Let us take a closer look at the folk wisdom to be found among ordinary people within our own culture, long reinforced at home and school. The Bible is naturally an important source. “A wise man built his house on a firm foundation.” (Matthew 7:24-27). When the rains came, the house withstood the onslaught of the elements. However, “a foolish man” built his house on sand, and was not so fortunate. “The rain came down, the floods rose, the winds blew and battered against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” The first house is both a literal home and a metaphor for the protective moral code of its inhabitants. “Cast your bread upon the waters and it will come back to you” is advice tendered in Ecclesiastes 11:1. It is intended to encourage generosity, with an assurance that such acts will not go unrewarded in the fullness of time, if only we can learn to be patient. “Don’t hide your light under a bushel” comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:15-16. It is intended to suggest that the virtuous person must not hide the “light” of his or her faith from others, but should make it visible to the world at large in order to glorify God who made the virtue possible. Taken at random from the Old Testament’s Book of Proverbs are two examples from a host of wise words that have guided people of faith for centuries. One is “A wise son is his father’s joy, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.” (10:1). Another is “One who minds his words preserves his life; one who talks too much faces ruin.” (13:3). Enough said.
In a speech delivered in 1858, Abraham Lincoln foresaw the consequences of the ruinous Civil War that was to devastate his nation: “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he said, quoting Matthew 12:25. Thomas Hobbes, the author of Leviathan, used the same quotation in 1651, as did Tom Paine in his 1767 Common Sense. Many public figures and humbler folk over the years have consulted the Bible for advice, encouragement, inspiration and reassurance.
Over these same years, folk wisdom’s culture has also been enriched by contributions from poets and philosophers whose thoughts have now become part of the language of English and its everyday users. The Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard, often called ‘the father of existentialism,’ recognized the truth that “life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” Rudyard Kipling wrote in his famous poem If of the need to bear reverses with restraint and stoic fortitude if one is to be worthy of the name of a “man.” These thoughts are good advice, but the writer’s use of memorable language– “what oft was thought, but ne’er so well-expressed”– lets it live beyond its own time. Among these is the advice Polonius gives to his son in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “Give thy thoughts no tongue,” he tells him,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the end of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
