FOOTNOTES
[1] In the preceding paragraphs I have incorporated, with minor changes, parts of my anonymous article on “Old Age” in the Atlantic Monthly of January, 1921, with the kind permission of the editor.
[2] Scientific American, March 25, 1905.
[3] See Pop. Sci. Mo., July, 1902.
[4] “Age and Eminence,” Pop. Sci. Mo., vol. 66, 1904–05, p. 538.
[5] The Age of Mental Virility, The Century Co., 1908.
[6] “What the World Might Have Missed,” Century, 1908, p. 113, et seq.
[7] “The Age Limit,” Living Age, 1914, p. 214.
[8] “The Old Folks and the War,” Living Age, 1918.
[9] The Psychology of Senescence, Master’s Thesis, Clark University, Worcester, Mass., 1912.
[10] P. Birukoff, Leo Tolstoy, His Life and Work. London, 1906; A. Maude, The Life of Tolstoy, London, 1908.
[11] W. Wundt, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Leipzig, 1901; K. Lasswitz, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Stuttgart, 1896; G. S. Hall, Founders of Modern Psychology, New York, 1907.
[12] See J. Croley, The Love Life of Auguste Comte, Modern Thinker, 2d ed., 1870; also J. Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism, London, 1907, 5th ed.; also A. Poey, The Three Mental Crises of Auguste Comte, Modern Thinker, 2d ed., London, 1870.
[13] G. Trobridge, Emanuel Swedenborg, His Life, Teachings, and Influence, London, 1911; also B. White and B. Barrett, Life and Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, 1876; also J. Wilkinson, Emanuel Swedenborg, a Biography, Boston, 1849. See also Emerson’s essay.
[14] See Karl Abraham’s work of this title (Leipzig, 1911), based on Seravia’s biography.
[15] J. Sadger, Aus dem Liebeslebens Nicolaus Lenaus, Leipzig, 1909, 96 p. See also his biography by B. E. Castle.
[16] J. Sadger in Grenzfragen des Nerven und Seelenlebens, 1910, pp. 5–63.
[17] G. Vorberg, Guy de Maupassant’s Krankheit, 1908, 27 p.
[18] Otto Kaus, Schriften des Vereins freie psychoanalytische Forschung, No. 2, 1912, 81 p.
[19] P. J. Moebius, Ueber Scheffel’s Krankheit, 1907, p. 40.
[20] E. T. Cook, Life of John Ruskin, London, 1911, vol. ii, p. 19.
[21] Frau Foerster-Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche.
[22] “On Growing Old,” Atlan., 1915, p. 803.
[23] “Concerning Age,” Sci. Amer. Sup., Nov. 15, 1919.
[24] “The Moral and Religious Psychology of Late Senescence,” Biblical World, 1918, p. 75.
[25] The Dangerous Age, London, 1912.
[26] See W. L. Comfort’s Midstream for the same crisis in men (1914).
[27] The Salvaging of Civilization: The Probable Future of Mankind, New York, 1921. 199 p.
[28] The Old World in the New, 1914, p. 27.
[29] The Longevity of Birds.
[30] On the Comparative Longevity of Man and Animals, 1870.
[31] Men of the Old Stone Age, New York, 1915, p. 40.
[32] See my “What We Owe to the Tree-life of Our Ape-like Ancestors,” Ped. Sem., 23:94–116, 1916.
[33] Adolescence, Ch. XIII, “Savage Pubic Initiations,” etc.
[34] Primitive Folk, p. 42.
[35] The American Indian, p. 177.
[36] Among the Eskimos of Labrador, p. 111.
[37] “Old Age and Death,” Am. Jour. Psychol., October, 1896.
[38] With a Prehistoric People: The Akikuyu of British East Africa, p. 157.
[39] Savage Man in Central Africa, p. 176.
[40] The Life of a South-African Tribe, p. 131.
[41] “Physiological and Medical Observations on the Indians of Southwest United States and Mexico,” Bureau Amer. Ethnol., Bull. 34.
[42] Das Weib in der Natur- und Völkerkunde, Chap. 74.
[43] On Centenarians and the Duration of the Human Race, 1899.
[44] A few even recent writers have gone to the extreme of doubting the authenticity of every record of human life beyond a century, although Young seems to have demonstrated it in his twenty-two annuitants. All such contentions are only doctrinnaire. Lives exceptionally prolonged may be abnormal, like dwarfs and giants, and extreme skepticism here has hardly more justification than extreme credulity. In 1799 James Easton believed he had demonstrated that 712 persons between the years A.D. 66 and the above date had attained a century or upward. He found three whom he thought had lived between 170 and 175 years; two who had lived 160 to 170; three, 150–160; seven, 140–150; twenty-six, 130–140; eighty-four, 120–130; and thirteen hundred and ten, 100–110. Even Babbage assumed 150 as the limit of age in his abstract tables based upon seventeen hundred and fifty-one persons who had attained 100 or more. A. Haller (1766) accepted the age of Parr and Jenkins and is quite uncritical, saying that over one thousand men have lived to be 100–110, and twenty-five have lived to between 130–140. He even accepts Pliny’s story of a man who lived to be 300, and another 340 years. Hufeland seems to approve the traditional 157 years of Epimenides, 108 of Gorgias, 139 of Democritus, 100 of Zeno, 105 of St. Anthony, and credited J. Effingham in Cornwall with 144 years. W. J. Thoms (Human Longevity: Its Facts and Its Fictions, 1873) is skeptical of great longevities and found no sure case of centenarians in any noble family. J. Pinney (1856) went to the limit of credulity, believing that there were three eras in which men lived to 900, 450, and 70 respectively. G. C. Lewis thinks there is no authentic record of a life exceeding 100 years. W. Farr in 1871 said that in 1821 there were 216 centenarians in England; in 1841, 249; 1851, 215; 1861, 201; 1871, 160, making a total of 1,041, of whom 716 were females. Walford (in his Insurance Guide and Handbook) compiled a list of 218 centenarians from what he deemed authentic sources, and J. B. Bailey in 1888 in his Modern Methuselahs discussed the question; while Humphry (1889) in his nine hundred returns, found 52 centenarians, 36 of whom were women.
[45] “The days of our years are three-score years and ten, and if by reason of strength they may be four-score years, yet is there strength, labor, and sorrow for it is cut off and we fly away.”
[46] Oriental Studies, Boston, 1894.
[47] Das Lebensalter in der Jüdischen Literatur, 1875.
[48] M. D. Conway, The Wandering Jew, 1881, and T. Kappstein, Ahesver in der Weltpoesie, 1906.
[49] Greek Life and Thought, London, 1896.
[50] E. Bard, in Chinese Life in Town and Country, p. 39, says, “In the worship of ancestors we have the keystone to the arch of the social structure of this strange country [China]. Hundreds of millions of living Chinese are bound to thousands of millions of dead ones. The cult induces parents to marry off their children almost before maturity so that they should have offspring to make their lives after death pleasant by means of worship and oblations. No matter how great the squalor, there must be many children in the family,” etc. “Funeral expenses for parents are the most sacred of all obligations, and it is not uncommon for the living to sell their estates to the very last foot and often their houses to be able to render proper homage to the deceased.” Presents of coffins, elaborate ones, are often very common. The sons of a deceased parent must at least wear mourning for three years, though this has been lately reduced to twenty-seven months. The expenses of elaborate funerals are enormous.
[51] Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece from Homer to Menander, p. 34.
[52] The Greek Genius and Its Meaning to Us, 1912.
[53] Republic, 329.
[54] Talks with Athenian Youth, tr. anon., New York, 1893, 178 p.
[55] Aristotle on Youth and Old Age, Life and Death and Respiration, tr. by Ogle, London, 1897, 135 p.
[56] Book II, Chap. 13.
[57] Ibid., Book I, Chap. 5.
[58] See Black’s Law Dictionary, 2d ed., 1910.
[59] Cicero, Cato Major or Old Age, tr. by Benjamin Franklin.
[60] “Woman as Witch” in his Chances of Death, 1897, vol. 2, pp. 1–50.
[61] History of Witchcraft in England, 1557–1718, p. 114.
[62] Notes on Witchcraft, Amer. Antiquarian Society.
[63] The New Stone Age in Northern Europe. New York, Scribner, 1921.
[64] “Old Age and Death.” Amer. Jour. Psychol., Oct., 1896, vol. 8, pp. 67–122.
[65] Die Hygiene des Lebensalters.
[66] “Four Types of Protestants: A Comparative Study in the Psychology of Religion,” Jour. of Relig. Psychol., Nov., 1908, vol. 3, pp. 165–209.
[67] The Vedanta Philosophy, London, 1914, p. 16 et seq.
[68] R. H. Lowie, Primitive Society, 1920.
[69] Altersklassen und Männerbünde, 1902.
[70] Atlantic Monthly, 1915, p. 385.
[71] See Le Bon: The World in Revolt, 1921.
[72] The Art of Living Long, tr. 1914, 207 p.
[73] History of Life and Death.
[74] Spectator, Oct. 17, 1711.
[75] The Anatomy of Melancholy.
[76] Gulliver’s Travels, Chap. X.
[77] After Noontide, Boston, 1883, 168 p.
[78] Old People, Boston, 1909, 236 p.
[79] Three-score and Ten. Dedicated to Chauncey Depew.
[80] The Secret of Long Life, London, 1871, 146 p.
[81] Masters of Old Age, Milwaukee, 1915, 280 p.
[82] “When Is Man Immortal?” Technical World, March, 1914.
[83] “A Physical Marvel at Seventy-three,” Amer. Mag., Dec., 1917.
[84] Old Age: Its Cause and Preservation, The story of an old body and face made young, New York, 1912, 309 p.
[85] “Young at Seventy,” Am. Rev. of Revs., vol. 57, p. 415.
[86] The Secret of a Much Longer Life and More Pleasure in Living It, 1906.
[87] “Why I am Well at Eighty,” Ladies Home J., April, 1919.
[88] “How I Came to Be Doing More Work at Seventy-Seven than at Forty-Seven,” Ibid.
[89] “Viewpoint of a Sexagenarian Contributor,” Unpartizan Rev., July, 1920.
[90] James M. Ludlow, Along the Friendly Way, Reminiscences and Impressions, New York, 1919, 362 p.
[91] “Confessions of a Septuagenarian Contributor,” Unpartizan Rev., July, 1920.
[92] Old Age.
[93] The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Chap. VII, and also in Over the Teacups, p. 26, et seq.
[94] Old Age and Immortality, 1893.
[95] “Eighty Years and After,” Harper’s, 1919, p. 21.
[96] “De Senectute,” Atlantic, 1913, p. 163.
[97] “I Refuse to Grow Old,” Amer. Mag., Sept., 1919.
[98] “The Passing of Old Age,” Independent, Jan., 1914.
[99] “At Seventy-Three and Beyond,” Atlan., 1914, p. 123.
[100] The Pursuit of Happiness, 1893.
[101] The Individual: A Study of Life and Death, 1910, especially Chap. 13, “The Period of Old Age.”
[102] The Fixed Period, New York, 1881.
[103] The Man in the Street, 1907, 405 p.
[104] Richard le Gallienne, “Not Growing Old,” Harper’s, 1921.
[105] “Young and Old,” Nineteenth Century, June, 1920.
[106] Worry and Old Age, 1909, Chap. 14.
[107] London, 1908.
[108] Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch, New York, 1921, 400 p.
[109] See my Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology, New York, 1917, Chap. XI, p. 694, et seq.
[110] See the end of the last chapter.
[111] Ibid.
[112] By permission of, and special arrangement with, Doubleday, Page & Co.
[113] By permission of, and special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Co.
[114] From Webb’s New Dictionary of Statistics, 1911, p. 471.
[115] A Discussion of Age Statistics, Rept. 13, Bull. Bur. Census, 1904.
[116] Life Insurance, N. Y., 1915.
[117] World Almanac, 1921, p. 438.
[118] Report of a Special Inquiry Relative to Aged and Dependent Persons in Massachusetts, 1915.
[119] The Elements of Vital Statistics, Lond., 1909, 326 pp.
[120] “Death Rate and Expectation of Life,” Science, vol. 43, 1916.
[121] Table of Mortality Statistics.
[122] “The Influence of Vital Statistics on Longevity.” Address at the sixth annual meeting of the Association of American Life Insurance Presidents, Dec., 1912.
[123] The Duration of Life and Conditions Associated with Longevity: A study of the Hyde genealogy (dealing with 8,797 persons) ending, for the most part, with the year 1825.
[124] “Who Shall Inherit Long Life?” Nat. Geog. Mag., June, 1919.
[125] Social Adjustment, New York, 1911.
[126] “Report on National Vitality,” Bulletin of the Committee of One Hundred on National Health, July, 1909, No. 30.
[127] How to Live, New York, 1915, Section 7.
[128] “The Extension of Human Life,” Sci. Am. Sup., May 4, 1916.
[129] Social Insurance, New York, 1913, Chap. 12, “The Old Man’s Problem in Modern Industry.”
[130] “The Biology of Death,” Sci. Mo., March-Sept, 1921, incl.
[131] Old Age Pensions: Their actual working results in the United Kingdom, London, 1915, 196 pp.
[132] Edith Sellers, “From the Old Age Pensioners’ Standpoint,” Nineteenth Century, Jan., 1920.
[133] Report of the Massachusetts Commission on Old Age Pensions, Annuities and Insurance, Jan., 1910, 409 pp.
[134] “Canadian Government Annuities,” Polit. Sci. Quar., 1915, p. 425 et seq.
[135] Old Age Poverty in Greenwich Village, 1915, 105 pp.
[136] Joseph Swain, “State Pension Systems for Public School Teachers,” Bureau of Education Bull., 1916.
[137] “Report on Teachers’ Pensions,” N. E. A. Proc., 1919, vol. 57, p. 145 et seq.
[138] See Paul Studensky, Teachers’ Pension Systems in the United States, New York, 1920, and the companion volume of Lewis Meriam, entitled Principles Governing the Retirement of Public Employees, New York, 1918.
[139] “Problem of Poverty and Pensions in Old Age,” Amer. J. Soc., vol. xiv, 1908–9, p. 282 et seq.
[140] See Spender, Treatise on State Pensions in Old Age, London, 1892; G. Drage, The Problems of the Aged Poor, London, 1895, 375 pp.; Metcalf, Universal Old Age Pensions, London, 1899, 200 pp.; Booth, Pauperism and the Endowments of Old Age, New York, 1906. For extended inquiries see The Report of the Royal Commission on Old Age Pensions by the Commonwealth of Australia, 1906; also, William Sutherland, Old Age Pensions in Theory and Practice, London, 1907.
[141] Old Age Dependency in the United States, New York, 1912, 361 pp. a masterly book.
[142] The Survey, vol. 31, 1914–15, p. 483.
[143] Clinical Lectures on Senile and Chronic Diseases, Lond., 1881, Lecture 1.
[144] “Old Age and the Changes Incident to it,” Brit. Med. J., March 9, 1885.
[145] “Old Age,” Brit. Med., Oct 2, 1891.
[146] “Senility, Premature Senility, and Longevity,” Med. Jour., New York, July 10, 1915.
[147] “Nature of Old Age and of Cancer,” Brit. Med. J., Dec. 27, 1913.
[148] “Degeneration, Senescence, and New Growth,” J. Med. Research, vol. 33, 1918, p. 485.
[149] The New Pathology of Syphilis, Harvey Lectures 1917–19, p. 67.
[150] “Die Psychosen des Rückbildungs- und Greisenalters,” Handbuch der Psychiatrie, Spezieller Teil, 5 Abteilung, Leipzig, 1912.
[151] “Senile Mentality,” Inter. Clin., vol. 4, 1916, p. 48.
[152] “Some Clinical Indications of Senility,” Inter. Clin., vol. 2, 1914, p. 93.
[153] Old Age: Its Care and Treatment in Health and Disease, London, 1913, 312 pp.
[154] Old Age Deferred: The Causes of Old Age and Its Postponement by Hygienic and Therapeutic Measures, Philadelphia, 1911, 572 pp.
[155] “The Medical Significance of Old Age,” Med. Press and Circ., London, May 20, 1914.
[156] “The Delay of Old Age and the Alleviation of Senility,” Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., July 15, 1905.
[157] “Centenarians and Nonagenarians,” Med. Rec., Feb. 15, 1913.
[158] “Ancient and Modern Theories of Age,” Maryland Med. Jour., vol. 49, Feb., 1906.
[159] Fads of on Old Physician (Sequel to Plea for a Simpler Life), London, 1897.
[160] “The Conservation of Energy in Those of Advancing Years,” Pop. Sci. Mo., 1903.
[161] “Evidences of Full Maturity and Early Decline,” Pop. Sci. Mo., 1917, p. 411.
[162] Über Altern und Sterben, Wien, 1913, 33 pp.
[163] See his articles in Sci. Mo., March-Sept., 1921.
[164] The Germ Plasm, 1893, p. 198 et seq.
[165] See his Essays Upon Heredity and Other Biological Problems, vol. i, 1889, especially Chaps. I, “The Duration of Life,” and III, “Life and Death.”
[166] In his able and brilliant discussion on “The Biology of Death,” Scientific Monthly, March, 1921, p. 202.
[167] American Handbook of Physiology, 1897, p. 883.
[168] Mildly challenging Weismann’s non-inherited ability of acquired qualities is Irving Fisher’s “Impending Problems of Eugenics,” Sci. Mo., Sept., 1921.
[169] The Nature of Man, 1904, 309 pp. and The Prolongation of Life, 1907, 343 pp.
[170] See a valuable but unprinted thesis of W. T. Sanger, a pupil of mine, “The Study of Senescence,” Clark University, 1915.
[171] In her fascinating life of her husband, “Life of Elie Metchnikoff,” (1920) the widow of Metchnikoff describes him in his last days as anxious “that his end, which seemed premature at first sight, did not contradict his theories but had deep causes, such as heredity, and the belated introduction of a rational diet, which he began to follow only at fifty-three.” He was very anxious that his example of serenity in the face of death should be encouraging and comforting. He had no illusions and knew for a long time that he was living only from day to day. He speculated whether the end would come to-day or to-morrow and had several specific “death sensations,” pledging his wife to hold his hand when the end came. He was interested in the completion of her biography of him, begged for enough pantopon to bring an eternal sleep, directed his friend how to perform his autopsy and what to look for in the different organs, provided for his cremation and the final disposition of his ashes, etc. All was done as he wished, with no funeral and no speeches, flowers, or invocations, and his ashes now lie in an urn, as he directed, in the library of the Pasteur Institute.
[172] The Problem of Age, Growth, and Death; A study of Cytomorphosis, 1908, 280 pp.
[173] See his monumental textbook, A Laboratory Textbook of Embryology, 1903, 380 pp.
[174] Senescence and Rejuvenescence, 1915, 481 pp.
[175] For our purpose his views are best summed up in his The Organism as a Whole from a Physiochemical Viewpoint, 1916, 379 pp. See more specifically his “Natural Death and Duration of Life,” Science, 1919, p. 578 et seq.
[176] Prof. W. J. V. Osterhout, “On the Nature of Life and Death,” Science, April 15, 1921, thinks that we can measure by quantitative methods such fundamental conceptions as vitality, injury, recovery, and death, by electrical resistance, which, he thinks, is an excellent index of what is normal condition. He believes that this holds for both plants and animals, for all agents known to be injurious change the electrical resistance at once. He also thinks this resistance proportional to a substance he believes he found and decomposed by a series of consecutive reactions and that on this basis we can write an equation that permits us to predict the course of the death process under various conditions, so that we can say that at a certain stage it is one-fourth or one-half completed. Stated chemically, the normal life process consists of a series of reactions in which a substance O is broken down into S, and this in turn breaks down into A, M, B, and so on. “Under normal conditions M is formed as readily as it is decomposed and this results in a constant condition of the electrical resistance and other properties of the cell. When, however, conditions are changed so that M is decomposed more rapidly than it is formed, the electrical resistance decreases” and other properties are simultaneously altered. Thus death results from a disturbance in the relative rates of the reactions that constantly go on.
[177] Sci. Mo., Aug., 1921.
[178] Sci. Mo., Apr., 1921.
[179] Genevieve Grandcourt, “The Immortality of Tissues: Its Bearing on the Study of Old Age,” Sci. Am., Oct. 20, 1912. Also “What is Old Age?: Carrel’s Research on the Mechanism of Physical Growth,” Sci. Am., Nov. 23, 1918.
C. Pozzi, “Vie Manifestée Permanente de La Tissue,” La Preusse Médicale, p. 532.
Alexis Carrel, “Present Condition of a Strain of Connective Tissue Twenty-eight Months Old,” Jour. Exper. Med., July 1, 1914, and “Contributions to the Study of the Mechanism of the Growth of Connective Tissue,” Jour. Exper. Med., Sept., 1913. See also Science, vol. 36, 1912, p. 789.
[180] “Geschlechtstrieb und echt sekundäre Geschlechtsmerkmale als Folge der Innersekretorischen Funktion der Keimdrüsen,” Zeit. f. Physiologie, Sept., 1910.
[181] “Pubertätsdrüsen und Zwitterbildung,” Archiv. f. Entwicklung der Organismen, vol. 42, 1916, pp. 307–332.
[182] “Erhöhte Wirkungen der inneren Sekretion bei Hypertrophie der Pubertätsdrüsen,” Archiv. f. Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen, vol. 42, 1916, pp. 490–507.
[183] “Klima und Mannbarkeit,” Archiv. f. Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen, vol. 46, 1920, p. 391.
[184] “Verjüngung durch Experimentelle Neubelebung der alternden Pubertäts Drüse,” Archiv. f. Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen, vol. 46, 1920, Part 4.
[185] “Steinach’s Forschungen über Entwicklung, Beherrschung, und Wandlung der Pubertät,” Ergebnisse der Inneren Medizin und Kinderheilkunde, 1919, vol. 17, pp. 295–398.
[186] “Eugene Steinach’s Work on Rejuvenation,” N. Y. Med. J., vol. 112, 1920, p. 612.
[187] “Steinach’s Rejuvenation Operation,” Central. f. Chirurgie, Sept. 11, 1920.
[188] “Further Observations on Sex-Gland Implantation” Jour. Am. Med. Assn., vol. 72, 1919, p. 396.
[189] H. E. Goodale of the Massachusetts Experiment Station, Amherst, says (Science, Oct. 23, 1914, p. 594.): “A brown Leghorn male was castrated completely when twenty-four days of age, and the ovaries from two brood sisters, cut in several pieces, were placed beneath the skin and also in the abdominal cavity. At the date of writing the bird is as obviously female as its brood sisters. Skilled poultrymen have called it a pullet. While it has all the female characteristics, there can be little doubt, from the scars still visible as well as other things, that it was a male.” It is not likely that its peculiar individuality was feminized owing to constitutional condition. The author believes it was feminized by the implanted ovaries in similar fashion to the rats and guinea pigs of Steinach.
[190] Life: A Study of the Means of Restoring Vital Energy and Prolonging Life, New York, 1920, 160 p.
[191] The Glands Regulating Personality: A study of the glands of internal secretion in relation to the types of human nature. New York, MacMillan, 1921. 300 p.
[192] Book X, Epigram 23 D.
[193] Spoon River Anthology.
[194] Morale: The Supreme Standard of Life and Conduct, New York, D. Appleton Co., 1920. 376 pp.
[195] Belief in God and Immortality: A Psychological, Anthropological, and Statistical Study, Boston, 1906.
[196] See my Adolescence, vol. ii, p. 113 et seq.
[197] “The Psychology of the Teacher,” Ped. Sem., vol. 24, p. 531 et seq.
[198] See Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, sec. 3.
[199] Monologen.
[200] Ethics, Book II, Chaps. 3 and 6 and Book IV, Chap. 3.
[201] In the last few paragraphs I have, thanks to the courtesy of the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, freely used material from my anonymous article on “Old Age” in the January, 1921, number.
[202] The World in Revolt, New York, 1921, 256 pp.
[203] See my Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology, Chapters VII and XI.
[204] Am. J. Psychology, vol. 8, p. 67 et seq.
[205] “A Study of Fears,” Am. J. Psy., vol. 8, pp. 147–249; see also Street, “A Genetic Study of Immortality,” Ped. Sem., vol. 6, p. 167 et seq.
[206] L. Proal, L’éducation et le suicide des enfants, Paris, 1907, p. 204; G. Budde, Schülerselbstmorde, Hanover, 1908, p. 59; E. Neter, Der Selbstmord im kindlichen und jugendlichen Alter, 1910, p. 28; L. Gurlitt, Schülerselbstmorde, n. d., p. 59; Baer, Der Selbstmord im Kindesalter, Liepzig, 1901, p. 85; Eickhoff, “Die Zunahme der Schülerselbstmorde an den höheren Schulen,” Zts. f. d. evangel. Religionsunter, an höheren Lehranstalten, 1909, vol. 4; Eulenberg, “Schülerselbstmorde” in Der Saemann, 1909, vol. 5, p. 30; Gebhard, “Über die Schülerselbstmorde,” Monatss. f. höhere Schulen, 1909, vols. 3 and 4, p. 24; Wehnert, Schülerselbstmorde, Hamburg, 1908, p. 81.
[207] Mersey “La Tanatophilie dans la famille des Hapsbourg,” Rev. d. Psychiatr. Nr. 12, 1912, p. 493, describes the strange case of love of death in the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and also Charles V. The former, after the death of her husband, Philip the Beautiful, whom she loved with a consuming jealousy, had his body embalmed and only with great difficulty could she leave the coffin where it lay. Sometimes she had it open for a time to kiss the bare corpse and did so with the greatest passion. This state had periods of remission and exacerbation. The history of Charles, too, can be paralleled in many modern instances, while dreams show us still more clearly how necrophilic man can be.
Witry says that from his own practice he believes thanatophobiacs are almost always from the professional or upper middle classes, those from the lower classes meeting death with more stoicism than those of the upper. Catholics, he says, have little fear of death. Thanatophobes are usually neuropaths of degenerate heredity. One of his cases, a girl of 18, was suddenly seized by a violent fear that she was to die within an hour. She was put to sleep by suggestion and woke up normal. A woman teacher of 49 had three acute attacks, cured by suggestion. A middle-aged physician, after being drunk, had acute fear of death and Hell, which yielded to medical treatment. Old priests, we are told, are especially subject to it if neuropathic or “scrupuleux.” Some feel it acutely when, after fighting a long reluctance to do so, they have compelled themselves to make a will.
Ferrari, “La peur de la morte,” Rev. Scient., 1896, vol. 5, p. 59, describes several cases of tolerably healthy people who have had sudden premonitions of death, with acute fear, and who have shortly thereafter died, some of them from no ascertainable cause. Hence he raises the question whether an obsession of death can be so strong as to cause it.
Fiessinger gives a case, which he thinks directly due to the symptoms of angina pectoris, and discusses whether patients should be told their disease and its gravity, in view of this possible phobia.
Ferrero, “La crainte de la morte,” Rev. Scient., 1895, vol. 3, p. 361, thinks the natural man has little fear or thought of death and its representations in art and religion are not painful, on account of the sustaining influences of our organic sensations. Still, the thought of death does have much influence upon our ideas, and to some extent our sentiments. The mathematical chances of death plays a small rôle in affecting the choice of professions. It is only the prospect of impending death that shocks. Chronic invalids have little fear but only hope for life, for example, consumptives, while to some, for example, Indian widows, lovers, it is attractive. Hence he thinks it normally indifferent and sometimes agreeable but becomes an object of fear only by association.
Levy, “Die agoraphobie,” Wien. allg. medizin. Zeitung, 1911, nr. 10, gives a case of an agoraphobia that was rooted in a very distinct dread of death by a special disease. A Dubois psychotherapeutic conversation, which proved the fallacy of its grounds and to which the patient attended, although with great effort, did not quiet but only increased excitement. Excitement and exhaustion were the chief symptoms and the case yielded only to isolation and rest.
[208] A striking illustration of this comes to me, as I write, in a popular song with lugubrious music that many of my young friends persist in singing and humming as if haunted by it.
Some Sweet Day
Did you ever think as the hearse rolled by
That some day or other you must die?
In an old churchyard, in a tiny lot,
Your bones will wither and then they’ll rot.
The worms’ll crawl up, the worms’ll crawl in,
They’ll crawl all over your mouth and chin.
They’ll bring their friends, and their friends’ friends, too;
You’ll look like hell when they’re through with you.
[209] Am. J. Sociology, March, 1921.
[210] The Next War, New York, 1921.
[211] Die Sprache des Traumes, 1911, pp. 214–284.
[212] The World as Will and Idea, vol. iii, p. 249 et seq.
[213] See my Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology, Chap. XI, “Death and Resurrection of Jesus.”
[214] Guérison et Evolution dans la Vie de l’Âme.
[215] See my Jesus, the Christ, in the Light of Psychology, Vol. II, Ch. 11.
[216] Science and Immortality, Boston, 1904, 54 pp.
[217] G. Lionel Taylor (The Stages of Human Life, N. Y., Dutton, 1921, 363 p.) says that there are four stages in the process of what he believes to be normal dying: first there is an appealing, anxious, puzzled look at the approach of a great crisis, as if wondering what the person will meet in the great darkness that is supervening, all not without an element of fear; then there supervenes a peace and poise, in which stage leavetakings are often made; third, when the last breath is drawn there is a strong impression on the bystanders that there has been a real departure, that something very actual has left, so that the body is no longer the friend. Then for perhaps an hour there is on the face of the dead a look of unnatural beauty and tranquillity which slowly fades and corruption begins.
Some in contemplating their own demise think chiefly of the isolation it involves. The most sympathetic friend can only go to the brink of the dark river which we must all cross absolutely alone. Suicide lovers sometimes vainly attempt companionship. Those about to die who are conscious of their impending departure may bid sad farewells to their friends. Aging and sickly people conscious of an impending end but with their faculties intact realize the inevitableness of dying alone no matter how many friends are about but are silent about it with an instinctive reluctance to betray any of the perturbations which weaklings, patheticists, and hystericals seek refuge in.
To others the thought of their own death centers in the idea of their body. They see themselves in thought pale, rigid, insentient, and follow the fate of their corpse in every detail at least up to interment or cremation, and some cannot resist a rather strong imaginative experience as to how their living sentient body would feel the rigidity, the cold, the treatment to which it is subjected, the gazing of friends, a custom which some interdict.
A third group focus on the cessation of activities which begins in the dimming of the senses and the weakening of motor or other powers, and here, too, we find two attitudes: that of compulsive but regretful renunciation, and the other of longing as for rest. In this sense death begins with the first abatement of powers, and as we have time slowly to adjust to progressive enfeeblement we do so more and more readily.
[218] See especially J. H. Leuba, The Belief in God and Immortality, 1916, 340 pp.
[219] The Philosophy of Long Life, Tr. from the French by Harry Roberts, 1903, 305 pp.
[220] See [Chapter VI].
[221] The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays, New York, 1901.
[222] The Conception of Immortality. Also The World and the Individual.
[223] The Evolution of Immortality.
[224] The Study of Life and Death.
[225] Death and Afterward.