Chapter I: This touch of autumn in August, however, rarely brings frost (1)

or blight but leaves only a trace of a new seriousness and perhaps sadness, while otherwise all goes on as before.

In a few cases the first realization that one is getting old springs upon the soul, as if from ambush, on some trivial occasion and clings like an obsession that remits only to recur again and again. The majority, however, promptly and ruthlessly suppress all such intimations beneath the threshold of consciousness, telling not only others but themselves that they are just as young and capable as ever, thus refusing to recognize that age is upon them till perhaps the sixth or seventh decade. Thus the old are often the last to recognize in themselves infirmities that have long been patent to others. This is one of the benignities of nature, for to no disease, not even consumption, does she give a more effective opiate. A man of ninety still retains his post as head of a great concern he created in his youth, to its serious detriment, convinced that he is better than ever and that the scores of younger men under him lack the efficiency of those of his own generation. “He was on the verge of resigning twenty years ago,” said one of his subordinates to me, “but now he does not know enough to do so.”

On the other hand, some seem to take a new lease of life in this youth of old age. It is not so much that they have a new sense of the value of time but because they have taken in sail in other directions and, realizing the limitations of life, have focused more sharply upon the things they deem most essential.

_To what do you ascribe your long life?_

Good heredity is much more often specified than anything else. There is a tendency in the old to inventory the virtues of parents and ancestors and a deep-seated belief, even in these democratic days, that blood will tell. Four correspondents believed their constitution was weak and that the early realization of this called their attention to personal hygiene, so that these individuals ascribe their long life more to their own effort than to inheritance. Next in rating is the environment of early life. In our land many have been born in the country and led a laborious life in youth and later changed to urban surroundings and to more sedentary habits, which always involves a considerable strain of readjustment. Where this change has been successfully weathered there is a strong disposition to place a very high emphasis upon the beneficence of strenuous physical activity in the formative period.

Next in appreciation comes the preservative influence of good and temperate habits, reinforced by observations of acquaintances of early life who, by reason of less moderation, have preceded them to the cemetery. When our own associates die we tend to draw the lessons of their physical and moral life. One ascribes her longevity to the very early implantation of the idea that everything must be determined by its bearing upon her power to bring healthy children into the world. Most mention, and many stress, the absence of worry and overwork, although one insists that he had been chronically anxious from the first, suffering by day for years from apprehensions of evil and lying awake nights trying to plan the reconstruction of the universe. Several ascribe their length of years to the fact that as they advanced in age they learned betimes to give up former duties and lay off burdens they could no longer carry with impunity. It is evident that this realization of the effect of years differs very widely in different individuals and seems almost lacking in some. Several take pride in the fact that although they inherited a short life from both parents and grandparents they have succeeded in greatly prolonging it, and by diet and regimen in overcoming hereditary handicaps. One determined early in life to make the mind rule the body. One old lady ascribes her vigor to progressive self-forgetfulness and devotion to the service of others.

An interesting case, which I deem typical of many in these Christian Science days, declares that he early learned that all living animals, especially man, have “a constructive, preserving, and renewing principle or energy within them fully competent to care for the body in every particular, demonstrated by the evidence of a vast number of recorded cures of so-called incurable diseases without any external remedial agency.” This element can become amenable to conscious control. “We are composed of a thousand billion cells, far greater in number than that of the entire population of the globe since man arrived and each of them infinitely complex and charged with potencies.” With such a force man should place no limitations upon himself, for he has inexhaustible recuperative energy, etc. If such a faith has little justification for science, it may, nevertheless, give a mental attitude that is conducive to a poise and confidence that in itself has marked hygienic and therapeutic value. It is interesting to note that cultivated men and women seem far less prone than the ignorant to the medical fetichism that ascribes exceptional value to some nostrum or single item of diet or regimen and this suggests how fast the age-long quest for a universal panacea is vanishing from modern consciousness. As men grow old and have a long experience and youthful friends have passed away, it is inevitable that they should seek the cause of their longevity and this urge would naturally increase with years. Therefore, while the individual answers to this question have little scientific value, they are of both psychological and practical interest. Underneath them all there is a tendency to identify hygiene with morals and most men who achieve great age thus tend to look with complacency upon their life as a whole as a triumph of virtue, even though in fact it may have been quite irregular.

_How do you keep well, that is, what do you find especially good or bad in diet, regimen, interests, and personal hygiene generally?_

In the answers to this question, as was perhaps to be expected, we find the utmost diversity. Only two report that they eat and do anything that appeals to them, with no special attention to regimen. Some eschew drugs, while one would wager that he had taken nearly every kind of medicament and said he had used laxatives daily for thirty-eight years. One had found great reinforcement of life from moderate wine drinking and thus found prohibition somewhat reductive of his vitality. Some entirely eschew tea, coffee, and tobacco, while most indulge in both of the former and several in the latter in moderation. Several found marked reinforcement when they began to rest or perhaps take a nap in the middle of the day. All praise early retiring and insist that a generous portion of the twenty-four hours must be spent in bed, even if they do not sleep. Most ascribe much virtue to daily, and particularly to cold baths, shower, spray, etc., while a very few prefer a sponge- or only a rub-down. Most stress the importance of exercise, varied and out-of-doors, particularly walking, while some emphasize the value of a little all-round indoor gymnastics that call all the muscles into moderate action. Some note the avoidance of starchy foods, while others speak of the effectiveness of bran or other agencies against constipation, which is, rightly or wrongly, felt to be one of the morbific tendencies of the old, although others believe that some degree of it is normal at this stage of life. Only one felt rejuvenated by vegetarianism, while many found it advantageous to eat less and more frequently. Most had given considerable attention to diet and had drawn up a list of things good or bad for them. Some found it necessary to regulate their lives with reference to some special morbid tendency of kidneys, intestines, heart, lungs, etc. Some laid special emphasis upon confining their occupation to things that were agreeable or congenial, while things distasteful brought fatigue early. A few were so in love with their life-work, or it had such variety, that they never felt the need of a vacation, while others were very dependent upon a more or less stated remission of work or change of scene and activity, not only yearly but at every week’s end.

The problem of finding a golden mean between excess and defective diet, exercise, work, and excitement, was almost always present. The fads that individuals stressed were horseback and bicycle riding, hunting, tramping, sleeping out-of-doors on an open porch, developing a programme that kept both mind and body busy all day with objective things, indulging in one or even several avocations often far removed from the main line of interest, etc. Some stressed more or less exact routine, while others found virtue in having none but always following their inner inclination and took pleasure in breaking up old habits. One old man loved skating; another, when he was seventy-three, took up automobiling with great zest. A man of ninety has a rub-down by a nurse every night and morning, with some massage. Another is so dependent upon the food to which he is accustomed that he always takes his cook with him in his private car and even if he goes out to dinner must be served with viands prepared by this particular servitor. Then, after exactly half an hour, he leaves the table, even when he is visiting, for a brief siesta. DeSaverin tells us that old people are liable to develop Epicurean appetites and, as they advance in age, can distinguish liquid and solid viands with far greater acuteness than when they were younger. Our data do not, however, confirm this but suggest that gustatory inclinations grow more amenable to reason. Appetite, we are told, is the safest guide, pointing true as the needle to the pole, to the nutritive needs of the body. It is, nevertheless, very modifiable, and the old often easily come to like the food they have learned is good for them, although they very rarely adopt dietaries suggested for their benefit by nutrition laboratories. It does seem, however, that there should be institutions where old people can go periodically for personal surveys of all their habits and receive suggestions that, based upon their idiosyncrasies, would doubtless be marked by very wide individual variations. It is certain that the diet and regimen most advantageous for the person of one diathesis would be very deleterious to another.

_Are you troubled with regrets for things done or not done by or for you?_

In these returns there is no vestige of tragic remorse of either the old classic or theological kind, although only one disclaimed every trace of regret for anything in the past. This is not because he had not made mistakes but because he believed, as nearly all did, that regrets were vain. Most admitted serious errors both of omission and commission, while many specified waste of time and energy, misdirection, bad advice, lack of method, continuity, and system. One bitterly regretted her choice of calling, which had made her daily work a “crucifixion.” Several regretted that they had not been more generous and deplored the too absorbing efforts they had made for acquisition. Others deplored their training as children, the effects of which it had taken years to overcome; while still others regretted the way in which they had brought up their own children. Some thought they had done too little for or given too little attention to their families. Some had made special efforts to cultivate forgetfulness of faults and especially rankling injustices they had suffered from others. One felt that he had come into the world not by his own will but as an accident of sexual passion and therefore felt himself under no obligations to his parents and not responsible for his life or its conduct. Some had even learned to rejoice in their mistakes because of the wisdom that had thus been taught them. Not a few took occasion to reflect upon their satisfactions, which offset the dissatisfaction with what life had brought. Many reproached themselves that they had not done more, worked harder, had more to show, etc. Other old people have a dull and sometimes corroding sense of sexual errors in their past that may have impaired the quality of all their family relations and even the constitution of their children. Some are prone to turn to thoughts of specific instances of outrageous injustice, so that their most poignant regret is that they have never been able to wreak vengeance upon those who had wronged them.

Many specified the long hardships to which they had been subjected by too strict religious and moral regimen and blamed their parents for not giving them instruction betimes during the stage of pubertal ferment. A few had been through the crisis of business failure, made mistaken alliances, or been mismated, or regretted that they had not married. Not infrequent is the regret of having been a spendthrift, wasted a patrimony; and still more frequent are the mentions of injuries to health by unhygienic habits. A few chiefly deplored the fact of not being able to believe what they felt they should. Other few deplored the dullness and languor of their emotional zests and that they take less interest in things than formerly. Most who make decided breaks in middle life do not seem to regret them, although more regret a series of circumnutations among various occupations before they found the right one.

It would seem that the very fact that man has succeeded in living and conserving tolerable health till advanced years gives a feeling that he has, on the whole, succeeded despite errors and lapses, and there seems to be at least a tacit agreement on the part of all that it is idle to regret what it is too late to help. Old age does not, therefore, seem to be a time of repentance for youthful follies and if this exists at all, it is more than compensated for by a complacency that things have not been worse than they were, and even the possibilities of the latter bring no disquietude.

_What temptations do you feel, old or new?_

More of my respondents failed to answer this question than any other and most answers were brief. It is very interesting and significant to note that resistances to anything like confessionalism increase with age. If the old have long walked in ways that society condemns, their secrecy about it has been too long and habitual to be readily broken. This is one reason why psychoanalysis totally fails with the old, so that most analysts refuse to take patients over forty. The German jurist, Friedrich, said that everyone was a potential murderer, because at some moment in his life he had been angry enough to kill and probably would have done so if every circumstance had favored. So the candid and conscientious man who looks back upon a long life realizes that he has done or nearly done, at least in heart, about every crime and yielded and felt promptings to about every vice. Probably everyone, too, had actually done things that if known would expose him to obloquy. Thus the old almost never go to the confessional. Moreover, there is a benign but deep instinct in us to forget things we have done that would disgrace us and perhaps especially those things at which our own moral sense and self-respect most revolt, where qualms of conscience would be so painful that we refuse to face them. And this is connected with the fact that in those churches that stress a radical change of heart, with deep conviction of sin, conversions of the old are very rare. Martial[192] says of the fortunate old Antonius viewing the years behind:

Back on their flight he looks and feels no dread
To think that Lethe’s waters flow so near.
There is no day of all the train that gives
A pang; no moment that he would forget.
A good man’s span is doubled; twice he lives
Who, viewing his past life, enjoys it yet.

All, of course, want to do just this, so that “the good men do” may live “after them,” while “the bad is interred with their bones.”

Edgar Lee Masters, in a little volume of clever poetic skits,[193] describes the dead in a country churchyard as sitting up, one after another, in their graves and belying their epitaphs. One says in substance, “They called me good and pure but I was a villain”; another, “They called me philanthropic and generous but I ground the faces of the poor and all my charities were to camouflage my selfishness and extortion”; and so on through a long list of rectifications, showing that while men generally follow the precept of saying nothing but good of the dead there may be, after all, at the bottom of the soul a certain impulse to have all the worst in us known. But this is not true of modern life, if it ever was so in the past.

Some of our respondents specified temptations to overeat, to under-exercise, to take life too easy or to be too tardy in throwing off responsibilities, to read or think too much, to be censorious and intolerant, irritable, to resent the cocky infallibility of the young, the excessive urge to speed up, the danger of getting cranky, of brooding; and a few speak vaguely of temptations of the flesh. Nearly all say that they are less prone to yield to temptations than in middle life.

It is perhaps from this standpoint that we see most clearly the danger to which the old are subjected in the progressive loss of self-knowledge. It is very hard for any but the strongest mentalities to realize the changes that age brings, to adjust to, feel at home in, and come to terms consciously with it, so that most would probably be surprised if they knew how clearly those closest to them understood their weaknesses, tolerated their idiosyncrasies, and made allowances for their failures. Self-control, poise, a calm, judicial state of mind even with regard to things that concern us most deeply, are among the chief, if also among the rarest, virtues of senescence. Everyone carries with him to the grave many a secret that it is well for him and for the world is buried with him; and the impulse to be known even by God Himself exactly as we are, although it has so many expressions in prayers and religious formulæ, lacks in our day, we must conclude, any real depth of sincerity.

_What duties do you feel that you still owe either to those about you or to the world?_

Some place first the duty of providing wisely and well for their families and friends after their death. A few are oppressed by the thought that they still owe the world far more than they can pay, although one who has lived a life of very large usefulness thinks the world owes him now far more than he owes it. Some have a dread amounting almost to horror of being useless and wish, above all things, to be not a burden but serviceable. A few feel the same old duties, with no change. Others feel called to give to the world, or at least to those about them, advice and admonition based upon the rich lessons of experience. Some who have been lifelong slaves to duty resolve that they will now emancipate themselves and live henceforth according to their own pleasure. Some feel that their time and strength for doing good have so abated that it is vain to try to accomplish anything more and that they must devote themselves to being, instead of doing, good, and would thus cultivate every grace of character and let their light so shine as to be examples to others, so that self-development must henceforth be their chief effort.

In such answers as are before me two things stand out with special prominence. The first is that the men of science, who constitute about one-third of all, have unfinished studies, which they feel it is their supreme duty to complete before their powers abate. It is less often new themes to which they would consecrate their energies than old ones on which already very much work has been done and that they rightly feel no one else could properly finish and that would thus be lost to the world unless they themselves were able to complete it. These men are less intent upon public reforms or special civic duties than upon adding at least a tiny stone to the great temple of science, although only a few in their own specialty will ever appreciate or be benefited by their work. The world has certainly lost much, although probably less than those concerned think, by the death or the incapacitating senility of savants who left an unfinished window in their Aladdin tower. We all think of great novels, which the authors did not live to complete; of promising, intricate researches, which were perhaps bungled by the imperfect reports of the half-competent who undertook to present them to the world; of papers left by the old to be edited by their children or their advanced students, some of which had better have remained untouched; of belabored manuscripts, which survivors can make nothing of and which are perhaps piously preserved for years and eventually consigned to the flames. It is such fates for the children of their brain that some of our respondents seem to dread chiefly and it is this that prompts them to dreams, which are generally fatuous, of literary executors or post-mortem publications.

The most general conclusion from these data is that the old are very prone to develop, if they have not had it before, a kind of educational instinct in the larger sense of this word; they wish to admonish or exhort, if not the world at least some section of it, to better and wiser living, to the acquisition of the knowledge that is of most worth, to the cultivation of peace and amity, or to a simple and perhaps more strenuous and efficient life and to the development of good habits. The lessons they would teach often impress the young as being trite and commonplace, but if they are so, they are charged with a depth of conviction and enriched by a wealth of experience that give them a greater significance than the young can appreciate.

_Is your interest in public, community, or in far future or past things, as compared with interest in persons and things right about you, greater or less than formerly?_

Here we have two very distinctly opposite tendencies. On the one hand, more frequently in women than men and much more common in the uneducated classes, the horizon of interest tends to narrow to the immediate environment and to the here and now of each day and if health is impaired, the chief concern may be personal well- or ill-being, in which case we see the egoism and selfishness of old age in its extreme form. On the other hand, and as we would fain believe more normally, we have an increase of breadth of view and of interest not only in local affairs of the community but of the state, country, world, and humanity, which may be intensified as decline necessitates withdrawal from more active participation in affairs nearest in time and place. Two great events have had an incalculable influence in this direction that often appears in our data. The one is the World War, the new era of history it has opened, and the whole problem of the future fate of civilization. This has made a tremendous appeal to those of contemplative habits and has stimulated them to follow the course of world events, to study the past and peer into the future as never before, as well as to want to live on to see the next act in the great drama. Suffrage and the new enfranchisement of woman have marked a great increase in public life and opened new spheres of influence for her sex in political, civic, and moral fields that are proving so absorbing that the former tendency which advanced years brought--to focus on persons at closer range and on narrower human relations--is superseded by a new and larger humanism. Not only have these tendencies greatly enriched old age but there is no reason to think they will ever be transcended or reversed. In this sense there has been no age in the world in which it was so good to be old and the last decade or two have contributed far more than any other to give old people a stronger hold on life and to bring it more of just the kind of culture needed for its legitimate development, as well as to very greatly strengthen the will to live.

_In what do you now take your greatest pleasure?_

While a few find it only in the same sources as before old age supervened, most have discovered new sources of satisfaction or at least find joy in more abandonment to inclinations that had to be more or less sidetracked or almost tabooed before. Reading is most often specified. A few who used to read novels voraciously have lost all interest in love stories and turned to biographies, which they now pursue with almost the same zest as they formerly felt for romance. A few turn to history in general or perhaps trace the earlier stages of the development of their own field of work. Several find a great resource in meditation or even reverie, giving more time to day-dreaming than before. A very few feel a new urge to give some message to the world before they die, and perhaps try, with or without success, to write for publication, while some do so merely for their own edification. Two old professors who have taught successfully all their lives, on ceasing to do so were impelled to address a larger public by print and were dismayed to find their efforts unsuccessful. Others confess to a loss of ambition to do anything to better the world but would confine their efforts to making those about them wiser or happier. Many find a new charm in nature, for example, walks in the open, gardening, birds, stars, celestial phenomena, or perhaps reading the works of naturalists and out-of-door observers of animals, flowers, plants, trees; while others, like Socrates, prefer human relations and indulge more freely than before in companionships, correspondence, or perhaps things that absorb them in their immediate environment, or in a wider rapport with current events, and give more time to newspapers, etc. It is not uncommon for cultivated old people to reread the classic standard literature they perused in their youth and sometimes to abandon themselves to the study of the best things in ancient literature, which they had only known before by name and always felt inclined but never had time to indulge in, feeling perhaps that they are thus tardily making up for lost time. Only a few specify greater keenness of æsthetic enjoyment for works of art, music, drama, etc. Men very rarely, and women somewhat more frequently, confess to taking greater pleasure in dress, so that while we only seldom find dandified old men who affect the fashions and dress of youth, women not infrequently feel that as their personal charms decline they must compensate by richness of attire, jewels, and perhaps lavish ornamentation, coiffure, etc. One old lady in the eighties regretted bitterly that lavender was the only color in which she could now dress without criticism. Perhaps excess in this direction is, on the whole, more pleasing than the growing neglect of these things with years, which is so much more common.

Of the three muses, solitude, society, and nature, while all have a new if not stronger attraction it is the first that, from our returns, would seem to increase most with age. Deafness, or perhaps impatience with the overactivities of the young, may weaken the social bonds and physical infirmity may limit contact with nature but nearly all our respondents seek and find solace in themselves more than before. We find few old people who, like many younger ones, have a horror of being alone. Several have daily periods of retreat or retirement when they are “at home” only to themselves, perhaps to digest what they have lately read or to adjust with more equanimity to changes within or without. Thus the old generally find resources within themselves that more or less compensate for their growing isolation, although some reproach themselves or others that they find these resources too meager. One old philosopher says in substance that, realizing that he must sometime meet death absolutely alone and reach a point where he must take final leave of all and everything about him, he feels that he must strengthen his soul by practising for the most solitary of all experiences. Thus there is a certain hermit or recluse motive, which of old sent so many aging persons into the desert, wilderness, mountains, etc., a motif that may possibly have received some psychogenetic reinforcement from the dangers of ill-treatment by their fellows to which in cruder stages of life the old were exposed. It is entirely impossible for youth to fully sympathize with age because this would mean nothing less than to anticipate it, and so the aged often feel, deep in their souls, that there is a slight falsetto or conventional note, even in the greatest consideration shown to them. This condition, in morbid cases, may amount to suspicions of insincerity or a sense that kindness masks the opposite feeling. Happily, however, most of the aged do not seem to suffer acutely from this feeling but accept what is done for them at its full face value.

Nature, on the other hand, is probably at no stage of life felt to be so motherly, so sympathetic, or so full of moral meanings. Quite apart from the nature that science teaches us, the old seem to feel a recrudescence of the old anthropomorphic feeling that once made the nature-myths and has inspired so many of the parables, similes, tropes, and what are now called anagogic interpretations, by which man has read into nature’s phenomena the experiences of his own life. The old man feels in a new way that not only all bibles but humanity itself came straight out of the heart of nature, so that contemplation of her various aspects may become for him again a kind of navel-gazing. He sometimes becomes an annotator of weather and temperature, to which he has a new susceptibility, and feels a new kinship not only with the sun, storm, forest, mountain, shore and sea, but even with celestial phenomena. He welcomes the advent of spring with a trace of the old jubilance once expressed in many vernal festivals; feels and is perhaps depressed by the analogy between his period of life and winter; often indulges the hope that he may die in his favorite season and not be buried when the world is ice-bound; and is in the closest rapport with climate and often makes much sacrifice to live in one he has found most favorable. In general, he is responsive, probably far more deeply even than he realizes, to all the moods and tenses in which nature expresses herself. Perhaps his very wakefulness gives him a new rapport with the night through all its watches.

The old who have access to the country often select favorite and generally retired nooks where they can sit for hours and be alone with nature and thus entertain their souls. One old man who did this habitually every summer in a spot in what he called his coign of vantage told me that at each successive year, on revisiting this spot, he was conscious of some deep change, of a certain new sense of closeness to nature’s heart, which, although he could not define it, seemed to mark a new step in his development and which he thought somehow normative for his whole life during the year, for he often went to sleep thinking of the charm of this place, etc. The psychology of solitude, both chosen and enforced, shows that it often brings an almost rapturous delight in the contemplation of some simple object of nature--a flower, shrub, insect or tiny animal, which causes for a moment a kind of temporary focalization that gives it something of a fetishistic power. All this, however, does not lessen but perhaps rather augments, by the law of change and alternation, the growing charm that humanity in the large sense always has for old people who conserve their faculties. The sphinx riddle, what is man and what is the worth and meaning of all his strivings, never fails to come over the matured mind, despite the fact that it is the most baffling and insoluble of all problems, for “age brings a philosophic mind” and with it comes a new realization that the greatest study of mankind is man.

_Do you enjoy the society of children, of young people, adults, or those near your own age more or less than formerly?_

Responses here differed very widely but certain common traits appear. Those who grow deaf are often condemned to a progressive solitude and this affliction has a pathos of its own. The friends we knew in youth and college are scattered and most of them, and perhaps most members of our own family, are dead, so that associates of our own age are generally very few. But besides this the old often develop idiosyncrasies highly distasteful to others and we find complaints of the stupidity or querulousness of other old people. Despite the fact that we have occasional instances of intimate friendships in the latest decades of life, the herd instinct that prompts each to flock with those of near his or her own years is less insistent, while with happily married pairs even love seems to take on the character of friendship. There is, indeed, no doubt that the gregarious instinct tends to wane, and as men advance in years they tend to withdraw from clubs and associations, not only because of infirmities but because increased individuation is itself isolative. On the other hand, I think we detect, not only in these returns but in life, a tendency to prefer associates of the next generation, that is, those of such an age that they might have been our own children. Some old men especially state that they prefer the society of men of middle life and it has often been thought that young teachers are best for young and older teachers for older children and that the young have a certain attraction for those near the age limits of their parents. A few of the very old like children, but often with reservations or best at a distance, and are prone to be annoyed by their noise or too great familiarity. It is pretty clear that age does incline to youth and perhaps becomes dependent on it for a kind of vicarious rejuvenation. Old professors often feel in a peculiarly close rapport with those of student years but this is partly due to habit. The old sometimes take, with peculiar interest, to pets and not infrequently have strong likes and dislikes, which they can only explain on the basis of congeniality or antipathy.

There can be no question that old people to-day are just as fond of acting as mentors for the young as they were in ancient Greece, although now it takes the very different form of a propensity to give advice and warnings. But our civilization has not yet found effective ways of making even god-fathers and -mothers really sponsors or assistant parents, although the teaching instinct is closely allied to the parental and is more or less developed in all. It is the testimony of those familiar with old people’s homes that their inmates do not tend to fraternize and although crony friendships are not infrequent, there is no analogy to “mashes” or “crushes.” Indeed, pessimists have often intimated that no one could really love very old people and so far as this is true we could hardly expect them to love even each other in return.

The above applies more to men than women and the case seems quite different with the latter, who are much more prone to be interested in the young, even in the very young, than are old men. The grandmother may lavish too much, while the grandfather gives too little, attention to the grandchildren. On the other hand, both are often very critical of the larger liberties allowed to and taken by children and find it hard to adjust to new notions and social customs and especially to the now rapidly increasing license given to both their conversation and conduct, which can hardly be said, in its turn, to involve greater respect for age than formerly.

_Would you live your life over again?_

All answered this question, but three could not decide. One had found it all so enjoyable that he would gladly start over again and repeat all identically. One recoiled “with horror” at the thought and rejoiced every week that it was ended forever. Even the pleasant experiences had such an alloy or aftermath of pain that one subject could not bear the thought of repeating a moment of it.

“What is the use?” said another. “I would probably do the same thing over again.” Some would live parts of their lives again or begin at a certain stage. Most would repeat it if they could start with some of their present knowledge or experience and thus improve upon what they had been or done. Most, too, had such a sense of progress that it would seem painful to them to go back to more primitive conditions. Two felt so assured of progress beyond the grave that the future drew them more than the past. One did not see how his life could be materially improved for he had fallen victim to no temptations, made very few mistakes, etc.; while many specified often radical changes they would make, errors or mistakes they would avoid, etc. There were no expressions of remorse; no bitter imprecations of fate, heredity, or nature; no vain longings for rejuvenation; and these data suggest that the vivid pleasures of childhood, the joys of youth, and the intoxication with life that characterizes its immature stages had vanished and left no trace in the memory of these respondents, or perhaps that life had palled and brought a certain satiety. One said:

I have lived three more or less independent lives, as
naturalist and explorer for the love of it, as science teacher
for the love of it, and as administrator because I knew men
and the value of money; and finally, as a matter of duty, as a
minor prophet of democracy. If I had the chance I would take
them all again. There is pleasure in it and the world badly
needs men willing to be counted in the minority.

In the attitude of these old people to this problem the psychologist can glimpse a little of the _tedium vitæ_ that perhaps first produced and then discarded the Oriental doctrine of eternal recurrence of life and death, a psychic trend that gave birth to and vitalized metempsychosis and that impelled the Buddha to break away and find a goal beyond it. It needs little psychology to see that such attitudes of mind imply a deep dissatisfaction with any form of future existence that would be in essence a repetition of life here, even with moderate improvements on our present state of existence. A postmortem form of survival or revival that is, in any large sense, a reduplication of this could never bring a deep satisfaction. All ancient creeds and all modern philosophies of recurrence, for example, that of Nietzsche, have always been strongholds of pessimism and are really anti-evolutionary, although they are sometimes said to presage modern theories of development.

To the genetic philosopher it would seem, from such data, that senescents tend to lose the sense that infancy and childhood are more generic than adulthood, that the latter brings the “shades of the prisonhouse,” and that every stage of individual development brings added limitations, so that our matured consciousness is only a very partial expression of the vaster life of the race, most of which is more and more repressed and incapable of coming to consciousness as life proceeds. If each of us might have lived very different lives from what we have done, and if many and varied lives are required to express all the possibilities with which we all start, it would seem as if each individual would have chosen, when he had played one part, to assume another in the _comédie humaine_ and then another, and so on; that the slave would want to complement his defects of opportunity by becoming king--if not, indeed, _vice versa_. When the psychic life of the race was young and rank, great minds did dream even of living out every phase and stage of life: of being animals, of experiencing every lot and station of humanity. But now that the world is older and the hyperindividuation that comes with age has supervened, this passion to taste everything possible to our estate is lost. Instead of sampling every dish we make a full meal of one and other viands are refused for we are sated. Biology teaches, as we have seen, that specialization is death and a hypertrophied personal consciousness is psychic specialization.

For myself, I confess I even retain in old age some vestige of my strong childish desire to be a horse, lion, ape, dog, fish, and even insect; or, in a word, to know how the world looks from under the skull of our older brothers, the beasts. Still stronger is the wish to have lived as a troglodyte, Indian, to have been a fire-worshiper, totemist, a woman, millionaire, tramp, or even a moron or a genius--if not, in some moods, to have experienced various insanities and even diseases. But strangest of all is the wish that I could be set back to happy childhood, even if it had to be with the smallest modicum of the experience I have acquired, and try the game of life again. It has been, on the whole, so fortunate that I would even repeat it identically, if I had to, rather than to face the future I do. But the chief charm would be not so much to improve it and avoid errors but to vary it and give my more generic self a less one-sided expression so as to bring out latencies that are suppressed or slumber and to invest the same old self with a new set of attributes. I have only seen one very small aspect of life and know but a single corner of my own soul and my knowledge of the world is too limited to my own narrow specialty. The future not only of my department but of all lines of human activity is so full of possibilities yet unrealized but which have aroused such eagerness of interest, that I would accept another life here under almost any terms in order to see the swelling drama unfold; while I revolt unspeakably at the realization that I must be cut off when so many things in which I have the keenest zest are in the most critical or interesting phase of their development.

Of course I am answering my question in a different sense than that understood by most of my correspondents. In fact, in a way it was an idle and perhaps foolish question, because to exactly relive a present life is so impossible that it is hardly conceivable. But let us oldsters realize that if we are sated, it is because our appetite has flagged and not because viands are scantier or less toothsome. Perhaps we all wish we had been born later so that we should be now in our prime. Most of us would probably have sacrificed a few of the earlier, if by so doing we could add a few more to the later, years of our life. Perhaps the very restlessness of old people, their retirement from activity, their propensity to a change of scene or mode of life, or their not infrequent _Wanderlust_, is the result of a blind instinct to exploit unused and submerged faculties and thus to complement or vicariate for the loss of certain possibilities always involved in realizing other careers. Certain it is that even those who do not make a clean break with their past develop views, interests, habits, modes of life, personal associations, or perhaps take pleasure in becoming novices, apprentices, or amateurs, in new fields and find thus a certain rejuvenation, the strong instinct for which has found so many unworthy forms of expression that the term “second childhood” as applied to age is commonly one of reproach and the affectations of youth by the old are ridiculous. We all tend to live our lives over again in our children and grandchildren and this impulse is another expression of the deep instinct for renewal and living other lives again. How shall we explain, too, the so common inclination of the old to plant trees they will never see mature or build houses they can hope to live in only a short time; or to get into and keep in such sympathetic rapport with the young; to engage in works of charity; or to grow tolerant of errors, of persons, and of opinions they once bitterly opposed. What can all these phenomena mean save that the barriers of egoism are falling down and that we tend to live more and more not only for but in others by a kind of sympathetic identification with them. Three of my correspondents had a period of reorienting themselves to new interests as if to find themselves again, which is suggestive of the period in youth when one vocation after another is taken up and abandoned before a fit life purpose has been found. Whether these tentatives in the old were a recrudescence of a series of earlier circummutations, like those of a climbing vine seeking a fit support, our data do not show.

_Did you experience an “Indian summer” of revived energy before the winter of age began to set in?_

Only five responses were affirmative to this question. One of the most eminent men of science with a world-wide reputation reported, at seventy-two, that he had never worked so effectively and was now engaged on a program that would require from ten to twenty years of strenuous activity for its completion, besides answering several scores of letters daily. Another scarcely less eminent, at the age of seventy-three, had lately undertaken an arduous line of investigation that would “require many years to complete” but was confident that he could finish it, for “a task is a life-preserver.” My returns suggest that men engaged in scientific research have more power to “carry on” than any other class and that those engaged in the professions are perhaps least likely to do so when they cease active practice. Several specify greater mental clarity in seeing through delusions, shams, and vanities. Others feel a certain exaltation at times, dependent perhaps upon digestion or the weather. Others specify new and deeper self-knowledge. Others find much satisfaction in the settling of a few fixed and cardinal ideas or convictions. A few feel new ambitions to begin new enterprises. Several found in the war and its results a mental stimulus that they felt to be rejuvenating and longed and believed that they must live on to see the settlement of some of the great questions now so wide open. Four had observed such awakenings in others. Most, however, felt themselves going on about as before, with no change save gradual abatement of energy. Some felt as strong physically and mentally as ever until they set themselves to some serious task and then realized that this feeling was illusory. Others were sure they would have felt a revival of springtide but for some infirmity or disaster. It is, however, hard for others to judge on this matter and harder perhaps for the individual to answer the question for himself.

The remission of responsibilities and the dropping of burdens would of itself give a certain sense of exaltation, because all such changes involve a new balance between ambitions and accomplishments. Retired clergymen often feel a great relief from being no longer accountable to others for their opinions and some often find a joyful sense of emancipation from old doctrines surprising, not only to others but most of all to themselves. One writes, “I found, on sober second thought, I no longer really believed certain dogmas I had preached all my life and that in my inmost heart I really believed certain things I had often condemned as heresies.” He found an intense mental stimulus in thus reconstructing his own creed. A clergyman of seventy-nine once told me he had ceased to preach, even as a supply, because since his resignation his new views gave offense. Old physicians, too, sometimes, though far more rarely and to a less extent, drop as illusions certain fundamental principles by which the practice of a lifetime had been regulated.

Again, the new lines of interest to which the old, set free from the tasks of their lives, sometimes turn show that there is a half-delusive and half-real sense of psychic rejuvenation associated with the pursuit of a new topic. On the whole, however, it would seem that withdrawal from exacting duties, the freedom from the necessity of self-support and the leisure thus resulting, the abatement of the _vita sexualis_ and the storm and stress this is now known to cause, the fact that one is now no longer anxious lest he do or say anything that would interfere with his own future career, and the sense that he can both live and think as he lists, would altogether constitute a loud call to revise his views, to get down to fundamentals, be more sincere and independent, to get better acquainted with his inmost self, review his past life, and draw from it its lessons. Morale, as I have elsewhere tried to show,[194] consists in keeping ourselves, body and mind, always at the tiptop of condition and this is ever harder to do as age advances. But I think we may conclude that just in proportion as this is done there is a perhaps prolonged and delightful “Indian summer” that is caused by the kind of mental housecleaning that dispenses with all non-essentials and consists in warming up the deeper emotions, quickening the intellect and reinforcing the will, and that this period combines uniquely the charm of summer and fall without excessive heat and without dangerous chill. All invites to synthesis, for the age of excessive and diverting specialization that is forced upon the young and immature in our day is past and the season for harvest has come. And it is just this that our distracted world now most lacks and needs. Sane and ripe old age has a new sense of values, relations, perspectives; and no form of culture man has ever produced is ripe until the fruitage it contributes to morals and life has been garnered. To show how all our achievements affect human conduct is the thing the world most needs to-day and needs far more than at any other period in history. This is what our age calls so loudly upon the old to supply. Just in proportion as civilization advances and life becomes more and more complex and distracting, the need of older and wiser men increases, for only from their outlook tower can things be seen in their true perspective. Wells’s new conspectus of history represents the old man’s view and one of my correspondents writes that in a long literary life he has never come upon anything quite so stimulating and absorbing. It is this sort of work that should have been done by an old man and such tasks can only be accomplished by those younger men who have the rare power of genius to anticipate the choicest gifts of age. Plato saw that the proper business of old men was to philosophize; and what is religion, to which so many senescents turn, but a condensed philosophy put in the form of symbol, myth, and rite.