THE MAN OF SIXTY

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 249, 19 September 1929, Page 2

THE MAN OF SIXTY

"EFFICIENT, USEFUL AND VALUABLE.”

“BETTER MAN AT SIXTY THAN AT THIRTY.”

In challenging contradiction to the widely current theory that a man begins to lose his usefulness at the age of 40, George Luks, the famous painter, asserts that a man is at his best at 60. Mr Luks, who has passed his sixtieth birthday, declares a man of that age is far moro efficient, useful and valuable than a man of 30, in his so-called prime. Having weathered the “reefs and whirlpools” of youth, having learned to deal with the problems of life and mastered the tools of his business or craft, ho is at sixty, if healthy and sound, ready and ripe to put forth what is most mature and worth while.

Youth, which is to-day predominantly in the foreground and whose assertions and accomplishments it has become popular to glorify, is much overrated according to Mr Luks. Youth, ho says is a period of blundering and mistakes, of experiment and tolly, and the outcome is always uncertain. Too many influences destroy the power and promise of youth, and often carry it adrift from real accomplishment/ Against the sporadic achievements of “child geniuses” and “child prodigies,” whoso intellectual bloom quickly withers. Mr Luks says most of the money and power in America is in the hands of old men, and all art that is solid and enduring is done by tlioso who have struggled for a lifetime to acquire technique. To retire in middle lifo is an indication of “sordid mediocrity.” Only then a new youth begins, Luks^ “On his sixtieth birthday, asl understand it, a man ought to think of his approaching end,” writes Mr Luks. “Is that not the acceptance of the insurance salesman and the heartless young? In theory they may be right, in practice never. ' The man of sixty thinks of life, and he thinks of it more affectionately and objectively than ever. Turned threescore, ho has arrived at his prime usefulness to the world. At last he is free to think high and accomplish nobly. Unless disease or innate frailty have wrecked him, his precious powers are at their full. He is ready to bring forth something of value. He understands this; others do not. He has lived long enough, too, to realise the folly of thinking about death. “Not long ago, When I happened to reach sixty, I was rash enough to assure some friends that a man of that ago is worth a great deal more than he was at thirty.. Now, I realise that to make such an assertion is to fly into the face of all authority, to mock the economists and to outrage the statistics. Still, I 'ground. "Why is a creative man worth more at sixty than at thirty, more valuable near the end of his life .than at the so-called prime? Primarily, because a young man is still too great a gamble. He may never live to maturity. Too many accidents may befall him, too many influences destroy his powers, too many cross-currents carry him out of the stream of accomplishment. “At sixty, on the other hand, a man has passed most of. the reefs and whirlpools. Expecting 'only death, he has no left' to meet. If he has not been idle in the intervening years and~'if "he -has arrived' in moderate possession of his health and vitality, he can be depended, on to put forth something /mature and worth while. He has had’time to master his craft, time to correct and live down his blunders, some lustrums in which to take a few calm peeps at life and learn some of its secrets. He is, at last, a grown man. ...

“Most of us have the idea that a man’s education ought to be complete when he is about twenty. As a matter of fact, in all the more, difficult callings, those in which sheer luck and low cunning are of least importance, and knowledge, power and experience of the greatest, man is just out of school at sixty. . “For myself I consider only the two ends of life worth while—childhood and old age. At the beginning of life alone are we certain of joy, and at the termination alone are we certain of ourselves. • Both the ends of life' are troubled by a noble curiosity. ’ “There is only one way' to be an artist or to produce an enduring work of art and that is by long, constant, unflinching and heartbreaking toil. Compared to this toil the work of the galley slave or the worry and anxiety of the man of finance is child’s play. It must go on not2for weeks or months, but for years—for a whole lifetime, in and out of hours, without holidays and without respite. That is the reason of reasons for saying that one is a better man at sixty than at thirty. At sixty one has had time to acquire the technique. “When a man reaches fifty or sixty and feels that he has at last mastered his mediuln and learned to use his tools, that man has wakened to a new youth, a new love. He is at the beginning of things again. Ergo, ho is still young.”