{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_60826/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_60826","id":"gutenberg_60826","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60826","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Old Age & the Elderly","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Conduct of life"],"text":"How to Face Life\n\n\n\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n                         THE ART OF LIFE SERIES\n                      Edward Howard Griggs, Editor\n\n                         ---------------------\n\n\n                            How to Face Life\n\n                                   BY\n\n                            STEPHEN S. WISE\n                 Rabbi of the Free Synagogue, New York\n\n                     [Illustration: B. W. H. logo]\n\n                                NEW YORK\n                             B. W. HUEBSCH\n                                MCMXVII\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                          COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY\n                             B. W. HUEBSCH\n\n\n\n\n                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n                                   TO\n                              MY LOUTINJIM\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                                CONTENTS\n\n\n                               I   YOUTH\n\n                           PREPARING FOR LIFE\n\n                                 PAGE 9\n\n\n                             II   MATURITY\n\n                        HOW TO SERVE AND ACHIEVE\n\n                                PAGE 48\n\n\n                               III   AGE\n\n                          HOW NOT TO GROW OLD\n\n                                PAGE 62\n\n------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\n\n\n\n                                   I\n\n                       YOUTH: PREPARING FOR LIFE\n\n\n  \u201cHow beautiful is youth! How bright it gleams.\n  With its illusions, aspirations, dreams!\n  Book of Beginnings, Story without End,\n  Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!\n  Aladdin\u2019s Lamp, and Fortunatus\u2019 Purse!\n  That holds the treasures of the universe!\n  All possibilities are in its hands,\n  No danger daunts it and no foe withstands;\n  In its sublime audacity of faith,\n  \u2018Be thou removed,\u2019 it to the mountain saith,\n  And with ambitious feet, secure and proud,\n  Ascends the ladder leaning on the cloud.\u201d\n\n    \u2014LONGFELLOW: _Morituri Salutamus_.\n\nHow to face life, how to prepare for life, are questions that must be\nanswered by those who believe, as Lecky put it, that the \u201cmap of life\u201d\nmust be marked out, that in the words of Emerson there is such a thing\nas the \u201cconduct of life\u201d which man is free to determine.\n\nWe are assured incessantly in these days that we must enter upon a great\nprogramme of preparedness for war,\u2014back of which urging lies the\nassumption that a maximum of preparedness must be arranged in order to\nsecure our land against the menace of aggression or invasion. If a\nprogramme of preparedness, which in the last analysis involves\ndestruction and desolation, be impossible without the fullest planning,\nhow much less possible is it to shape a constructive life-upbuilding\nprogramme without most careful and adequate preparedness.\n\nInto the mind of youth must penetrate the ideal of\nself-preparedness,\u2014not of external preparation for the outward life, but\nof inmost preparedness for the inner life. Whether or not the\npreparedness programme be, as some hold, more menacing to the soul of\nAmerica than foreign foe can ever become because it marks an immediate\ninvasion of the American soul rather than a possible aggression upon\nAmerican soil, it is certain that life cannot worthily be lived save\nafter preparedness in the fullest sense of the term.\n\nIt is, in truth, easy to stir up excitement and even deeper feeling over\na purely external problem such as is that of war-preparedness, preparing\nto do something to another whether an individual or a nation or a\ncontinent. The easiest way is the way of external preparedness, the\nmilitaristic way, for it involves a minimum of reasoning. But\npreparation for life which I ask of youth involves the largest measure\nof reasoning and planning and purposing. It is the hardest way rather\nthan the easiest way, though the pursuit thereof makes ultimately for\nthe way that is inevitably rightful and unerring.\n\nIs it needful to urge upon young people that they shall face life with\nthe determination to sketch for themselves a map of life as they see it,\nas they purpose, if so be they purpose, to make it? What would be said\nof a military commander who entered upon a land to him unknown without\nsecuring in advance the fullest possible data, without gaining, as far\nas it was possible so to do, an understanding of the outlines of the\ncountry he proposed to enter?\n\nCuriously enough, it is often imagined that preparation for life is\nlargely a matter of the higher education and exclusively associated with\ncollege and university life. This imagining may be due to the\ncircumstance that men and women step out of so-called preparatory\nschools into higher institutions of learning. One sometimes wonders, in\nvery truth, whether, instead of college preparing men for life, it were\nnot more fitting to hold that after the college or university experience\nmen need to be repaired if they are rightly to live and toil and serve.\n\nMy counsel is not for men alone but for men and women, for youth and\nmaidens alike. Let no man venture to offer two kinds of counsel, one to\nmen and yet another to women. There is only one manner of preparedness\nfor life, for life is life and it is not one thing for a man and yet\nanother for a woman.\n\nThough I have used the term \u201cmap of life,\u201d map is hardly a happy\nanalogy. For maps presuppose that a land is become known and familiar.\nAnd life cannot be foreknown and charted, if life it is to be, as every\nlife ought to be, a great adventure into the unknown rather than the\nacceptance of a programme, a hazard of the spirit rather than a body of\nprescriptions and ordinances. We are to fare forth upon the seas of\nlife,\u2014without chart. But some of us attempt to sail the sea rudderless,\nhelmless, starless. Men and women embark upon life without ever having\ngiven thought to the storms that beset, to the rocks that threaten, to\nthe unknown perils that may lie before. And then it is wondered why many\nfail to make port, why the ships of life frequently founder upon the\nhigh seas. The wonder ought rather to be that so many enter triumphantly\ninto the harbors of eternity, seeing how rarely men map out life in\nadvance, seeing how grudging is the time spent upon preparation, seeing\nhow seldom men diligently and consciously prepare to meet those\ndifficulties and burdens and problems which adequate preparedness for\nlife alone can fit the soul to face.\n\nLet not life be mapped out so definitely for you, so accurately and\nsystematically that no room will be left for the play of your own will\nand the determinations of your own spirit. I would almost rather have\nevery map of life flung away than have life so mapped out as to leave\nyouth no freedom of choice, as to fail to spur men on to face the great\nadventure, to be capable of daring to front whatsoever life may offer.\nNot very long ago, I inquired of friends, whose little lad is a pupil of\none of the so-called best schools in the land, when they had applied for\nhis admittance, and they answered, \u201cBefore he was born.\u201d It occurred to\nme to inquire what dire thing would have happened in the event of the\nlad having proved upon birth to be a little lass, but the comforting\nassurance was at once given me that such contingency, not to say\ncalamity, had been guarded against, in a sense, through applying for\nadmittance to a girls\u2019 school in the event of the lad being born a lass.\nIt seemed to me then as it does now an admirable thing to make such\ncomprehensive provision for a child\u2019s education as to gain for it in\nadvance of birth admittance into two schools, irrespective of sex.\n\nBut, without resting too heavily upon this illustration, is it not\npossible to prepare another for life so definitely as to deny to youth\nthe privilege of willing, choosing, venturing, daring\u2014even losing? It\nwere almost better that a youth go without the problematic advantages of\nschool discipline than have his school and college and university career\nchosen and marked out for him rigidly and inflexibly. What greater wrong\ncan I do my child than to withhold from him the freedom of choice, than\nso to cabin and confine his spirit that he must needs beat his wings in\nthe intense inane without knowing the atmosphere that magnifies freedom\nand liberates the soul? Guide if you will the life of youth, but beware\nof the danger of maiming and crippling life through so definitely and\ncompletely mapping it out as to deny the soul of youth the peril of\nadventure, the joy of combat, the glory of hopeless daring.\n\nLife must mean pioneering, not making one\u2019s way, but breaking a way,\nclearing a path of life for one\u2019s self. It is the glory of life,\u2014and\nthere is no glory like unto it,\u2014to face the task of moral and\nintellectual pioneering. There is danger lest in our time there pass out\nof the life of men one of the most precious of things, that pioneering\nspirit that comes to the man who after he has fared forth, braved every\ndanger, stood every peril at bay, declares in the word of the poet:\n\n                     \u201cAnybody might have heard it\n                     But God\u2019s whisper came to me.\u201d\n\nThe whisper of God comes to every man or to every man it may come. The\nopportunity for the performance of the task of moral or spiritual\npioneering is denied to no man. Americas of the spirit remain to be\ndiscovered within the life of every one of us. What man or woman who may\nread this will affirm that there has never come into his life a\nrevelation the gleam of which enables him to see that he is free to\nreach a great decision, that his spirit may dare a great refusal, that\nhis soul may utter a great affirmation? The great moment of life is that\nin which a man is revealed unto himself, in which his soul is laid bare,\nin which it comes to him with the force of a revelation,\u2014mine is the\npower to will and to determine the content of my life, though if I am to\nwill I must dare to be myself, I must reach the decision, I must will, I\nmust be free.\n\nAnd the freedom of youth means freedom to be one\u2019s self, to be a law\nunto one\u2019s self, not to be one\u2019s self in lawlessness. Choose ye this day\nwhom ye will serve,\u2014remembering that the responsibility of decision\nrests with you and that, in the despite of all the lives that have been\nlived and all the maps that have been drawn and all the plans that have\nbeen sketched and all the precedents that have been set, you must live\nyour own life, and, if it be not your own life, it is not life at all.\nCherish the counsels of loved ones but remember that neither mother nor\nfather, uncle nor cousin nor any kinsman or kinswoman whosoever can\nchoose whom you are to serve. You cannot serve God unless yours be the\nchoice.\n\nYoung men and women require to be warned against a thousand and one\ninfluences ever lurking near at hand to deter youth from the hazard of\nthe spirit\u2019s pioneering. Despise the counsels of the over-wise and\nover-mature, the sum of whose low wisdom is that a man can make no\ngraver mistake in life than to wander from the paths which all men else\nhave pursued. The fear of seeming unusual obsesses the soul of too many\nof us. Not a few men and women would rather be wrong than seem\ndifferent. Difference, variance, distinctiveness are not ends in\nthemselves, but may become and ofttimes are the means that must be used\nby him who is not fearful of moral distinction.\n\nOutward differentiation is nothing, but inward distinction is\neverything,\u2014is the counsel I ever urge upon my fellow-Jews. We are not\nto seem different for the sake of seeming, but we are to dare to seem to\nbe different in order to be distinguished, in order to achieve spiritual\noutstandingness. When nice and refined and timid people say to you,\n\u201cRemember to be like everybody else, don\u2019t attempt anything new, don\u2019t\nrun the risk of seeming peculiar, don\u2019t dream of venturing upon novel\ncourses whether in things great or small,\u201d remember that there is a\npossible invasion of the soul\u2019s integrity that no man need endure. To\nthe counsels of the timorous fling back the command to the brave:\n\u201cAlways do what you are afraid to do.\u201d\n\nWhen men seek to affright you by their counsels of prudence, remind them\nof the rule of one of the knightliest of Americans, the founder of\nHampton Institute, who laid upon one youth\u2019s soul the burden: \u201cdoing\nwhat can\u2019t be done is the glory of living.\u201d And when men seek to degrade\nyou to the level of their own base timidity, bid them to remember the\ncourage and nobleness that were in the act of Higginson in leading a\nnegro regiment touching which he said: \u201cWe all fought, for instance,\nwith ropes around our necks, the Confederate authorities having denied\nto officers of colored regiments the usual privileges if taken prisoners\nand having required them to be treated as felons.\u201d\n\nPioneering, moreover, presupposes unrest, discontent, just as it should.\nI am not fearful for the youth whose soul is in a state of unrest, the\nyouth who has soaring ideals and knows not whether life is even worth\nliving. If that be his problem it is enough for him to know,\nparaphrasing the word of the Jewish fathers, that whether or not life is\nworth living we must live as if it were and we must make life fuller of\nworth. Are you dissatisfied, are you discontented, so much the better\nfor you. Hearing from the mother of James Russell Lowell of his general\ndiscontent with the conditions of society, Emerson wrote to her, \u201cI hope\nhe will never get over it.\u201d Better the nobly discontented than the\nignobly content. Did not John Stuart Mill say that pigs are always\nsatisfied and men are always dissatisfied. But let your discontent and\ndissatisfaction be not with the world but with yourself, knowing that if\nit be noble it shall lift you up.\n\nGrave consequences attend the too definite mapping out of life\u2019s\nprogramme. Men\u2019s passion for and faith in the profession of soldiering\nrest upon youth\u2019s yearning for adventure. And if, perchance, to-day\ngreat multitudes of men are yearning to take up arms, it is not because\nthey would destroy an enemy, but because they would obliterate the\nemptiness of their own lives, because they are in revolt against the\nabsence in normal life to-day of the pioneering opportunity. It is this\nlack of stimulus or impulse in the direction of pioneering which makes\nfor poor, mean, low substitutes in the realm of adventure. The low gang\ntakes the place of high comradeship, the debasing fling becomes a\nsubstitute for ennobling adventure. The passion for glamour and glare,\nas disclosed in the craze for the motion picture, is only another\nexpression of the thwarted sense of adventure which the soul of youth\ndare not be denied.\n\nSeeing that the gang spirit is nothing more than a crude, imperfect, at\nworst sinful, expression of youth\u2019s passion for togetherness, what needs\nto be done is to offer youth an opportunity for the expression of the\ndeep yearning for fraternalism. Do young men imagine that they must have\ntheir fling? Is it not because life as lived is often so flat and stale\nand unprofitable that the fling of the body is substituted for the\nadventure of the spirit, that, failing to grasp hold of the eternal\nrealities and verities, men set out to magnify the passing and\nperishable? When everything big is shut out of life it is not to be\nwondered at that life becomes full of meanness and littleness and\nunworthiness.\n\nGive yourself to something great, enroll under the banner of a high\ncause, choose as your own some standard of self-sacrifice, attach\nyourself to a movement that makes not for your own gain but for the\nwelfare of men, and you will have come upon a richly satisfying as well\nas engrossing adventure. Either your spirit will greatly and bravely,\nnobly and self-forgettingly adventure, or you will be in danger of\nyielding to the dominance of your appetites, you will be in peril of\nbeing overcome by your masterful passions. Dare to give every power of\nyour life to the furtherance of a mighty cause. Let your spirit come\nunder the dominance of a high and exalting enthusiasm. So will you gain\nthe mastery over yourself, not as a matter of prudence, not as a matter\nof caution, not as a matter of timidity, not as a matter of duty.\n\nLet something so high and noble come into your life that it shall be\nexpulsive of everything low and mean. The men one honors most, the men\none has reason to cherish most highly, are those into whose lives\nsomething so lofty and commanding has come as to have left no room for\nthe mean and petty. Having given themselves to the furtherance of a high\nand exalted ideal, life leaves no place for the mean. The selfish and\nthe unworthy retreats with the precipitancy of the coward before the\nimperiousness of the noble impulse, the divine aim. And to their honor\nbe it said, young men and women will rise to the highest level when it\ninvites or challenges. There is in the heart of youth a limitless\ncapacity for ardent devotion to causes of nobleness if but it be evoked\nand guided. And youth, too, understands how noble the venturesome deed\nmay be even when utterly futile, how sublime in essence even when broken\nand foredoomed.\n\nBut men cannot finely pioneer nor nobly adventure until after they have\nlearned certain lessons in life. Men must learn to be self-reveringly\nindependent, which implies not the aloofness of solitude but the\naloneness when necessary of moral and spiritual self-reliance. Man must\nlearn to live his own life. There is no greater danger in our time than\nthat a man shall submit to the tyranny of the crowd. A man need not be\nremote from nor yet alien to the world and yet he may live his own life\nand live within himself. We suffer ourselves to come under the\ndomination of mob-feeling and mob-thinking, such as it is, because we\nhave not learned the art of shutting ourselves away at times from the\nworld. We seem never to dare to be alone because, though we know it not,\nwe would fain avoid facing life\u2019s problems. We must understand, too,\nthat, if the problems of our own life are to be met and solved, these\nthings cannot be done vicariously. Not parents nor teachers nor\nministers can solve those pressing problems of our inner life with which\na man can cope effectively only amid the solitude of his inmost life.\nUntil you have learned the art of separating yourself for some time in\nevery day from the multitude, you will not learn how to think out and\nthink through life\u2019s problems. You will not even know that there are\nproblems to be resolved.\n\nBut while life is to be lived in the spirit of self-reverence and\nself-reliance, life\u2019s great questions cannot be faced aright unless they\nbe faced selflessly. Life is not to be egocentric but heterocentric. The\nquestion that a man must put is not what is he going to get out of life,\nhow can he get the most out of life, but how can he put the most and the\nbest into life. Life is not to be interpreted in terms of self, of\nindividual gain, of personal advantage. If it be possible to\ndifferentiate between two classes in the world, these classes are\nrespectively made up of the men who read life in the language of\nprivilege and advantage and the men who interpret life in the terms of\nduty and obligation and responsibility. The selfless are the only beings\nwho know how to live, who have learned and mastered the art of life. It\nis always possible to draw the distinction between the man who lives for\nhimself, for what he can get out of life, for the enhancement of his own\nfame, for the enlargement of his own power, and the man who puts himself\nsecond, who lives for the good of others, who lives for the good, who is\ncapable of denying self. The noblest of men and women are they who\nprescribe life to self in terms of duty to the world.\n\nI venture to say to youth this day that there are two great needs in the\nlife of youth, if life is to be truly and finely faced. Have an ideal,\nsomething to live by, and live for that ideal, wholly, steadfastly,\nunwaveringly. Many men are willing to cherish an ideal, to behold a\nvision, to catch a gleam, but they do not seem to understand that ideals\nare not to be had cheaply, that a vision is not to be gained for the\nasking. One comes upon men and women in every walk of life entirely\nready to pursue an ideal, but the pursuit must impose no difficulty,\nmust involve no sacrifice. These are the idealists who falter not until\nsacrifice be demanded of them, and then their ideal is suffered to pass\nas if the ideal were nothing more than a fair-weather friend rather than\na refuge in time of trouble, a bulwark during hours of trial and amid\nthe storms of temptation.\n\nNor are ideals reserved for the great and outstanding in life. Every one\nof us has a goal, and you are what your goal is. Your life will\nultimately define itself in the terms of your ideal. Let your ideal be\nhigh and it will exalt you. Suffer your ideal to be low and it will be\nsure to debase you. You are your goal: your ideal is you. Life often\nbreaks down here, in one of these two critical places, in the matter of\nwilling highly and of having holily. Some men have neither vision of\ngoal nor choice of way. Some men have the vision but stumble on the\nway,\u2014the men who think the goal more important than the way, forgetting\nthat the way is the goal. And so many falter and fumble, forgetting that\nlife\u2019s most important choice is as truly of a path as of the goal, that\nthe way that leads thither is of the essence of the dream and the\ntriumph. What thou wouldst have highly thou must have holily. We will to\nhave high things, but we are not prepared to achieve them holily, as if\nthe manner of the quest were less holy than the matter of the goal.\n\nWho does not know of men in business who aim to secure a competence and\nare resolved to put by the ways that are sharp and mean, after a fortune\nhas been secured? Men vainly imagine that after they have amassed much\nthey will neutralize the evil they have done by doing much good, but in\nthe meantime they have done evil to themselves and are no longer free to\nlive by the ideal. Giving themselves unholily to the quest of the high,\nthey have become transformed and debased into something mean and\nstrange. One knows of men in the ministry to whom is given the\nputatively wise counsel to be discreetly cautious and evasively silent\nuntil the time comes for the occupancy of a great pulpit, when, as it is\nbasely said, a man can afford to speak out of his soul. But when the\ngreat pulpit prize is won, the gleam, alas, is gone, the vision lies\nshattered. The man has been corrupted and his soul corroded and he who\nwas willing for a time to be silent in the hope that some day, through\nthe methods of silence, he might achieve the right of speaking out more\nbravely, has in the meantime become a dumb dog who has lost the power as\nwell as the will to utter himself in fashion brave and unafraid.\n\nSeemingly good men, outwardly decent men enter into political life and\nimagine that they must for a time strike hands with corruption until the\nhour will come when they shall be able to smite corruption with their\nown fists. They palter and they falter, whispering sorrowfully, \u201cTruly\nit is regrettable, but one must do these things.\u201d One distinguished\nstatesman in American life declared to a friend many years ago that\nthere are times when a man must eat a peck of dirt in order to gain high\noffice. He gained the office, he ate his peck, and the tragedy is that\nit is not only become the steady article of his diet, but he loves it\nand he would not live without it, that it is become of the very essence\nof his being.\n\nIn other words, a man cannot wallow through the mire to the skies. No\nman can have two standards, one to be followed until he be forty or\nfifty, and then suddenly put away. No man can divest himself of the\nlower ideal which he has adopted as a temporary expedient, because in\nthe meantime it has come to have the mastery over his soul. Putting\naside the great choice, the hour comes when a man finds himself\nincapable of the great refusal and the standard to which he gave his\ntemporary adherence, to be abandoned in the years of opulence and\nsafety, becomes his despotic and inescapable master. It is no more\npossible to have two standards in the world of the spirit than it is\npossible to prescribe two different moral standards for men and women.\nUnity must be sought and achieved at the outset, not a lowered standard\nin the beginning and a higher standard in the end. The habit of the soul\ncannot be altered at will. Once to every man and not a thousand times\ncomes the moment to decide, and the earlier decision will in part, if\nnot in whole, be determinative of every later choice.\n\nAnd if, young men and women, there were nothing else for which to\nprepare, there is the future, there is the holy calling of parenthood to\nbe pursued by most of you. Have I not the right to appeal to young men\nand women to-day to remember how much or how little they can make of\ntheir own lives, and may we not base such appeal upon the truth that\nthey are to be the makers and the molders of the morrow; that unless\ntheir lips and lives proclaim the voice of God in the soul of man, there\nwill follow a little-souled and mean-hearted generation instead of a\nrace of great-hearted and noble-souled men and women.\n\nA beautiful passage in an allegory recently presented upon the stage\ntells of the song of unborn souls, which are dreaming of the parenthood\nto be their lot upon earth and looking forward with heavenly joy to the\nsupreme felicity and benediction of parenthood. The most important duty\nof youth is to prepare with consciousness and consecration for life\u2019s\nhighest duty,\u2014the duty of parenthood. Shall that future be polluted,\nshall that heritage be befouled? In reminding young men and women as I\ndo that they are the trustees of the morrow, that they hold in their\nkeeping the destiny of all the future, I am tempted to ask a question.\nWhat if I were to bring a little child before you, some beautiful child\nof a year or two, and what if some man sitting in this company were to\ncome hither and for some unknown reason strike that child: would it not\nbe with difficulty that we could restrain ourselves from doing violence\nto such a creature? What of the men and women committing a crime\ninfinitely more hurtful, who would not strike a little child, but who,\nnone the less, are ready to doom unborn generations to a heritage of\nevil, of hurt, of shame? What young man or woman will not think upon\nthat?\n\nA further word should be spoken to young women who in every generation\nare standard-bearers, and not only standard-bearers but\nstandard-lifters. I know it to be true that ofttimes women conform to\nthe lower standards which men impose upon them. Yet is it true that\nwomen may be the makers of standards if they will, and that, if they\nconsent to the lowering of the standards, men will readily and, alas,\neagerly lapse to the lower levels. Will not young women understand that,\nif they suffer standards to be lowered, if they for any reason yield to\nthe temptation to be their poorer, unworthier selves in the sight of\nmen, then will they corrupt men, then will they in very truth have\nbroken faith with the moral order which has vested womanhood with the\nsupreme privilege of exalting standards and by the exalting of standards\nexalting men.\n\nI have said nothing up to this time about the place of God in the life\nof youth. I never feel it my duty to urge you to believe in God as if\nfaith in God, as if trust in God, as if the acceptance of God were a\ntask to be superimposed rather than a privilege to be coveted. To young\nmen and women I would say that the one thing in the world they may not\nomit to do is to leave room for God in their lives. But you cannot leave\nroom for God if your life be choked and clogged with things, and things,\nand things. Leave a place in your life for the spirit of God and God\nwill find his way into your life and lead you to the making of a life\ndivine.\n\nReviewing what has gone before, the great thing in life is to map it out\nin youth. Not that one is to refrain from venturing upon the uncharted\nsea but that, howsoever daringly one is ready to fare forth upon the\nseas, one may not forget the guidance of the stars. It is a great thing\nto venture upon the imperiling seas of life without the assurance of\nsafety and reward for one\u2019s plans and toils. It is a greater thing so to\nfare forth as to come inevitably under the direction of the fixed stars\nin the heavens of the spirit divine.\n\nUpon a stained window in the dwelling of a noble friend I came upon some\nlines which I commend to the soul of youth everywhere:\n\n                          \u201cClimb high\n                          Climb far\n                          Your goal the sky\n                          Your aim the star.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                                   II\n\n                   MATURITY: HOW TO SERVE AND ACHIEVE\n\n\nMaturity, or the middle period of life, is in a sense the largest part\nof life, and is not to be viewed merely as the period after youth and\nbefore old age. It is relative only as all time is relative, but it is\nabsolute, too. In truth, it is the time of that self-dependence which\ncomes with the consciousness of power in maturity. It is the very body\nand substance of life and least relative,\u2014for youth is its foreshadowing\nand old age the shadow which it casts behind. Middle age is not a link\nbetween youth and old age, but that period of life to which youth is an\napproach,\u2014from which old age is an exit. Comparing life to a bridge,\nyouth and old age might be likened to the piers which must be builded,\nbut the linking together of the piers, the stretching of the cables over\nwhich the larger part of life\u2019s pilgrimage must be made is the task of\nlife\u2019s middle period.\n\nLife is so constituted that it were almost within the limits of\nreasonableness to urge that life need not pass out of the middle stage\ninto old age. Loath though one be to enter upon maturity, it need never\nbe left behind in return for age if it be entered upon in the spirit of\npreparedness. Middle age is hard and bitter if youth have been misspent,\nif youth have not been the stage of conscious preparation for life.\n\nCertain rules have been laid down for the governance of youth and the\nquestion may be asked whether these are pertinent to the needs and tasks\nof middle age,\u2014namely the law that one must have an ideal by which to\nlive, and that one must not merely live by it but up to it. As for the\nrules which are to be binding upon the middle period of life, who shall\nventure to prescribe them, save that certain things are obviously\ntrue,\u2014that middle age shall continue that which youth initiates, and\nthat there shall be no sharp frontier dividing youth from that which\ncomes after. For middle age is not so much a part of life as it is life,\nand life absolute.\n\nMiddle age is but a part of the same life-long journey which in its\nearly stages is youth, which culminates in age. And yet in a sense a\ndifferent type of rules and ordinances is applicable to every one of the\nthree great periods of life. For life is not a journey, even and\nunvarying, over a wide plain. Life may best be likened to the ascent of\na mountain and in turn the descent from its summit, and the laws that\ngovern life must be variously modified in order to meet the needs of the\ndifferent periods along the journey.\n\nIn the early stages, during the hours of the ascent, the imperative\nthing is that a man shall not over-tax his strength, that he shall not\noverstrain his powers in the initial stages of the journey, that he\nshall not attempt too much, that he shall not travel at too wearying a\npace. As man nears the summit of the mountain, it becomes needful for\nhim to conform to other rules. He must not lose the stride, he must know\nhow to go on, he must climb and climb without succumbing to the heat of\nthe day. Once the descent is begun, yet other rules apply, if one is\nwith safety to reach the end of the long journey. The glory of the\nmorning no longer upbears him, the splendor of the noonday sun no longer\nmaintains his strength. But as he leaves youth\u2019s vigor and the power of\nmaturity behind him, the glow of the passing day may irradiate his\nvision and reveal to him the distant horizon.\n\nMiddle age seems too often a painful reluctance to leave youth behind\nand to be a more painful hesitancy in the matter of facing the oncoming\nof age. Unhappily for itself, middle age oft combines the childishness\nof immaturity with the senescence of post-maturity so that it lacks\nalike the charm of youth and the grace of age. Old age that is not\nworthy of reverence is contemptible. Not less worthy of contempt is\nmiddle age, if it have brought from youth nothing save youth\u2019s foibles\nand frailties. We not unseldom see\u2014and it is always a pitiful\nspectacle,\u2014men and women whose bark of life is unballasted by the poise\nthat comes with strength and unsteadied by the serenity which ought to\nbe the mark of the maturer period. While men speak of the dignity of old\nage, it is in truth the middle age which is in need of dignity, which\nalas it too often lacks.\n\nMen frequently refer to the emptiness and the barrenness of old age,\nwhen it is oftenest middle age that is empty and meaningless, for it is\nthe time when life\u2019s emptiness is disclosed. It is in middle age that\nmen are made to face the bitter truth that theirs is not to achieve and\nto serve because they have not set up any standards worthy of the name,\nbecause their goal, such as it is, is too immediately accessible, and\nthey cannot serve because self, having been their very deity, has not\nsuffered them to will to serve or to learn how to serve.\n\nThe temptation of middle age is to yield to the spirit of\ndisenchantment, though verily that is oft-times called disenchantment\nwhich means nothing more than the absence of enchantments. The\ntemptation of middle age is not so much to give up ideals as to realize\nthat one is without them. Then men mistake their poor plans and\nplottings, their puny purposes for ideals and wonder why they have lost\nthat which in truth they never had. Men rarely lose ideals. Poor,\nimperfect substitutes for ideals are found out and find out their\nowners,\u2014if so they may be named. Men are not to fear losing ideals in\nmiddle age. They are to fear not having them in youth so that they\ncannot hold them throughout life.\n\nMiddle age depends upon youth, and its disillusionments are due chiefly\nto the absence of illusions in the time of youth. In middle and in old\nage men suddenly discover that they cannot reap what in youth they have\nfailed to sow. That middle age finds the ideals of youth unsatisfying\nand even unengrossing, indicts only youth and not itself, shows that the\nmap of life, if drawn at all and as drawn in youth, was not ample and\ngenerous enough to have proved sufficing for a lifetime.\n\nAssuming that middle age is less joyous than youth, it enjoys one\nsupreme satisfaction, or rather reaps one supreme compensation, that of\nthe consciousness of two powers, two of life\u2019s sovereign powers, the\npower to achieve and the power to serve. If youth initiates, middle age\nmost achieves and best serves,\u2014most achieves because it is a time of\nfullness of intellectual strength and firmness of moral will; best\nserves because the stains of self have been or ought to have been burnt\nout and there is left the capacity of selfless enlistment under banners\nunrelated to personal gain or private advantage. The middle age that men\nfind bare and unsatisfying is in truth that to them who have not\nmastered the two arts of life, achieving and serving.\n\nCertain mistakes are not uncommon in respect of the interpretation of\nmiddle age, for example, that it is not the period of high initiative.\nBecause things are not initiated with dash and flare, it is assumed that\nmiddle age undertakes nothing. On the contrary, it is then and perhaps\nonly then that things are begun and achieved for their own sake, that\nthings are really undertaken in the consciousness of strength and with a\ncapacity for achievement. Moreover, while little can be carried into and\nbeyond middle age that is not initiated in youth, the soul of man has\nnot in the middle period forfeited or abandoned the power of\nself-correction and self-redemption. It may not be easy, neither is it\nimpossible.\n\nPerhaps the supreme rule for middle age may be phrased in the fewest of\nwords,\u2014_don\u2019t stop growing_! Physical and intellectual maturity are not\ninterchangeable terms. The truth is that men almost consciously cease to\ngrow, and even will not to grow at thirty-five and forty and forty-five\nand then proceed to wonder why life is so unsatisfying. Let men but\nremember that there is no such thing as maturity in life,\u2014if maturity\nmean the cessation of growth,\u2014for maturity were followed by\npost-maturity, which is over-ripeness.\n\nMen need never cease to grow and mature. Men will either grow up or go\ndown. The great and satisfying lives are those of men and women who grow\non and go on until they are cut down. When Freeman died, he asked that\non his gravestone be carved the words, \u201cHe died learning.\u201d He who grows\nand learns dies not. Continue, as long as thou wouldst grow, to learn\nand reason and purpose, nor yet imagine that life is done when youth is\nended. Nor let the middle-aged forget that going on is not the only\npossibility. Even in middle age a man may reserve for himself freedom,\nfreedom of choice, freedom to revise life\u2019s foundations, freedom to\nbegin anew if so be error have been made.\n\nAbove all, middle age must not lose its admirations, its reverences, its\nenthusiasms. The edge of enthusiasm may be dulled with the passing of\nthe years,\u2014but the body and substance of one\u2019s admirations need not be\ndiminished, and by our admirations we live. Anatole France, speaking of\nthe old campaigners of the Reserve, uses this finely stimulating word\nwith regard to them,\u2014\u201cthey unite the elasticity of youth with the\nstaunchness of maturity.\u201d There is another and an older way of\ndescribing the characteristic quality of middle age, which must combine\n\u201cthe wisdom of age and the heart of youth.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n                                  III\n\n                        AGE: HOW NOT TO GROW OLD\n\n\n  \u201cBut why, you ask me, should this tale be told\n  To men grown old, or who are growing old?\n  It is too late! Ah, nothing is too late\n  Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.\n\n         *       *       *       *       *\n\n  What, then? Shall we sit idly down and say\n  The night hath come; it is no longer day?\n  The night hath not yet come; we are not quite\n  Cut off from labor by the failing light;\n  Something remains for us to do or dare;\n  Even the oldest tree some fruit may bear.\n\n         *       *       *       *       *\n\n  For age is opportunity no less\n  Than youth itself, though in another dress,\n  And as the evening twilight fades away\n  The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.\u201d\n\n    \u2014LONGFELLOW: _Morituri Salutamus_.\n\n\nOld age depends largely upon the attitude of men toward the whole of\nlife. Old age is not a joke nor a bore nor a trial nor a calamity,\nthough it may be any one of these as all of life may be. But what needs\nto be stressed is that old age has no content in itself apart from the\nwhole of life. Old age may be as nothing else a foretaste of the kingdom\nof heaven where faith and hope may meet and love crown all. But little\ncan come to old age that was not in and throughout life. Alas for the\nold age of the self-centered and self-serving! If life have built walls\nthat shut out, these cannot be razed by age, which will forever have\nmade itself captive.\n\nThe crown of old age is a term that trips lightly from our tongues. Are\nwe not in danger of forgetting that there must be something to crown?\nFor in old age inheres no magic to redeem and transfigures all that has\ngone before. Old age purges the precious metal of life\u2019s substance of\nits debasing dross, but the precious substance must be there to be\npurged. Age, like happiness, is neither to be sought nor evaded. It is a\nby-product of life rather than life\u2019s end. Not the aim nor goal of life,\nbut the way of life must it be.\n\nIn the matter of reverencing old age, we rest historically upon the\nfirmest Jewish foundation. For the Jew as no other man before or after\nhim taught the world how to magnify childhood and to glorify old age,\u2014to\nrise up before the hoary head and honor the face of the old man. And\nthis revering solicitude for the aged is still one of the marks of\nJewish life. Jewish teaching has urged and Jewish practice has confirmed\nthe truth that blessing rests upon that home in which the aged have\nfound shelter.\n\nIndeed, one is almost disposed to hold that there is a possibility of\noverdoing reverence for old age as old age, of becoming indiscriminating\nin the honor which one metes out to the hoary head. If the people of\nIsrael have erred in any part with respect to old age, they have revered\nthe aged head too much irrespective of the head and the man. I would not\nif I could break with that fine tradition, but, sometimes, it were well\nto ask whether old age is to be respected as a virtue in itself, whether\nlength of days should be regarded as a merit apart from what has gone\nbefore. Old age is judged compassionately on the principle that nothing\nbut the good should be spoken touching the dead or the nearly dead.\n\nOne is sometimes moved to believe that if the aged are unhappy it is\nbecause age brings with it not only opportunity for quiet meditation and\nserene retrospect, but the necessity of thinking about the great issues\nof life. And many of us have never learned how to think. We have put off\nthe evil day of taking thought upon life so that, when it at last comes,\nits imminence appalls. Men and women put off their questions and their\nproblems to the end of life and when the end is nearly come, they lack\nthe strength and will to think them through. The need of solutions is\nthen cruelly pressed upon unpracticed and undisciplined minds.\n\nThough I ask the question, how to grow old and how not to grow old, are\nwe not, if we will be frank, more interested in the question how not to\ngrow old than how to grow old? In the question, pressing a little\nfarther, how to seem not to grow old rather than how not grow old?\nSeeming not to grow old may be attained by artificial means. Not to grow\nold may be achieved by inward grace alone. Need it be said that no one\nis ever deceived by external methods of averting age, nor is any one\nprofited or helped save perhaps the chemist and the dye-maker, save the\nbabblers and praters of new substitutes for old faiths? Whosoever thinks\nof old age aright, whosoever has fitted himself for the dignity of the\nburden of many days will resort neither to renewing cosmetics nor novel\ncults as a refuge from old age.\n\nMen speak of the penalties of old age and penalties there are, but what\nof its rewards, rich and abundant and wondrous, richer indeed in most\ncases than its desert? The old, because they are old, are treated for\nthe most part as if they were travelers returning richly laden with\nstores of varied treasures from a voyage over remotest seas to some\nstrange and wondrous spot. Old age in itself is no more a reward than a\npenalty. And yet what rewards, paraphrasing Shakespeare, accompany old\nage, and how fitting that these rewards, friendship-bearing,\nhonor-bringing, should wait upon what might elsewise be life\u2019s\nmelancholy end!\n\nThe truth is that old age is not a period of rewards nor penalties in\nthemselves. It is a time of duties, as every period offers life\u2019s cup\nwith duties brimming o\u2019er. Duties there are,\u2014but there are privileges\nbeyond estimate. And the privilege of privileges is to offer an example\nto others in all ways and most of all in the way of facing life with\nserenity. Finer far for old age to claim its duties than to enjoy its\nprivileges for the old ought to shun being pitied as weak and seek\nrather to be admired as strong and honored as serene.\n\nWhen old age has the grace of exalting duty and subordinating privilege,\nit ceases to be the period of mute resignation. From one point of view,\nit is the age of resignation, for one wittingly resigns in part what\ndeath is wholly to take away, but, be it made clear, resignation is not\ninaction, renunciation is not willlessly surrendering torpor. These\nthings imply will, action, choice, not merely an awaiting of the end\nwithout murmur or complaint. For old age waits not but wills; old age\nsurrenders not but whilst life is renders return for life.\n\nWhile different types of laws seem to obtain for youth, maturity and old\nage, these yet are one and one spirit seems to pervade and dominate all.\nLet youth hold high its aim and pursue high aims through holy means. Let\nmaturity serve and achieve and above all achieve only that it may serve\nwith unimpaired admiration and undimmed ideals. And let old age be nobly\nwise and unafraid and unselfish to the end!\n\nMuch, if not everything, of the content of old age depends on the things\nfor which one cares. If one care for the things that cannot survive\nyouth or middle age, whose value is inevitably lessened with the flight\nof years, then old age must become barren and empty. Whether your old\nage is to be void and meaningless depends almost wholly not upon what\nyou have and care for at seventy or eighty, but what it was you sought\nto have at twenty, what you cared for at thirty, what you cherished at\nforty. Certain things may be harmless, even admirable in themselves, and\nyet are destined to be woefully disappointing if they are suffered to\nbecome the pursuits of a lifetime and men give themselves to things for\nwhich they cannot care when the years have multiplied.\n\nMyopia may interfere with one\u2019s zest for looking upon motion pictures,\nlimbs may become too rheumatic for dancing, tragic though this may\nsound, the hazard of games of chance may lose its fascination, even\nmoney-making, the accumulation of things, may pall or become impossible.\nBut certain things there are that can never grow stale nor wearying nor\nseem unprofitable. Upon these let men fix their vision and their aim,\nthe pleasures of the mind, the tasks of the spirit, the possibilities of\nserving. It is almost life\u2019s greatest danger that life will be lived\nwith care for things interest in which cannot survive youth and middle\nage. What if a man were so to train himself physically that he could run\nand do nothing else, so that after the period of running had passed, he\ncould not walk! Would not such modus vivendi seem unwise and sadly\nblundering?\n\nWould you avoid growing old? Do you will even to seem not to grow old?\nThen have a vision of life and amid a multiplicity of things have and\nhold, cherish and pursue an ideal. To the man of ideals, to the man who\nin other words lives, age comes not. Age cannot touch nor wither nor\nblast the life pervaded and smitten through by ideals. Would you grow\nold, or rather would you not grow old, then live, and live by the stars.\nSuch are the lives of the unaging. In order not to grow old, I say\nagain, grow on in faith and hopefulness, in vision and serviceableness.\nBeing without these things, some men cannot grow old, they are old.\nUnhappily for them, they were born old, as other men, whatever be the\nnumber of their years, die young. Having these things, age cannot ravage\nthe spirit.\n\nSuch men and women are age-proof, their heads may be silver white, their\nframes bowed, their limbs palsied, but age they know not,\u2014the men I have\nin mind, such men as that great physician who, after sixty years and\nmore of unwearied and unrivaled service, is still an impassioned pleader\nfor the right of the child, of the merest, puniest babe. Who will dare\nsay that he is aged, who at fourscore and more spends himself utterly in\nthe service of the least of these? I am thinking of yet another friend\nof fourscore and more, whose life is nobly dedicated to the furtherance\nof amity between faith and faith, who serves all men as brothers, who\nproves that he is a Christian by the love he bears the Jew. And I am\nthinking of yet another man who likewise has lived for fourscore years,\nperhaps the foremost educator of our generation, a publicist of\nmatchless felicity in utterance and conduct alike, a man who at eighty\nand more steps into the arena with all the power and eagerness of youth\nin order to take up arms on behalf of another great though much wronged\nservant of the nation.\n\nIt was once said of Theodore Parker that he gave himself unreservedly\nand with abandon to whatever truth, duty, love, the three sublime voices\nof God,\u2014the real trinity in our souls,\u2014commanded. Truth, duty, love!\nHave you tried these things? Have you dared to live by them and for\nthem, by and for any one of them? Does not this word bear out what was\nrecently said by a great American physician about a noble social\nworker,\u2014that individual, who has no object in life, who simply works day\nby day, with the idea that he is making a dollar and is going to use the\ndollar for his own comfort, cannot have a very peaceful mind. But if one\nhas an object in life, to attain certain things which will be helpful to\nothers, and whose day is filled with that sort of work, that individual\ndeserves,\u2014and other things being equal,\u2014will have an old age.\n\nTruth, duty, love,\u2014obey their command and when you do you shall find age\na fiction and life alone a reality. What if old age be without teeth and\neyes if it be not without hope and faith and fadeless memories!\n\n                \u201cTo suffer and endure,\n                To keep the spirit pure\u2014\n              The fortress and abode of holy Truth\u2014\n                To serve eternal things\n                Whate\u2019er the issue brings\n              This is not broken Age, but ageless Youth.\u201d\n\nIf then life be centered on self, old age may rest in the certitude of\ndisappointment and disillusion. But if self be centered on life, then\nmay come what Morley described, touching Edmund Burke, as \u201can\nunrebellious temper and hopes undimmed for mankind.\u201d\n\nTwofold must be the hope of man,\u2014for a future for self and for the\nfuture for all. And when the soul is so freighted with hopes, then shall\nit be said of a man as it was said of the great poet: \u201cHe was one of\nthose on the lookout for every new idea and for every old idea with a\nnew application, which may tend to meet the growing requirements of\nsociety; one of those who are like men standing on a watch-tower to whom\nothers apply and say, not \u2018What of the night?\u2019 but \u2018What of the morning\nand of the coming day?\u2019\u201d\n\nMy one word of counsel is,\u2014let life not be centered on self, for to live\nfor self is to invite cruel disaster in old age. The saddest, in truth\nthe most tragic, lives I know are those of old men and women who have\nnothing to live for because they have lived for self and self alone,\u2014and\nself is nothing. Their lives are piteously empty. For the restlessness\nand excitement of youth may hide this truth, but age, like death, is a\nrevealer. And there are many types of selfishness. I speak of two which\nmust suffice. There are those who live for self,\u2014for selfissimus, giving\nnot the utmost for the highest but all for the nighest,\u2014self, self,\nself, self\u2019s pleasure and profit and power and vantage and fame. These\nare the most crude and obvious types of the selfful, who shall pay the\npenalty of their folly and their moral disease.\n\nBut, though it be said to your dismay, there are other types of\nselfishness, though less obvious,\u2014the selfishness of those who project\nself into and magnify self in family relationship. For there are those\nwho simply extend the horizon of self enough to include other forms of\nself, one\u2019s own, one\u2019s nearest, one\u2019s flesh and blood. And here, too,\ndisillusion is bound to come and ought to come, for one\u2019s own cannot and\nought not to fill one\u2019s life forever. One might well excuse our mothers\nand fathers for giving their thought and attention to their own, for\nthese were many and life was hard and life\u2019s struggle ofttimes bitter.\nBut for the fewest is such excuse valid now,\u2014if ever it was\nvalid\u2014especially seeing that we concentrate upon the giving to others of\nthings rather than upon helping others to their highest and best. In\ntruth, people concentrate upon self, upon their own interests and\nwishes, and these things pass and little or nothing is left in life save\nself. Live for yourself, and you live two years in one; live in the life\nof others, and you divide your years with another.\n\nIs not all this a paraphrase of what Emerson has said better than any\nother? He who loves is in no condition old. Not lives and lives for\nself, not loves self and self alone, but he who loves! Emerson, building\nbetter perhaps than he knew, has voiced the deepest truth of the soul.\nLove cannot die and love will not let die nor yet grow old. And yet as a\nfinal word, and more needed than all else, I would say that there is\nonly one way to grow old, and that too is the only way not to grow old.\nThat way is to know, to love, to serve.\n\n        \u201cGrow old along with me!\n        The Best is yet to be,\n        The last of life for which the first was made;\n        Our times are in His hand\n        Who saith, \u2018A whole I planned,\u2019\n        Youth shows but half: Trust God: see all nor be afraid.\u201d","title":"How to Face Life","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":9495}