The Follies of Youth, by Robert Louis Stevenson

A Maine coon kitten and cat.

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Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world like smiling images pushed from behind. For God’s sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over. There shall be such a mopping and a mowing at the last day, and such blushing and confusion of countenance for all those who have been wise in their own esteem, and have not learned the rough lessons that youth hands on to age. If we are indeed here to perfect and complete our own natures, and grow larger, stronger, and more sympathetic against some nobler career in the future, we had all best bestir ourselves to the utmost while we have the time. To equip a dull, respectable person with wings would be but to make a parody of an angel.

by Robert Louis Stevenson 1850-1894

From Essays by Robert Louis Stevenson (1918) with an introduction by William Lyon Phelps.

Précis

Too many people go through life accepting what lies around them without protest, said Stevenson. But playing it safe will not help: hard facts will make fools of everybody in the end. We should decide before all is revealed on Judgment Day, we should urgently begin to take the opportunities for growth that our life here affords.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

What, according Stevenson, is the point of this life?

Suggestion

To become fit for life in heaven.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

There is another life after his one. We should prepare for it. We should start now.

See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.

INext. IIPut off. IIIReady.

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