life, so that on reaching it the man is
at his best. Some people are charming so long as they are young, and
afterwards there is nothing attractive about them; others are vigorous
and active in manhood, and then lose all the value they possess as
they advance in years; many appear to best advantage in old age, when
their character assumes a gentler tone, as becomes men who have seen
the world and take life easily. This is often the case with the
French.

This peculiarity must be due to the fact that the man's character
has something in it akin to the qualities of youth or manhood or old
age--something which accords with one or another of these periods of
life, or perhaps acts as a corrective to its special failings.

The mariner observes the progress he makes only by the way in which
objects on the coast fade away into the distance and apparently
decrease in size. In the same way a man becomes conscious that he is
advancing in years when he finds that people older than himself begin
to seem young to him.

It has already been remarked that the older a man becomes, the
fewer are the traces left in his mind by all that he sees, does or
experiences, and the cause of this has been explained. There is thus
a sense in which it may be said that it is only in youth that a man
lives with a full degree of consciousness, and that he is only half
alive when he is old. As the years advance, his consciousness of what
goes on about him dwindles, and the things of life hurry by without
making any impression upon him, just as none is made by a work of art
seen for the thousandth time. A man does what his hand finds to do,
and afterwards he does not know whether he has done it or not.

As life becomes more and more unconscious, the nearer it approaches
the point at which all consciousness ceases, the course of time
itself seems to increase in rapidity. In childhood all the things and
circumstances of life are novel; and that is sufficient to awake us to
the full consciousness of existence: hence, at that age, the day seems
of such immense length. The same thing happens when we are traveling:
one month seems longer then than four spent at home. Still, though
time seems to last longer when we are young or on a journey, the sense
of novelty does not prevent it from now and then in reality hanging
heavily upon our hands under both these circumstances, at any rate
more than is the case when we are old or staying at home. But the
intellect