The Privilege of Age

I

MANY people are going to be seventy years old, some day. I suppose the Psalmist is largely responsible for the little feeling of dread most of them have about that special date. Probably it is a date not quite so memorable as in old Judæa; at least, one observes many cases in which the subsequent years, far into the eighties, are free from the ‘strength’ which is ‘but labour and sorrow’ — full of zest, energy, and fruitful achievement. It remains true, however, that to divide the drama of life into successive acts is convenient; and old age may as well begin at seventy as anywhere else. Carnegie Pension arrangements suggest that it begins at sixty-five; but that is really outrageously soon. Let us construe the edict of retirement more cheerfully; let us say that at sixty-five teachers are released from pedagogy in order that they may pay undivided attention to the aims that have been thrust into the background by professional duties: they may write their books, complete their investigations, reap their harvests. A great renewal of life may occur when a retiring allowance goes into effect.

But the time left for action is short — that, one must not forget. And as for the men and women in industry, superannuated at forty even in times called normal — this, not the least painful phenomenon in our civilization of manifold needless and unjust pains, will not bear thinking of.

Old age! Much has been written about it from Cicero down. People seem impelled to make confidences concerning the experience. And they do well, for unless life ends prematurely it is an inevitable experience, and challenging. Most of life’s searching events are rather special. Not everyone gets divorced, or even married; not everyone knows bereavement, though the majority probably do. Not everyone — though again the majority, just at present — loses his job, goes bankrupt, faces disaster and want. Some stupid people, as well as some ‘glad souls, without reproach or blot,’ never encounter a spiritual crisis. But everyone, unless he dies first, grows old.

The experience is private and individual, but it is also social, in the sense that men can exchange impressions, sure of a common ground of interest in the adventure. That is the reason I am writing. It is intimate business, this entering old age; it is very grave business. Many people find it sad, a larger number expect so to find it. The assumption is usual that everyone would stay young if he could, that old age is to be endured rather than welcomed, unless you are a pessimist, or a cynic out of love with life. Writers present consolations, reasons for being reconciled, always on the basis of that assumption, always a little on the defensive. We need to confer, we old or aging people, if we are to find how to make these later years the climax of the fine art of living.

I am thinking the thing out on paper, first for my own sake, then, perhaps, for the sake of other old people. For here I am, to my own bewildered amusement, actually seventy years old; and I must find a new orientation of life. I have taken that turn of the road from which the landscape already traversed reveals new aspects, and untrodden paths before me lead on — lead on — toward a strange blankness: height, or abyss? — end, or beginning? It is the path to be trodden before that dim blank be reached that interests me now.

II

I begin by considering the common assumption that one would prefer to be young rather than old. And, for myself, I deny it. There is no use writing this article unless one is honest, and confidential. One can speak only for one’s self. For my part, I enjoy being old far more than I ever enjoyed being young. I think this is because I feel so much more alive.

Not in my body. That is rheumatic and feeble. It dislikes getting up in the morning, it demands to be put to bed absurdly early. It is too deaf to enjoy theatres, lectures, dinners, any more; it is unable — here is the worst deprivation — to start buoyantly, pleasure thrilling nerve and muscle, on a mountain trail. I do still follow short trails, but I hobble along on my lame old leg, and I cannot pretend that I am, or rather that my body is, having a good time in the old way. I cannot smell as once I did, and while there are a lot of smells I am glad to escape, like gasoline, there are others I miss, such as violets and lilies. I miss them rather badly. But sometimes I dream of them.

How, then, in view of these limitations, which are bound to increase, can I say that I feel more alive than when I was young?

Partly, I think, because what messages are still brought me through the senses — and there are yet many — I now have time and freedom to receive. I am not wholly deaf; I can enjoy a rose if I bury my nose in it; my sight is perfectly good; and a kitten’s fur never felt more silky. In the old days, I could rarely pet a kitten without a guilty sense that I ought to be up and doing something of Value to Humanity; it is pleasant to feel that Humanity gets along without me surprisingly well. We have great times, Kitty and I. The color of a daffodil, the dear evasions of an hepatica bud in spring, the form of that Greek amphora — I can gaze on them, lost and entranced, forgetful of the tyranny of time, until, by a curious transmutation, the senses themselves cease to register a physical fact, and the thing seen becomes, as Wordsworth says, ‘a prospect in the mind.’ I like this to happen, and it happens more and more.

While, on the one hand, this contemplative habit, joying in detail, grows on me, circumstance, on the other, makes me survey landscape more rapidly than ever before. For, like the rest of the public, I have taken to motoring. I am whirled through the country on the Riviera, in Italy, in New England, unable to identify the wayside flowers, while the hills ‘flow from form to form’ more rapidly than Tennyson imagined, and ‘nothing stands,’ as that bard remarks, the static universe being lost in a merry-goround of motion. I can only gasp to my breathless spirit, naturally slower to receive impressions than it was twenty years ago, ‘What a lovely region this would be if I had time to see it!’

Do not assume, pray, that I dislike motoring. I revel in it. And I think my generation met a lucky turn of fate, in that this new control of space was granted just as we began to need it, and the cavallo di San Francesco, as Italians call one’s legs, began to fail us. There is new dreamy pleasure in this swift motion, which is an anodyne to thought or grief. And the country flashing by reveals itself in aspects hitherto unknown. But I am not writing on the joys of motoring, and I would give up a motor trip any day for a stroll in a spring wood.

Let us return to the joys of age. Part of the delight I now take in beautiful things is hard to express, for it seems to depend largely on my very limitations. Is it Stevenson’s, that hackneyed quotation: ‘To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive’? By the same token, I find that in looking at beauty a part is better than the whole. An element of abstention, of restraint, must enter into all finer joys. One daffodil can mean more than all the golden host, and thought of the glories I can no longer hope to see surrounds the modest loveliness still mine to behold, like an aura, a halo of reflected light. I find the perfectly definite thing I mean hard to express; I suppose it goes back to the truth that in the realm of the imagination, as Blake says, all things really exist. Sight can smother vision. The less is actually seen, the more increasing dullness of sense imposes limitations, the more easily, provided enough sense stimulus is left to quicken the inner eye, the more easily, I say, one enters that Land of Heart’s Desire where loveliness abides forever.

Even in youth one knows this Law of the Half-Revealed. A sudden parting of clouds to show a sunlit snow-field high in air will be to memory a greater and more enduring possession than a whole Alpine range. I find that the enforced abstentions of later life greatly assist this power to dwell in the real world, which is the world of the Unshown. So are limitations transmuted into privilege, and I am content. My very dreams begin to regain a little of the poignant ecstasy of dreams in adolescence.

But with a difference. For the dreams of youth are shot through with desire. And desire is absent from the dreams of age.

III

All sages, Oriental and Christian, have testified that only the soul cleansed of desire can enter into its full heritage. And that this process of cleansing, or purification, has gone far is one source of refreshment to the elderly. I do not mean anything crass when I speak of such release from desire. Neither do I mean the sad recognition that nothing much can longer be expected — the apathetic resignation seen in some dull old people. I mean rather that the mere advance of years has brought reënforcement to what is a chief requisite to happiness — the renunciation of greed.

Greed! It is the archenemy, whether one look at an economic system or at such religions as centre attention on saving one’s soul or conserving one’s health. It has two phases, greed: one the lust for possession, the other, far more dangerous to the respectable type of modern person, the lust for achievement. That subtle form of greed, a Sense of Duty, often dominates youth. The fetish of Efficiency disguises itself as an angel of light. And it really does have some angelic traits. It is a good pedagogue, belonging to the tribe of that schoolmaster, the Law, whose business it is to lead us further. A better type of greed, this, surely, than the crude acquisitive instinct to possess! Yet not the ultimate guide. How much egotism, how much craving for power, may lurk in the seeming-righteous quest of productive activity! There is arrogance in it, there is ambition, there is that wish to assert the self — legitimate only when it leads to self-effacement. Desire to possess and desire to achieve are both, let us say, true angels, but their work is provisional and temporary, justifiable only in its purifying discipline. And it is refreshment, even if sadness, too, to realize that for this span of earthly life that work is done.

Escape from responsibility is a delicious experience. The element of mortification present is salutary enough to leave it purely redemptive. The United States is slow in learning to leave one alone, but already one is not asked to do so many things. Committees are formed without one; the old desk, the former lecture platform, solicit one no more. The situation can be taken in two ways: one can be either mournful and aggrieved, or triumphant. The second way is better. One is laid on the shelf; but the shelf affords an excellent view of what is going on in the room.

Only, this gradual cessation of responsibility and action must mean not less life, but more. Which, depends largely on one’s past. An energetic middle life is, I think, the only safe precursor of a vitally happy old age. ‘Without undertaking Works, no man may possess Worklessness,’ says the Bhagavad-Gita: ‘nor can he come to adeptship by mere casting off of works.’ Surely, he alone can ‘come to adeptship’ who has, during his active years, known the profound significance of a later phrase in the Gita: ‘This world is fettered by works, save in the Work which has for its end the Sacrifice.’ And again: ‘The man who does his work without attachment attains to the Supreme.’ Not the man who has lived with personal aims, or languidly.

But how few Americans who amount to anything live languidly! To most, the law of their years is put in classic form by Lewis Carroll: —

We are chased by our Purposes, we flee before them, and when the time comes for Purposes to relinquish their pursuit, how good to sit and breathe! Then it is that one learns whether or no ‘the Work has had for its end the Sacrifice.’ If, in however small degree, appointed activities have been purely impelled by disinterested passion to share in creative and redemptive energy, then and only then the summons to lay these activities aside may be welcomed with weary satisfaction.

IV

They may be laid aside, for fuller life to be known. Energy, when work is over, can be transferred. One of the perquisites of age is that it renders possible a wide expansion of sympathies. Through middle life, most of us have to specialize rigorously. We teach the classics: our chief reading must be confined to the field in which light may be sought on the art and thought of the past. We are working for Old Age Pensions: even within the strict confines of sociology, there is much we have no time to explore. Doctor, scientist, business man, have by the exigence of modern standards to concentrate more and more fiercely on lines more and more restricted; time for side excursions is scant, if one wishes to accomplish anything in one’s chosen field. . . .

(As I write these lines, a letter is handed me from a younger friend whom I had invited to help me in securing signatures for Norman Thomas’s campaign. She is sorry to refuse; she is in full sympathy; but she cannot spare the time from her research in problems of New Testament criticism.)

We are part-men all; it is the modern way. There is good to it — and ill.

But for me! I can flaunt the obsolete Baconian motto, I can take all knowledge to be my province! No time ahead to be thorough on any new line, but plenty of time to enjoy a number. I have been a financial expert; I can now turn my attention to excavations in Crete. I have been head of a settlement; let me now rejoice in Byzantine art. I have taught economics; now let me explore mathematical physics and try to understand Poincaré. What fun, my masters! What fun, I repeat, to dabble, with no least idea of utilizing one’s knowledge — to make contacts with fascinating subjects, at one’s own sweet will, for pure delight!

For instance, my ignorance of geology is vast. Yet how impoverished the mind to which rocks can tell no story! There are popular treatises aplenty to initiate me into elementary knowledge which will add zest to travel. I shall amuse myself with Numismatics if I like. I know a dear lady who in her eighties took up Greek, and carried study far enough to retreat behind O’Neill straight to Æschylus.

Observation of some young American Ph.D.’s suggests — the fact is notorious — that there is real danger to general culture in our earnest and conscientious pursuit of specialized knowledge. Is it not possible that on the aged, whose definite tasks are over, might devolve the happy care of maintaining the ancient cultures, by seeking the delights of study and reading as ends in themselves? Cultural values ought to be preserved. The young can’t or won’t preserve them; they are too busy getting ready to earn their living, to follow their specialties; moreover, they need all their free time for motoring or sports. The middle-aged can’t do it; that beast of a Purpose is forever treading on their tail. But the aged, the elderly — ah, let them maintain the balance of civilization!

I perceive that in my own despite I have become utilitarian. Alas, c’est de man âge. Disregard, I pray, these last remarks. Don’t do all this to preserve the balance of civilization. Do it for fun. I counsel all aged people, when withdrawal from active life befalls them, to take up at once some interest remote from any they ever had before. This policy will, among other advantages, help to keep them young, and it will hugely entertain their juniors. ‘Look at Grandmother reading that book on Egyptology!’ And they will have a good time. Happiness, in old age, does not come of itself; does it ever, after childhood? To be happy means to be selective, to be disciplined, to cultivate a rigorous attitude. Happiness is an ascesis. But the ‘great task’ is, I claim, at least as possible in old age as in youth. And in some ways more possible, for it may rest on firmer foundation; it may strike roots into the soil of eternity. This, if one does not falter. And not to falter is important, for the world needs nothing more than it needs happy people.

Yet here comes a question. Eternity ? You are making a shockingly bad preparation for it, says someone, in thus increasing the range of terrestrial interests.

I can only reply, I don’t think so. Nor will I stop to explain, further than to say that every innocent and worthwhile interest on earth seems to me to have a sacramental quality; and that I agree with Æ, the Irish mystic, in correlating ‘ the politics of time,’ and I may add the arts, sciences, and philosophies of time, with ‘the politics’ et al. ‘of eternity.’

It is, of course, a sad fact to be frankly faced that one does not remember what one acquires. Memory is often the first faculty to fade, though with many people in the seventies and even the eighties it remains fairly intact. But take the situation at its worst, accept the failure of powers, which is naturally the basic reason why one’s work is done; it matters little. The difference between the keenest and the dullest memory vanishes or is very slight if scrutinized. The power of enjoyment is worth gratifying so long as it survives; interest is the chief thing, and that it is within our compass to retain.

Also, be it said in passing, there is a hope which robs this loss of memory of its worst sting. The loss seems a presage of the loss of one’s very being, the first hint of waiting extinction. When one begins to realize it, one is very sober. Now to be ready for extinction, if the rhythm of the universe so demands, is to my mind part of the essential spiritual process, and may carry a strange sad ecstasy of its own. But the loss of memory does not necessarily portend such fate. For there is reason to believe that memory is suspended rather than gone. I have known two cases where a mind apparently reduced to puerile futility was restored to radiant clarity, in which each detail of past and present shone clear, before the approach of death. Never have I felt more convincing proof of immortality.

V

Does someone mourn that this extension of interests for which we plead, made possible by the increasing leisure of age, is cold comfort even if possible? Are we reminded of the encroaching loneliness, normal destiny of most old people, as more and more ‘precious friends’ are ‘hid in death’s dateless night’? The married, who have families, children and grandchildren rallying around them, may feel this loneliness less; yet to them also life is likely to grow more and more solitary as the long years pass. There is no use in evasion. Early youth before ties are formed, advanced age when most ties are severed, are assuredly, by natural law, the lonely periods in life’s journey.

What forces shall we rally, we the aged, to meet this situation? Again let us call on that good gift of imagination. It is quite possible to satisfy in a measure the craving for fellowship by cultivating intimacy with people who interest us, in history, and even, save the mark, in fiction. A good novel can help a great deal to rescue one from solitude. One can live pleasantly with its characters, suffering less from friction than in many more substantial contacts, and, agreeable thought, one can escape when one likes. But further, and in entire seriousness, there is exquisite and unique satisfaction in cultivating affections which make no personal claims, especially toward small children and toward persons who have no idea that you take special interest in them. For here is love without desire.

Moreover, one clear fact of experience consoles and reassures. Those ‘precious friends’—are they really ‘hid in death’s dateless night’? On the contrary — this is fact, not sentiment - one becomes slowly, awesomely aware that they are present; that each dear life is known in its completeness as never when it was close to us in the flesh. One can possess and cherish the beloved dead in a sense peculiar and blessed; for death holds a unique revelation of personality. This is the surprise that comes to many, sometimes out of the very first acuteness of bereavement, but usually at some later point, when grief is a more sober wayfarer at our side. Suddenly the lost awareness returns — the Beloved, perceived with a perfection never possible in the flux of time, is here. . . .

These are high matters and mystical. It is not well to treat of them in words. Better, perhaps, to quote the aspiration of a saintly soul toward the Eternal Lover: ‘O Father of the fatherless, God of the lonely: let loneliness be Thy Presence in my soul.’

VI

So the noises of earth withdraw. So the voices, one’s own voice first of all, fall into silence. And in that silence, which can be most dear, deep undertones of an abiding harmony are slowly heard. The best of old age is that it gives us the opportunity to understand how the eternity which awaits us so very soon is even now our home. We can in a measure at last ‘sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance from the near moving-cause to its far-distant Mover.’ We take rest, ere we be gone once more on our adventure brave and new — if such adventure is to be. If not, one may at least hope to attain, before the darkness falls, some clearer vision of reality.

Oriental and Catholic wisdom at their best agree in telling us that to wait, to listen, is the attitude best befitting the Pilgrim of Eternity. Is it ironical to bid an American, even when elderly, to listen and to wait? The attitude is not one easily assumed by modern man or woman; and perhaps it should not be assumed often by the young, except as the power is cultivated to dwell in ‘the cell of the heart.’ But years bestow the faculty. One is free now to align one’s life in accord with the insight of the ages. What is demanded of us in last analysis is to receive rather than to give; to receive, and to adore. It is in the eyes, not of Matilda, but of Beatrice that ‘ the smile of the Universe’ is caught by Dante.

One would like so to look out on the complex tumultuous scene in which one is no longer called to bear a part that ‘the smile of the universe’ might be reflected in one’s eyes.

Let us not sentimentalize. It is not easy to-day to perceive that the universe smiles. On the contrary, we aging people contemplate just now a very piteous spectacle. No one can offer to old age to-day — or ever, for that matter — a facile optimism. Yet there is help in the perspective which the vantage of years affords. ‘Another race hath been and other palms are won.’ One’s own memory blends strangely, looking back, with the rare memory which has seen empires rise and fall, and has seen life forever renewed. The most desolate mountains become clothed with glory when beheld from afar through depths of luminous air. The European traveler, finding the records of anguish and bitter strife to be essential elements in the harmony of the landscape, may cry: ‘Earth’s ancient pain, outworn, becomes her peace.’ The wayside Cross, which adds to the countryside something that leaves our own secular country blank by comparison, is a sign no longer of shame but of salvation. So the aging vision trusts to behold beauty, which is the language of eternal love, emerge triumphant from all the horrors and ugliness of modern times; and already, in the light shining from eternity, that beauty may at times be seen.

Those who live deeply always live by paradox. To gain from her authorities ‘ the Privilege of Poverty ’ was to Saint Clare, the disciple of Saint Francis of Assisi, the crowning victory of life. It is not a privilege commonly coveted. I have written this study of the Privilege of Age in the assured conviction that this privilege also may be a crown of victory.