not invariably; as sometimes a man, by being forewarned of danger, is unnerved with terror, and undone.  So the two maxims, “Never abandon a certainty for an uncertainty,” “Nothing venture, nothing have,” destroy each other.  Whether you shall give up the one bird in the hand and try for the two in the bush depends on the relative worth of the one and the two, and the probabilities of success in the trial.  No abstract maxim can help solve that problem:  it requires living intelligence.  To follow a foreign rule empirically will often be to fare as the monkey fared, who, undertaking to shave, as he had seen his master do, gashed his face and paws.  Fearful incisions of the soul will he get who accepts unqualifyingly the class of impulsive proverbs with their enormously overdrawn inferences:  such as that of David, when he said in his haste, “All men are liars”; or that of Moore, when he said in his song, “The world is all a fleeting show, for man’s illusion given”; or that maxim of Schopenhauer, so full of deadly misanthropy and melancholy that one would gladly turn his back on a world in which he believed such a rule necessary, “Love no one, hate no one, is the first half of all worldly wisdom; say nothing, believe nothing, is the other half.”

The first condition of a profitable use of maxims being a thorough mastery of the rule proposed, with its limits, the next condition is an accurate self-knowledge.  Know yourself, your weaknesses, your aptitudes, your exposures, your gifts and strength, in order that you may know what to seek or avoid, what to cherish or spurn, what to spur or curb, what to fortify or assail.  For example, if your head is made of butter, it is clear that it will not do for you to be a baker.  If you are a coward, you must not volunteer to lead a forlorn hope.  The advantage of self-knowledge is that it enables us to prescribe for ourselves the contemplation of such principles and motives as we need.  If our thought is narrow and our fancy cold, we should study the maxims that instruct,—­as, “Joys are wings, sorrows are spurs.”  If our heart is faint and our will weak, we should study the maxims that inspire,—­as, “The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”  The instructive maxim opens a vista of truth to the intellect, as when Goethe said, “A man need not be an architect in order to live in a house.”  The inspiring maxim strikes a martial chord in the soul, as when Alexander said to his Greeks, shrinking at the sight of the multitudinous host of Persians, “One butcher does not fear many sheep.”  The evil of self-ignorance is, that it permits men to choose as their favorite and guiding maxims those adages which express and foster their already rampant propensities, leaving their drooping deficiencies to pine and cramp in neglect.  The miser pampers his avarice by repeating a hundred times a day, “A penny saved is a penny gained”:  as if that were the maxim he needed!  The spend-thrift comforts and confirms himself in his prodigality by