when we can no longer do this, when the nat-land peasant-otherwise differing so much from al strength is barely sufficient for the daily each other-are yet all alike in this, that the work, when anything unusual fatigues, and ex-same measure, the same interval of time, separtraordinary efforts sensibly injure the health. ates their birth from their death-that difference When the reserve of strength is exhausted, the in race, in climate, in food, in comforts makes no age of decline has fairly begun. It is by drawing difference in this common interval, we must pon this natural store of reserved strength acknowledge that the length of life depends through excess in living, faster than it can be nat- neither upon habits manners, nor quality of food; urally repaired, that manhood is shortened, and that nothing can change the laws of the mechald age so often prematurely entered. anism by which the number of our years is

And, besides, old age is distinguished by this, regulated." that it brings with it a general weakening of All this is true. The length of life depends the whole body. It is not the lungs, or the on the essential constitution of our internal heart, or the nerves, or the muscles that lose organs. their tone, and become incapable of unusual or That comparatively few men reach ninety or prolonged exertion. Local disease may weaken a hundred years is also true, says experience, one organ, while all the others remain sound and but that is because of the interference of disvigorous as ever. But old age impairs all alike. turbing causes. Most men die of disease; only Fach, so to speak, has consumed its treasured a small number die of old age. In our artificial stores of surplus strength, and, living as it were life, the moral is more frequently sick than the from hand to mouth, is barely able to accom- physical man. In a calmer moral atmosphere, plish the daily task which the bodily movements entire lives would be more frequently spent. impose upon it. "Almost all," says Buffon, "spend their lives in Yet old age does make itself felt more, in fear and contention, and most men (most Frenchevery individual, upon some one organ than men, of course he means) die of chagrin." upon all the others. There is a weak member Among savage tribes it is the same. Few die a in every man's body. All parts are not alike natural death. All die by accidents, by hunger, strong and healthy in any of us. On this weak by wounds, by the poison of serpents, by epimember old age tells most sensibly; and hence demic diseases, etc. That few really reach their in one man the decline of strength first distinct- hundreth year, therefore, experience repeats, is ly manifests itself upon the lungs, in another no proof that such is not the natural term of upon the stomach, and in a third upon the heart. human life.

And as the excessive weakening of any one organ Haller, professedly a physiologist, likewise influences, hampers, we may say, and obstructs, investigated this question historically, or by the all the rest, it may happen that this weakness, light of recorded experience. He collected tooriginal or acquired, of one important organ, gether all the authenticated instances of long may suddenly arrest life altogether when the age life. Of these, the two extreme cases are the of decline arrives. As a penalty for the exces- Englishman, Thomas Parr, who died in the sive use which has impaired that organ, old age reign of Charles I. at the age of 152, and anomay be barely reached before the whole machin- ther less certain case of 169. His conclusionery of life spontaneously stops, and is arrested not a very precise one-is, that the utmost limit of human life is not within two hundred years

at once.

Such are the periods into which M. Flourens (non citra alterum seculum!) But though himdivides the natural life of man, and such the self a physiologist, this deduction of Haller is physiological reasons assigned for the duration only a historical one. It is based on no physiohe ascribes to each. His second period of old logical data.

age begins at eighty-five, and thus the complete What, then does physiology say? Buffon natural life of man, according to his view, can not only investigated the subject historically, or scarcely fall short of a century. But that the natural normal life of man ought to carry him on to his hundreth year, is a somewhat startling assertion. We naturally ask, therefore, for further proof upon this special point.

What says experience, for example, to this alleged long life as natural to man?

by the light of experience, as we have seen, but he was the first also to study it physiologically. He writes as follows: "The total duration of life may be estimated to a certain degreee by that of the durations of an animal's growth. ... Man increases in height up to his sixteenth or eighteenth year, and yet the full development in "The man," says Buffon, "who does not die size of all the parts of his body is not completed of accidental diseases, lives everywhere to ninety till the thirtieth year. The dog attains its full or a hundred years." This is the answer of length in one year, and only in the second year experience experience from the mouth of an completes its growth in bulk or size. Man, eminent naturalist. who takes thirty years to grow, lives ninety or a "When we reflect," he adds," that the Euro-hundred years. The dog which grows only dur pean, the Negro, the Chinese, the American, the ing two or three years, lives only ten or twelve; civilized and the savage, rich and poor, citizen and it is the same with most other animals.”

It

This passage contains the germ of an idea ed, by which the utmost possible or extreme limit which he afterwards develops more clearly. of human life is determined-that limit beyond "The duration of life in the horse," he says, "as which man cannot possibly live? To this quesin all other species of animals, is proportionate tion physiology as yet returns no answer. to the length of time during which it grows. falls back in its turn upon historical experience, Man, who takes fourteen years to grow, may and even from that source gathers only prelive six or seven times as long; that is to nine-sumptive evidence.

ty or a hundred years. The horse, which com- We have seen that, from a consideration of pletes its growth in four years, may live six or the extreme cases of long life to be found upon seven times as long; that is to twenty or thirty record, Haller had concluded that the extraoryears." dinary limit of life approached to two centuries. And again, "As the stag is five or six years Buffon reached the same conclusion by a differin growing, it lives also seven times five or six; ent progess. The ordinary life of a horse is that is, to thirty-five or forty years." twenty-five years; but there is a case on record So far, Buffon lays down the true physiologi- of a horse of the Bishop of Metz which lived cal problem. The length of life is a multiple of fifty years, or double the ordinary length of a the length of growth. His own deductions as horse's life. "The same should happen in other to the true multiple were uncertain, because his species, and therefore in the human species," data were so. He did not know accurately at says Buffon. Man, he concludes, may live to what age the growth of man and other animals double the ordinary length of life. really ceased, or what was the true sign of such In aid of this analogical argument of Buffon, M. cessation. At this point M. Flourens takes the Flourens brings further facts. The camel which question up; and with more accurate anatomical has an ordinary life of forty or fifty years, has lived and physiological data, he has arrived at what he to a hundred. The lion, which lives commonly to believes, and what certainly appears, more reli

able results.

twenty, may live to forty and even to sixty. Dogs have lived twenty, twenty-three and twen"I find," he says, "the true sign of the term ty-four years, and cats eighteen and twenty. of animal growth in the reunion of the bones to From all these cases united, he concludes-in retheir epiphyses. So long as this union does not gard to mammiferous animals, to which our accutake place, the animal grows. As soon as the rate knowledge is at present confined—“that it bones are united to their epiphyses, the animal ceases to grow."

In man this reunion takes place at the age of twenty years, and he lives to ninety or a hundred. The following table contains the other data given by M. Flourens :

Man grows for 20 years, and lives 90 or 100
The camel, 8

40

25

15 to 20
20

10 to 12

9 or 10

8

6 or 7

is a fact, a law-in other words the general experience in regard to that class-that their extraordinary life may be prolonged to double the length of their ordinary life; that is to say, the extreme possible limit of human life is measured by ten times the period of growth.

"A first century," he adds, "of ordinary life, and almost a second-a half century at leastof extraordinary life." Such is the perspective which science opens up to man. It is true that science offers this great fund of life to us, more in the possible than the actual-plus in posse quam in actu, to speak after the manner of the ancients; but were it offered to us in the actual, would the complaints of men cease? "Begin

By these data the result of Buffon is correct- by telling me," said Micromegas, "how many ed. All the larger animals live about five times senses the men of your globe have ?"-"We longer than they grow, instead of six or seven have seventy-two," answers the inhabitant of times, as inferred by Buffon. This by a physio- Saturn; "and we complain every day of the logical analogy, the ordinary natural life of a smallness of the number." "I don't man is fixed at a hundred years. He grows doubt it," said Micromegas; "for on our globe twenty, and five twenties make up the hundred. we have nearly a thousand, and we are still torIf some few men live beyond the hundred years, mented with vague desires." it may be that their natural growth was also unu- SECOND. But an old age thus protracted sually prolonged. Or some extraordinary pru- a life continued to the full period of one century dence in living, or uncommon constitutional only-are they worth struggling for, are they "strength, may have secured for these rare indi- worth living for, are they worth having when viduals their extraordinary length of life. they come? Solomon speaks of them as "evil But, having arrived at a degree of comparative days," as years in which a man shall say, “I certainty in regard to the ordinary or natural have no pleasure in them." And he describes length of human life, we turn with renewed in- the infirmities of the period as "the day in terest to these extraordinary lives. Can any which the keepers of the house shall tremble, general physiological relation or law be discover-land the strong men bow themselves, and the

grinders cease because they are few, and those Regrets ought to disappear in like manner; that look out of the windows shall be darkened, they are only the last flashes of that foolish and the doors shall be shut in the streets. . . vanity which never grows old.

and all the daughters of music shall be brought| "Let us not forget another advantage, or at low . . . and fears shall be in the way, and the least a powerful compensation, which contributes almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper to the happiness of old age. This is, that the shall be a burden, and desire shall fail." moral gains more than the physical loses. In The frailties of extreme old age are truly fact, the moral gains everything; and if somepictured in the figurative language of Solomon. thing is lost by the physical, the compensation Physical strength declines as old age advances; is complete. Some one asked the philosopher this fact is unquestionable. But for this decline Fontenelle, when ninety-five years of age, of strength, does old age bring with it no com- which twenty years of his life he regretted the pensation? "The physical loses," says Cornaro, most? I regret little,' he replied; and yet that is certain." The moral gains," says the happiest years of my life were those between Cicero. "More than the physical loses," says the fifty-fifth and the seventy-fifth.' He made Buffon "A noble compensation," says Flour- this confession in good faith, and his experience ens. "It makes one wish to become old," says arose out of these sensible and consoling Montaigne. "And then how advantageous to truths. At fifty-five years a man's fortune is eslive long," adds Cornaro; "for if one is a cardi- tablished, his reputation made, consideration is nal, he may become pope as he grows older; if obtained, the state of life fixed, pretensions he occupy a distinguished place in a republic, he given up or satisfied, projects overthrown or esmay become its chief; if he be a learned man, tablished, the passions for the most part calmed or excel in any art, he may excel in it still or cooled, the career nearly completed, as regards the labors which every man owes to sociWe might quote the praises which Cornaro ety; there are fewer enemies, or rather fewer lavishes on old age. But seeing him bear so envious persons who are capable of injuring us, joyously his many years, we almost identify him because the counterpoise of merit is acknowlat ninety-five with old age in person, and feel as edged by the public voice." if he were only sounding the praises of the an- "The spirit increases in perfection," says Corcient Cornaro himself. naro, as the body grows older." It becomes Cicero, on the other hand, wrote of old age fitted for new duties and exercises of mind; for when he was still too young. His praises read the development of the human faculties is not sweetly, and contain much truth; but it is the simultaneous, it is successive. Those which composition we admire, as much as the senti-rule at one period, become subordinate at anment it embodies. We reflect that Cicero, in other. "In youth," says Flourens, "the attentalking of old age, was still far from the period tion is quick, lively, always on the alert, fixes when he might speak of it from experience. itself on everything, but reflection is wanting. He was only composing a theme which he had In manhood, attention and reflection are united, set himself as a task. and this constitutes the strength of manhood. But at seventy years of age, Buffon, who re- In old age, attention lessens, but reflection ingarded himself as still young, wrote-not of creases; it is the period in which the human set purpose, but incidentally, and among his heart bends back on itself, and knows itself other writings-concerning old age. We listen best."

more."

66

as to the true and genuine homage of one who "The old man," says M. Reveille Parise, stands on the confines of both periods, and feels " smiles sometimes, he very rarely laughs. himself entitled to speak freely of each-when, Goodness, that grace of old age, is often found in contrasting his own state with that of young- under a grave and severe exterior, for the first er men around him, he says,-" Every day that comes from the heart, and the second from the I rise in good health, have I not the enjoyment physical being, which has become weak. Paof this day as immediately and fully as you tience is the privilege of old age. A great adhave? If I conform my movements, my appe- vantage of a man who has lived long is, that he tites, my desires, to the impulses of a wise nature knows how to wait. In the old man, everyalone, am I not as wise and more happy than thing is submitted to reflection." you? And the view of the past, which awakens Thus old age has its pleasures, it appears, the regrets of old fools, offers to me, on the and its compensations. It is by no means the contrary, the enjoyments of memory, agreeable unenjoyable period we are apt to fancy it. For pictures, precious images, which are worth more its calm and reasonable pleasures, wise men than your objects of pleasure; for they are praise it above the other periods of life. It is pleasant, these images, they are pure, they call surely worth living for, therefore. It is even up only amiable recollections. The inquietudes, worth sacrificing the pleasures of youthful exthe chagrins, all the troop of sadnesses which cess, if by so doing we can hope to reach and accompany your youthful enjoyments, disappear live through it. But if it begin only at seventyin the picture which represents them to me. the natural termination of manhood, according

to M. Flourens-how few ever do reach it!| The subject, as we have sketched it, seemsand of these, again, how few have left them- indeed, really is-complete in itself. And yet selves in a condition to taste its peculiar enjoy-speculative questions rise up in connection with ments and compensations! it, some of which awaken doubts as to the main THIRD. But if old age be an enjoyable pe- conclusion at which we have arrived, Grant riod of life-if it be really worth living to, and that human life may naturally extend to a hunliving for, it is worth caring for, when reached. dred years, or even to a century and a half, then It is to be reached, as we have seen, by living a we naturally say to ourselves,-Were men resober life; it is to be reached in good health, by ally to live so long as this, and other animals in a reasonable obedience to the rules of Lessius. proportion, how thickly peopled the world would But when this green and worthy old age is at- become! If births greatly exceed deaths now tained, how is it to be nursed and specially up- among civilized nations, living at a state of held ? peace, how would it be were men to live usually With a view to this special end, M. Reveille to a hundred years, with health and vigor in Parise has laid down four simple rules. proportion! This reflection did not escape the The FIRST is to know how to be old. There great Buffon-great in genius and in capacity is very much in this rule. "Few people know for speculation, but limited, like the time in how to be old," was one of the sayings of which he lived, and often erroneous, in his Rochefoucauld; and the philosophy of this knowledge of facts. He met the objection it knowledge is expressed by Voltaire in the embodies, with a new and brilliant hypothesis. couplet:

"Qui n'a pas l'esprit de son age-
De son age a tous les malheurs."

"The total quantity of life on the Globe," he says, "is always the same. Death, which seems to destroy all, destroys nothing of that primiThe SECOND rule is to know oneself well. tive life which is common to all the species of Both of these precepts are more philosophical organized beings. God, in creating

than medical, and yet both lie at the basis of a the first individuals of each species of animal successful medical management, at the period and vegetable, not only gave form to the dust when age and ill health are so likely to of the earth, but rendered it living and animaconjoin. ted by including in each individual a greater or The THIRD rule is to make a suitable adjust- smaller number of active principles, of living ment of the daily life. Good physical habits organic molecules, indestructible in their nature, produce health, as good moral habits produce and common to all organized beings. These happiness. Old men who do every day the molecules pass from body to body, and serve to same thing, with the same moderation and the maintain and continue the life, or to nourish same relish, live forever! "One can scarcely and enlarge the body of every individual alike; believe," says Reveille Parise, "how far a little and after the dissolution of the body, after its health, well treated, will carry us." And "the destruction, even its reduction to ashes, these rule of the sage," says Cicero, "is to make use organic molecules, upon which death has no of what one has, and to act in everything ac- power, still survive, pass into other beings, and cording to one's strength." bring to them nourishment and life. Every And the FOURTH rule is, to attack every mal- production, every renewal, every increase by ady at its beginning. In youth, there is a generation, by nutrition, by development, supreserve of force-a dormant life, as it were, poses then a preceding destruction, a conversion behind the visible acting life. The first life be- of substance, a transport of these organic moleing in danger, this second life comes to its aid-cules which never mulliply, but which, always and thus youth rallies after much neglect or ill existing in equal number, keep nature always usage, and still lives on. But old age has no equally alive, the earth equally peopled, and alsuch reserve life. Every ailment of age, there- ways equally resplendent with the first glory of fore, must be taken up quick and cut short, if Him who created it.” the single, unsupported, easily enfeebled life is to be surely upheld.

Who, after reading this passage, will deny to Buffon the praise both of genius and eloquence? By following these fundamental rules, and No wonder he has charmed and captivated so the practical precepts as to diet, exercise, tem- many generations of admiring readers, and perature, etc., which M. Reveille Parise deduces persuaded them to receive his poetical imaginfrom them, can we prolong life? No; we can- ings as the dogmas of true science. not, by any art, prolong life, in the sense of The entire doctrine of Buffon, that the quanmaking it pass the limit prescribed by the con- tity of life on the globe is fixed, is a pure specstitution of man. But we shall be able to live ulation. His organic molecules are a second an entire and complete life-extending our still more etherial imagination, devised to exdays as far as the laws of our individual consti- plain the possibility of the first. Except as a tution, combined with the more general laws curious hypothetical notion, wherewithal to which regulate the constitution of the species, while away an idle hour, we would dismiss the will admit of. first not only from our books, but from our

thoughts. It can scarcely, in any way, be con- extinct. Immediately before the historic period nected with the positive knowledge of our the mammoth and the mastodon disappeared, time. The second speculation is only to be leaving the elephant as the sole existing gigannumbered with the vain fancies, antiquated tic quadruped. Before these, again, the megathough fine, which abound so much in the purely therium, the dinotherium, and how many poetical physical philosophy of past centuries. others! And yet there is a charm in this poetical phi- "To take a special example. Not less than osophy which makes us regret, while we dis- forty species of pachyderms are known to have miss it. We cannot help admiring the specu- lived on the soil of France, and of these the lators of the olden time, as men of finely-gifted only one that now remains, is the wild boar; minds. And we envy them those happy hours and of nearly a hundred species of ruminating of creative inspiration, when, by their midnight animals, only the ox, the stag, and the roebuck. lamps, or beneath the shade of academic groves, Finally, M. Agassiz reckons not less than they built up poetical worlds, and by imagina- twenty-five thousand species of fossil fishes all tive methods constructed and regulated all lost, while we know only five or six thousand their wheels. living fishes-and of extinct shells forty thousand

It is no doubt owing to feelings of this kind are reckoned in a fossil state." that the great views of Buffon, the substance of These facts are admitted, but the conclusion his eloquence, possess still the power to charm which M. Flourens hastily draws from them, and influence M. Flourens. I reject," he is not admissible.

says, "the organic molecules of Buffon, as I do Since life first appeared upon the earth, he the Monads of Leibnitz. They are only philo- says, species have always gone on diminishing. sophic expedients for removing difficulties But of this assertion, the facts he has advanced, which they do not remove. I study life in are no proof whatever. It is an undisputed neither of these, but in living beings them- fact in paleontology, that species, and even selves; and from this study I learn two things genera, have from time to time disappeared from -first, that the number of species has been the surface of the globe. But it is equally uncontinually diminishing ever since animals have disputed that new species and genera have from existed upon the globe; and, second, that the time to time made their appearance-man himnumber of individuals in certain species has self so far as we know, being among the last. been, on the contrary, continually increasing. New forms constantly succeeded the old. And The result of these contrary actions is, that, who shall say that at any one of those epochs taking every thing into account, the total quan- in which life most abounded, the number of spetity of life-by which I understand the total cies or genera was really less than in another? number of living beings-remains in effect, as Who can even, with a show of reason, say— Buffon has said, very nearly the same." taking all species of living things togetherTamed down into plain English, the eloquent that there are fewer genera or species on the imaginings of Buffon, as interpreted and under-earth at this moment—in air, land, and water— stood by M. Flourens, amount simply to this, than at any former geologic era he could name? that the number of individual living beings All that can be safely said is, that man, as the existing at one time on the face of the earth has dominant species, is gradually subduing and exalways been very nearly the same. Out of a tirpating some hundreds of other species in the purely speculative assertion like this, what good present era, and that the individuals of his own can be extracted? Does it really throw any species, and of a few useful domestic animals, light upon paleontological history, or derive are at the same time increasing somewhat in any confirmation from such chapters of this his- number. tory as have yet been written? Does it enable us, in any degree, to understand better the Divine plan and procedure in the past, as it is recorded in the rocky strata-or in the present, as seen in the supposed progressive increase of the human race?

But in this latter increase is there anything more than an imaginary compensation for the other forms of life that are lessened or extirpated? Is there in it any evidence of a system of compensation having been in existence in more ancient geological epochs? There is Nevertheless. M. Flourens, in the book before nothing of the sort. The imaginary law of us, sets formally to work to prove his two pro- Buffon is rendered in no degree more probable positions. by the conjectural modifications of M. Flour"That species are always lessening in num- ens. All we can admit at present is, that the ber," he says, "is evident from the fact that quantity of life upon the globe at any one time. several species are known to have become ex- and the forms in which this life manifests itself, tinct in comparatively recent times. The dodo are dependent upon the will of the Deity. To has become extinct since the Portuguese first what general laws He has subjected this total visited the Isle of France in 1545. The primi- quantity and these forms, we cannot even guess. tive types of nearly all our domestic animals-|

the ox, the horse, the camel, the dog-are all Do these speculations as to the quantity of