impel feebler and less agile natures to
follow the tracks of light and emulate the choice examples set before
them, with swifter movements and with richer results than they could
ever have attained, if not thus encouraged. Proverbial axioms flourish
copiously in the idiomatic ground and vernacular climate of unlearned,
undisciplined, unreflective minds, as thistles on the highway where
every ass may gather them. But precious maxims, those "short sentences
drawn from a long experience," as Cervantes calls them, are found
mostly in the writings of the greatest geniuses, Solomon, Aristotle,
Shakspeare, Bacon, Goethe, Richter, Emerson: and they appeal
comparatively but to a select class of minds, kindred in some degree
to those that originated them.

To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius,
a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which
first created it. In order to secure genuine profit here, the disciple
must for himself repeat the processes of the teacher, reach the same
conclusion, see the same truth. Wisdom cannot be mechanically taken,
but must be spiritually assimilated,--cannot be put on as a coat or
hat, used as a hammer or a sling, but must be intelligently grasped,
digested, and organized into the mental structure and habits. The
truth of this is at once so palpable and so important that it has
found embodiment in numerous proverbs known to almost every one: "An
ounce of mother-wit is worth a pound of school-wit"; "A pennyweight of
your own wit is worth a ton of other people's"; "Who cannot work out
his salvation by heart will never do it by book."

For the reason just indicated, we think the common estimate of
the actual influence of even the costliest preceptive sayings is
monstrously exaggerated. That an aphorism should really be of use, it
must virtually be reproduced by the faculties of your own soul. But
the mental energy and acquirement which thus recreate it in a great
degree supersede the necessity of it, render it an expression not of
a guidance you need from without, but of an insight and force already
working within. Your character determines what maxims you will select
or create far more than the maxims you choose or make determine what
your character will be. Herbart says, "Characters with ruling plans
are energetic; characters with ruling maxims are virtuous." This is
true, since a continuous plan subsidizes the forces that would without
it run to