The Pity of It

ON THE AVERAGE in the United States young men go to college at 18 and graduate at 22. Is this too early? One hears all too frequently from men in middle life that they feel that because of their immaturity they got too little benefit from their college training, or, as it is sometimes put, "I'd get so much more out of it if I went to college now"—that is, at about 40. Possibly some would. Probably more would not get as much more as they think. In any event it is something that must be ticketed among the vain regrets, because if a man is going to college at all it will always have to be at about 18, as now.

It may be true -that the efforts of the colleges succeed in that they seem to fail—a paradox which, in Rabbi ben-Ezra's phrase, comforts while it mocks. The man who mourns because he cannot go to college at 40 would in most cases have no wish to go to college at 40 if he had not gone at 18. At the time, he did not appreciate to the full what he was being introduced to, and at 40 he is just beginning to realize it. But the introduction must come first, and the full fruitage of love or friendship must come later as the man's consciousness of his environment develops. He was shown the road, at least. What he should do with it is his own responsibility. The pity is that so few of us wake up to this fact before we come to the forty-year.