But what, it may be asked, before we proceed further, is a proverb? Nothing is harder than a definition. While on the one hand there is for the most part no easier task than to detect a fault or flaw in the definitions of those who have gone before us, nothing on the other is more difficult than to propose one of our own, which shall not also present a vulnerable side. Some one has said that these three things go to the constituting of a proverb, shortness, sense, and salt. In brief pointed sayings of this kind, the second of the qualities enumerated here, namely sense, is sometimes sacrificed to alliteration. I would not affirm that it is so here: for the words are not ill spoken, though they are very far from satisfying the rigorous requirements of a definition, as will be seen when we consider what the writer intended by his three esses, which it is not hard to understand. The proverb, he would say, must have shortness; it must be succinct, utterable in a breath. It must have sense, not being, that is, the mere small talk of conversation, slight and trivial, else it would perish as soon as born, no one taking the trouble to keep it alive. It must have salt, that is, besides its good sense, it must in its manner and outward form be pointed and pungent, having a sting in it, a barb which shall not suffer it to drop lightly from the memory.[2] Yet, regarded as a definition, this of the triple s fails, as I have said; it indeed errs both in defect and excess.
Proverbs will be concise.
Thus in demanding shortness, it errs in excess. It is indeed quite certain that a good proverb will be short, as short, that is, as is compatible with the full and forcible conveying of that which it intends. Brevity, “the soul of wit,” will be eminently the soul of a proverb’s wit; it will contain, according to Fuller’s definition, “much matter decocted into few words.” Oftentimes it will consist of two, three, or four, and these sometimes monosyllabic, words. Thus Extremes meet;—Right wrongs no man;—Forewarned, forearmed;—with a thousand more.[3] But still shortness is only a relative term, and it would perhaps be more accurate to say that a proverb must be concise, cut down, that is, to the fewest possible words; condensed, quintessential wisdom. [4] But that, if only it fulfil this condition of being as short as possible, it need not be absolutely very short, there are sufficient examples to prove. Thus Freytag has admitted the following, which indeed hovers on the confines of the fable, into his great collection of Arabic proverbs: They said to the camel-bird, [i. e., the ostrich,] “Carry:” it answered, ‘I cannot, for I am a bird.’ They said, “Fly;” it answered,‘I cannot, for I am a camel.’ This could not be shorter, yet, as compared with the greater number of proverbs, is not short. [5] Even so the sense and salt, which are ascribed to the proverb as other of its necessary conditions, can hardly be said to be such; seeing that flat, saltless proverbs, though comparatively rare, there certainly are; while yet, be it remembered, we are not considering now what are the ornaments of a good proverb, but the essential marks of all.
And then moreover it errs in defect; for it has plainly omitted one quality of the proverb, and that the most essential of all—I mean popularity, acceptance and adoption on the part of the people. Without this popularity, without these suffrages and this consent of the many, no saying, however brief, however wise, however seasoned with salt, however worthy on all these accounts to have become a proverb, however fulfilling all other its conditions, can yet be esteemed as such. This popularity, omitted in that enumeration of the essential notes of the proverb, is yet the only one whose presence is absolutely necessary, whose absence is fatal to the claims of any saying to be regarded as such.
Aphorisms not proverbs.
Those, however, who have occupied themselves with the making of collections of proverbs have sometimes failed to realize this to themselves with sufficient clearness, or at any rate have not kept it always before them; and thus it has come to pass, that many collections include whatever brief sayings their gatherers have anywhere met with, which to them have appeared keenly, or wisely, or wittily spoken; [6] while yet a multitude of these have never received their adoption into the great family of proverbs, or their rights of citizenship therein: inasmuch as they have never passed into general recognition and currency, have no claim to this title, however just a claim they may have on other grounds to our admiration and honour. For instance, this word of Goethe’s, “A man need not be an architect to live in an house,” seems to me to have every essential of a proverb, saving only that it has not passed over upon the lips of men. It is a saying of manifold application; an universal law is knit up in a particular example; I mean that gracious law in the distribution of blessing, which does not limit our use and enjoyment of things by our understanding of them, but continually makes the enjoyment much wider than the knowledge; so that it is not required that one be a botanist to have pleasure in a rose, nor a critic to delight in Paradise Lost, nor a theologian to taste all the blessings of Christian faith, nor, as he expresses it, an architect to live in an house. And here is an inimitable saying of Schiller’s: “Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce;” yet it is not a proverb, because his alone; although abundantly worthy to have become such; [7] moving as it does in the same line with, though far superior to, the Chinese proverb, which itself also is good: One has never so much need of his wit, as when he has to do with a fool.
Or to take another example still more to the point. James Howell, a prolific English writer of the earlier half of the seventeenth century, one certainly meriting better than that almost entire oblivion into which his writings have fallen, occupied himself much with proverbs; and besides collecting those of others, he has himself set down “five hundred new sayings, which in tract of time may serve for proverbs to posterity.” As was to be expected, they have not so done; for it is not after this artificial method that such are born; yet many of these proverbs in expectation are expressed with sense and felicity; for example: “Pride is a flower that grows in the devil’s garden;” as again, the selfishness which characterizes too many proverbs is not ill reproduced in the following: “Burn not thy fingers to snuff another man’s candle;” and there is at any rate good theology in the following: “Faith is a great lady, and good works are her attendants;” and in this: “The poor are God’s receivers, and the angels are his auditors.” Yet for all this, it would be inaccurate to quote these as proverbs, (and their author himself, as we have seen, did not do more than set them out as proverbs upon trial,) inasmuch as they have remained the private property of him who first devised them, never having passed into general circulation; which until men’s sayings have done, maxims, sentences, apothegms, aphorisms they may be, and these of excellent temper and proof, but proverbs as yet they are not.
Not all proverbs true.
It is because of this, the popularity inherent in a genuine proverb, that from such an one in a certain sense there is no appeal. You will not suppose me to intend that there is no appeal from its wisdom, truth, or justice; from any word of man’s there may be such; but no appeal from it, as most truly representing a popular conviction. Aristotle, who in his ethical and political writings often finds very much more than this in it, always finds this. It may not be, it very often will not be, an universal conviction which it expresses, but ever one popular and widespread. So far indeed from an universal, very often over against the one proverb there will be another, its direct antagonist; and the one shall belong to the kingdom of light, the other to the kingdom of darkness. Common fame is seldom to blame; here is the baser proverb, for as many as drink in with greedy ears all reports to the injury of their neighbours; being determined from the first that they shall be true. But it is not left without its compensation: “They say so,” is half a liar; here is the better word with which they may arm themselves, who count it a primal duty to close their ears against all such unauthenticated rumours to the discredit of their brethren. The noblest vengeance is to forgive; here is the godlike proverb on the manner in which wrongs should be recompensed: He who cannot revenge himself is weak, he who will not is vile, [8] here is the devilish. These lines occur in a sonnet which Howell has prefixed to his collection of proverbs:
“The people’s voice the voice of God we call;