Chapter 74
Old age: growing old and the condition of the aged; its losses, wisdom and consolations; honour or neglect of the old.
325 passages · 116 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Old age is the last of the seasons through which every life must pass if it is not cut short. It covers the condition of the aged body and mind, the losses and gains that years bring, the approach of death, and the way families and states treat those who have outlived their strength. It is a great idea for these books because nearly every one of them meets it. Homer and the Psalms take it up, and so do the Buddhist scriptures, Shakespeare and Wordsworth. One of the collection’s classical treatises, Cicero’s dialogue in which the aged Cato answers the accusers of old age, is devoted wholly to it. Around that defence the other authors gather, some in agreement and some in sharp dissent, so that the question whether growing old is an evil, a fulfilment, or merely a fact is argued here across three thousand years.
The first question is what old age is. One answer treats it as nature’s own last act, common to all and folly to resent. Odysseus speaks of old age and death as visitors that come to all mankind1. Cato holds that complaint against it is senseless, since nature ordains it2. Marcus Aurelius counts gray hairs among the natural operations of life, like teething or death itself, to be awaited calmly3. He adds that each stage of life is a kind of death, and none of them was feared4. Against this stands a darker tradition that names age a disease. The Buddhist writings set old age beside birth, sickness and death as the subjects of misery from which release is sought5,6,7. Manzoni’s curate quotes the maxim that old age is itself a sickness, one that plague and villains cannot match8. Rousseau calls it the one natural ill human help cannot relieve9,10. He adds that dotage strips a man of everything he has acquired and sinks him below the beasts, the price of human perfectibility11. Montaigne finds decline a harder death than death, since nature takes our vigour by degrees too slow to notice12. Emerson calls age the one disease, yet holds that hope and truth can smooth its wrinkles13.
The ages of a single life have long served as a figure for larger things. Bacon likens the ages of states and of learning to a man’s, ending in a dry, exhausted old age14. Hugo reads humanity’s history as childhood, manhood and old age15,16. In his decline, he says, civilization falls into a second childhood, melancholy unlike the first17. Pascal turns the figure against reverence for antiquity: if mankind is one man, its true old age is the present, and the moderns are the ancients18. Age also need not keep to the calendar. Penelope observes that men age quickly in misery19. Byron’s Manfred is furrowed by anguish rather than years20, and he speaks of those who grow old in youth21. Webster’s Bosola reads care in the Duchess’s early gray hairs22. The opposite fantasy appears in Jonson’s Mammon, whose elixir would restore an eighty-year-old to childhood23. In Euripides the god’s revel renews the strength of Cadmus and Teiresias for a moment24.
The portraits of decay are many and unsparing. Hamlet recites to Polonius the satirist’s list of grey beards, rheumy eyes and weak hams25. Priam’s armour is a useless aid to his decayed limbs26. Hrothgar warns Beowulf that sickness, dimming eyes and odious age will diminish him27. Milton’s Michael tells Adam that strength and beauty will wither into dulled senses and melancholy, and bids him accept it28. Cowper finds Mary still lovely through failing sight and indistinct speech29. Wordsworth’s leech-gatherer, bent double, keeps a stately speech and bright eyes30. The mind fails too. Rosencrantz repeats that an old man is twice a child31. Lear wakes to call himself a foolish fond old man32.
Sorrow and solitude follow. Laertes withdraws to his upland plot and prays for death33,34. Evander begs to die rather than outlive Pallas35. The psalmist prays not to be cast off when strength fails36. Burns’s aged bard is a stranger among men, having outlived all who shared his sorrows37. Burke, desolate and infirm, mourns the friends whose society once made life happy38,39. Wordsworth’s Matthew grieves less for what age takes than for what it leaves behind40. Tennyson’s worn mariners fear returning home as strange ghosts among inheriting sons41. Mill records his father’s remark that he had never known a happy old man, save those who could relive life through the pleasures of the young42.
Whether age brings wisdom is the most openly disputed question. Job holds that wisdom is with the aged43, and Eliphaz appeals to gray-headed men on his side44. Cicero assigns prudence to age as rashness to youth, and he maintains that memory fails only where it is unexercised45. More’s Utopians send three wise old men from each city to the common council46. Rousseau notes that early societies chose elders for their deliberateness47. Hume grounds the claim in experience: the aged husbandman knows nature’s regularities better than the beginner48. Burke defends the dignity of age against juvenile politicians49. Yet within the same books the doubt is sharp. Elihu waited for years to speak and found that the spirit, not age, gives understanding50. The psalmist claims more understanding than the ancients because he keeps God’s precepts51. Franklin’s grave old Samuel Mickle is a croaker whose prophecies of ruin fail52. Lowell argues that an elderly man should doubt his opinions most53. Bacon takes a middle course: age excels in counsel but is slow and cautious, and the two ages should be joined in business54. Age, he adds, gains in understanding but not in will and affections55. Goethe’s pastor would teach each age the worth of the other56.
Cicero’s treatise remains the centre of the defence. Cato names four charges: that age withdraws from action, weakens the body, removes pleasure, and stands near death57. To the first he answers that elders serve by counsel and character58. Solon learned in age, old farmers plant for posterity59, and Cato himself at eighty-four is still active in Senate and forum60. Farming, he adds, keeps old age pleasant61,62. To the second he answers that each age has its proper gift, and that exercise and temperance preserve vigour63. Age is to be fought like illness, and life ebbs gradually, like a lamp going out64,65. To the third he answers that release from desire is age’s highest praise66. Appetite for conversation grows as appetite for food declines67, and the soul freed from passion turns to study68. Peevishness and avarice, finally, are faults of character, not of years69,70. Pliny’s Spurinna at seventy-eight is the living proof71,72. Dryden’s translation of Virgil, finished amid want and sickness, is a later instance73,74. Tennyson’s Ulysses carries the claim into the moderns: old age still has its honour and its toil75.
Not all agree that age’s vices belong to character alone. Confucius warns that in age, when strength is broken, the gentleman must guard against greed76. Bacon lists old men among the envious77. Penn observes that the old hoard in inverse proportion to the time left them to spend78. Browne turns the matter further: age does not cure vice but hardens it, and sins multiply with years79. Carlyle says the mind sets like iron80. Bunyan’s Honest argues that the weakening of desire in age is a decay of nature mistaken for grace81,82. Cicero had praised that same weakening as freedom. Shelley’s Cenci shows the darkest version, a jaded appetite seeking crimes to sharpen it83.
Death is age’s horizon. Socrates thinks a man of his years should not repine, though Crito notes that many old men do84. Cicero offers the image of ripe fruit falling and a ship reaching port85. Satiety of life, he says, brings the ripe time86, and he would not relive his youth87. Marcus Aurelius holds that the longest life ends in the same condition as the shortest88. Edgar’s “Ripeness is all” counsels old Gloucester to endure89. The Buddhist writings make old age Death’s first messenger, a warning to act nobly while there is time90,91. Herrick draws the opposite moral and urges seizing youth because we shall grow old apace and die92. Plutarch casts an irony on Cicero himself, carried about in age, hiding from a death nature had already made near93. Pliny’s crippled Tullus clings to life all the same94. The Norsemen, Emerson reports, thought dying of old age a mark of ill condition95.
The consolations of age vary with the books that offer them. Homer’s ideal is a smooth old age in one’s halls among prosperous people, as Zeus granted Nestor96 and Teiresias promises Odysseus97. The psalmist sees the righteous bearing fruit in age, still green98. Marcus Aurelius finds a comeliness in old men and women that others miss99. Manzoni’s Cardinal Federigo carries grey locks with serene dignity100. Emerson finds that moral character lends wrinkles splendour101. Browning goes furthest: the best is yet to be, and youth was made for age102. Children are a hope in decline. Wordsworth’s Michael finds forward-looking thoughts in the son of his old age103, and passes his legacy on to him104. Burns wishes a friend grandchildren to cuddle his grey hairs105.
Lastly, these authors ask how the old are treated. Job remembers when the aged rose for him and mourns the loss of that standing106. Cicero praises Sparta, where age was honoured, over Athens107. More’s Utopians serve the old first at table108, and they forbid a man to cast off a wife grown old, calling age a sickness that demands kindness109. The Koran commands humility and gentleness toward aged parents110. The literature of neglect is nonetheless long. Laertes toils in filthy rags, when the aged should lie soft and fed111,112. Lear is the supreme case: Edmund’s forged letter calls aged rule a tyranny113. Goneril says old fools are babes again114, and the daughters shut their father out into the storm115,116. Albany judges that even a bear would have respected such a gracious aged man117. Darwin reports that Fuegian old women are killed in famine before the dogs118. Manzoni shows an old man beaten by a mob119. Poverty compounds all this. More laments labourers worn out and repaid with a miserable death120. Harrison lists the aged among the “poor by impotence” whom parishes must relieve121. Wordsworth’s Simon Lee is overwhelmed with gratitude for small help122. Dana sees old sailors break down under labour too hard for them123.
The authors part less over the facts than over their weight. All agree that the body fails and that death draws near. Cicero and the Stoics hold that philosophy can make age delightful. The Buddhist writings, Montaigne and Rousseau find no remedy within the world for its misery. Wordsworth’s old men stand between: they suffer real decay and yet endure with dignity124. The question of wisdom stays open, since Job and Elihu are found in the same book. So does the question whether the calm of age is virtue or only exhaustion, on which Cicero and Bunyan read the same weakening of desire in opposite ways. What remains constant from Homer to the moderns is the judgment that a society reveals its character in how it treats those who can no longer serve it.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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