years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and
travelling in the common orbit of men's opinions. I submit to
this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant
of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not
acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better - I
daresay it is deplorably for the worse. I have no choice in
the business, and can no more resist this tendency of my mind
than I could prevent my body from beginning to totter and
decay. If I am spared (as the phrase runs) I shall doubtless
outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry about
that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the
immunity just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself
on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism.
Old people have faults of their own; they tend to become
cowardly, niggardly, and suspicious. Whether from the growth
of experience or the decline of animal heat, I see that age
leads to these and certain other faults; and it follows, of
course, that while in one sense I hope I am journeying towards
the truth, in another I am indubitably posting towards these
forms and sources of error.

As we go catching and catching at this or that corner of
knowledge, now getting a foresight of generous possibilities,
now chilled with a glimpse of prudence, we may compare the
headlong course of our years to a swift torrent in which a man
is carried away; now he is dashed against a boulder, now he
grapples for a moment to a trailing spray; at the end, he is
hurled out and overwhelmed in a dark and bottomless ocean. We
have no more than glimpses and touches; we are torn away from
our theories; we are spun round and round and shown this or