RESTLESSNESS IN AGE.
WE are all familiar with the impatience which comes naturally with age and failing health, the intolerance of little hindrances, the inconsequence in argument, the
petulance in comment, which are the first signs of senility. But there is another kind of impatience which has a wholly different meaning. It comes to the high-spirited, strenuous man when he feels the hand of Age on him, or that premonition of death which the human body in some hidden way can give to its owner. A man whose soul is centred on a great ideal to which his life's work has been given chafes at the thought that he must be taken before seeing its realisation. A man, again, of fiery energy, whose days have been spent in conflicts, may redouble his efforts at the prospect of their cessation, and show an almost hysterical vitality in his closing years. It is a commonplace of literature. The men of the greatest power have the least toleration for petty triumphs, the most abiding sense of the smallness of their doings and the magni- tude of their task. That line of "In Memoriam" which was one of the last utterances of Mr. Rhodes is a cry on the lips of all who fix their eyes on a far horizon. Haste to justify themselves, either to make practical some idea, or to walk a little further on the road, is the last infirmity of the strongest and best. FOr them there can be no afternoon. Their view of age is the view of the old huntsman in "The Flight of the D uchess " :—
" What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all; Cram in a day what his youth took a year to hold."
They cannot be content, like Bacon, to leave the under- standing of their work and character "to foreign nations and the next ages," or to suffer gladly that others should complete what they have begun. To have led the people to the Promised Land, and then to get no more than a Pisgah sight of it, is a bitter trial for human nature.
There are two forms which this restlessness may take. The
practical worker, the statesman, explorer, thinker, artist, may chafe at the fiat which bids him give up his task before completion. A year or so more and the great policy will be a fact, a new State or a new Empire will be created, the barrier mountain will have been crossed and the new continent beyond explored, the great system of philosophy which is to reconcile conflicting creeds will have been given to the world, the last touch will have been added to the picture which has been a lifetime in the making. To weaker souls the thought brings despair; but to the higher spirits it means only an increase of earnestness. , And therein lies danger. To the man whose work is of a personal kind, such as the writer or the painter, an access of energy, however feverish, matters comparatively little. But to the maker of nations, the statesman, the sudden quickening of pace may mean the undoing of a life-work. When we build successfully we build in tacit alliance with natural forces, biding our time and making broad and deep our foundations. We believe that Time is on our side, and believing also that "the counsels to which Time hath not been called, Time will not ratify," we dare not move too fast. Short-cuts, which policy forbade in those earlier days when we had patience, are not more justifiable now in our old age. The temptation, indeed, is superhuman. It is natural to wish to hurry a work to its completion while you are still there to superintend, for who knows that you may trust your successors? To bring life to some full satisfying close is an essential if you are to say " Nun° Dimittis" with a quiet mind, and the stronger souls have a hunger for finality. They do not see that the gratification of an instinct, which, however noble, is a personal one, may gravely endanger the permanence of that structure a which they have laboured. If in the desire to see the tower clear of scaffolding they build the last story hastily, the first north wind may send it down about the ears of their children. "So little done, so much to do," is a fine motto for life, but so far as concerns methods, Goethe's Ohne Heat, ohne Bast, is perhaps a safer maxim. But there is another form of restlessness in age, which is not con- cerned with the completion of a particular work. A man of strong natural energy may be content to trust himself and his labours, so far as they have gone, to the mercies of his successors, but may chafe at the thought that with it all he has but realised a fraction of what is within him. The consciousness of latent power may drive him to that strange flare of genius which we find sometimes in the last years of great men. Here there is no need to counsel patience for the sake of their work, for they differ from the man who has been possessed by the idea of some practical achievement. They need not think of the world, but of their own souls,—how to find a balm to soothe the feverish love of living from which they must soon be free. And haply they may find it, like Browning's Grammarian, in the hope of immortality.
The one faith which can give patience to the great builder among men is the belief that in his work he has been on the side of cosmic forces, and that these will cherish and per- petuate his efforts. It is a high stretch of human fortitude, and few have reached it. The martyr who, believing that God is fighting for him, is content to leave his cause in His hands, is the most conspicuous example of such a faith. There used to be a theory among certain German historians —a theory for which, unfortunately, we have no warrant in facts—that Caesar, having brought his country to the brink of an Empire, chose to forego its consummation, thinking that work better done by other hands, and deliberately courted the sword of Brutus. If the fable were true, it would be a perfect instance of the patience of the great builder, who could so purge all personal vanity from his soul that for his work's sake he could choose to leave the crowning achievement and the glory to another. But there have been many cases of men who died without seeing the fruit of their labours, but in perfect confidence as to the ultimate issue. No restlessness clouded the last days of William the Silent, who seemed to the world to be leaving his country in as ill a plight as ever, but who was sustained by the faith that he had allies whom the world knew not. There is a fragment of a song in one of the " Wa.verley Novels" which represents the attitude of the great man who has not achieved a small success, but has laid the foundations of a permanent one :— . "The body to its place, and the soul to Heaven's grace, And the rest in God's good time."
There is no other sedative for the noble impatience which great workers must feel except the belief in some Power in the universe which will preserve and complete whatever of truth and value their work has contained. It is a presupposi- tion of philosophy that the world is not in league to defeat the efforts of man in the quest of truth or the moral life. In the same way it is a fair supposition that progress cannot be permanently impeded by the hiatus of death. The restless desire to finish off a work is justifiable only when the haste it entails does not do violence to those principles of organics growth on which alone permanence is founded.
Previous page
