234 LITEEAKT VALUES 



the new. The new years and the new friends 

 come and go, and leave no impression. Youth 

 makes all the world plastic ; it creates all things 

 anew ; youth is Adam in Paradise, from which the 

 burdens and the experiences of manhood will by 

 and by cause him to depart with longing and sorrow. 

 " When we were young," says Schopenhauer, " we 

 were completely absorbed in our immediate sur- 

 roundings ; there was nothing to distract our atten- 

 tion from them ; we looked upon the objects about 

 us as though they were the only ones of their kind, 

 — as though, indeed, nothing else existed at all." 



It is perhaps inevitable that a man of sensibility 

 and imagination should grow conservative as he 

 grows old. The new is more and more distasteful 

 to him. Did you ever go back to the old home- 

 stead where you had passed your youth or your 

 early manhood, and find the old house, the old bam, 

 the old orchard, in fact all the old landmarks gone ? 

 What a desecration, you thought. The new build- 

 ings, how hateful they look to you! They mean 

 nothing to you but the obliteration of that which 

 meant so much. This experience proves nothing 

 except that the past becomes a part of our very 

 selves ; our roots, our beginnings, are there, and we 

 bleed when old things are cut away. 



After a certain age is reached, how trivial and 

 flitting seem the new generations ! The people whom 

 we found upon the stage when we came into the 

 world, — the middle-aged and the elderly people who 

 were bearing the brunt of the battle, — they seem 



