AFTER FORTY

Waipa Post, Volume 36, Issue 2147, 21 April 1928, Page 7

AFTER FORTY

TEACHING AN OLD DOG TRICKS. Some time ago an eminent physician staggered humanity by declaring that every man had exhausted himself at 40. Sir William Beveridge has not quite such a low opinion of his fello wcreatures, but he felt .it his duty to tell an audience of schoolboys that the older one gets the harder it is to learn; and his illustration was that a man could never learn to play chess well "once he had come to his fortieth year." It was not kindly done feays the London Daily Telegraph). Those boys will now survey their parents, their pastors ,and masters, with a more supercilious brow as creatures publicly acknowledged and officialy certified incapable of learning anything. If Sir William has formed th eopJnion that boys; need this sort of stimulus, his experience of them must be less extensive than peculiar. He 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 not to admit chess as a test, for in that field, as in music, it seems that all the great masters are precocious. There are less specialised activities of the human intellect!. Few politicians attain a position in which they can learn the business of administration until after 40. Sir William Beveridge will not be cynical enough to retort that the consequences prove the 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 ever seen? When Marlborough was 40 William 111 said there wa s "no man so fit to be a general who had seen so fe wcampaigns"; when, at 52, he was at last given an independent command, a life spent in court intrigues had left him with everything which practice and experience can teach of war still to learn. There are no rules which apply to the capacity of genius. But all around us we .see men not to be suspected of genius who have moved in middle lift from one kind of work to another, yet show sufficient competence in learning their new jobs and perform the unfamiliar functions tolerably well. We cannot approve of Sir William B<) bridge's dictum that the older one gets the harder it is to learn. Many young men in every profession could tell him that they have found a trained .experienced, elderly intellect most inconvenintly quick in picking up somthing new. As a matter of moral training, what could be worse for boys than instructing them that anyone over 40 is fossilising ? ,