g a man can do. Bernardin de Saint Pierre has the
very excellent and pertinent remark that to be sparing in regard
to food is a means of health; in regard to society, a means of
tranquillity--_la diete des ailmens nous rend la sante du corps, et
celle des hommes la tranquillite de l'ame._ To be soon on friendly, or
even affectionate, terms with solitude is like winning a gold mine;
but this is not something which everybody can do. The prime reason for
social intercourse is mutual need; and as soon as that is satisfied,
boredom drives people together once more. If it were not for these two
reasons, a man would probably elect to remain alone; if only because
solitude is the sole condition of life which gives full play to
that feeling of exclusive importance which every man has in his own
eyes,--as if he were the only person in the world! a feeling which,
in the throng and press of real life, soon shrivels up to nothing,
getting, at every step, a painful _dementi_. From this point of view
it may be said that solitude is the original and natural state of man,
where, like another Adam, he is as happy as his nature will allow.

But still, had Adam no father or mother? There is another sense in
which solitude is not the natural state; for, at his entrance into the
world, a man finds himself with parents, brothers, sisters, that is to
say, in society, and not alone. Accordingly it cannot be said that the
love of solitude is an original characteristic of human nature; it is
rather the result of experience and reflection, and these in their
turn depend upon the development of intellectual power, and increase
with the years.

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A
little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for
only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great
punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one
another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are
glad now and then to be alone;--but to spend the whole day thus would
be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble
to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he
advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is
either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper
element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency
to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proporti