And similar prayers, as lifeless now as the fossil shells on the shore of some ancient coral sea, lie scattered abundantly in many an English rhyme and ballad, serving to show how the philosophy of one age passes into the nonsense of a later one, and how ideas which constituted a religion for one time may only survive as an amusement for another.
III.
SOME SAVAGE PROVERBS.
The German proverb, ‘Speak, that I may see thee,’ may be applied as truly to a whole community as to an individual. For proverbs—or, roughly defining, popular sayings—reflect conspicuously the general character of a nation, constituting its actual code of social, political, and moral philosophy. Besides the beauty and wisdom, from which alone many of them derive an imperishable charm, they serve as a kind of literature in miniature, in which the inner life of a nation is more clearly legible than in its more voluminous writings. And in spite of the general resemblance which seems to pervade the proverbial lore of the world, arising partly from the direct interchange of thought inseparable from international commerce of any kind, partly from a uniformity of experience—such, for example, as has impressed on all people the wisdom of caution and truth—there are yet well-marked differences in the proverbs of nations, which as clearly retain the records of their several histories as do their different laws and customs. Remarkable, therefore, as is the substantial similarity of proverbial codes, of which the general characteristic is a high sense of right coupled with a mournful consciousness of human infirmity, they betray often in the very expression of the same idea the individuality of their national birthplace. It is obvious, for instance, that, largely as all modern nations are indebted to a writer like Æsop for the thoughts they share in common, each nation severally will owe more of its wisdom to writers of its own, who, like Shakespeare or Cervantes, have, from greater familiarity with the manners, been more competent to express the feelings, of their different countries. But the way in which good proverbs, like good gold, find acceptance everywhere, and pass readily into the current coinage of different realms, may be illustrated by the fact of the existence, in countries so widely remote as Spain, Arabia, Persia, Afghanistan, and India, of a saying, second to none in all the essentials of a good proverb, to the effect that ‘when God wills the destruction of an ant, he supplies it with wings.’[118]
An instructive instance of the light thrown on national character by proverbs may be supplied from a comparison of Italian, German, and Persian teaching on the subject of vindictiveness. In communities destitute of social organisation, the ‘vendetta,’ or duty of blood-revenge, probably preceded and led the way to the practice of legal punishment. Originally it was a kind of lynch-law, supplying the default of any legal protection of life; and all nations bear traces in their history of having passed through a stage of growth in which the sacred duty of vengeance was the germ of any idea of a more judicial retribution. Confucius made it a duty for a son to slay his father’s murderer, just as Moses insisted on a strictly retaliatory penalty for bloodshed. The duty of revenge, which if it is yet extinct in Corsica survives with so much interest in the play of ‘The Corsican Brothers,’ to this day, in places like Fiji, still passes from father to son, and from the son to the nearest relation. The longer survival of such feelings in Italy, consequent on the different circumstances of her history, is clearly impressed on the proverbial philosophy of her people, constituting a remarkable contrast to the sentiments of other countries. For the Italian, extolling the sweetness of revenge, declares it a morsel fit for God; and, expressing pity or contempt for the man who either cannot or will not carry out his revenge, counsels patience and the waiting of time and place for its successful execution. In a proverb so terribly expressive that you seem to hear in it the assassin’s gnashing teeth, he will tell you that ‘revenge, though a hundred years old, still has its milk teeth,’ a maxim which stands on no higher a level than the pagan African saying, ‘Hate hath no medicine,’ or than that of Afghanistan, ‘Speak good words to an enemy very softly, gradually destroy him root and branch;’ and which may be fitly compared with the Fijian expression of malice: ‘Let the shell of the oyster perish by reason of years, and to these add a thousand more, still my hatred shall be hot.’ How much purer than the Italian is the German teaching, which declares revenge to be fresh wrong, the conversion of a little right into a great injustice, and sure in its turn to draw revenge after it; or how far nobler still is the more positive sentiment of Persia, that to take revenge for an injury is the sign of a mean spirit; that it is easy to return evil for evil, but that the manly thing is to return good for it!
The contrast conveyed in these proverbs is the more striking, in that Italy might pre-eminently call herself the Catholic, as against Germany the heretical, or Persia the infidel, land. It has been said that every tenth proverb in an Italian collection contains a selfish or cynical maxim; and though the beauty and purity of many Italian sayings counterbalance the baseness of others—those, for instance, on love being as refined as those on revenge are barbarous—it may not be uninteresting to compare generally the proverbs of Italy with those of a land like Persia where the religious history has been so different.
The noblest Italian proverb is to the effect that a hundred years cannot repair a moment’s loss of honour; the basest, perhaps, that bad as it is to be a knave, it is worse to be known as one. To love a friend with all his faults; to associate with the good in order to be good; to work in order to rest; to do right in spite of consequences, and good irrespectively of persons; to do evil never, whatever the benefit—these are among the highest lessons of Italian proverb-lore. That among men of honour a word is a bond, and that conscience is as good as a thousand witnesses; that the best sermon is a good life, and that the gains of begging are dearly bought, are maxims of the same upright tendency. Yet, over against these, are proverbs pervaded by the saddest spirit of universal mistrust, instilling utter disbelief of any sincerity in friendship, and even counselling to selfish or downright wicked conduct. What more melancholy evidence of this than is afforded by the following common sayings?—
He who suspects is seldom to blame.
Trust was a good man, Trust-not a better.