resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you
go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the
bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious
despair is concealed even under what are called the games and
amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes
after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do
desperate things.
When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the
chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of
life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode
of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly
think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures
remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up
our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can
be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence
passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow,
mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would
sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you
cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people,
and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once,
perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people
put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe
with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase
is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor
as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may
almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute
value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice
to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and
their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons,
as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left