[00:05]When Is a Man Old
[00:09]¡°I dread to come to the end of the year¡±, said a friend to me recently,
[00:16]¡°it makes me realize I am growing old.¡±
[00:22]William James, the great psychologist,
[00:26]said that most men are old fogies at twenty-five.He was right.
[00:34]Most men at twenty-five are satisfied with their jobs.
[00:41]They have accumulated the little stock of prejudices that they call their ¡°Principles¡±,
[00:49]and closed their minds to all new ideas; they have ceased to grow.
[00:57]The minute a man ceases to grow¡ªno matter what his years¡ª
[01:04]that minute he begins to be old.
[01:09]On the other hand, the really great man never grows old.
[01:17]Goethe passed out at eighty-three, and finished his Faust only a few years earlier;
[01:28]Gladstone took up a new language when he was seventy.
[01:34]Laplace, the astronomer, was still at work when death caught up with him at seventy-eight.
[01:44]He died crying, ¡°What we know is nothing; what we do not know is immense.¡±
[01:53]And there you have the real answer to the question, ¡°When is a man old?¡±
[02:03]Laplace at seventy-eight died young.
[02:07]He was still unsatisfied, still sure that he had a lot to learn.
[02:16]As long as a man can keep himself in that attitude of mind,
[02:23]as long as he can look back on every year and say, ¡°I grew¡±, he is still young.
[02:35]The minute he ceases to grow, the minute he says to himself,
[02:42]¡°I know all that I need to know,¡±¡ªthat day youth stops.
[02:49]He may be twenty-five or seventy-five, it makes no difference.
[02:57]On that day he begins to be old.