onstitution and not from his too active invention;
that which in the study of a single artist you might not easily find,
but in the study of many you would abstract as the spirit of them all.
Phidias it is not, but the work of man in that early Hellenic world that
I would know. The name and circumstance of Phidias, however convenient
for history, embarrass when we come to the highest criticism. We are
to see that which man was tending to do in a given period, and was
hindered, or, if you will, modified in doing, by the interfering
volitions of Phidias, of Dante, of Shakspeare, the organ whereby man at
the moment wrought.

Still more striking is the expression of this fact in the proverbs
of all nations, which are always the literature of reason, or the
statements of an absolute truth without qualification. Proverbs, like
the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.
That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the
realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs
without contradiction. And this law of laws, which the pulpit, the
senate and the college deny, is hourly preached in all markets and
workshops by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as
omnipresent as that of birds and flies.

All things are double, one against another.--Tit for tat; an eye for an
eye; a tooth for a tooth; blood for blood; measure for measure; love
for love.--Give and it shall be given you.--He that watereth shall be
watered himself.--What will you have? quoth God; pay for it and take
it.--Nothing venture, nothing have.--Thou shalt be paid exactly for
what thou hast done, no more, no less.--Who doth not work shall not
eat.--Harm watch, harm catch.--Curses always recoil on the head of him
who imprecates them.--If you put a chain around the neck of a slave,
the other end fastens itself around your own.--Bad counsel confounds the
adviser.--The Devil is an ass.

It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our action is
overmastered and characterized above our will by the law of nature.
We aim at a petty end quite aside from the public good, but our act
arranges itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the poles of
the world.

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With his will or against his
will he draws his portrait to the eye of his companions by every word.
Every opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread-ball thrown at
a mark, but t