"When one studies a science in detail, one begins to collect material, else the result is nil. But the young man attacks the difficult science of life without experience, i.e. without material. And the result is what we see.
"I can see myself now as a young student. How proud I was of borrowed knowledge and borrowed plumes! How I despised the old! And yet all that I had stolen from books was stolen from the old, who had written the text-books. The young write no text-books. O Youth! O Foolishness!
When I was Young and Stupid.—"When I was young and stupid, I always had a band of hearers who saw a light in me. When I grew older, and wisdom came, I was left alone with my lecture and regarded as an old ass. But the passage from youth to age was bitter, when I discovered that the old could not be deceived. They read my secret thoughts behind my lofty words; they anticipated my evil purposes; they unmasked my crude desires; they prophesied the results of my actions; and found in my past the true cause of my present condition. They seemed to me to be wizards and prophets, although they were simple characters.
"When I asked myself how they could know this and that, I found the answer later—because they had collected material; because they had passed through all the stages which were new to me; because they had also tried to deceive the old in the same way, but had not succeeded. Youth, however, is always believing that it can deceive old age, were it only by stealing a thought from him. I know, moreover, why the young obstinately imagine they are superior because they can deceive. There are old wise men who have come to terms with life, and therefore think it a duty to let themselves be deceived now and then; they let themselves be deceived tastefully.
"Youth is only an idea, an abstraction, a boast, a theme for an essay, a song, a toast!"
Constant Illusions.—The pupil continued: "When I was young I was never really happy, because my seniors oppressed me, because the future disquieted me, because I lived on my parents' money almost as though I were a pensionary. When the first symptoms of love showed themselves, life became a hell. I was never very well, for the most serious illnesses—measles, scarlet fever, agues, croup, and others—affect only the young. I could never satisfy an innocent fancy, for I had no money; every desire was nipped in the bud. I was a slave, for my time was not at my own disposal, and I could not leave my place in order to visit foreign countries. Such is the huge humbug which is called 'youth.' No one has dared to unmask it, for fear lest the young might pelt him with stones, or draw caricatures of him on the walls. The teachers in the schools crouch before them, flatter them, pretend to envy them. If anyone comes who does not flatter these shameless and conscienceless little bandits, these lewd apes who live in the age of innocence, these parent-murderers—there is always some old woman there who exclaims, 'Ah! he does not understand the young!' He understands them very well, for he has been young himself. But the young do not understand the old, for they have never been old.
"The young assert that the future is in their hands, and that therefore they are feared by the cowardly. Let us wait and see! If thirty per cent, reach the future at all, they will work just as their elders have done, and with the thoughts which they have borrowed from them. Exceptions prove the rule."