e, Macaulay at fifty-nine, Tennyson at eighty-three,
Carlyle at eighty-six, Emerson at seventy-nine, Amiel at sixty.

I have heard it said that it is characteristic of old age to reverse
its opinions and its likes and dislikes. But it does not reverse them;
it revises them. If its years have been well spent, it has reached a
higher position from which to overlook life. It commands a wider view,
and the relation of the parts to the whole is more clearly seen....

"Old age superbly rising"--Whitman.

Age without decrepitude, or remorse, or fear, or hardness of heart!

FACING THE MYSTERY

I wish there were something to light up the grave for me, but there is
not. It is the primal, unending darkness. The faith of all the saints
and martyrs does not help me. I must see the light beyond with my own
eyes. Whitman's indomitable faith I admire, but cannot share. My torch
will not kindle at his great flame. From our youth up our associations
with the dead and with the grave are oppressive. Our natural animal
instincts get the better of us. Death seems the great catastrophe.
The silver cord is loosened, and the golden bowl is broken. The
physical aspects of death are unlovely and repellent. And the
spiritual aspects--only the elect can see them. Our physical senses
are so dominant, the visible world is so overpowering, that all else
becomes as dreams and shadows.

I know that I am a part of the great cosmic system of things, and that
all the material and all the forces that make up my being are as
indestructible as the great Cosmos itself--all that is physical must
remain in some form. But consciousness, the real Me, is not physical,
but an effect of the physical. It is really no more a thing than "a
child's curlicue cut by a burnt stick in the night," and as the one is
evanescent, why not the other?

Nature is so opulent, so indifferent to that we hold most precious,
such a spendthrift, evokes such wonders from such simple materials!
Why should she conserve souls, when she has the original stuff of
myriads of souls? She takes up, and she lays down. Her cycles of
change, of life and death, go on forever. She does not lay up stores;
she is, and has, all stores, whether she keep or whether she waste. It
is all the same to her. There is no outside, no beyond, to her
processes and possessions. There is no future for her, only an
ever-lasting present. What is the very bloom and fragrance of
humanity to the Infinite? In the yest