waste, and a deliberately chosen authority girds and guides
the soul from perilous dallying and dissipation. Nevertheless, it is
not so much that characters are energetic or virtuous because they
have ruling plans or maxims as it is that they have ruling plans or
maxims because they are energetic or virtuous. Say to a penurious,
hard, grumpy man, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Will
you thus make him liberal, sympathetic, affable? No, his character
will neutralize your precept, as vinegar receiving the sunshine into
its bosom becomes more sour. Some persons seem to imagine that a wise
maxim is a sort of fairy's wand, one touch of which will transform the
loaded panniers of a donkey into the fiery wings of a Pegasus. Surely,
it is a great error. Trench says, with an amusing _naivete_, "There is
scarcely a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed,
but some proverb, _had we known and attended to its lesson_, might
have saved us from it." The two comprehensive conditions, "had we
known and attended to its lesson," are discharging conductors, that
empty the sentence of all proper meaning, and leave only a rank of
hollow words behind. He might as well say, "Had we never been tempted,
we had never fallen,--had we possessed all wisdom, we had never
committed an error," The best maxim that ever was made cannot directly
impart or create knowledge or virtue or spiritual force. It can only
give a voice to those qualities where they already exist, and so set
in motion a strengthening interchange of action and reaction. Though a
fool's mouth be stuffed with proverbs, he still remains as much a fool
as before. He is past preaching to who does not care to mend. As the
brave Schiller affirms, "Heaven and earth fight in vain against a
dunce." Eternal contact with nutritious wisdom can teach no lesson,
nor profit at all one who has not a cooeperative and assimilative
mind. The anchor is always in the sea, but it never learns to swim.
Philosophic precepts address the reason; but the springs of motive and
regeneration are in the sentiments. To attempt the reformation of
a bad man by means of fine aphorisms is as hopeless as to bombard
a fortress with diamonds, or to strive to exhilarate the brain by
pelting the forehead with grapes.

And yet, notwithstanding these large limitations and abatements, it
is not to be denied that both proverbs and maxims, when habitually
recalled, generally have some effect, often