iceberg.
Promise me faithfully, my son.' 'Yes, daddy, I promise.' Off trudged
Jonathan to school, carrying his bread and meat with a small
bottle of molasses in his jacket-pocket, and his late firm promise
uppermost in his mind. A boy, who bore him an old grudge, met him,
and, after calling him the 'young deacon,' and many other scurrilous
nicknames, caught him off his guard, and threw him to the ground,
tearing his jacket, and breaking his molasses-bottle. Now it _is_
said by censorious Southrons, that a Yankee will take a great many
hard names with the patience of a martyr: his spirit is word-proof;
but tear his clothes or cheat his belly, and he will fight 'to the
knife.' Up jumped Jonathan, his eyes wolfish and his lips white with
rage. But 'there was an oath in Heaven,' and he did not forget it.
So he proceeded to swallow his alphabetical pills--an antidote to
wrath, not mentioned in the 'Regimen Salernitanum,' nor recognized
by the British College. 'A, B, C,--you've tored my jacket--D, E,
F,--you've spilt my 'lasses--G, H, I, J, K,--you're a 'tarnal
rascal--L, M, N, O, P, Q,--I'll larn you better manners, you scamp,
you!--R, S, T, U, V,--I'll spile your picter, you old wall-eye!--W,
X, Y, Z, _ampersand_--now I'll pound your insides out o' you, you
darned nigger!' And with that, Jonathan, whose passion had been
mounting alphabetically throughout all his father's prescription of
vowels and consonants, caught the young scape-grace, and, throwing
him down, was proceeding to work off each of the deacon's twenty-six
anti-irascible pills in the shape of a dozen hearty fisticuffs,
which might, perhaps, have brought the poor fellow to the omega of
his days had not the timely approach of a passenger interrupted the
manipulations. So much for rules to control the passions.
The Greek pentameters, containing the 'Admonitions of Theognis the
Megarian' form one of the strangest compositions I ever read. They
are as complete a medley as any _colluvies_ of vegetables, shells,
and bones, swept by the Noachic flood into the hollows of the
earth. Here a petrified rose-leaf rests its cheek upon a nettle;
here lies the bill of a dove, and here a shark's tooth; here is the
grinning chasm of a lion's jaws, and here the skeleton of a loving
lamb. A kindly maxim is followed by a cynic snarl, and exhortations
to universal affection sleep side by side with counsels to entire
distrust in man. They are probably the 'disjecta membra'--a pest on
the pedantry of Latin!--the scattered limbs of several moralists,
and in their present incoherency, they remind one of that anomalous
species of union facetiously styled by grammarians, a '_con_junction
_dis_junctive!'
The proverbs of Solomon, apart from their inspiration, are of
clearer and more comprehensive wisdom than all the parœmial precepts
of the world beside. But among them, as Peter said of the writings
of his brother Paul, there are 'some things hard to be understood.'
As one instance out of many, I refer to Prov. xxvi. 4, 5. 'Answer
not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him;'
and again, 'Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in
his own conceit'--directions which it requires the wit of an Œdipus
fully to explain, and the wisdom of Solomon himself to act out with
appropriate discrimination.
Among all modern books of that cast, I prefer the 'Lacon' of the
eccentric Colton. Straggling through the fields of life after
the Greek and Roman reapers, he has bound his gleanings into a
bundle scarce inferior to their sheaves in beauty and abundance. If
hardly equal to some of his Gallic rivals in glitter and acuteness,
neither has he dazzled the eyes of Truth with sparkling falsehoods,
nor pierced the heart of Virtue with the darts of slander, nor
sundered with the sword of sarcasm the fresh-strung nerves of Hope.
Expressing thoughts at once noble, original, and true, in words
always happy, and in a style at times of almost unrivalled elegance,
the teachings of his few brief pages are of more value than all
the tawdry sentiment and flimsy ethics scattered through the fifty
'parvum in multo' volumes of the _Last_ of the _Baronets_.
'Dans toutes les conditions,' says La Bruyere, 'le pauvre est bien
proche de l'homme de bien, et l'opulent n'estquère éloigné de la
friponnerie. Le savoir-faire et l'habilité ne mènent pas jusq 'aux
énormes richesses.' How shallow and how false! One can hardly
imagine how a man of his wit and sense could have ventured the
sweeping declaration, that poverty is a proof of honesty, and wealth
of knavery. Every one must see in the world around him that riches
fall exclusively neither to the good nor to the bad, but somewhat
according to the industry of men, and still more by the caprices of
Fortune, or, in better language, by the mysterious dispensations
of Heaven. Many of the rich have acquired their wealth by discreet
and honest industry, and manage it with a thoughtful and wise
benevolence. Many of the poor, on the contrary, are niggards on a
contracted scale, and in their avidity for money would engage in any
knavery to obtain it. Why have they not become rich? Because they
had neither industry, enterprise, nor patience, and many constantly
laid out their little gains in extravagant dress, temporary
pleasures, and vicious indulgence. If, then, we grant the eager love
of money to be a vice, the poor are often chargeable with it to the
same extent as the rich, while the sum of their moral excellence
being still farther lessened by idleness, impatience, imbecility,
and vice, they are left far inferior to the wealthy in the scale of
character and value. The truth is, the larger portion of mankind are
dishonest, so far as temptation urges, and their courage or their
opportunities allow. It is also true that large numbers of the rich
have amassed their fortunes by knavery or gross injustice, and that
a majority of them have occasionally infringed the rules of rigid
honesty. And it is certainly no less true that, in some shape or
other, a large plurality of the poor are more or less unjust and
knavish in their little dealings with each other. The proportion of
truly upright men is doubtless greater among the poor than among
the rich, because riches have confessedly a corrupting influence
upon the heart. But this corrupting influence of wealth has nothing
to do with the mode of its acquisition. The ranks of the rich are
constantly recruited from the crowds of the poor, and most of those
who are now rolling in wealth were at first but penniless and
friendless boys. If, therefore, a majority of the poor be radically
and truly honest, so are an almost equal number of the rich, who
are taken indiscriminately from among the poor. Furthermore,
the position that the opulent have generally gained their money
unfairly, clashes with two other very orthodox and ancient proverbs,
that 'villany never prospers,' and that 'honesty is the best
policy.' I leave those who guide themselves by old saws to reconcile
these contradictions, and independently of all proverbs I form my
own opinion; which is, that riches and power are distributed among
men with little or no respect of merit, and that fraud, however
beneficial temporarily and in a coarse, pecuniary view, is ruinous,
if we regard the sum total of our existence.
There are many opinions so commonly entertained and so frequently
expressed, that although they have not perhaps attained the fixed
form of an adage, yet they have the operation, and may be considered
in the light, of proverbs. These opinions may be divided into two
classes--generalities in general, and generalities in particular.
The first arise from men's observing a few instances of a given
fact, and erecting these instances into an all-embracing rule. They
consist in such unqualified assertions as these--'Americans are
money-worshippers: Frenchmen are fops: religionists are hypocrites:
doctors are pretenders: lawyers are knaves: politicians are
time-servers. These may be termed generalities in general, and they
generally amount to falsehoods in particular. Unqualified assertions
are usually qualified lies; for every thing in this world is a
commixture of good and evil. What is good at one time, is bad at
another; or what is good in itself is bad from its circumstances and
adjuncts, or bad in comparison with something better. He, therefore,
who affirms a tiling to be good or bad absolutely, entirely, and at
all times, commonly affirms more than is true, or, in other words,
affirms a restricted falsehood.
Generalities in particular are derivative generalities, and the
detection of their falsity requires a double analysis. After
generalities in general have been established by a course of false
reasoning, generalities in particular are inferred by a process
of similar sophistry reversed, and an unfair deduction from an
unsound predicate derives specific falsehoods from a generical
untruth. Like that famous tree of the Indies, whose branches droop
downward to the ground, and take root, and rise again, and descend
once more, and rise afresh, till the central trunk is guarded by
a youthful forest, and clings to its native earth by a thousand
vegetable arms; so one of these comprehensive untruths sends forth
its ramifications of mistake, which spring upward in a fresh growth
of reproductive errors, till they are all fastened to the soil
of the social mind by numberless and ineradicable roots, and the
parent falsehood stands, surrounded by a giant progeny of lies.
Here is the reasoning. Such a class of men are bad in general;
_therefore_, this particular individual is worthless. Lawyers are
usually dishonest men; _ergo_, this individual lawyer is a knave.'
Here is the same beautiful logic reversed. 'I have heard of _some_
cruel slave-holders; _therefore_, every slave-holder is a bloody
tyrant. I have seen _some_ haughty and oppressive 'millionaires;'
_ergo_, all the opulent are purse-proud and unfeeling aristocrats.'
These are the foolish generalities of opinion and assertion, which
have caused so many misunderstandings, suspicions, antipathies, and
heart-burnings among the classes of society, the sects of religion,
and the nations of men. He who should believe in the infallibility,
and guide himself by the directions, of accredited opinions, and
undisputed proverbs, would often, be wofully puzzled by their
divergent counsels and contradictory assertions. They often uphold
as unfailing truths things that are true but in a majority or even a
measureless minority of instances, and that according to extraneous
contingencies.
For example, in speaking of heirs they represent them as universally
a race of spendthrifts. Now they may, or may not, be so, according
to their peculiar dispositions. Doubtless the acquisition of wealth
by inheritance is less calculated to impress its possessor with a
prudent estimate of its value than its accumulation by 'eating the
bread of carefulness.' Yet thousands of legatees are more miserly
than their legators, and thousands more manage their inheritances
with discreet liberality.
It is said that intemperance _always_ hardens the heart. Far be
it from me to play the sophist in favor of excess, or to deny its
natural _tendency_ to blunt the feelings, and brutalize the soul.
But, though I know not how it is, I have _seen_ many, who, amid the
ruins of their character and the withering of their hopes, seemed
only to grow the more tender, generous, and self-sacrificing,
and while shrinking from the coldness of their connections and
the contempt of the world, overflowed with affection toward all
mankind. A few years since I chanced to sit by the death-bed of
one, who had drank up a fine estate, and brought down his once full
and muscular form to a shrunken, fleshless frame--a very skeleton.
That man would, at any time, have periled his life for another;
and, when in his cups, would have rushed on inevitable death for
the meanest of his kind. And even then, as he lay now writhing in
pain, now fainting with feebleness, forgetful of his own sufferings
and danger, he followed all my motions with his eyes, constantly
beckoned to the servants to attend to my wants, and watched me,
stranger as I was, with an anxious tenderness, which almost
choked me with tears. Peace be with thee, poor Ned! May the earth
rest lighter on thy heart than did the scorn of thy kindred! The
adamantine chains of habit bound thee to degradation, and dragged
thee to the grave--but a truer and kinder spirit never dwelt within
a human breast!
A common maxim is, that 'old maids' are peevish, tea-drinking,
scandal-loving bodies. Many old maids are so; for their constant
exposure to unfeeling derision renders them the first; sympathy
with each other's condition gives them the second habit; and the
weakness of human nature prompts them to envy and detract from those
whom they deem more fortunate than themselves. But there are many
of these slandered sisters who never coveted the double blessedness
they are supposed to envy; who are too independent to sigh for
gilded compliments and hollow homage; and are quite content to live
in isolated virtue, and die in solitary peace. Yes! thousands of
these unappropriated 'units' have been mellowed by the touch of
Time, till they have become the very models of womanhood; modest and
intelligent, just and generous, mild and charitable; aiding by their
labors, consoling by their words, enlightening by their wisdom, and
instructing by the beautiful teachings of uniform example. Hannah
More is at the head of the female world.
It is a frequent remark that the sons of eminent men are rarely
eminent. Now eminence is rare in _every_ class of society--for it
is a relative term, meaning _uncommon_ excellence, and of course,
it cannot be very common. But I think the proportion at least as
large among the offspring of the great as among the children of the
obscure. If among the former, vice too often consumes the energies
of the spirit, and parasites persuade them that greatness is the
privilege of their birth, and that Elisha will receive the mantle,
although he walk not in the footsteps of Elijah; to the latter 'the
ample page of Knowledge' has been sealed by stern necessity, and
'Penury has frozen the genial current of the soul.' Not one in ten
thousand among the sons of the humble has ever attained to eminence,
and quite as great a percentage is found among the children of the
distinguished. The opinion, therefore, is either false, or is a
stupid truism amounting to this: 'Few of the multitude distinguish
themselves by _uncommon_ merit.'
Another common assertion is, that the sons of very good men are
generally more profligate than those of others. This proverb
contradicts another adage, that a 'good tree bears good fruit,'
and they nullify each other. In truth, however, the latter maxim
is true, agreeing with reason, and verified by experience; while
the former is absurd in theory, and false in fact. It forgets the
grand principle of cause and effect. It were, indeed, a strange
and mournful comment on the perverseness of our race, if the pious
counsels and pure example of an upright father only served to
harden and degrade the child. Strange were it, most strange and
sad, did the seeds of a blameless life fail generally of their
natural crop, and fructify only in acts of guilt and shame. On this
theory, the tender parent, who would take the surest course for
securing the integrity and welfare of his offspring, should in his
own person display an obscene drama of flagitious action, and, like
the lawgivers of Sparta, infuse in others a disgust of vice by a
practical exhibition of her foulness. I do not thus believe in the
force of contrast, or the power of opposites to beget and produce
each other. The ordinary rule of Nature is, 'Like produces like.'
The quite common opinion that reverses this rule in reference to
the children of pious parents, arose from the observation of some
instances of sad degeneracy, and as these were very striking, people
forgot the mass of instances on the other side of the question, and
generalized a few scattering exceptions into a universal rule.
Once more. Many modern novelists, when they wish to be very novel
and acute, exclaim (in some suitable context) 'Misery loves
company.' 'Ho! ho! are you there, old Truepenny!' 'Misery loves
company.' And, pray, my fine apoththegmatist, are you deep and
original in this remark? Is it a profound discovery, or is it a
shallow truism? Are you very wise, or quite otherwise? 'Misery
loves company.' And doesn't joy love company? Does not anger long
to diffuse its fires, confidence to reveal its hopes, and triumph
to announce its exultations? Instead of appearing to say something
when you were saying nothing, why did you not remark in unpretending
prose that we are sociable, sympathy-craving beings, and love
company, whether miserable or happy; and that all our passions,
save the morose ones, seek for participation? If you wished to
go a little father, and assert a truth, which should not be very
brilliant, nor entirely unfathomable, you might remark, that if ever
our joy or our sorrow fly from crowds, it is only because it is
unfitted for their sympathy or too great for their comprehension.
When our happiness or grief is so intense that it fills all the
heart and engages all the brain, we withdraw ourselves from all
communion, and reverize in the selfishness of solitude and silence.
Here endeth the commentary on the Book of Proverbs.