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The Colour of Life-Part8_Alice Meynell(1847-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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he was so deceived. For it was a very deception. If the Argonauts,

for instance, had been children, it would have been well enough for



the child to measure their remoteness and their acts with his own

magnificent measure. But they were only men and demi-gods. Thus



they belong to him as he is now - a man; and not to him as he was

once - a child. It was quite wrong to lay the child's enormous ten



years' rule along the path from our time to theirs; that path must

be skipped by the nimble yard in the man's present possession.



Decidedly the Argonauts are no subject for the boy.

What, then? Is the record of the race nothing but a bundle of such



little times? Nay, it seems that childhood, which created the

illusion of ages, does actually prove it true. Childhood is itself



Antiquity - to every man his only Antiquity. The recollection of

childhood cannot make Abraham old again in the mind of a man of



thirty-five; but the beginning of every life is older than Abraham.

THERE is the abyss of time. Let a man turn to his own childhood -



no further - if he would renew his sense of remoteness, and of the

mystery of change.



For in childhood change does not go at that mere hasty amble; it

rushes; but it has enormous space for its flight. The child has an



apprehension not only of things far off, but of things far apart; an

illusive apprehension when he is learning "ancient" history - a real



apprehension when he is conning his own immeasurable infancy. If

there is no historical Antiquity worth speaking of, this is the



renewed and unnumbered Antiquity for all mankind.

And it is of this - merely of this - that "ancient" history seems to



partake. Rome was founded when we began Roman history, and that is

why it seems long ago. Suppose the man of thirty-five heard, at



that present age, for the first time of Romulus. Why, Romulus would

be nowhere. But he built his wall, as a matter of fact, when every



one was seven years old. It is by good fortune that "ancient"

history is taught in the only ancient days. So, for a time, the



world is magical.

Modern history does well enough for learning later. But by learning



something of antiquity in the first ten years, the child enlarges

the sense of time for all mankind. For even after the great



illusion is over and history is re-measured, and all fancy and

flight caught back and chastised, the enlarged sense remains



enlarged. The man remains capable of great spaces of time. He will

not find them in Egypt, it is true, but he finds them within, he



contains them, he is aware of them. History has fallen together,

but childhood surrounds and encompasses history, stretches beyond



and passes on the road to eternity.

He has not passed in vain through the long ten years, the ten years



that are the treasury of preceptions - the first. The great

disillusion shall never shorten those years, nor set nearer together



the days that made them. "Far apart," I have said, and that "far

apart" is wonderful. The past of childhood is not single, is not



motionless, nor fixed in one point; it has summits a world away one

from the other. Year from year differs as the antiquity of Mexico



from the antiquity of Chaldea. And the man of thirty-five knows for

ever afterwards what is flight, even though he finds no great



historic distances to prove his wings by.

There is a long and mysterious moment in long and mysterious



childhood, which is the extremest distance known to any human fancy.

Many other moments, many other hours, are long in the first ten



years. Hours of weariness are long - not with a mysterious length,

but with a mere length of protraction, so that the things called



minutes and half-hours by the elderly may be something else to their

apparent contemporaries, the children. The ancient moment is not



merely one of these - it is a space not of long, but of

immeasurable, time. It is the moment of going to sleep. The man



knows that borderland, and has a contempt for it: he has long ceased




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