this question will very much depend
upon the stuff he put into his years, while as yet he knew not his
limitations.

And even where middle life has won success in the things men covet, and
for which they strive, it may be the success that is just deadly in its
reaction of monotony. How often do we hear it said of a prosperous
man, who in middle years is giving place to unworthy habits, or to
ill-humour and chronic depression: "Would he had something to take him
out of himself; some interest in anything, if it were but a harmless
hobby." Think of a man being reduced to the need of a "hobby" to keep
him out of moral mischief! What such a man, if man he can be called,
really needs is some higher interest or a coffin. A hobby is well
enough in its place, and much can be said for it, but when it becomes a
man's only peradventure between himself and the devil, the world can
probably spare him to its own advantage. The young have no little
safety in their years, in the temporary buoyancy of the blood. It is
when the former draw in, and the latter thins out, that dangerous
things get their more obvious and, too often, fatal chance with men.
It is when the first fires of passion have slowed down, and the ties of
early friendship have relaxed, and the outlook appears to leave us with
the problem, not how to live, but how to exist. I tremble at times
when my experience suggests the dangers of those long stretches of
emptiness, that so easily fill with the sinister and the unspeakable.
I would pray, as a man in mortal terror, against the bottomless pit of
a motiveless existence.

This is why I put emphasis upon the threshold of manhood; not that I
believe it to be the most dangerous part of human life, but because I
believe it is the time to safeguard the part that is. It is the time
when habits can be cultivated, and resources acquired, which can make
middle life as crowded with interest and good to enjoy as any of the
earlier years, and infinitely more useful. But this is possible only
when the middle years can command their own. Just as many of us
"postpone life until after our funeral," so may we find ourselves in
middle life discouraged and sullen because we cannot do what we would,
only because we have not done what we ought. Men do not always go
under because they cannot do things. They fail, not because they do
not know what it is well to do, but because they do not choose to
attempt it. And why do they not