Your character determines what maxims you will select
or create far more than the maxims you choose or make determine what
your character will be. Herbart says, "Characters with ruling plans
are energetic; characters with ruling maxims are virtuous." This is
true, since a continuous plan subsidizes the forces that would without
it run to waste, and a deliberately chosen authority girds and guides
the soul from perilous dallying and dissipation. Nevertheless, it is
not so much that characters are energetic or virtuous because they
have ruling plans or maxims as it is that they have ruling plans or
maxims because they are energetic or virtuous. Say to a penurious,
hard, grumpy man, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Will
you thus make him liberal, sympathetic, affable? No, his character
will neutralize your precept, as vinegar receiving the sunshine into
its bosom becomes more sour. Some persons seem to imagine that a wise
maxim is a sort of fairy's wand, one touch of which will transform the
loaded panniers of a donkey into the fiery wings of a Pegasus. Surely,
it is a great error. Trench says, with an amusing _naivete_, "There is
scarcely a mistake which in the course of our lives we have committed,
but some proverb, _had we known and attended to its lesson_, might
have saved us from it.
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