Considering the countless ages that man has lived upon this globe, it seems a strange thing that he has so little learned to acquiesce in the normal conditions of humanity. How large a proportion of the melancholy which is reflected in the poetry of all ages, and which is felt in different degrees in every human soul, is due not to any special or peculiar misfortune, but to things that are common to the whole human race! The inexorable flight of time; the approach of old age and its infirmities; the shadow of death; the mystery that surrounds our being; the contrast between the depth of affection and the transitoriness and uncertainty of life; the spectacle of the broken lives and baffled aspirations and useless labours and misdirected talents and pernicious energies and long-continued delusions that fill the path of human history; the deep sense of vanity and aimlessness that must sometimes come over us as we contemplate a world in which chance is so often stronger than wisdom; in which desert and reward are so widely separated; in which living beings succeed each other in such a vast and bewildering redundance—eating, killing, suffering, and dying for no useful discoverable purpose,—all these things belong to the normal lot or to the inevitable setting of human life. Nor can it be said that science, which has so largely extended our knowledge of the Universe, or civilisation, which has so greatly multiplied our comforts and alleviated our pains, has in any degree diminished the sadness they bring. It seems, indeed, as if the more man is raised above a purely animal existence, and his mental and moral powers are developed, the more this kind of feeling increases.

In few if any periods of the world's history has it been more perceptible in literature than at present. Physical constitution and temperament have a vast and a humiliating power of deepening or lightening it, and the strength or weakness of religious belief largely affects it, yet the best, the strongest, the most believing, and the most prosperous cannot wholly escape it. Sometimes it finds its true expression in the lines of Raleigh:

Sometimes it takes the tone of a lighter melancholy touched with cynicism:

There are few sayings which deserve better to be brought continually before our minds than that of Franklin: 'You value life; then do not squander time, for time is the stuff of life.' Of all the things that are bestowed on men, none is more valuable, but none is more unequally used, and the true measurement of life should be found less in its duration than in the amount that is put into it. The waste of time is one of the oldest of commonplaces, but it is one of those which are never really stale. How much of the precious 'stuff of life' is wasted by want of punctuality; by want of method involving superfluous and repeated effort; by want of measure prolonging things that are pleasurable or profitable in moderation to the point of weariness, satiety, and extravagance; by want of selection dwelling too much on the useless or the unimportant; by want of intensity, growing out of a nature that is listless and apathetic both in work and pleasure. Time is, in one sense, the most elastic of things. It is one of the commonest experiences that the busiest men find most of it for exceptional work, and often a man who, under the strong stimulus of an active professional life, repines bitterly that he finds so little time for pursuing some favourite work or study, discovers, to his own surprise, that when circumstances have placed all his time at his disposal he does less in this field than in the hard-earned intervals of a crowded life. The art of wisely using the spare five minutes, the casual vacancies or intervals of life, is one of the most valuable we can acquire. There are lives in which the main preoccupation is to get through time. There are others in which it is to find time for all that has to be got through, and most men, in different periods of their lives, are acquainted with both extremes. With some, time is mere duration, a blank, featureless thing, gliding swiftly and insensibly by. With others every day, and almost every hour, seems to have its distinctive stamp and character, for good or ill, in work or pleasure. There are vast differences in this respect between different ages of history, and between different generations in the same country, between town and country life, and between different countries. 'Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay' is profoundly true, and no traveller can fail to be insensible to the difference in the value of time in a Northern and in a Southern country. The leisure of some nations seems busier than the work of others, and few things are more resting to an overwrought and jaded Anglo-Saxon nature than to pass for a short season into one of those countries where time seems almost without value.

On the whole there can be little doubt that life in the more civilised nations has, in our own generation, largely increased. It is not simply that its average duration is extended. This, in a large degree, is due to the diminished amount of infant mortality. The improvement is shown more conclusively in the increased commonness of vigorous and active old age, in the multitude of new contrivances for economising and therefore increasing time, in the far greater intensity of life both in the forms of work and in the forms of pleasure. 'Life at high pressure' is not without its drawbacks and its evils, but it at least means life which is largely and fully used.

All intermissions of work, however, even when they do not take the form of positive pleasure, are not waste of time. Overwork, in all departments of life, is commonly bad economy, not so much because it often breaks down health—most of what is attributed to this cause is probably rather due to anxiety than to work—as because it seldom fails to impair the quality of work. A great portion of our lives passes in the unconsciousness of sleep, and perhaps no part is more usefully spent. It not only brings with it the restoration of our physical energies, but it also gives a true and healthy tone to our moral nature. Of all earthly things sleep does the most to place things in their true proportions, calming excited nerves and dispelling exaggerated cares. How many suicides have been averted, how many rash enterprises and decisions have been prevented, how many dangerous quarrels have been allayed, by the soothing influence of a few hours of steady sleep! 'Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care' is, indeed, in a careworn world, one of the chief of blessings. Its healing and restorative power is as much felt in the sicknesses of the mind as in those of the body, and, in spite of the authority of Solomon, it is probably a wise thing for men to take the full measure of it, which undoctored nature demands. The true waste of time of the sluggard is not in the amount of natural sleep he enjoys, but in the time idly spent in bed when sleep has ceased, and in misplaced and mistimed sleep, which is not due to any genuine craving of the body for rest, but simply to mental sluggishness, to lack of interest and attention.

Some men have claimed for sleep even more than this. 'The night-time of the body,' an ancient writer has said, 'is the day-time of the soul,' and some, who do not absolutely hold the old belief that it is in the dreams of the night that the Divine Spirit most communicates with man, have, nevertheless, believed that the complete withdrawal of our minds from those worldly cares which haunt our waking hours and do so much to materialise and harden our natures is one of the first conditions of a higher life. 'In proportion,' said Swedenborg, 'as the mind is capable of being withdrawn from things sensual and corporeal, in the same proportion it is elevated into things celestial and spiritual.' It has been noticed that often thoughts and judgments, scattered and entangled in our evening hours, seem sifted, clarified, and arranged in sleep; that problems which seemed hopelessly confused when we lay down are at once and easily solved when we awake, 'as though a reason more perfect than reason had been at work when we were in our beds.' Something analogous to this, it has been contended, takes place in our moral natures. 'A process is going on in us during those hours which is not, and cannot be, brought so effectually, if at all, at any other time, and we are spiritually growing, developing, ripening more continuously while thus shielded from the distracting influences of the phenomenal world than during the hours in which we are absorbed in them.... Is it not precisely the function of sleep to give us for a portion of every day in our lives a respite from worldly influences which, uninterrupted, would deprive us of the instruction, of the spiritual reinforcements, necessary to qualify us to turn our waking experiences of the world to the best account without being overcome by them? It is in these hours that the plans and ambitions of our external worldly life cease to interfere with or obstruct the flow of the Divine life into the will.'[75]

Without, however, following this train of thought, it is at least sufficiently clear that no small portion of the happiness of life depends upon our sleeping hours. Plato has exhorted men to observe carefully their dreams as indicating their natural dispositions, tendencies, and temptations, and—perhaps with more reason—Burton and Franklin have proposed 'the art of procuring pleasant dreams' as one of the great, though little recognised, branches of the science of life. This is, no doubt, mainly a question of diet, exercise, efficient ventilation, and a wise distribution of hours, but it is also largely influenced by moral causes.

To appease the perturbations of the mind, to live a tranquil, upright, unremorseful life, to cultivate the power of governing by the will the current of our thoughts, repressing unruly passions, exaggerated anxieties, and unhealthy desires, is at least one great recipe for banishing from our pillows those painful dreams that contribute not a little to the unhappiness of many lives.

An analogous branch of self-culture is that which seeks to provide some healthy aliment for the waking hours of the night, when time seems so unnaturally prolonged, and when gloomy thoughts and exaggerated and distempered views of the trials of life peculiarly prevail. Among the ways in which education may conduce to the real happiness of man, its power of supplying pleasant or soothing thoughts for those dreary hours is not the least, though it is seldom or never noticed in books or speeches. It is, perhaps, in this respect that the early habit of committing poetry—and especially religious poetry—to memory is most important.

In estimating the value of those intermissions of labour which are not spent in active enjoyment one other consideration may be noted. There are times when the mind should lie fallow, and all who have lived the intellectual life with profit have perceived that it is often in those times that it most regains the elasticity it may have lost and becomes most prolific in spontaneous thought. Many periods of life which might at first sight appear to be merely unused time are, in truth, among the most really valuable.

We have all noticed the curious fact of the extreme apparent inequalities of time, though it is, in its essence, of all things the most uniform. Periods of pain or acute discomfort seem unnaturally long, but this lengthening of time is fortunately not true of all the melancholy scenes of life, nor is it peculiar to things that are painful. An invalid life with its almost unbroken monotony, and with the large measure of torpor that often accompanies it, usually flies very quickly, and most persons must have observed how the first week of travel, or of some other great change of habits and pursuits, though often attended with keen enjoyment, appears disproportionately long. Routine shortens and variety lengthens time, and it is therefore in the power of men to do something to regulate its pace. A life with many landmarks, a life which is much subdivided when those subdivisions are not of the same kind, and when new and diverse interests, impressions, and labours follow each other in swift and distinct succession, seems the most long, and youth, with its keen susceptibility to impressions, appears to move much more slowly than apathetic old age. How almost immeasurably long to a young child seems the period from birthday to birthday! How long to the schoolboy seems the interval between vacation and vacation! How rapid as we go on in life becomes the awful beat of each recurring year! When the feeling of novelty has grown rare, and when interests have lost their edge, time glides by with an ever-increasing celerity. Campbell has justly noticed as a beneficent provision of nature that it is in the period of life when enjoyments are fewest, and infirmities most numerous, that the march of time seems most rapid.

The shortness of life is one of the commonplaces of literature. Yet though we may easily conceive beings with faculties both of mind and body adapted to a far longer life than ours, it will usually be found, with our existing powers, that life, if not prematurely shortened, is long enough. In the case of men who have played a great part in public affairs, the best work is nearly always done before old age. It is a remarkable fact that although a Senate, by its very derivation, means an assembly of old men, and although in the Senate of Rome, which was the greatest of all, the members sat for life, there was a special law providing that no Senator, after sixty, should be summoned to attend his duty.[76] In the past centuries active septuagenarian statesmen were very rare, and in parliamentary life almost unknown. In our own century there have been brilliant exceptions, but in most cases it will be found that the true glory of these statesmen rests on what they had done before old age, and sometimes the undue prolongation of their active lives has been a grave misfortune, not only to their own reputations, but also to the nations they influenced. Often, indeed, while faculties diminish, self-confidence, even in good men, increases. Moral and intellectual failings that had been formerly repressed take root and spread, and it is no small blessing that they have but a short time to run their course. In the case of men of great capacities the follies of age are perhaps even more to be feared than the follies of youth. When men have made a great reputation and acquired a great authority, when they become the objects of the flattery of nations, and when they can, with little trouble or thought or study, attract universal attention, a new set of temptations begins. Their heads are apt to be turned. The feeling of responsibility grows weaker; the old judgment, caution, deliberation, self-restraint, and timidity disappear. Obstinacy and prejudice strengthen, while at the same time the force of the reasoning will diminishes. Sometimes, through a failing that is partly intellectual, but partly also moral, they almost wholly lose the power of realising or recognising new conditions, discoveries and necessities. They view with jealousy the rise of new reputations and of younger men, and the well-earned authority of an old man becomes the most formidable obstacle to improvement. In the field of politics, in the field of science, and in the field of military organisation, these truths might be abundantly illustrated. In the case of great but maleficent genius the shortness of life is a priceless blessing. Few greater curses could be imagined for the human race than the prolongation for centuries of the life of Napoleon.

In literature also the same law may be detected. A writer's best thoughts are usually expressed long before extreme old age, though the habit and desire of production continue. The time of repetition, of 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 reverting in old age to the studies of youth, and he himself often feels something of the thrill of a second youth in his sympathy with the children who are around him. It is the St. Martin's summer, lighting with a pale but beautiful gleam the brief November day. But the time must come when all the alternatives of life are sad, and the least sad is a speedy and painless end. When the eye has ceased to see and the ear to hear, when the mind has failed and all the friends of youth are gone, and the old man's life becomes a burden not only to himself but to those about him, it is far better that he should quit the scene. If a natural clinging to life, or a natural shrinking from death, prevents him from clearly realising this, it is at least fully seen by all others.

Nor, indeed, does this love of life in most cases of extreme old age greatly persist. Few things are sadder than to see the young, or those in mature life, seeking, according to the current phrase, to find means of "killing time." But in extreme old age, when the power of work, the power of reading, the pleasures of society, have gone, this phrase acquires a new significance. As Madame de StaËl has beautifully said, 'On dÉpose fleur À fleur la couronne de la vie.' An apathy steals over every faculty, and rest—unbroken rest—becomes the chief desire. I remember a touching epitaph in a German churchyard: 'I will arise, O Christ, when Thou callest me; but oh! let me rest awhile, for I am very weary.'

After all that can be said, most men are reluctant to look Time in the face. The close of the year or a birthday is to them merely a time of revelry, into which they enter in order to turn away from depressing thought. They shrink from what seems to them the dreary truth, that they are drifting to a dark abyss. To many the milestones along the path of life are tombstones, every epoch being mainly associated in their memories with a death. To some, past time is nothing—a closed chapter never to be reopened.

To others, the thought of the work achieved in the vanished years is the most real and abiding of their possessions. They can feel the force of the noble lines of Dryden:

He who would look Time in the face without illusion and without fear should associate each year as it passes with new developments of his nature; with duties accomplished, with work performed. To fill the time allotted to us to the brim with action and with thought is the only way in which we can learn to watch its passage with equanimity.