we have acquired, together with the facility we have gained in the use of our powers, makes it then more than ever easy and interesting to us to pursue the study of any subject.  A thousand things become clear which were formerly enveloped in obscurity, and results are obtained which give a feeling of difficulties overcome.  From long experience of men, we cease to expect much from them; we find that, on the whole, people do not gain by a nearer acquaintance; and that—­apart from a few rare and fortunate exceptions—­we have come across none but defective specimens of human nature which it is advisable to leave in peace.  We are no more subject to the ordinary illusions of life; and as, in individual instances, we soon see what a man is made of, we seldom feel any inclination to come into closer relations with him.  Finally, isolation—­our own society—­has become a habit, as it were a second nature to us, more especially if we have been on friendly terms with it from our youth up.  The love of solitude which was formerly indulged only at the expense of our desire for society, has now come to be the simple quality of our natural disposition—­the element proper to our life, as water to a fish.  This is why anyone who possesses a unique individuality—­unlike others and therefore necessarily isolated—­feels that, as he becomes older, his position is no longer so burdensome as when he was young.

For, as a matter of fact, this very genuine privilege of old age is one which can be enjoyed only if a man is possessed of a certain amount of intellect; it will be appreciated most of all where there is real mental power; but in some degree by every one.  It is only people of very barren and vulgar nature who will be just as sociable in their old age as they were in their youth.  But then they become troublesome to a society to which they are no longer suited, and, at most, manage to be tolerated; whereas, they were formerly in great request.

There is another aspect of this inverse proportion between age and sociability—­the way in which it conduces to education.  The younger that people are, the more in every respect they have to learn; and it is just in youth that Nature provides a system of mutual education, so that mere intercourse with others, at that time of life, carries instruction with it.  Human society, from this point of view, resembles a huge academy of learning, on the Bell and Lancaster system, opposed to the system of education by means of books and schools, as something artificial and contrary to the institutions of Nature.  It is therefore a very suitable arrangement that, in his young days, a man should be a very diligent student at the place of learning provided by Nature herself.