The Great Sage Confucius (55 1-479) once said this when teaching students. This sentence is not only his summary of the first half of life, but also his expectation and requirement for the second half of life. He said: I have five out of ten and I am determined to learn. Stand at 30, don't be confused at 40, know your destiny at 50, listen at 60, and walk at 70 without overstepping the bounds.

Later, this sentence was included in the Analects of Confucius and became a famous saying widely circulated by Confucianism.

It can be seen that the ancients expressed their true views entirely based on their own time environment and their own life cognition. In fact, like modern people, the length of life cycle will profoundly affect the size of a person's ideological pattern.

"Life is forty without learning art" is also said from the ancient population, which represents the general view of the ancients. If we look at it now, this sentence will be marked with a big question mark.

"Art" here refers to a kind of "craft" or "skill", which means that people get much older when they live to 40 years old, and learning skills is of little practical use. There are two main reasons why you say that.

First, the ancients basically got married and had children around 15. Many people had children and grandchildren at the age of 40, so they should settle down and enjoy their family life. Moreover, at this age, the ancients are already elderly people and their life expectancy is not long. They basically see through the world and life. It can be said that they have reached the age of wanting nothing. If you spend time and energy learning those crafts, there will be no place for them. Who knows how many days you can live? Therefore, there is no need to tinker around by yourself.

Secondly, when people live to 40 years old, various organs of the body begin to age, memory declines, energy is poor, and often nothing can be done. Compared with those energetic young people in their twenties, their physical hardware conditions are much worse. Don't say that the ancients did this, even modern people will face this problem at this age.

Going to school at this age is often like cramming for the Buddha's feet, which is both painful and unrealistic.

However, judging from the conditions of modern people, we can completely ignore the old adage that "life is forty without learning and skill". It must be the ancient people's ideological understanding in a specific environment, which has great limitations. Modern people should follow the motto of "never too old to learn", because the life span of modern people far exceeds that of the ancients, their living conditions far exceed that of the ancients, they pursue so many things and update their knowledge so quickly. If they don't study actively, they will stay where they are for a long time.