With all this, I would not of course in the least deny that immoral proverbs, and only too many of them, exist. For if they are, as we have recognised them to be, the genuine transcript of what is stirring in the hearts of men, then, since there is cowardice, untruth, selfishness, unholiness, profaneness there, how should these be wanting here? The world is not so consummate an hypocrite as the entire absence of all immoral proverbs would imply. There will be merely selfish ones, as our own: _Every one for himself and God for us all_; or as this Dutch: _Self’s the man_;[149] or more shamelessly cynical still, as the French: _Better a grape for me, than two figs for thee_;[150] or again, such as proclaim a doubt and disbelief in the existence of any high moral integrity anywhere, as _Every man has his price_; or assume that poor men can scarcely be honest, as _It is hard for an empty sack to stand straight_; or take it for granted that every man would cheat every other if he could, as the French: _Count after your father_;[151] or, if they do not actually “speak good of the covetous,” yet assume it possible that a blessing can wait on that which a wicked covetousness has heaped together, as the Spanish: _Blessed is the son, whose father went to the devil_; or find cloaks and apologies for sin, as the German: _Once is never_;[152] or such as would imply that the evil of a sin lay not in its sinfulness, but in the outward disgrace annexed to it, as the Italian: _A sin concealed is half forgiven_.[153] Or again there will be proverbs dastardly and base, as the Spanish maxim of caution, which advises to _Draw the snake from its hole by another man’s hand_; to put, that is, another, and it may be for your own profit, to the peril from which you shrink yourself;—or more dastardly still, “scoundrel maxims,” an old English poet has called them; as for instance, that one which is acted on only too often: _One must howl with the wolves_;[154] in other words, when a general cry is raised against any, it is safest to join it, lest one be supposed to sympathise with its object; to howl _with_ the wolves, if one would not be hunted _by_ them. In the whole circle of proverbs I know no baser, nor more dastardly than this. And yet who will say that he has never traced in himself the cowardly temptation to obey it? Besides these there will be, of which I shall spare you any examples, proverbs wanton and impure, and not merely proverbs thus earthly and sensual, but devilish; such as some of those Italian on revenge which I quoted in my third lecture. [Sidenote: Immoral proverbs rare.]