Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-08-18
WHEN MEN ARE RyFORMERs.
Youth the Time When Men Are Willing
to Change,

Youth the Time When Men Are willing
to Change.
In his remarkable novel, "Diana of the
Crossways," Mr.. Meredith represents his
heroine as writing to a friend "The very
young men and the old are our hope. The
middle-aged are hard and fast for existing
facts. We pick our leaders on the slopes,
the incline and the decline of the noun
tain-not on the upper table-land midway,
where all appears to men so solid, so toler
ably smooth, save for a few excrescenceS,
roughnesses gradually to be ieveled at
their leisure, which induces one to protest
that the middle age of men is their time
of delusion. 1t is no paradox. They may
deny it at ALL They must be near the
gates of life-the opening or the closing
for their minds to be accessible to the ur-
gency of the greater question"
We are inclined to think that Diana
Merton was right. The impulse to reform
comes generally from the young men, who
are taking their first clear lookout upon
the field of social institutions and estab-
lished customs. Custom is a hardening
force in intellectual processes aud dulls the
keenness of moral perceptions. Conserya-
tive, and therefore preservative, influence,
though it be in society, is dead weight
to be overcome in any social reconstruction.
But it is only the finer and rarer natures
that by middle life have not succumbed
to the habits of their own ways of
thought or the stronger organized habit
which we call social convention The adj
vantage of taking things as they are COM
mends itself to the man in middle life,
who is bearing the burden and heat of
the day. Things may not be as he would
wish them to be, but he knows at least the
conditions under which he must make his
battle, and the reformer's purpose throws
conditions into confusion from which he
shrinks He has come to look with toler-
ance, if not with complacency, upon mani
fest evils on all sides of him, and his stolid
acceptance of them springs partly from
mental inertia and partly from the decline
of hopefulness.
With some men, however, the impulse
of reformatory principle carries them far
into middle life, and perhaps through life,
as reformers. They may be men of one
idea, social or political "cranks," agita-
tors and propagandists, but they have at
least a thoroughness of conviction and a
tenacitY of purpose which the world badly
needs to counterbalance the dead weight
of indifference and blind conservatism. In
deed, it is deplorable when man does not
start with radicalism enough at least on
one subject to last him through life, and
so preserve to him some sense of sympathy
with the reforming spirit.
The army of young reformers find some
appreciation and encouragement among
the old, among those who are "near the
closing gates of life" They have fought
their way through, taking probabilities as
they found them, and they have come to a
time when they can look backward with
out personal anxiety, but with the sympa-
thy Of experience for those who are at the
threshold. The veterans of life know that
life can be made better for the trying; the
victims of society know that social and
political conditions can be made Just and
more honorable. The young are hopeful
and anxious TO work reform for them
selves; the old are willing to help on the
young champions of reform for the sake of
posterity. And so it comes about that the
stimulating influences of society are strong
est at the extremes of age, strongest among
those who stand near the opening or the
closing gates of activity. In a sense it is
true that the middle age of men is their
time of delusion.-Boston Courier.