We see people even late in life carried away by political or religious
contagions or developing strange vices; there would be no peace in old
age, but rather a greater and greater obsession by all sorts of cares,
were it not that time, in exposing us to many adventitious influences,
weakens or discharges our primitive passions; we are less greedy, less
lusty, less hopeful, less generous. But these weakened primitive impulses
are naturally by far the strongest and most deeply rooted in the organism:
so that although an old man may be converted or may take up some hobby,
there is usually something thin in his elderly zeal, compared with the
heartiness of youth; nor is it edifying to see a soul in which the plainer
human passions are extinct becoming a hotbed of chance delusions.
In any case each fresh habit taking root in the organism forms a little
mainspring or instinct of its own, like a parasite; so that an elaborate
mechanism is gradually developed, where each lever and spring holds the
other down, and all hold the mainspring down together, allowing it to
unwind itself only very gradually, and meantime keeping the whole clock
ticking and revolving, and causing the smooth outer face which it turns to
the world, so clean and innocent, to mark the time of day amiably for the
passer-by. But there is a terribly complicated labour going on beneath,
propelled with difficulty, and balanced precariously, with much secret
friction and failure. No wonder that the engine often gets visibly out of
order, or stops short: the marvel is that it ever manages to go at all.
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