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CHAPTER XVI
The Agony of Solomon
Faith is one of the powers of youth and doubt is a symptom of senility.
The young man who believes in nothing is like a misbegotten infant with wrinkles and grizzled locks.
When the spirit weakens, when the heart’s fires burn low, then one mistrusts truth and love. When one’s eyes grow dim, one imagines that the sun no longer shines, and even life itself becomes a matter of doubt as one feels in advance the cold approach of death.
Consider the children. How their eyes shine; what tremendous faith they have in light, in goodness, in the infallibility of their mother, in the pronouncements of their nurse! What a mythology their inventions are! With what personality they endow their toys and dolls! What paradise the way they look conveys! Dear, beautiful angels! The eyes of little children are God’s mirrors upon earth. The youth believes in love: his time of life is that of the ‘Song of Solomon.’
The mature man believes in wealth, in success and, on occasions, even in wisdom. The ‘Proverbs of Solomon’ are concerned with this period of maturity.
Then a man ceases to be amiable and proclaims the vanity of love. He is surfeited, and no longer gives credence to the pleasures of riches. He loses his taste for success because of the errors and abuses of glory. His enthusiasm is exhausted, his generosity is worn out. He becomes egotistical and defiant, until at last he doubts knowledge and wisdom too. So Solomon turns to write his melancholy book of ‘Ecciesiastes.’
What was left in him of that young man who wrote: ‘My beloved is an only one among beautiful women ... love is stronger than death ... and all a man’s goods and his life as well
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