saying, “God loveth a cheerful giver”:  as if that were not precisely the saying he ought never to recall!  Audacity and arrogance constantly say to themselves, “Be bold, be bold, and evermore be bold.”  Timidity and distrust are ever whispering, “Be not too bold.”  Thus what would be one man’s meat proves another man’s poison; whereas, were it rightly distributed, both would be nourished into healthy development.  The over-reckless should restrain himself by remembering that “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”  The over-cautious should animate himself with the reflection that “The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one.”  A man who, with deep self-knowledge, carefully chooses and perseveringly applies maxims adapted to check his excess and arouse his defect may derive unspeakable profit from them.

To do this with full success, however, he must have a discriminating knowledge of the circumstances as well as of the rule, and of himself.  “Circumstances alter cases.”  What applies happily in one exigency may be perfectly absurd or ruinous in a different situation.  The mule, loaded with salt, waded through a brook, and, as the salt melted, the burden grew light.  The ass, loaded with wool, tried the same experiment; but the wool, saturated with water, was twice as heavy as before.  So the Satyr, in AEsop’s fable, asked the man coming in from the cold, “Why he blew on his fingers?” and was told, “To warm them.”  Soon after he asked, “Why he blew in his soup?” and was told, “To cool it.”  Whereupon he rushed on the man with a club and slew him as a liar.  The ramifications of truth in varying emergencies are infinitely subtile and complicated, and often demand the very nicest care in distinguishing.  Good advice, when empirically taken and rashly followed, is as an eye in the hand, sure to be put out the first thing on trying to use it.  “Advice costs nothing and is good for nothing,” it is often said.  But that depends on the quality of the advice, on the circumstances, and on what kind of persons impart and receive the counsel.  Advice given with earnestness and wisdom, and applied with docility and discrimination, may cost a great deal and be invaluable.  Competence and aptness, or folly and heedlessness, make a world of difference.  The great difficulty in regard to the fruitfulness of advice is the universal readiness to impart, the usual unwillingness to accept it.  We give advice by the bucket, take it by the grain.  For these reasons the world is yet surfeited with precept and starving for example:  and the applicability is by no means exhausted of the fable of Brabrius, who tells how when an old crab said to her child, “Awkward one, walk not so crookedly!” he replied, “Mother, walk you straight, I will watch and follow.”  Verbal wisdom would direct us; exemplified wisdom draws us.