sense, not at all upon their university learning or upon
philosophical theories. And in the case of the English nation, it must be
acknowledged that this instinctive method has been eminently successful.
When the "Havamal" speaks of wisdom it means mother-wit, and nothing else;
indeed, there was no reading or writing to speak of in those times:

No man can carry better baggage on his journey than wisdom.

There is no better friend than great common sense.

But the wise man should not show himself to be wise without occasion. He
should remember that the majority of men are not wise, and he should be
careful not to show his superiority over them unnecessarily. Neither
should be despise men who do not happen to be as wise as himself:

No man is so good but there is a flaw in him, nor so bad as to be
good for nothing.

Middling wise should every man be; never overwise. Those who know
many things rarely lead the happiest life.

Middling wise should every man be; never overwise. No man should
know his fate beforehand; so shall he live freest from care.

Middling wise should every man be, never too wise. A wise man's
heart is seldom glad, if its owner be a true sage.

This is the ancient wisdom also of Solomon "He that increases wisdom
increases sorrow." But how very true as worldly wisdom these little
Northern sentences are. That a man who knows a little of many things, and
no one thing perfectly, is the happiest man--this certainly is even more
true to-day than it was a thousand years ago. Spencer has well observed
that the man who can influence his generation, is never the man greatly in
advance of his time, but only the man who is very slightly better than his
fellows. The man who is very superior is likely to be ignored or disliked.
Mediocrity can not help disliking superiority; and as the old Northern
sage declared, "the average of men is but moiety." Moiety does not mean
necessarily mediocrity, but also that which is below mediocrity. What we
call in England to-day, as Matthew Arnold called it, the Philistine
element, continues to prove in our own time, to almost every superior man,
the danger of being too wise.

Interesting in another way, and altogether more agreeable, are the old
sayings about friendship: "Know this, if thou hast a trusty friend, go and
see him often; because a road which is seldom trod gets choked with
brambles and high grass."

Be not thou the f