AFTER FORTY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 65, 17 March 1928, Page 20

AFTER FORTY

"TEAOHING AN OLD DOG-. TRICKS." Some tituo ago an eminent physician staggered humanity by declaring that .every man had exhausted hhnsolf' at 40. Sir William Bcveridgo has not quite such "a low opinion of his fellowcreatures, :but he felt it his duty to tell an audience of schoolboys that the oldor one gets the harder it is to learn; and his illustration was that n man could never learn to,play chess, well "once he had come to forty year." It was not kindly done (says the London "Daily Telegraph"). -Those' boys .will now survey their parents, their pastors, and inastois, with a moro supercilious brow as creatures publicly acknowledged and officially certified, incapable of learning, anytlung.. ..If Sir AVilliam has formed the opinion that boys need this sort of stimulus, his experience of them must- be less • extensive than, peculiar.- :Ho might plead .the authority of the ancients, whose wisdom has declared-to us that "you can't teach an old 'dog new.'tricks." But the point in dispute" is: whether a man' of .40 is an old dog.'. We prefer uot to admit chess &s ,a test, ,f or in that field, as in music, it .'seems thai; all the great masters are precocious. -'■ There are less specialised' activities tif the human intellect. . Few ■ politicians attain a position in which they can loam the business of administration ■ until after 40. Sir William li;Beveridge '"' will:" not be cynical enough to retort that.the consequences," prove. Ms .'.case. ■■What, is' the explanation of Chatham, who, . having held no important office before, was made Secretary of State at .48, and instantly became as great a War Minister as the world has over seen? When Marlborough was! 40 William'lll. saidthere was "no'.in.au,,.so fit to be a general who had seen so" few campaigns "; when, at 52, ho was . at'last given aii independent; command, a : life spent in Court intrigues had left him with everything which practice a"nd. experience can teach of' War still" to; learn: There arc no rules which apply to the capacity of genius. But all around Us we see men not to be suspected 6i '■ genius who have moved in middle life from one

kind of work to another,-yet show sufficient compotenco in learning their new jobs, and perform tho unfamiliar functions tolerably well. We cannot approve of Sir William Boveridgo's dictum that the older ono.gets the harder it is to iearri,' "M&ny young men in every .profession could toll, him that they have found a trained, experienced, elderly intellect most inconveniently quick in picking up something new. As a matter of moral, training, what could bo worse for boys than instructing them that anyono over 40 is fossilising? ... ■ *. , ■..,-•