Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

Ordered SozUh 1 5 i
that a proper allowance has been made for this true
cause of suffering in youth ; but by the mere fact of
a prolonged existence, we outgrow either the fact or
else the feeling. Either we become so callously
accustomed to our own useless figure in the world, or
else — and this, thank God, in the majority of cases —
we so collect about us the interest or the love of our
fellows, so multiply our effective part in the affairs of
life, that we need to entertain no longer the question
of our right to be.
And so in the majority of cases, a man who fancies
himself dying, will get cold comfort from the very
youthful view expressed in this essay. He, as a living
man, has some to help, some to love, some to correct ;
it may be, some to punish. These duties cling, not
upon humanity, but upon the man himself. It is he,
not another, who is one woman's son and a second
woman's husband and a third woman's father. That
life which began so small, has now grown, with a
myriad filaments, into the lives of others. It is not in-
dispensable ; another will take the place and shoulder
the discharged responsibility ; but the better the man
and the nobler his purposes, the more will he be
tempted to regret the extinction of his powers and
the deletion of his personality. To have lived a
generation, is not only to have grown at home in that
perplexing medium, but to have assumed innumerable
duties. To die at such an age, has, for all but the
entirely base, something of the air of a betrayal. A
man does not only reflect upon what he might have
done in a future that is never to be his ; but beholding
himself so early a deserter from the fight, he eats his