THE CONDUCT OF AGE.
AGOOD part of the world is almost governed by very old men. The Emperor of Germany will be 90 next ntonth ; Von Moltke is 86; Prince Bismarck is 71; M. Grevy, 76; and Mr. Gladstone, 77. Yet the great influence which the old un- doubtedly tend to acquire in modern times has certainly done nothing to help old people of average calibre to order their life better,—partly, no doubt, because picked lives of exceptional vigour are either no models, or very unfortunate models for men of ordinary type; and partly because, even if they were to tell us their experience, it would not be of much use to us, in con- sequence of the very different conditions to which men on whose resolves affairs of the greatest moment depend, are subjected,—very different, we mean, from those which surround ordinary people. You could not get much guidance as to how to meet the sense of decaying energy from the example of those whose energy, even when it has been lessened by age, is twice as great as that of ordinary men of the same age, or from those who are kept up to their work by the imperious exigencies of a position in which every one is looking to them for some urgent decision. It would be as wise for a horse to guide his endeavours in old age by the example of the elephant, as for most of us to guide ourselves in that stage of life by the hints which lives such as we have mentioned might supply. Indeed, we hold that our literature in general often misleads commonplace folks from a closely analogous cause,—that all its most influential portions are due to men of genius, and that men of genius, in their interpretations of life, are very apt to misin- terpret the experience of those who are not only not men of genius at all, but who are very apt to be misunderstood by men of genius even when most brilliantly painted by them. The history of the world could not, of course, have been either guided or written except by men of very exceptional endow- ments ; but just for that very reason, the lessons which have been learnt from them are often far less applicable than they are supposed to be to their humbler fellow-men who have neither their endowments, nor, in general, that vivid life which usually results from exceptional endowments. And what is true of the misleading effect produced by the teaching of men of high powers generally on those who have very moderate powers, is equally true of the misleading effect produced on men of ordinary vigour by watching the old age of men of very exceptional vigour. We are often told that it is a great mistake to retire early, that the motto of the old should be Cave de reeignationibus, and BO forth. But do the persons who give this advice on the strength of the experience of men of unusual strength of constitution, know what it really means I' —that it means duties half-performed or ill-performed, though protected by a certain traditional respect from sharp criticism ; that it means the effort to do what there is no longer the power to do well, and the secret mortification of feeling that it is not well done ; that it means the keeping back of the competent to save the pride of the incompetent ; and, worst of all, the keeping up of a sort of self-deception on the part of the old, in order that they may reconcile themselves to the part they are playing ? No doubt it is true that when old men give up their accustomed tasks in later life, they may often lose health which they might have prolonged a little further into their age, and drop away. Well, is it not better so, if the only mode of retaining bodily health is to affect to do as in former times what men have lost the power to do well ? There is no such deficiency in the stock of energy needing work, that those who have only the habit of work without the energy, should keep the work in their own hands. Probably the advice so often given to the old to stick to their work to the last is, in nine cases out of ten, bad advice, advice which takes into account a very small part of the case,— namely, the convenience and habits of the old, and not the convenience and habits of the young ; the pride of the old, and not the aspirations of the young ; and, finally, the rigidity and inelasticity of the old, and not the pliancy and elasticity of the young.
The troth is, we take it, that very little of our best literature is written for the benefit of old people, and that that which is, is not very likely to do them good. A good work on the best way of growing old is greatly wanted. The willingness to admit that certain portions of one's former work are beyond one is hardly ever pressed upon any one as a duty ; yet a duty it undoubtedly is. The evil,—we think we may say the sin,—of deceiving ourselves, and trying to deceive others on the subject, is hardly ever in- sisted upon ; and yet it is a great evil. Doubtless it is very difficult to recall as a practical truth that what we are apt to call the work of life is, and ought to be, the work of only a part of life, and that mortal men, if they live to old age at all, have to learn to die out of life well,—by which, of course, we do not mean to die physically, but to die to a great many of their former pursuits, with as much meekness and humility as we teach the young to display in their entrance into life. It is the greatest of mistakes to suppose that humility is a duty which belongs exclusively to the young. It is quite as needful to the old, and a great deal more difficult. Pride is a far greater temptation to the old than it is to the young, partly bemuse it necessarily meets with much fewer rebukes, and partly because dignity is so often confounded with pride, while the old find it hard to maintain their dignity (as, however, they often do in the very highest sense) if they sacrifice their pride. Yet to make neither mistake to which pride prompts the old,—neither to hold fast to power which they have lost the art of exerting to the advantage of others, nor to throw up in mortification duties which they could do better than ever because they find that they cannot be successfully combined with other duties which they once discharged well,—is a matter of no little difficulty, and one in which they are very little helped by the moral counsels of the best spiritual advisers. The latter part of the life of the old ought to be, even when it is not, a very gradual dying out of the active work of life, and ought to be a cheerful and serene process, not a gloomy and sullen one. But it is precisely here that men get so little help from the spiritual teachers who are so full of their counsels to the young. Old men hardly ever hear of the special difficulties and temptations of old age, of the duty of cultivating an ungrudging spirit while making this kind of retreat from active influence, of the plausibility of the self-deception which represents a certain gloom or melancholy under such conditions as a perfectly right and natural attitude of mind springing solely from a noble yearning for the sphere of usefulness from which an active mind has been un- willingly driven. The truth, however, is that the self-sacrifice which in youth is oftenest represented by readiness to surrender pleasure for duty, is in age oftenest represented by readiness to surrender what was once duty but is duty no longer, into more vigorous though less practised guardianship.
Considering how carefully childhood and youth are usually made apprenticeships to the practical duties of middle life, miffing is more remarkable than the complete neglect of the hardly less clear duty of making middle life an apprenticeship to the duties of age; of preparing for the time of declining strength, for the time of life suitable to the advising rather than the executing mind, for the freedom and detach- ment of spirit appropriate to less exhausting labours, for the graceful but unexacting dependence which is quite willing to owe much to others, but is fully aware of the conditions under which alone it is possible to owe much to others without being a heavy burden upon them. It seems to us that there is far too little of this kind of deliberate preparation for later years, that men at least, and often women, are far too tenacious of all the practical rights which they gain in middle life, and which, whatever they may say to the contrary, they evidently never dream of relaxing their hold upon, while they live. This is why old age, when it does at last compel them to give up their long-ago enfeebled grasp on their work, is so hope- less and intolerable. They have never prepared themselves for it. This may be excusable in the poor, who are forced to work up to the last limits of their ability, though even in the poor, as they are now educated, there might be much more preparation than there is for the last stage of life. But amongst the middle classes nothing is less excusable or more melancholy than to see men jealously holding on to work which is no longer their fit work, and for which others who are far fitter are waiting, simply because they have no other interest inlife than that of di's:barging mechanically duties which it was once their pride to have shown how to discharge with a certain originality. It is no paradox to say that there is an immense deal of youth in age, if people would only study how to keep it, and not overburden it with a sort of strain for which the physical organisation of the old has become unfit. There is no brighter hopefulness than the hopefulness of age,—personal hopefulness for the great change approaching to themselves,--hopefnluess of vision for others,— hopefulness of insight for the world. It is only the outworn and the overburdened who have the hopefulness crashed out of them by the sense of a weight of responsibility for active duties which it is no longer possible to carry with ease. In order to bring out this hopefulness to its full brightness, there should be a serious moral preparation in middle life for the approach of the time of peace, a steady discouragement of that jealousy of the young which is so apt to creep on ambitious men, a steady fostering of those quieter and less exciting interests of life which grow in importance as the active strength declines, and a steady grasp on that spiritual life which waxes as the powers of administra- tion wane. Wordsworth says that- " the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away, Than what it leaves behind." _
And that is so, no doubt, when age leaves behind all the eager desire to control others which failing energy no longer enables men to gratify. But if we trained ourselves as we might, age would take away the desire as well as the power always to be meddling in the practical control of earth's affairs, and leave only the willingness to counsel others with that disinterested and dispassionate insight which carries the most weight. And if that were so, age would really gain in unobtrusive influence as much as it had lost in executive force. The dregs of a carnal hankering after controlling force, which age now so often leaves behind, is the legacy not of years merely, but of a jealous and unchastened middle life.
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