Meaning & Analysis
Most people tend to revere the sun as it rises in the morning, a symbol of a new day, rather than when it sets in the evening.
Insights
Political Opportunism
The 'rising sun' symbolizes a person or power gaining influence, while the 'setting sun' represents one whose power is waning. The proverb cynically observes that people are opportunistic, shifting their loyalty and praise toward emerging leaders to gain favor, while abandoning those in decline.
Youth over Age
On a broader social level, it reflects a societal preference for youth, novelty, and potential over old age, experience, and decline. Energy and future promise ('rising sun') attract more attention and admiration than the accomplishments and wisdom of a fading generation ('setting sun').
Human Fickleness and Ingratitude
The proverb serves as a commentary on the fickle and ungrateful nature of humanity. It suggests that allegiance is often transactional and temporary, quickly forgotten once a benefactor or leader loses their ability to provide rewards.
Pragmatism and Ambition
It highlights the strategic nature of ambition, where individuals pragmatically invest their energy and support where they anticipate the greatest future return. Worshiping the 'rising sun' is a calculated act aimed at securing one's own position in a new order.
Historical Court Politics
Rooted in classical antiquity and cited by Erasmus, the proverb reflects the precarious nature of court politics, where survival and advancement depended on aligning with ascending powers. The 1670 annotation by Ray, noting Queen Elizabeth I's strategic refusal to name a successor, vividly illustrates how this principle was a tangible political reality, used to maintain loyalty by preventing a premature shift of allegiance to a 'rising sun'.
Literary Resonance
Shakespeare masterfully employs this theme, as in 'Timon of Athens', where former friends 'shut their doors against a setting sun', capturing the brutal social abandonment that follows a loss of fortune and power. This literary resonance underscores the proverb's deep integration into Renaissance thought about human nature.
Psychological Bias
The proverb taps into a fundamental human psychological bias toward potential over actuality, and growth over decline. This 'recency bias' makes people instinctively value future promise more than past contributions, reflecting a self-interested focus on securing future benefits rather than honoring past loyalties.
Universal Symbolism
The sun is a universal symbol of life, divinity, and power. The proverb leverages this potent symbolism, where the 'rising sun' universally signifies hope and new beginnings, while the 'setting sun' represents endings and mortality. This makes the proverb's meaning immediately and intuitively understood across cultures.
Rhetorical Devices
Metaphor
The proverb is built on the central metaphor of the sun representing a person's life, influence, and power cycle, from ascendance to decline.
Antithesis
A powerful contrast is drawn between 'rising' and 'setting', creating a stark and memorable opposition that effectively highlights the core theme of shifting allegiances.
Personification
The sun is personified as a deity or monarch who is 'worshiped', elevating the act of showing favor from mere sycophancy to a quasi-religious act of devotion, thus emphasizing its intensity.
Transcription
Quotations
Plures adorant solem orientem, quam occidentem.
All men commonly more reioyce in the Sunne rising, then they doe in the Sunne setting.
I perceiue you are borne in the East, and neuer laugh but at the sunne rising.
Men rather honour the sun rising than the sun going down.
Honour the Sunnes faire rising not his setting.
Looke not Westward to the fall of Don Phoebus, but to the East.
The Rising Sunne, not Setting, doth men please.
Wrong'd you the Light, That came but as the Egyptians, to adore The rising Sunne, and to fall downe before it.
I am not worth the Old and at set, honour the rising Sunne.
Was any Nation read of, so besotted In reason, as to adore the setting Sunne.
The rising sun with joyful superstition, I could fall down and worship.
Men use to worship the rising sunne.
People most usu-ally, upon dislike of present things, look up after the rising sun and forsake the setting.
*They that are young and rising have more followers, then they that are old and decaying. This consideration, it is thought, withheld Queen Elizabeth a pru-dent Princess from declaring her succcessour.
Most Men worship the rising Sun.
Shakespeare Citations
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
Lo, in the Orient when the gracious light Lifts up his burning head, each under eye Doth homage to his new-appearing sight.
Cross References
- See Sr., no. 2658.
- M1147 More favor lusty youth than crooked age.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.