From Blackwood's Magazine. 2. Or so much as will make the body heavy 1. Discorsi di Luigi Cornaro, intorno della and torpid. Vita Sobria, 1550 to 1572. 2. L'Arte de Godere Sanita Perfetta de LEONARDO LESSIO. 1563. 3. De la Longevite Humaine et de la Quantite de vie sur la Globe. Par F. FLOURENS, Membre de l'Academie Francaise, etc., etc., Paris, 1855. THERE are two things we chiefly wish for while we remain in this world-health, to make life enjoyable; and length of days, to make it lasting. To obtain both depends mainly upon our selves. We do not simply die, we usually kill ourselves. Our habits, our passions, our anxieties of body and mind-these shorten our lives, and prevent us from reaching the natural limit of human existence. battles ?" 3. Not to pass hastily from one extreme of living to another, but to change slowly and cautiously. 4. To eat plain and wholesome food. 5. To avoid too great variety, and the use of curious made dishes. 6. To proportion the quantity of food to the temperament, the age, and the strength of the eater, and to the kind of food he uses. 7. Not to allow the appetite for food and sensual desire is really the cause of the whole drink to regulate the quantity we take, as this difficulty. By these rules a sober life is to be led, and a perfect condition of health maintained. And the life thus led, though nominally a life of restraint and privation, yet carries with it many pleasurable comforts. "A sober life," says Lessius, "gives vigor to the senses, mitigates the passions, preserves the memory, strengthens the mind, protects from the evils of intemperance, makes both body and mind more free in their operations, and prolongs the period of our existence." But Cornaro has more fully sounded the praises of what he calls-"That divine sobriety which is grateful to God, friendly to nature, the daughter of reason, the sister of virtue, the companion of temperate living-modest, gentle, content with little, guided by rule and line in all its operations." The key to health and long life is sobriety of living. It is the fashion of the present day to restrict the term sobriety to moderation in the use of intoxicating liquors. Misery and crime and death we trace readily to the neglect of this species of sobriety. We do not hesitate to say of a drunkard that he has killed himself, but we rarely speak of over-eating as a serious or frequent shortening of life. Yet the food they eat causes to mankind at large more sleepless nights, more unhappy days, and more shortening of life, than all the liquors they consume. "Oh! miserable and unhappy Italy," wrote Cornaro, three centuries ago, "dost thou not see "From this sobriety," he says, "as from a that gluttony is killing every year more people root, spring life, health, cheerfulness, bodily inthan would perish in a season of most severe dustry, mental labor, and all those actions pestilence, or by the fire and sword of many which are worthy of a well-formed and wellA sober life implies moderation in all things. favor it. From it, like clouds from the sun, fly disciplined mind. Laws, divine and human, "It consists," says Cornaro, "in moderate eating, in moderate drinking, and in a moderate humors, distempers, fevers, griefs, and the perrepletions, indigestions, gluttonies, superfluities, enjoyment of all the pleasures of life. In keep-ils of death. Its beauty allures every noble heart, ing the mind moderately but constantly employ- its safety promises to all an agreeable and lasting ed, in cultivating the affections moderately, in preservation. Its happiness invites every one, avoiding extremes of heat and cold, and in with little disturbance, to the acquisition of its vicshunning excessive excitement either of body tories. And, finally, it promises to be a grateful and benignant guardian of life to both poor and And so Lessius, a follower and amplifier of rich, to male and female, to young and old; teachthe views of Cornaro, writes also in his Art of Enjoying Perfect Health. "By a sober life," ing to the rich, moderation to the poor, economy-to man self-restraint, and to woman modhe says, "I understand a moderate use of meat, esty: providing the old with a defence from death; and drink, such as accords with the tempera- and for the young, placing the hope of a long life ment and actual dispositions of the body, and on a foundation more firm and more secure." And still, as if he could not come to an end a life of order, of rule, and of temperance." of its praises, the eloquent old man-concludThen as the moderate use he speaks of implies ing this, his first Discourse, at the age of eightythe consumption of meat and drink, both in just three-begins anew in warmer words. "Sobrimeasure and of proper kinds, he adds to his definition of a sober life, the following seven rules for actually living such a life: or of mind." with the functions of the mind. A sober life is 1. Not to eat so much as will unfit the mind for its usual exertions. L'Arte de Godere Sanita Perfetta, 1653. ety purifies the senses, lightens the body, gives vivacity to the intellect, cheerfulness to the mind, strength to the memory, quickness to the movements, readiness and decision to the actions. By it the soul, relieved, as it were, from its terrestrial load, enjoys a large part of its natu ral liberty; the spirits (in the language of the| And we divide each again into an earlier and later times) move pleasantly through the arteries, the period of uncertain duration. We talk of later blood runs through the veins, a temperate and infancy, of early youth, of full manhood, of deagreeable warmth produces agreeable and tem-clining old age, without attaching any fixed or perate efforts; and, finally, all our powers, with definite ideas to these expressions. a most beautiful order, preserve a joyous and "I propose, however," says M. Flourens, in a grateful harmony. O most holy and innocent book which has recently awakened the attention sobriety," he concludes, "the only cooler of of all Paris-"I propose the following natural nature, gracious mother of human life, true divisions and natural durations for the whole life medicine of mind and body-how ought men of man :to praise thee, and to thank thee for thy cour- "The first ten years of life are infancy, properteous gifts!"* ly so called; the second ten is the period of For all these eulogies of Cornaro there is an boyhood; from twenty to thirty is the first undoubted substratum of truth and fact; and youth; from thirty to forty the second. The we are safe in conceding that, from the sober first manhood is from forty to fifty-five; the selife of Lessius and Cornaro, two main blessings cond from fifty-five to seventy. This period of are likely to flow-health, with its attendant manhood is the age of strength, the manly period comforts, and long life, with its continued en- of human life. From seventy to eighty-five is joyments. Let us leave the former for the pres- the first period of old age, and at eighty-five the ent, since health is a blessing which all have expe- second old age begins." These periods all shade rienced more or less, and all can judge of and insensibly into each other, so that, in an actual value. But we may usefully consider the old age to which this life is. to lead us. Now, in regard to this old age there are three things we naturally ask First, At what time of life does old age naturally begin, and how long does it naturally last? life, we can hardly tell where the one ends and the other begins. They vary in length, also, in different individuals, and most men now-a-days become old and die while they ought still to have been in the period of early manhood. The limits thus assigned by Flourens to the several periods of life are not wholly arbitrary, Second, Is this old age really worth having? like those we generally talk of; on the contrary, Is it worth living for? Will it repay us for the a more or less sound physiological reason is asself-restraint and self-denial which are necessary signed for each. Infancy proper ceases at ten to attain it? And years, because then the second toothing is comThird, Should we really reach and value it, pleted-boyhood at twenty, because then the how is it to be best nursed and upheld? bones cease to increase in length-and youth FIRST. The first of these is the most difficult extends to forty, because about that time the to answer. Up to the present time we have body ceases to increase in size. Enlargement only been able to hazard guesses, both as to of bulk after that period consists chiefly in the when old age begins, and when life naturally accumulation of fat. The real development of ends. What David puts into the mouth of the parts of the body has already ceased. InMoses we still generally receive as a fair expres- stead of increasing the strength and activity, sion of the truth regarding the length of human this latter growth weakens the body and retards life: "The days of our years are threescore its motions. Then, when growth has ceased, years and ten; and if by reason of strength they the body rests, rallies, and becomes invigorated. be fourscore years, yet is their strength, labor Like a fortress, with all its works complete, its and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly garrison in full numbers, and threatened with an away." And fixing the limit of life at seventy early siege, it repairs, arranges, disposes everyor eighty, we of course reckon old age to begin thing within itself. The new stores it daily a great many years earlier. receives are employed in fully equipping, in But physiological anatomy has recently come strengthening, in rebuilding and in maintaining to our aid, and professes now to give us definite every part in the greatest perfection and effiand precise views, in regard both to when old ciency. This period of internal invigoration age begins, and when the complete life of man lasts fifteen years, (that of the first manhood,) naturally ends. and it maintains itself for ten or fifteen years The life of the body naturally divides itself more, when old age begins. into two parts. During the first, the body in- And what marks the beginning of old age? creases in size and development; in the second, In youth and manhood we perform a usual daiit decreases or becomes less. The first half in- ly amount of physical and mental labor; but we cludes the two stages of infancy and youth-are able to do more. Let an emergency arise, the second half, those of manhood and decay. and we find within us a reserve of strength which These are the four periods or epochs of human enables us to accomplish far heavier labors; we life which are generally received and spoken of CORNARO, Discorso Primo. Psalm xc., verses 10-(a song of Moses.) double or triple our exertions, we accomplish the unusual work, and after a little rest we are as strong and hale as ever. Old age has come on when we can no longer do this, when the nat-land peasant-otherwise differing so much from ural 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 upon 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 mechold age so often prematurely entered. anism by which the number of our years is regulated." All this is true. The length of life depends on the essential constitution of our internal And, besides, old age is distinguished by this, that it brings with it a general weakening of the whole body. It is not the lungs, or the 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 Each, 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 conclusion— ery 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 size of all the parts of his body is not completed till the thirtieth year. The dog attains its full length in one year, and only in the second year completes its growth in bulk or size. Man, 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." "The man," says Buffon, "who does not die of accidental diseases, lives everywhere to ninety or a hundred years." This is the answer of experience-experience from the mouth of an eminent naturalist. 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- 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." able results. 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 : 8 40 Man grows for 20 years, and lives 90 or 100 The ox, The lion, The dog, 2 The cat, 11-2 25 15 to 20 10 to 12 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 The hare The guinea-pig, 7 months, 8 6 or 7 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. 66 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 remore." We might quote the praises which Cornaro lavishes on old age. But seeing him bear so joyously his many years, we almost identify him at ninety-five with old age in person, and feel as if he were only sounding the praises of the ancient Cornaro himself. gards the labors which every man owes to society; there are fewer enemies, or rather fewer envious persons who are capable of injuring us, because the counterpoise of merit is acknowledged by the public voice." The spirit increases in perfection,” says Cornaro, "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." 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 |