maturity, or the middle period of life, is in a sense the largest part of life, and is not to be viewed merely as the period after youth and before old age. it is relative only as all time is relative, but it is absolute, too. in truth, it is the time of that self-dependence which comes with the consciousness of power in maturity. it is the very body and substance of life and least relative,—for youth is its foreshadowing and old age the shadow which it casts behind. middle age is not a link between 49youth and old age, but that period of life to which youth is an approach,—from which old age is an exit. comparing life to a bridge, youth and old age might be likened to the piers which must be builded, but the linking together of the piers, the stretching of the cables over which the larger part of life’s pilgrimage must be made is the task of life’s middle period.
life is so constituted that it were almost within the limits of reasonableness to urge that life need not pass out of the middle stage into old age. loath though one be to enter upon maturity, it need never be left behind in return for age if it be entered upon in the spirit of preparedness. middle age is hard and bitter if youth have been misspent, 50if youth have not been the stage of conscious preparation for life.
certain rules have been laid down for the governance of youth and the question may be asked whether these are pertinent to the needs and tasks of middle age,—namely the law that one must have an ideal by which to live, and that one must not merely live by it but up to it. as for the rules which are to be binding upon the middle period of life, who shall venture to prescribe them, save that certain things are obviously true,—that middle age shall continue that which youth initiates, and that there shall be no sharp frontier dividing youth from that which comes after. for middle age is not so much a part of life as it is life, and life absolute.
51middle age is but a part of the same life-long journey which in its early stages is youth, which culminates in age. and yet in a sense a different type of rules and ordinances is applicable to every one of the three great periods of life. for life is not a journey, even and unvarying, over a wide plain. life may best be likened to the ascent of a mountain and in turn the descent from its summit, and the laws that govern life must be variously modified in order to meet the needs of the different periods along the journey.
in the early stages, during the hours of the ascent, the imperative thing is that a man shall not over-tax his strength, that he shall not overstrain his powers in the initial stages of the 52journey, that he shall not attempt too much, that he shall not travel at too wearying a pace. as man nears the summit of the mountain, it becomes needful for him to conform to other rules. he must not lose the stride, he must know how to go on, he must climb and climb without succumbing to the heat of the day. once the descent is begun, yet other rules apply, if one is with safety to reach the end of the long journey. the glory of the morning no longer upbears him, the splendor of the noonday sun no longer maintains his strength. but as he leaves youth’s vigor and the power of maturity behind him, the glow of the passing day may irradiate his vision and reveal to him the distant horizon.
53middle age seems too often a painful reluctance to leave youth behind and to be a more painful hesitancy in the matter of facing the oncoming of age. unhappily for itself, middle age oft combines the childishness of immaturity with the senescence of post-maturity so that it lacks alike the charm of youth and the grace of age. old age that is not worthy of reverence is contemptible. not less worthy of contempt is middle age, if it have brought from youth nothing save youth’s foibles and frailties. we not unseldom see—and it is always a pitiful spectacle,—men and women whose bark of life is unballasted by the poise that comes with strength and unsteadied by the serenity which ought to be the mark of the maturer 54period. while men speak of the dignity of old age, it is in truth the middle age which is in need of dignity, which alas it too often lacks.
men frequently refer to the emptiness and the barrenness of old age, when it is oftenest middle age that is empty and meaningless, for it is the time when life’s emptiness is disclosed. it is in middle age that men are made to face the bitter truth that theirs is not to achieve and to serve because they have not set up any standards worthy of the name, because their goal, such as it is, is too immediately accessible, and they cannot serve because self, having been their very deity, has not suffered them to will to serve or to learn how to serve.
the temptation of middle age is to 55yield to the spirit of disenchantment, though verily that is oft-times called disenchantment which means nothing more than the absence of enchantments. the temptation of middle age is not so much to give up ideals as to realize that one is without them. then men mistake their poor plans and plottings, their puny purposes for ideals and wonder why they have lost that which in truth they never had. men rarely lose ideals. poor, imperfect substitutes for ideals are found out and find out their owners,—if so they may be named. men are not to fear losing ideals in middle age. they are to fear not having them in youth so that they cannot hold them throughout life.
middle age depends upon youth, and 56its disillusionments are due chiefly to the absence of illusions in the time of youth. in middle and in old age men suddenly discover that they cannot reap what in youth they have failed to sow. that middle age finds the ideals of youth unsatisfying and even unengrossing, indicts only youth and not itself, shows that the map of life, if drawn at all and as drawn in youth, was not ample and generous enough to have proved sufficing for a lifetime.
assuming that middle age is less joyous than youth, it enjoys one supreme satisfaction, or rather reaps one supreme compensation, that of the consciousness of two powers, two of life’s sovereign powers, the power to achieve and the power to serve. if youth initiates, 57middle age most achieves and best serves,—most achieves because it is a time of fullness of intellectual strength and firmness of moral will; best serves because the stains of self have been or ought to have been burnt out and there is left the capacity of selfless enlistment under banners unrelated to personal gain or private advantage. the middle age that men find bare and unsatisfying is in truth that to them who have not mastered the two arts of life, achieving and serving.
certain mistakes are not uncommon in respect of the interpretation of middle age, for example, that it is not the period of high initiative. because things are not initiated with dash and flare, it is assumed that middle age undertakes 58nothing. on the contrary, it is then and perhaps only then that things are begun and achieved for their own sake, that things are really undertaken in the consciousness of strength and with a capacity for achievement. moreover, while little can be carried into and beyond middle age that is not initiated in youth, the soul of man has not in the middle period forfeited or abandoned the power of self-correction and self-redemption. it may not be easy, neither is it impossible.
perhaps the supreme rule for middle age may be phrased in the fewest of words,—don’t stop growing! physical and intellectual maturity are not interchangeable terms. the truth is that men almost consciously cease to grow, 59and even will not to grow at thirty-five and forty and forty-five and then proceed to wonder why life is so unsatisfying. let men but remember that there is no such thing as maturity in life,—if maturity mean the cessation of growth,—for maturity were followed by post-maturity, which is over-ripeness.
men need never cease to grow and mature. men will either grow up or go down. the great and satisfying lives are those of men and women who grow on and go on until they are cut down. when freeman died, he asked that on his gravestone be carved the words, “he died learning.” he who grows and learns dies not. continue, as long as thou wouldst grow, to learn and reason and purpose, nor yet imagine 60that life is done when youth is ended. nor let the middle-aged forget that going on is not the only possibility. even in middle age a man may reserve for himself freedom, freedom of choice, freedom to revise life’s foundations, freedom to begin anew if so be error have been made.
above all, middle age must not lose its admirations, its reverences, its enthusiasms. the edge of enthusiasm may be dulled with the passing of the years,—but the body and substance of one’s admirations need not be diminished, and by our admirations we live. anatole france, speaking of the old campaigners of the reserve, uses this finely stimulating word with regard to them,—“they unite the elasticity of 61youth with the staunchness of maturity.” there is another and an older way of describing the characteristic quality of middle age, which must combine “the wisdom of age and the heart of youth.”
