YOUTH.
The ancient statue of Minerva, in the Villa Albani, was characterized as the Goddess of Wisdom by an aged countenance. Phidias reformed this idea, and gave to her beauty and youth. Previous artists had imitated Nature too carelessly,—not deeply perceiving that wisdom and virtue, striving in man to resist senescence and decay, must in a goddess accomplish their purpose, and preserve her in perpetual bloom. Yet even decay and disease are often ineffectual; the young soul gleams through these impediments, and would be poorly expressed in figures of age. Accepting, therefore, this ideal representation, age and wisdom can never be companions; youth is wise, and age is imbecile.
Our childhood grows in value as we grow in years. It is to that time that every one refers the influence which reaches to his present and somehow moulds it. It may have been an insignificant circumstance,—a word,—a book,—praise or reproof; but from it has flowed all that he is. We should seem ridiculous in men's eyes, were we known to give that importance to certain trifles which in our private and inmost thought they really have. Each finds somewhat in his childhood peculiar and remarkable, on which he loves to dwell. It gives him a secret importance in his own eyes, and he bears it about with him as a kind of inspiring genius. Intimations of his destiny, gathered from early memories, float dimly before him, and are ever beckoning him on. That which he really is no one knows save himself. His words and actions do but inadequately reveal the being he is. We are all greater than we seem to each other. The heart's deepest secrets will not be told. The secret of the interest and delight we take in romances and poetry is that they realize the expectations and hopes of youth. It is the world we had painted and expected. He is unhappy who has never known the eagerness of childish anticipation.
Full of anticipations, full of simple, sweet delights, are these years, the most valuable of lifetime. Then wisdom and religion are intuitive. But the child hastens to leave its beautiful time and state, and watches its own growth with impatient eye. Soon he will seek to return. The expectation of the future has been disappointed. Manhood is not that free, powerful, and commanding state the imagination had delineated. And the world, too, disappoints his hope. He finds there things which none of his teachers ever hinted to him. He beholds a universal system of compromise and conformity, and in a fatal day he learns to compromise and conform. At eighteen the youth requires much stricter truth of men than at twenty-four.
At twenty-four the prophecies of childhood and boyhood begin to be fulfilled, the longings of the heart to be satisfied. He finds and tastes that life which once seemed to him so full of satisfaction and advantage. The inclination to speak in the first person passes away, and his composition is less autobiographical. The claims of society and friends begin to be respected. Solitude and musing are less sweet. The morbid effusions of earlier years, once so precious, no longer please. Now he regards most his unwritten thought. He uses fewer adjectives and alliterations, more verbs and dogmatism. There was a time when his genius was not domesticated, and he did his work somewhat awkwardly, yet with a fervor prophetic of settled wisdom and eloquence. The youth is almost too much in earnest. He aims at nothing less than all knowledge, all wisdom, all power. Perchance the end of all this is that he may discover his own proper work and tendency, and learn to know himself from the revelations of his own nature in universal nature.
For it is by this sign we choose companions and books. Not that they are the best persons or the best thoughts; but some subtile affinity attracts and invites as to another self. In the choosing of companions there seems to be no choice at all. "We meet, we know not how or when; and though we should remember the history, yet friendship has an anterior history we know not of. We all have friends, but the one want of the soul is a friend,—that other self, that one without whom man is incomplete and but the opaque face of a planet. For such we patiently wait and hope, knowing that when we become worthy of him, continents, nor caste, nor opinion can separate us."
A like experience is known to the young man in his reading. 'Tis in vain to advise as to reading; a higher power controls the matter. Of course there are some books all must read, as every one learns the alphabet and spelling-book; but his use and combination of them he shall share with no one. Some spiritual power is ever drawing us towards what we love. Thus in books one constantly meets his own idea, his own feelings, even his most private ones, which he thought could not be known or appreciated beyond his own bosom. Therefore he quickly falls in love with those books that discover him to himself, and that are the keepers of his secrets. Here is a part of himself written out in immortal letters. Here is that thought long dimly haunting the mind, but which never before found adequate expression. Here is a memorable passage transcribed out of his experience.
The fascination of books consists in their revelations of the half-conscious images of the reader's mind. There is a wonderful likeness and coincidence in the thoughts of men. But not alone in books does one meet his own image at every turn. He beholds himself strewn in a thousand fragments throughout the world; and all his culture is nothing but assimilation of himself to them, until he can say with wise Ulysses, "I am a part of all that I have met."
Thus Nature compels the youth to seek every means of stimulating himself to activity. He has learned that in periods of transition and change fresh life flows in upon him, dilating the heart and disclosing new realms of thought. He thanks the gods for every mood, Doric or dithyrambic, for each new relation, for each new friend, and even for his sorrows and misfortunes. Out of these comes the complete wisdom which shall make old age but another more fair and perfect youth. Even the face and form shall be fortified against time and fate. In the physiognomy of age much personal history is revealed. The dimples and folds of infancy have become the furrows of thought and care. Yet, sometimes retaining their original beauty, they are an ornament, and in them we read the record of deep thought and experience.
But the wrinkles of some old people are characterless; running in all directions, appearing as though a finely-woven cloth had left its impress upon the face, revealing a life aimless and idle, or distracted by a thousand cross-purposes and weaknesses.