Reviewing what has gone before, the great thing in life is to map it out in youth. Not that one is to refrain from venturing upon the uncharted sea but that, howsoever daringly one is ready to fare forth upon the seas, one may not forget the guidance of the stars. It is a great thing to venture upon the imperiling seas of life without the assurance of safety and reward for one’s plans and toils. It is a greater thing so to fare forth as to come inevitably under the direction of the fixed stars in the heavens of the spirit divine.
Upon a stained window in the dwelling of a noble friend I came upon some lines which I commend to the soul of youth everywhere:
“Climb high
Climb far
Your goal the sky
Your aim the star.”
II
MATURITY: HOW TO SERVE AND ACHIEVE
Maturity, or the middle period of life, is in a sense the largest part of life, and is not to be viewed merely as the period after youth and before old age. It is relative only as all time is relative, but it is absolute, too. In truth, it is the time of that self-dependence which comes with the consciousness of power in maturity. It is the very body and substance of life and least relative,—for youth is its foreshadowing and old age the shadow which it casts behind. Middle age is not a link between youth and old age, but that period of life to which youth is an approach,—from which old age is an exit. Comparing life to a bridge, youth and old age might be likened to the piers which must be builded, but the linking together of the piers, the stretching of the cables over which the larger part of life’s pilgrimage must be made is the task of life’s middle period.
Life is so constituted that it were almost within the limits of reasonableness to urge that life need not pass out of the middle stage into old age. Loath though one be to enter upon maturity, it need never be left behind in return for age if it be entered upon in the spirit of preparedness. Middle age is hard and bitter if youth have been misspent, if youth have not been the stage of conscious preparation for life.
Certain rules have been laid down for the governance of youth and the question may be asked whether these are pertinent to the needs and tasks of middle age,—namely the law that one must have an ideal by which to live, and that one must not merely live by it but up to it. As for the rules which are to be binding upon the middle period of life, who shall venture to prescribe them, save that certain things are obviously true,—that middle age shall continue that which youth initiates, and that there shall be no sharp frontier dividing youth from that which comes after. For middle age is not so much a part of life as it is life, and life absolute.