es. Goethe himself
has in all his great works a wealth of aphorism unsurpassed by any other
writer whatever, even though it be Montaigne or Bacon or Shakespeare;
and sayings of his not to be found in this collection are some of the
best that he uttered.

The besetting sin of the maxim-writer is to exaggerate one side of a
matter by neglecting another; to secure point and emphasis of style, by
limiting the range of thought; and hence it is that most maxims present
but a portion of truth and cannot be received unqualified. They must
often be brought back to the test of life itself, and confronted and
compared with other sides of the experience they profess to embody. And
when a maxim stands this trial and proves its worth, it is not every one
to whom it is of value. To some it may be a positive evil. It makes the
strongest appeal to those who never see more than one aspect of
anything, hardening their hearts and blunting their minds; and even to
those who could make a good use of it, there are times when it may
mislead and be dangerous. Maxims in their application seem to need
something of the physician's art: they must be handled with care, and
applied with discretion. Like powerful drugs they may act with
beneficent effect on a hardy constitution; they may brace it to effort,
or calm the fever of a misguided activity; but great is the mischief
they work where the mind is weak or disorganised. As a medicine may save
a man at one time that would kill him at another, so the wise counsel of
to-day may easily become the poisonous suggestion of to-morrow.

With writers who depend for effect on mere qualities of style and ignore
the weightier matters of depth and truth of observation, Goethe has
nothing in common; nor with those who vainly imagine that insight is a
kind of art, with a method that may be learned and applied. By constant
practice a man of literary talent may, it is true, attain a fair mastery
of language terse and attractive, and then set himself, if he will, to
the deliberate creation of aphoristic wisdom or a philosophy of
proverbs; mistaking the dexterous handling of a commonplace for the true
process of discovery. The popular literature of the last generation
supplies a terrible instance of the length to which the manufacture of
maxims can thus be carried, for a time with immense success; and we have
seen how a few years suffice to carry them and their author to
obscurity. How different is the true process!