beyond their fellows
and tower over them, entering at last upon a
fatal treadmill of thought, where they yield
to the innate indolence of the soul and begin
to delude themselves by the solace of repetition.
Then comes the barrenness and lack of
vitality,--that unhappy and disappointing
state into which great men too often enter
when middle life is just passed. The fire of
youth, the vigor of the young intellect, conquers
the inner inertia and makes the man
scale heights of thought and fill his mental
lungs with the free air of the mountains. But
then at last the physical reaction sets in; the
physical machinery of the brain loses its powerful
impetus and begins to relax its efforts,
simply because the youth of the body is at an
end. Now the man is assailed by the great
tempter of the race who stands forever on the
ladder of life waiting for those who climb so
far. He drops the poisoned drop into the ear,
and from that moment all consciousness takes
on a dulness, and the man becomes terrified
lest life is losing its possibilities for him. He
rushes back on to a familiar platform of
experience, and there finds comfort in touching
a well-known chord of passion or emotion.
And too many having done this linger on,
afraid to attempt the unknown, and satisfied to
touch continually that chord which responds
most readily. By this means they get the assurance
that life is still burning within them.
But at last their fate is the same as that of the
gourmand and the drunkard. The power of
the spell lessens daily as the machinery which
feels loses its vitality; and the man endeavors
to revive the old excitement and fervor by
striking the note more violently, by hugging
the thing that makes him feel, by drinking
the cup of poison to its fatal dregs. And then
he is lost; madness falls on his soul, as it
falls on the body of the drunkard. Life has no
longer any meaning for him, and he rushes
wildly into the abysses of intellectual insanity.
A lesser man who commits this great folly
wearies the spirits of others by a dull clinging
to familiar thought, by a persistent hugging of
the treadmill which he asserts to be the final
goal. The cloud that surrounds him is as fatal
as death itself, and men who once sat at his
feet turn away grieved, and have to look back
at his early words in order to remember his
greatness.

VII

What is the cure for this misery and waste
of effort? Is there one? Surely life itself has