When a miserly man refuses to give
anything in behalf of some distant object, his refusal is not prompted
by the remembrance of the proverb, "Charity begins at home"; but the
stingy propensity first stirs in the man and actuates him, and then he
expresses his motive, or evades the true issue, by quoting the selfish
old saw ever ready at his hand. In such cases the axiom is not the
forerunning cause of the action, but its justifying explanation.
Sometimes, undeniably, an applicable proverb coming to mind does
influence a man and decide his conduct. Coming at the right moment, in
the wavering of his will, it suggests the principle which determines
him, lends the needful balance of impulse for which he waited. An old
proverb, indorsed by the usage of generations, strikes on the ear like
a voice falling from the heights of antiquity; it is clothed with
a kind of authority. Doubtless many a poor boy has received a sound
flogging which he would have escaped, had not his father happened
to recall the somewhat cruel and questionable aphorism of Solomon,
currently abbreviated into "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
When Charles IX. was hesitating as to the enactment of the Saint
Bartholomew Massacre, his bigoted mother, infuriated with sectarian
hate, whispered in his ear, "Clemency is sometimes cruelty, and
cruelty clemency,"--and the fatal decree was sealed.
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