oftener withdrawn, because no due acknowledgment of Him was made in its use; as when the German proverb declares: _Charity gives itself rich; covetousness hoards itself poor_;[160] and the Danish: _Give alms, that thy children may not ask them_; and the Rabbis, with a yet deeper significance: _Alms are the salt of riches_; the true antiseptic, which as such shall prevent them from themselves corrupting, and from corrupting those that have them; which shall hinder them from developing a germ of corruption, such as shall in the end involve in one destruction them and their owners.[161] At the same time, as it is the very character of proverbs to look at matters all round, there are others to remind us that even this very giving itself shall be with forethought and discretion; with selection of right objects, and in right proportion to each. Teaching this, the Greeks said, _Sow with the hand, and not with the whole sack_;[162] for as it fares with the seed corn, which if it shall prosper, must be providently dispersed with the hand, not prodigally shaken from the sack’s mouth, so is it with benefits, which shall do good either to those who impart, or to those who receive them. Thus again, there is a Danish which says, _So give to-day, that thou shalt be able to give to-morrow_; and another: _So give to one, that thou shalt have to give to another_.[163] And as closing this series, as teaching us in a homely but striking manner, with an image Dantesque in its vigor, that a man shall carry nothing away with him when he dieth, take this Italian, _Our last robe_, that is our winding sheet, _is made without pockets_.[164] [Sidenote: Manly proverbs.]