"Noah's dove had not searched the earth for resting-places so carefully, or with so little success. Any spot on land or water satisfies a dove who wants and finds rest; but no perch suits a dove of sixty years old, alone and uneducated, who has lost his taste even for olives. To this, also, the young may be driven, as education, and the lesson fails in humor; but it may be worth knowing to some of them that the planet offers hardly a dozen places where an elderly man can pass a week alone without ennui, and none at all where he can pass a year.
"Irritated by such complaints, the world naturally answers that no man of sixty should live, which is doubtless true, though not original. The man of sixty, with a certain irritability proper to his years, retorts that the world has no business to throw on him the task of removing its carrion, and that while he remains he has a right to require amusement, - or at least education, since this costs nothing to anyone, - and that a world which cannot educate, will not amuse, and is ugly besides, has even less right to exist than he. Both views seem sound; but the world wearily objects to be called by epithets what society always admits in practice; for no one likes to be told that he is bore, or ignorant, or even ugly; and having nothing to say in its defense, it rejoins that, whatever license is pardonable in youth, the man of sixty who wishes consideration had better hold his tongue. This truth also has the defect of being too true. The rule holds equally for men of half that age. Only the very young have the right to betray their ignorance or ill-breeding. Elderly people commonly know enough not to betray themselves.
"Exceptions are plenty on both sides, as the Senate knew to its acute suffering; but young or old, women or men, seemed agreed on one point with singular unanimity; - each praised silence in others. Of all characteristics in human nature, this has been one of the most abiding. Mere superficial gleaning of what, in the long history of human expression, has been said by the fool or unsaid by the wise, shows that, for once, no difference of opinion has ever existed on this. 'Even a fool,' said the wisest of men, 'when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise,' and still more often, the wisest of men, when he spoke the highest wisdom, has been countered a fool. They agreed only on the merits of silence in others. Sophocles made remarks in its favor, which should have struck the Athenians as new to them; but of late the repetition had grown tiresome. Thomas Carlyle vociferated his admiration of it. Mathew Arnold thought it the best form of expression; and Adams thought Matthew Arnold the best form of expression in his time. Algernon Swinburne called it the most noble to the end. Alfred de Vigny's dying wolf remarked: -
'A voir ce que l'on fut sur terre et ce qu'on laisse,/ Seul le silence est grand; tour reste est faiblesse.'
'When one thinks what one leaves in the world when one dies,/ Only silence is strong - all the rest is but lies.'
Even Byron, whom a more brilliant era of geniuses seemed to have decided to be but an indifferent poet, had ventured to affirm that -
'The Alp's snow summit nearer heaven is seen/ Than the volcano's fierce eruptive crest;'
with other verses, to the effect that words are but a 'temporary torturing flame,' of which no one knew more than himself. The evidence of the poets could not be more emphatic: -
'Silent, while years engrave the brow!/ Silent, - the best are silent now!'
"Although none of these great geniuses had shown faith in silence as a cure for their own ills or ignorance, all of them and all philosophy after them, affirmed that no man, even at sixty, had ever been known to attain knowledge; but that a very few were believed to have attained ignorance, which was in result the same. More than this, in every society worth the name, the man of sixty had been encouraged to ride this hobby, - the Pursuit of Ignorance in Silence, - as though it were the easiest way to get rid of him. In America the silence was more oppressive than the ignorance; but perhaps elsewhere the world might still hide some haunt of futilitarian silence, where content reigned, - although long search had not revealed it, - and so the pilgrimage began anew!"
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
A man at sixty.
