To youth it is middle age that seems trivial and playful. It is after the serious work of love-making and establishing one’s self in economic independence is over that one can rest and play. Youth has little time for that sort of recreation. In middle age, most of the problems have been solved, the obstacles overcome. There is a slackening of the lines, a satisfied taking of one’s reward. And to youth this must always seem a tragedy, that the season of life when the powers are at their highest should be the season when they are oftener turned to material than to spiritual ends. Youth has the energy and ideals, but not the vantage-ground of prestige from which to fight for them. Middle age has the prestige and the power, but too seldom the will to use it for the furtherance of its ideals. Youth has the isolation, the independence, the disinterestedness so that it may attack any foe, but it has not the reserve force to carry that attack through. Middle age has all the reserve power necessary, but is handicapped by family obligations, by business and political ties, so that its power is rarely effective for social or individual progress. The supreme virtue of middle age will be, then, to make this difficult fusion,--to combine devotion to one’s family, to one’s chosen work, with devotion to the finer idealism and impersonal aims that formed one’s philosophy of youth. To keep alive through all the twistings and turnings of life’s road the sense of a larger humanity that needs spiritual and material succor, of the individual spiritual life of ideal interests, is a task of virtue that will tax the resources of any man or woman. Yet here lies the true virtue of middle age,--to use its splendid powers to enhance the social and individual life round one, to radiate influence that transforms and elevates. The secret of such a radiant personality seems to be that one, while mingling freely in the stress of everyday life, sees all its details in the light of larger principles, against the background of their social meaning. In other words, it is a virtue of middle life to be socially self-conscious. And this spirit is the best protector against the ravages of the tough material world. Only by this social consciousness can that toughness be softened. The image of the world the way it ought to be must never be lost sight of in the picture of the world the way it is.