sphere of activity. And then the years pass more quickly as we become
older, and we want to devote our remaining time to the intellectual
rather than to the practical side of life. For, provided that the mind
retains its faculties, the amount of knowledge and experience we have
acquired, together with the facility we have gained in the use of our
powers, makes it then more than ever easy and interesting to us to
pursue the study of any subject. A thousand things become clear which
were formerly enveloped in obscurity, and results are obtained which
give a feeling of difficulties overcome. From long experience of men,
we cease to expect much from them; we find that, on the whole, people
do not gain by a nearer acquaintance; and that--apart from a few rare
and fortunate exceptions--we have come across none but defective
specimens of human nature which it is advisable to leave in peace.
We are no more subject to the ordinary illusions of life; and as, in
individual instances, we soon see what a man is made of, we seldom
feel any inclination to come into closer relations with him. Finally,
isolation--our own society--has become a habit, as it were a second
nature to us, more especially if we have been on friendly terms with
it from our youth up. The love of solitude which was formerly indulged
only at the expense of our desire for society, has now come to be the
simple quality of our natural disposition--the element proper to our
life, as water to a fish. This is why anyone who possesses a unique
individuality--unlike others and therefore necessarily isolated--feels
that, as he becomes older, his position is no longer so burdensome as
when he was young.

For, as a matter of fact, this very genuine privilege of old age is
one which can be enjoyed only if a man is possessed of a certain
amount of intellect; it will be appreciated most of all where there is
real mental power; but in some degree by every one. It is only people
of very barren and vulgar nature who will be just as sociable in their
old age as they were in their youth. But then they become troublesome
to a society to which they are no longer suited, and, at most, manage
to be tolerated; whereas, they were formerly in great request.

There is another aspect of this inverse proportion between age and
sociability--the way in which it conduces to education. The younger
that people are, the more in every respect they have to learn; and it
is just in youth that Nature