acter, thinks itself
much wiser than the one immediately preceding it, let alone those that
are more remote. It is just the same with the different periods in a
man's life; and yet often, in the one case no less than in the other,
it is a mistaken opinion. In the years of physical growth, when
our powers of mind and our stores of knowledge are receiving daily
additions, it becomes a habit for to-day to look down with contempt
upon yesterday. The habit strikes root, and remains even after the
intellectual powers have begun to decline,--when to-day should rather
look up with respect to yesterday. So it is that we often unduly
depreciate the achievements as well as the judgments of our youth.
This seems the place for making the general observation, that,
although in its main qualities a man's _intellect_ or _head_, as well
as his _character_ or _heart_, is innate, yet the former is by no
means so unalterable in its nature as the latter. The fact is that the
intellect is subject to very many transformations, which, as a rule,
do not fail to make their actual appearance; and this is so, partly
because the intellect has a deep foundation in the physique,
and partly because the material with which it deals is given in
experience. And so, from a physical point of view, we find that if a
man has any peculiar power, it first gradually increases in strength
until it reaches its acme, after which it enters upon a path of slow
decadence, until it ends in imbecility. But, on the other hand,
we must not lose sight of the fact that the material which gives
employment to a man's powers and keeps them in activity,--the
subject-matter of thought and knowledge, experience, intellectual
attainments, the practice of seeing to the bottom of things, and so a
perfect mental vision, form in themselves a mass which continues to
increase in size, until the time comes when weakness shows itself,
and the man's powers suddenly fail. The way in which these two
distinguishable elements combine in the same nature,--the one
absolutely unalterable, and the other subject to change in two
directions opposed to each other--explains the variety of mental
attitude and the dissimilarity of value which attach to a man at
different periods of life.

The same truth may be more broadly expressed by saying that the first
forty years of life furnish the text, while the remaining thirty
supply the commentary; and that without the commentary we are unable
to understa