Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/904

Rh 880 PROVERBS catch the expression of men good or bad, or photograph their actions and thoughts; more generally they pass a verdict upon them, and exhort or instruct men in regard to them. The proverbs differ from the shrewd or humorous sayings which are so called in profane literature ; some of them have a certain flavour of humour, but they are mainly maxims touching practical life on its religious and moral side. Such maxims cannot be regarded as wholly or even in a very large degree the production of an individual mind. A number of them may well be by Solomon, and a greater number may belong to his age ; but, though the stream of wisdom began to flow in his day, its beginnings were then comparatively small ; as the centuries advanced it gathered volume. In the book which now exists we find gathered together the most precious fruits of the wisdom in Israel during many hundred years, and undoubtedly the later centuries were richer, or at all events fuller, in their contributions than the earlier. The tradition, however, which connects Solomon with the direction of mind known as the wisdom cannot reasonably be set aside. The renown for wisdom which this king enjoyed among his own people, and even, though in a distorted and fantastic form, among the other peoples of the East, must have rested on some real founda tion. No doubt reputations grow, and veneration mag nifies its hero sometimes in proportion to the indistinct ness of its real knowledge of him ; and objects seen in the broad light of day are very insignificant compared with the bulk which they assume when seen between us and the light still lingering on the horizon of a day that has gone down. But, making allowance for the exaggerations of later times, we should leave history and tradition altogether unexplained if we disallowed the claim of Solomon to have exercised a creative influence upon the wisdom in Israel. At the same time it is probable that this influence did not lie in the application of new methods, much less in the creation of a new direction of thought. The supposition that Solomon was the inventor of the proverbial distich or mashal, particularly of the antithetical distich, or that he was the first to use this in his sententious sayings on men and life, and thus the father of didactic poetry among the Hebrews, is a mere conjecture. The distich was employed long before his day, and sententious maxims regarding life and men long preceded him. Moreover the conjecture is based on the very false assumption that the essence of the wisdom lay in the form of expression rather than in the matter, and that the curt, sharp, antithetical distich was its proper characteristic and belonged to it from the beginning. This assumption, made by Ewald, has been so usually accepted by writers after him that the polished pointed antithesis has been elevated into a criterion of the higher antiquity of those proverbs which possess it. Pro bably the opposite conclusion would be nearer the truth. The form of these antithetical proverbs betrays art, long use of the literary methods of the wise, and an approach to technicality things not to be expected in an early age. The early mashal was probably simple, containing a figure or comparison, as the name implies ; some truth of the life of mankind thrown into an image from nature, without anything artificial or technical. Proverbs like &quot; iron sharp- eneth iron,&quot; or such fine similes as these &quot;a trampled fountain and a fouled spring is the righteous man who hath given way before the wicked,&quot; &quot; a city that is broken down and hath no wall is the man whose spirit is without con trol&quot; (xxv. 26, 28) are the kind of proverbs which we should look for in this earliest time. Solomon has a place of renown in the wisdom, not because he imposed any mannerism upon it, but because he threw a vigorous mind into it. He probably formed no class : the word &quot; wise &quot; did not, from being an adjective, become a noun in his days. The nature of his wisdom is best illustrated by the story of the two women with the living and the dead child (1 Kings iii. 16-28). He possessed a keen insight into the operations of human nature ; he knew r the world and men and life. Most likely also he possessed the power of giving pointed expression to his shrewd and ready judgments ; and, as it is said that he spoke of beasts and fishes and trees, he probably had an eye for the analogies between human life and the external world. From his character we should judge that his three thousand proverbs were not all religious ; neither were his thousand and one songs all hymns, or some of them would have been preserved to us besides the two more than doubtful poems in the Psalter (Ps. Ixxii., cxxvii.). The theme of the wisdom was life, and its aims were practical ; and, if the rise of the wisdom be connected with the age of Solomon, that is due to the fact that life in the civil sense began in this age, and its principles could be discovered. Then the tribes were con solidated into one community, the state rose into existence, the channels of commerce were opened, men entered into various and complicated relations with one another, and the principles which rule such relations revealed themselves to the eye that was open to observe them. It is not quite easy to form definite conceptions of those called the wise in Israel. They were certainly no heredi tary caste like the priests ; neither had they any distinct call to a vocation like the prophets, although in later times at least they were so well recognized that they could be ranked with these two classes as influential in forming men s opinions and guiding their actions (Jer. xviii. 18). They were probably men who might be named elders, not always because of their age, but because of their superior sagacity ; men who, having at heart the welfare of the state and particularly the moral soundness of the citizens, sought to gain the ear of the young and inculcate upon them the principles of right conduct. While the priests were the clergy and lawyers in Israel, and the prophets the statesmen, the wise were the moralists and educa tionists, whose operations touched the individual in all his relations and duties. Their methods were probably simple to begin with, and natural, without anything strictly characteristic ; they were moral &quot; reprovers,&quot; or ordinary &quot; counsellors,&quot; and possibly at first their ethical maxims were general, touching life as a whole. By and by they surveyed life with a keener scrutiny and subjected it to a sharper analysis, bringing their moral principles to bear on its shades and sides and aspects, and applying these principles with greater inwardness so as to strike not merely at external conduct but at the disposition of the mind. And, finally, under the influence of the universalistic ideas of God and providence suggested to the minds of men in Israel by contact with the great empires of the world and observation of their destinies, when the Jewish state became involved in political movements as wide as the known world, the wise were enabled to gather together the manifold fragments into which they had analysed the moral life of man and the operation of the providence of God, and to perceive that they were all but elements in one great divine system embracing all things, both the world of nature and the destinies of men. To this great scheme, which was but God fulfilling himself in many ways, they gave the name of wisdom in the abstract ; it was the counterpart of the divine mind, God s fellow and architect in framing the world. This was the divine wisdom ; human wisdom consisted both in intellectual comprehension of it and in moral harmony with it, and the first could be reached only through the second : the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Illustrations of the wisdom in its earliest form may be seen in the collection xxv.-xxix., and in many proverbs in x.-xxii.