I think that, from a biological standpoint, human life almost reads like
a poem. It has its own rhythm and beat, its internal cycles of growth
and decay. It begins with innocent childhood, followed by awkward adolescence
trying awkwardly to adapt itself to mature society, with its young passions
and follies, its ideals and ambitions; then it reaches a manhood of intense
activities, profiting from experience and learning more about society
and human nature; at middle age, there is a slight easing of tension, a
mellowing of character like the ripening of fruit or the mellowing of
good wine, and the gradual acquiring of a more tolerant, more cynical
and at the same time a kindlier view of life; then In the sunset of our
life, the endocrine glands decrease their activity, and if we have a true
philosophy of old age and have ordered our life pattern according to it
, it is for us the age of peace and security and leisure and contentment
; finally, life flickers out and one goes into eternal sleep, never to
wake up again. One should be able to sense the beauty of this rhythm of
life, to appreciate, as we do in grand symphonies, its main theme, its
strains of conflict and the final resolution. The movements of these cycles
are very much the same in a normal life, but the music must be provided
by the individual himself. In some souls, the discordant note becomes
harsher and harsher and finally overwhelms or submerges the main melody
. Sometimes the discordant note gains so much power that the music can
no longer go on, and the individual shoots himself with a pistol or jump
into a river. But that is because his original leitmotif has been hopelessly
over-showed through the lack of a good self-education. Otherwise the normal
human life runs to its normal end in kind of dignified movement and procession
. There are sometimes in many of us too many staccatos or impetuosos, and
because the tempo is wrong, the music is not pleasing to the ear; we might
have more of the grand rhythm and majestic tempo o the Ganges, flowing
slowly and eternally into the sea. No one can say that life with childhood
, manhood and old age is not a beautiful arrangement; the day has its morning
, noon and sunset, and the year has its seasons, and it is good that it
is so. There is no good or bad in life, except what is good according
to its own season. And if we take this biological view of life and try
to live according to the seasons, no one but a conceited fool or an impossible
idealist can deny that human life can be lived like a poem. Shakespeare
has expressed this idea more graphically in his passage about the seven
stages of life, and a good many Chinese writers have said about the same
thing. It is curious that Shakespeare was never very religious, or very
much concerned with religion. I think this was his greatness; he took
human life largely as it was, and intruded himself as little upon the
general scheme of things as he did upon the characters of his plays. Shakespeare
was like Nature itself, and that is the greatest compliment we can pay
to a writer or thinker. He merely lived, observed life and went away.