"I dread to come to the end of the year,said a friend to me recently, "it makes me realize I am growing old.”
William James, the great psychologist, said that most men are "old fogies at twenty-fiveHe was right. Most men at twenty-five are satisfied with their jobs. They have accumulated the little stock of prejudices that they call their "Principles, " and closed their minds to all new ideas; they have ceased to grow.
The minutea man ceases to grow-no matter what his years-that minute he begins to be old. On the other hand, the really great man never grows old.
Goethe passed out at eighty-three, and finished his Faust only a few years earlier; Gladstone took up a new language when he was seventy. Laplace, the astronomer, was still at work when death caught up with him at seventy-eight. He died crying, "What we know is nothing; what we do not know is immense."
And there you have the real answer to the question, "When is a man old?"
Laplace at seventy-eight died young. He was still unsatisfied, still sure that he had a lot to learn.
As long as a man can keep himself in that attitude of mind, as long as he can look back on every year and say , "I grew," he is still young.
The minute he ceases to grow, the minute he says to himself, "I know all that I need to know,"--that day youth stops. He may be twenty-five or seventy-five, it makes no difference. On that day he begins to be old.
“我懼怕臨近歲末年尾”,一位朋友最近對(duì)我說(shuō):“它使我意識(shí)到我正在變老。”
偉大的心理學(xué)家威廉·詹姆斯就曾說(shuō)過,大多數(shù)人“25歲時(shí)就成了守舊落伍者”。他的話是對(duì)的。大多數(shù)人25歲時(shí)就滿足于他們的工作。他們已經(jīng)積累了一些他們稱之為“原則”的偏見,對(duì)所有新的思想關(guān)閉心靈之門;他們已經(jīng)停止成長(zhǎng)。
一個(gè)人一旦停止成長(zhǎng)--不管他年齡多大--他就開始衰老。反之,真正的偉人從來(lái)不會(huì)衰老。
歌德享年83歲,逝世前幾年才完成《浮士德》;格萊斯頓70歲時(shí)又開始學(xué)習(xí)一門外國(guó)語(yǔ);法國(guó)天文學(xué)家拉普拉斯78歲死時(shí)還在工作著。臨死前,他大聲喊道:“我們所知的太少太少,我們所不知的太多太多。”
“一個(gè)人何時(shí)變老?”,從這類事例中對(duì)這個(gè)問題你已經(jīng)有了真正的答案。
拉普拉斯78歲逝世時(shí)依然年輕。他依舊不滿足,依舊感到許多東西要學(xué)。
一個(gè)人,只要他能夠保持這種心態(tài),只要他在回首過去的一年時(shí)能夠說(shuō)“我在成長(zhǎng)”,他就依然年輕。
他一旦停止成長(zhǎng),他一旦對(duì)自己說(shuō)“我該懂的都懂了”,這個(gè)時(shí)候他的青春也就完了。他可能在25歲時(shí)死去,也可能在75歲時(shí)死去,這都沒有區(qū)別。就在那一天,他開始變老。