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OF OLD AGE AND DEATH.
Every object in Nature has its improvement and its decay. No sooner does the human form arrive at its limited perfection, than it begins to decline. The alteration is at first insensible, and even several years elapse before it becomes perceptible. Yet we ought to feel the weight of our years better than other people can estimate the number of them; and, as those are rarely deceived who judge of our age from external appearances, we would be still less so, as to the internal effect, if we did but observe ourselves more, and flatter ourselves less with false and idle hopes.
When the body has attained its full length, by the final expansion of all its parts, it begins to receive an additional bulk, which rather incommodes than assists it, and may be considered as the first step towards decay. This is formed from a superfluous substance termed fat, and generally appears about the age of thirty-five, or forty, and by which, in proportion to its encrease, the body becomes less nimble, active, and unconstrained in its motions.
The bones also, and the other solid parts of the body, encrease in solidity. The membranes become cartilaginous, or gristly, the cartilages become bony, the fibres become more hard, the skin dries up, wrinkles are gradually formed in it, the hair grows grey, the teeth fall out, the visage becomes haggard, and the body stoops. The first approach of these alterations is perceived before the age of forty; by slow degrees they advance till that of sixty, and by rapid ones till that of seventy: after which period, decrepitude soon follows, and continues to augment to the age of ninety, or a hundred, when the life of man is generally terminated.