For the Southern Literary Messenger.
EXAMPLE IS BETTER THAN PRECEPT.
I never read Jeremy Bentham's 'Book of Fallacies:' it is known to me only through the Edinburgh Review. I am uncertain whether it gibbets the above saying, or not; but no fallacy of them all better deserves to be hung up on high, for the admonition of mankind. There is none more mischievous, in the best filled pack of the largest wholesale proverb-pedler.
"Example is better than precept!"—is the constant plea, the invariable subterfuge, of those who do not want to follow good counsel. Be the counsel ever so sage—be the propriety and expediency of following it ever so manifest—if it perchance do not square to a T with the adviser's own practice, he is twitted with this sapient apothegm; and the advised party wends his way of folly as completely self-satisfied, as if he had demonstrated it to be the way of wisdom by an argument clearly pertinent, and mathematically unanswerable. Yet how is his argument more to the purpose—how is he more rational—than if he should refuse to take a road pointed out by a sign-board, because the board itself did not run along before him? May I not correctly show to others a way, which it is not convenient or agreeable for me to travel myself?
I could fill a book with the instances I have known, of people who have deluded themselves to their own hurt, by relying upon this same proverb.
For years, I have been a little given to drinking: not to excess, 'tis true—but more than is good for me. A sprightly younker, whose thirst appeared likely to become inordinate, being counselled by me to abstain altogether from strong waters, as the only sure resource of those afflicted with that propensity—told me, "example was better than precept," and refused to heed the one, because he could not have the other also. He has since died a sot. The last three years of his existence were, to his wife, years of shame, terror, and misery, from which widowhood and the poor-house were a welcome refuge. His children are schooled and maintained by the parish.
My appetite is better than ordinary. It is, in truth, too much indulged, and not a few head-aches and nightmares have been the consequence. Venturing once, on the score of my woful experience, to admonish a young friend whom I saw entering the habit in which I was confirmed, he confuted me with the accustomed logical reply—"example," and so forth. Seven years afterwards saw him tottering on the grave's brink, with an incurable dyspepsia, the fruit of gluttony, and of gluttony's usual attendant, indolence.
When a boy, I was a famous climber. Perched in a cherry tree one day, I saw a lad, clumsier than I was, going far out upon a slender branch. I cautioned him that it would break. "Didn't I see you on it just now?" said he: "and there you are now, further out on a smaller limb! Example's better"—but before he could end the saying, his bough snapped, and he fell twenty feet, breaking a leg and dislocating a shoulder by the fall.