Every generation, no matter how paltry its character, 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 understand aright the true sense and coherence of the text, together with the moral it contains and all the subtle application of which it admits.

Towards the close of life, much the same thing happens as at the end of a bal masque—­the masks are taken off.  Then you can see who the people really are, with whom you have come into contact in your passage through the world.  For by the end of life characters have come out in their true light, actions have borne fruit, achievements have been rightly appreciated, and all shams have fallen to pieces.  For this, Time was in every case requisite.