One meets with of men who have continued gaining in intellectual power
to the end of their lives, in spite of physical decay, it is reasonable
to conclude that the stationary individuals are only so because of the
condition of their lives having been inimical. In fact, stagnation
strikes us as an unnatural condition of mind. The man who dies at fifty
or sixty or seventy, after progressing all his life, doubtless would,
if he had lived a lustrum or a decade longer, have attained to a still
greater height. "How disgusting it is," cried Ruskin, when he had
reached his threescore years and ten, "to find that just when one's
getting interested in life one has got to die!" Many can say as much;
all could say it, had not the mental machinery been disorganised by
some accident, or become rusted from neglect and carelessness. He who
is no more in mind at sixty than at thirty is but a half-grown man: his
is a case of arrested development.
It is hardly necessary to remark here that the mere accumulation of
knowledge is not the same thing as power of mind and its increase: the
man who astonishes you with the amount of knowledge stored in his brain
may be no greater in mind at seventy than at twenty.
Comparing the sexes again, we might say that the female mind reaches
perfection in childhood, long before the physical change from a
generalised to a specialised form; whereas the male retains a
generalised form to the end of life and never ceases to advance
mentally. The reason is obvious. There is no need for continued
progression in women, and Nature, like the grand old economist she is,
or can be when she likes, matures the mind quickly in one case and
slowly in the other; so slowly that he, the young male, goes crawling
on all fours as it were, a long distance after his little flying
sister - slowly because he has very far to go and must keep on for a
very, very long time.
I met Freckles in one of those small ancient out-of-the-world market
towns of the West of England - Somerset to be precise - which are just
like large old villages, where the turnpike road is for half a mile or
so a High Street, wide at one point, where the market is held. For a
short distance there are shops on either side, succeeded by quiet
dignified houses set back among trees, then by thatched cottages, after
which succeed fields and woods.
I had lunched at the large old inn at noon on a hot summer's day; when
I sat down a black cloud was coming up, and by-and-by there was
thunder, and when I went to the door it was raining heavily.
