It is only youth that has the energy to be bothered with everything. There comes a time when one’s mind is “made up” on all sorts of things that were once matters of inquiry; we have profited by experience; we know that some things are not worth investigating. It is one of the marvellous laws of growth that this increase in wisdom should accompany physical decay. As our teeth and hair start to fall out our judgment grows riper. The law of growth is not really as simple as this, for there are many silly old men and there are one or two wise youths. The rich, mellow, balanced period is never reached by some people: Solomon, on the other hand, was noted for his wisdom while still a young man. There is, it must be admitted, something mechanical about old men’s wisdom. Truth is one, of course, so that we should expect a certain unanimity. The answers of the old can usually be predicted. Wisdom can be simulated; all that one lacks is the conviction, the spirit that animates the letter. Deep conviction is a very impressive quality, especially to youth, which secretly doubts everything. The man of strong convictions is a cause of optimism in others, for life would appear a sad cheat if the payment for sixty years of it did not include one certainty. Youth’s certainties make as much noise, but everybody detects the bluff. A fearful man shouts to hearten himself, as all the world knows. Between the certainties of youth and age there is scepticism, a _fine fleur_ of brief life, an exquisite tempering of the soul, neither too soft nor too hard, an infinite flexibility. It is a state of intense activity; life lived at this pace cannot long endure; the tired spirit relaxes and one finds rest either in credulity or in dogmatism, accident determining which attitude affords the soundest slumber. It is not always easy to detect the true sceptic; that honourable title has often been wrongly bestowed--Voltaire, for instance, was a dogmatist. Sceptics exist in all ages, but they are more clearly revealed at those periods that see the birth of some new inquiry. It is essential to their indubitable manifestation that the inquiry should be attended by the passionate interest of a large number of people. At the present day a very good test inquiry is spiritualism. It is a very much better test than Free Trade and Tariff Reform, for, owing to its comparative remoteness, the true sceptic of that alternative might live and die in obscurity. But spiritualism is a subject on which no one is genuinely indifferent and towards which hardly anyone is genuinely sceptical. Dispassionate inquiry on this, as on all matters where human interests are strongly engaged, is usually a pretence. We need not suppose that the great ones of the Psychical Research Society are less credulous than the majority of believers or less intolerant than their louder opponents; it is merely that, their traditions being scientific, they have better manners.