Philosophy springs from a certain bent of mind which, though different in character, is as much a natural gift as an aptitude for mathematics or a genius for music. Philosophical speculation requires so little in the way of a knowledge of the world and is, in comparison with some other intellectual pursuits, so independent of book-learning, that the gift is apt to manifest itself early in life. And often a philosopher will be found to have made his significant contribution at an age when others are still preparing themselves to speak or to act. Hobbes had a full share of the anima naturaliter philosophica, yet it is remarkable that the beginning of his philosophical writing cannot be dated before his forty-second year and that his masterpiece was written when he was past sixty.
(Michael Oakeshott, "Introduction to Leviathan," in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, new and expanded ed. [Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991], 221-94, at 228-9 [essay first published in 1946])
Note from KBJ: I'm 52. Maybe I still have a masterpiece in me. Ha! My teacher, Joel Feinberg (1926-2004), published his four-volume magnum opus, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, between the ages of 58 and 62.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 