diluted force, and of weakened judgment--the age when the mind has lost
its flexibility and can no longer assimilate new ideas or keep pace with
the changing modes and tendencies of another generation--often sets in
while physical life is but little enfeebled. In this case, it is true,
the evil is not very great, for Time may be trusted to sift the chaff
from the wheat, and though it may not preserve the one it will
infallibly discard the other. 'While I live,' Victor Hugo said with some
grandiloquence, but also with some justice, 'it is my duty to produce.
It is the duty of the world to select, from what I produce, that which
is worth keeping. The world will discharge its duty. I shall discharge
mine.' At the same time, no one can have failed to observe how much in
our own generation the long silence of Newman in his old age added to
his dignity and his reputation, and the same thing might have been said
of Carlyle if a beneficent fire had destroyed the unrevised manuscripts
which he wrote or dictated when a very old man.

We are here, however, dealing with great labours, and with men who are
filling a great place in the world's strife. The decay of faculty and
will, that impairs power in these cases, is often perceptible long
before there is any real decay in the powers that are needed for
ordinary business or for the full enjoyment of life. But the time comes
when children have grown into maturity, and when it becomes desirable
that a younger generation should take the government of the world,
should inherit its wealth, its power, its dignities, its many means of
influence and enjoyment; and this cannot be fully done till the older
generation is laid to rest. Often, indeed, old age, when it is free from
grave infirmities and from great trials and privations, is the most
honoured, the most tranquil, and perhaps on the whole the happiest
period of life. The struggles, passions, and ambitions of other days
have passed. The mellowing touch of time has allayed animosities,
subdued old asperities of character, given a larger and more tolerant
judgment, cured the morbid sensitiveness that most embitters life. The
old man's mind is stored with the memories of a well-filled and
honourable life. In the long leisures that now fall to his lot he is
often enabled to resume projects which in a crowded professional life he
had been obliged to adjourn; he finds (as Adam Smith has said) that one
of the greatest pleasures in life is