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    CRITICAL APPRECIATIOn of Youth N Age PDF

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    Syeda Rida Zahra
    1) Francis Bacon's essay "Of Youth and Age" compares the merits and flaws of young people and old people. 2) Bacon argues that while young people have energy, imagination, and fresh ideas, they often lack experience and wisdom. Meanwhile, older people have experience and judgment but lack energy and imagination. 3) The best approach, according to Bacon, is to employ both young and old people in business to take advantage of their complementary strengths and offset their weaknesses. When they work together, both can achieve greater success.

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    CRITICAL APPRECIATIOn of Youth N Age PDF

    Uploaded by

    Syeda Rida Zahra
    2K views4 pages
    1) Francis Bacon's essay "Of Youth and Age" compares the merits and flaws of young people and old people. 2) Bacon argues that while young people have energy, imagination, and fresh ideas, they often lack experience and wisdom. Meanwhile, older people have experience and judgment but lack energy and imagination. 3) The best approach, according to Bacon, is to employ both young and old people in business to take advantage of their complementary strengths and offset their weaknesses. When they work together, both can achieve greater success.

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    1) Francis Bacon's essay "Of Youth and Age" compares the merits and flaws of young people and old people. 2) Bacon argues that while young people have energy, imagination, and fresh ideas, they often lack experience and wisdom. Meanwhile, older people have experience and judgment but lack energy and imagination. 3) The best approach, according to Bacon, is to employ both young and old people in business to take advantage of their complementary strengths and offset their weaknesses. When they work together, both can achieve greater success.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    2K views4 pages

    CRITICAL APPRECIATIOn of Youth N Age PDF

    Uploaded by

    Syeda Rida Zahra
    1) Francis Bacon's essay "Of Youth and Age" compares the merits and flaws of young people and old people. 2) Bacon argues that while young people have energy, imagination, and fresh ideas, they often lack experience and wisdom. Meanwhile, older people have experience and judgment but lack energy and imagination. 3) The best approach, according to Bacon, is to employ both young and old people in business to take advantage of their complementary strengths and offset their weaknesses. When they work together, both can achieve greater success.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 4

    CRITICAL APPRECIATION

    OF YOUTH AND AGE


    Francis Bacon, first major English essayist, published three versions of his Essays
    or Counsels, Civil and Moral (1597, 1612, and 1625). Bacon's essay 'Of Youth
    and Age' has been written to familiarize the people with the worth of the people
    belonging to two extremely crucial stages of life i.e young and old. Involvement of
    the people belonging to these two age groups in any worldly activity may result in
    wonderful success. Moreover, Bacon has also given a great comparison between
    young and aged people, which seems to be quite interesting for the reader.
    The essay ‘Of Youth and Old Age’ is one of the most popular essays of Lord
    Bacon. In this essay Bacon presents a comparative study of the nature of youth age
    and old age. He says that both the stages of life have their own merits and
    demerits. Bacon is of the view that the compounding of the characteristics of
    young age and old age can help in getting success especially in business.
    Bacon starts his essay by motivating youth via debunking and breaking the myth
    about youngsters. He says young people can also get prudence, intelligence, and
    knowledge like old age people if they don’t waste their time. Because at a young
    age people have energy, enthusiasm, fresh ideas, you can achieve what you want,
    but the thing is that youth should not waste time. As Darwin puts about the value
    of time:
    “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of
    life.”- Charles Darwin
    If they understand the value of time, they can be mature and get experience in
    different situations in life at a very young age. According to him, Youth is like first
    thoughtful consideration. There is always room for improvement in first thinking,
    ideas of a younger age are more naïve and childlike. At the same time, Bacon
    points out the shortcomings of youth by saying that it is rare to find a young
    person with a ripe intellect. He says that youth is liable to foolish thoughts. The
    errors of youth often prove fatal. It is because of certain characteristic weaknesses
    of youth such as attempting too much thinking only about the end, ignoring the
    means, holding on to imperfect principles, reckless innovations, extreme
    remedies, and reluctance to acknowledge errors. Describing the merits of youth
    Bacon says that youth have lively inventions and imagination. Though youth is
    not so well fit to judge or deliberate, it is fitter to invent and execute. A man that is
    young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time. Young men have a moral
    freshness, which the old lack in. They are full of adventures and would not tolerate
    partial success. They are more capable of taking immediate decisions. Thus,
    young people have many advantages over old people.
    Describing the drawbacks of old age Bacon says, “Men of age object too much,
    consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon and seldom drive
    business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of
    success.” While, describing the merits of old age he says that old men are more
    experienced than the young men and they are guided in their action by their
    experience. But they are less imaginative, they argue too much, consult too long,
    are less adventurous, repent too soon and seldom push an affair right through the
    end. Even a little success satisfies them.
    Praising the youth, Bacon writes that young people are closer to God because
    they have almost no experience of the outer world and their soul is pure and they
    are prone to more experimenting and imagination. Younger people are more
    moral and connected to God than older because former ones become more
    manipulative and go for materialistic success. Bacon says vision is higher than
    dreams. Young People are prone to vision because of their morality. Bacon says
    older ones should try to pursue dreams to make themselves energetic, ambitious
    passionate and moral like younger ones.
    Bacon was famous for his allusions, giving references and experience of the past.
    In his essay, he gives reference of two Roman emperors Julius Caesar and
    Septimius Severus. They both got a victory at their old age, the former fought
    Gallic war in his mid-forties and became dictator at the age fifty- six and the latter
    was the proclaimed Emperor at forty-seven. Because at a young age they were
    over-ambitious and got a victory over the time. For the latter, someone quoted it he
    lived youth full of errors and madness (The life of Severus).
    Contrary to that, Bacon mentions that young men of calm and quiet nature may do
    much well even in their early age, those who possess composure and balance in
    their actions. Examples of such kind of man may be made of Augustus Caesar,
    the first Roman Emperor, Comus, governor of Florence, and Gaston de Fois,
    one of Charlemagne’s Knights. All of them became famous in their youth.
    More drawbacks of young people, they quickly fly to a conclusion without
    thinking about the strategies that need to continue their action. In between start and
    end, there is a middle struggle needed for success but they assume the end. They
    embrace themselves too much and it causes the failure of young people. They look
    at certain principles which show their immaturity and do not know actual
    techniques for running a particular subject. Another cause of their failure is that
    they accept a lot of things at one particular time and don’t have time to
    explore their creativity. They are not ready to accept their follies and don’t go for
    counsel or advice.
    According to Bacon, the wise course would be to employ the men of both kinds in
    business. He advises that the merits of both young and old men should be
    employed in business as youth and age complement each other in various ways.
    This requires a combination of the moral freshness of youth and the political
    sagacity of old age. When both old men and young men are employed, young men
    will learn from their elders and will themselves grow older and thus have the
    advantages of old age also.
    Bacon also put forth some special cases, he says that there are some who think
    beyond their age but it diminishes along with their age, who possess an over-
    early ripeness. The ancient rhetorician, Hermogenes, who in his early life wrote
    subtle books, but he, in his later age lost the power of creation and became stupid.
    Then, there are some people whose natural dispositions have better grace in
    youth than in old age. Hortensius belonged to this class of men. He did not
    change, but his passionate speech style suited him better as a young man than when
    he was old. The people belonging to the third category are those who undertake a
    very elevated attitude at first, but they cannot maintain it till the last. Such type
    of man was Scipio Africanus, the Roman general, whose end was inferior to the
    beginning.

    Bacon concludes that both Youth and Age have their own merits and demerits,
    each stage of life has its fruits and follies so the best approach would be to utilize
    the energies and potential of that age. Bacon stresses that both youth and age are
    like lock and key to unlock the door to success. If they work together,
    collaborate with each other, and retrieve each other’s mistakes. Old people
    share their wisdom, authority and young people can learn through their
    experience and reach success in no time. Young people give their fresh
    adventurous ideas, and they will make great success together.

    This essay is Bacon’s masterpiece as it aptly compares Youth and Age in a side-
    by-side manner. The distinct style of Bacon is reflected through the brevity and
    terseness of expression, his skillful use of Latin quotations, classical allusions
    and epigrammatic sentences to enrich the reader with lasting wisdom.

    In the essay "Of Youth and Age,” Prof.Vickers notes in the introduction to the
    Oxford World's Classics 1999 edition of "The Essays Or Counsels, Civil and
    Moral" that Bacon:

    "uses a most effective variation in tempo, now slowing down, now speeding up,
    together with syntactical parallelism, in order to characterize the two opposed
    stages of life."

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