Adulthood

“ That old age, when it comes, may chasten us, humble us, soften us; and that our second childhood may be a second childhood indeed, purged from the conceit, the scheming, the fierceness, the covetousness which so easily beset us in our youth and manhood; and tempered down to gentleness, patience, humility, and faith. God grant that instead of clinging greedily to life, and money, and power, and fame, we may cling only to God, and have one only wish as we draw near our end.—‘From my youth up hast thou taught me, Oh God, and hitherto I have declared thy wondrous works. ”

“ It was in this mood that he conceived those oft-reiterated regrets for a half-ideal childhood, when the relics of Paradise still clung about the soul—a childhood, as it seemed, full of the fruits of old age, lost for all, in a degree, in the passing away of the youth of the world, lost for each one, over again, in the passing away of actual youth. ”

“ It is very presumptuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have been struck with the fact that life admits of a natural analysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods. Taking the five primary divisions, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, each of these has its own three periods of immaturity, complete development, and decline. I recognize on old baby at once, - with its “pipe and mug,” (a stick of candy and a porringer,) - so does everybody; and an old child shedding its milk-teeth is only a little prototype of the old man shedding his permanent ones. ”

“ While I am dwelling upon this, and tracing out the gradual change from infancy to youth, from youth to perfect growth, from that to age, and thinking, with an old man’s pride, that she is comely yet, I feel a slight thin hand upon my arm, and, looking down, see seated at my feet a crippled boy,—a gentle, patient child,—whose aspect I know well. ”

“ Shall well-trained old men, then, fear what youth, and they not only untrained, but even fresh from the country, despise?—In fine, satiety of life, as it seems to me, creates satiety of pursuits of every kind. There are certain pursuits belonging to boyhood; do grown-up young men therefore long for them? There are others appertaining to early youth; are they required in the sedate period of life which we call middle age? This, too, has its own pursuits, and they are not sought in old age. ”

“ The feeling is rather common that human experience becomes rich only as the adult period is reached; that childhood is comparatively barren of needs, and valuable mainly as a period of storage of knowledge to meet wants that will arise later. Yet is this true? By the time the adult state is reached, one has passed through the principal kinds of experience; the period of struggle is largely over, and the results have registered themselves in habits. The adult is to a great extent a bundle of habits. ”

“ And ever they came, more and more youngsters—Youth unquenchable and irresistible— and ever they put the old uns away, themselves becoming old uns and travelling the same downward path, while behind them, ever pressing on them, was Youth eternal—the new babies, grown lusty and dragging their elders down, with behind them more babies to the end of time—Youth that must have its will and that will never die. ”

“ If it faithfully depict the psychology of child life, of adolescence, of dawning maturity, devoid though it be of plot and, as a whole, of dramatic interest, it may yet, as a typical human portrait, justify itself; may aid the young to a better understanding of their own natures, and help those no longer young to a keener remembrance, a deeper sympathy, and a broader tolerance concerning the struggles, problems, and complexities that beset the young lives around them. ”

“ The young are growing up to maturity, the old dropping into their graves; but the infant of her affections ever remains an infant—her charge in middle life, when all her other children have left her and gone out into the world, and, amid the weakness of decay and decrepitude, the child of her old age. ”

“ Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly marked characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all. They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the exuberant frolic someness of their years. ”

“ Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young. Infancy, youth, receptive, aspiring, with religious eye looking upward, counts itself nothing, and abandons itself to the instruction flowing from all sides. But the man and woman of seventy assume to know all, they have outlived their hope, they renounce aspiration, accept the actual for the necessary, and talk down to the young. ”

“ It seems to me that our great problem, or rather our chief concern, should not be so much how to stay young in the sense of possessing all the attributes of youth, for the passing of the years does bring changes, but how to pass gracefully, and even magnificently, [Pg 41] and with undiminished vigour from youth to middle age, and then how to carry that middle age into approaching old age, with a great deal more of the vigour and the outlook of middle life than we ordinarily do. ”

“ The reason they thought to be that the interests of age have contracted to about the same scope as those of childhood before it has expanded into maturity. The skein of life is drawn together to a point at the two ends and spread out in the middle. ”

“ The love, joy, and peace which give glory to maturity and old age grow alone out of thought upon true and pure and lovely things and those of good report.
(3) Development specialized, not general. Out of the many calls and lines of interest, each life has made choice of one or more, according to taste and circumstances. Along these lines growth and development proceed. It is not that life could not continue [Pg 176] the many-sided expansion of adolescence, but growth demands nourishment, development demands activity. ”

“ In due time he entered the period expressively designated, ‘The monster age.’ This is the time when expanding young life has outgrown the tenderness of infancy and failed of putting on manly and womanly graces; a time when there is a mighty ambition to put on the characteristics of adult life and a mighty lack of ability gracefully to wear them. ”

“ The period of adolescence here assumes the prominence that childhood has in the psychological study preparatory to teaching in lower schools. This is the period of beginnings, the beginning of a more ambitious and generous life, a life having the future wrapped up in it; a transition period, of mental storm and stress, in which egoism gives way to altruism, romance has charm, and the social, moral, and religious feelings bud and bloom. ”

“ Youth fleets away, if not happily, at least tranquilly, while thus employed; and maturity glides into age, and age drops into the grave, scarcely conscious of the gradations of each, owing to the mind having been filled with a continuous train of thought, engendered by study. ”

“ She could not but see the black depths of disintegration in his eyes, the sudden glance upon her, as if she could save him, as if he would reveal himself.
And how could age save youth? Youth must go to youth. ”

“ Now this generation of children, when they come to maturity, marry—the earlier the more dependent they are and the less serious their views of life—and begin the story of their own parents, and their own childhood, all over again. ”

“ One adult, then, remains in this world. Except to say that he is two hundred years old and full of knowledge, and that he endured the long journey without serious ill effects, she has told me little about him. ”

“ The mind contemplates the pranks of school, the sprightly aberrations of our boyish days, the wanton stories of early youth, our plays and pastimes, and all the little hopes and fears of infancy, with fond delight. Oh! with what approving smiles and soft regret, the aged cast their eyes upon those happy times when youthful inclination prompted all their actions, when every enterprise was undertaken with lively vigor, and executed with undaunted courage ”

“ In exploring such sources we soon see how few writers have given true pictures of the chief traits of this developmental period, which can rarely be ascertained with accuracy. The adult finds it hard to recall the emotional and instinctive life of the teens which is banished without a trace, save as scattered hints may be gathered from diaries, chance experiences, or the recollections of others. But the best observers see but very little of what goes on in the youthful soul, the development of which is very largely subterranean. ”

“ The events I have just related will, I hope, strengthen the moral so many wish to impress upon the minds of youth, namely—that, without a strict adherence to propriety, there can be no permanent pleasure; and that it is the actions of early life must give to old age either happiness and comfort, or sorrow and remorse. ”

“ And it was not so much mere picture of youth and age ill-matched, as of youth that yearned with the oldest craving in the world, and of age that had slipped beyond the power of sympathetically divining it. ”

“ Characterization of the age from eight to twelve—The era of recapitulating the stages of primitive human development—Life close to nature—The age also for drill, habituation, memory, work and regermination—Adolescence superposed upon this stage of life, but very distinct from it. ”

“ The adolescent stage of life has long seemed to me one of the most fascinating of all themes, more worthy, perhaps, than anything in the world of reverence, most inviting study, and in most crying need of a service we do not yet understand how to render aright. ”

“ The freshness and enthusiasm of youth cheers the dreariness of age; and age can return the benefit a hundred fold, by its mild maxims of experience and wisdom. In this country, youth and age are too much separated; the young flock together, and leave the old to themselves. We seem to act upon the principle that there cannot be sympathy between these two extremes of life ”

“ But, the next moment, the exhilarating gush of young life shot through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of cares, and sorrows, and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke. ”

“ Youth, Manhood, and Age. In Youth, as Entered Apprentices, we ought industriously to occupy our minds in the attainment of useful knowledge; in Manhood, as Fellow Crafts, we should apply our knowledge to the discharge of our respective duties to God, our neighbor, and ourselves; so that in Age, as Master Masons, we may enjoy the happy reflections consequent on a well-spent life, and die in the hope of a glorious immortality. ”

“ Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age. Thus parents and children for the greatest part live on to love less and less; and if those whom Nature has thus closely united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for tenderness and consolations? ”

“ Certain it is that even those who do not make a clean break with their past develop views, interests, habits, modes of life, personal associations, or perhaps take pleasure in becoming novices, apprentices, or amateurs, in new fields and find thus a certain rejuvenation, the strong instinct for which has found so many unworthy forms of expression that the term “second childhood” as applied to age is commonly one of reproach and the affectations of youth by the old are ridiculous. ”

“ When one reaches the age of fifteen years, one has said farewell to the pastimes of childhood; one has come to look upon them as trifling and ephemeral, as one would the actions of children building houses of cards or sand castles. At thirty, one has begun to put behind one the consuming pleasures of passionate youth. ”

“ Even if, in after life, we return to the [109] scenes of our childhood, they have lost the bloom of youth, and in its place we see the wrinkles of that age which has graven its hard lines upon our hearts. ”

“ Partly doubtless as the effect of a life, now getting to be a tolerably long one, spent in the older world, I see the world of our childhood as very young indeed, young with its own juvenility as well as with ours ”

“ It was, however, the first time I had seen with my own eyes this desperate yearning of age for youth, or this something that is almost a death-blow which youth can inflict on age. My father used to say that fundamentally there is no such period as age, that only the outer husk grows old, while the inner self, the vital ego, is young eternally. ”

“ There are, properly speaking, three grades of age worth considering—youth, maturity, and old age; but from our point of view we are justified in regarding mature life as the normal state, and shall therefore consider the duties of the mature man and woman as they come in contact with the extremes. ”

“ The Defective Children.—Not those who die young, full of promise, to leave a memory of exquisite budding loveliness cut short by untimely frosts, but those who live on from infancy to 206childhood and from youth to physical maturity and even on to old age, yet never become responsible adults—these are the children we must consider. ”

“ A perpetual Youth runs through their life; the same agitations in the heart, the same dullness in the soul, and the 235same void in the mind. Youths of twenty-five and of sixty, march with an equal pace to the same end. The desires, eagernesses, sallies, excesses are the same. ”

“ So it is with the human being: the character and habit are directed easily in infancy, with difficulty during childhood, but they are well-nigh impossible of direction by the time adolescence is established. ”

“ It may bear comparison with one of the great changes in the mental life of the individual man, perhaps rather with the expansion and fixing of the mind which accompanies the passage from infancy into youth, than with the later steps from youth into manhood, or from manhood into old age. ”