The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies

by Elie Metchnikoff

Moreover, it has been noticed that persons affected with chronic diseases frequently have a very optimistic conception of life, whilst young people in full strength may become sad, melancholic, and abandoned to the most extreme pessimism. Such a contrast has been well described by Émile Zola in his novel La Joie de Vivre, where a rheumatic old man, tried by severe attacks of gout, maintained his good humour, whilst his young son, although vigorous and in good health, professed extreme pessimism.

I have a cousin who lost his sight in early youth. When he grew up he formed a most enviable judgment of life. He lived in his imagination and everything in life seemed to him good and beautiful; he married, and pictured his wife to himself as the most beautiful woman in the world, and thus he feared nothing more than the recovery of his sight. He had adapted himself to live without sight, and was convinced that the reality was much lower than his imagination. He feared that if he were able to see his wife she would appear to him less beautiful.

I know a girl twenty-six years old, blind from her birth, the subject of infantile paralysis and liable to fits of epilepsy. She is nearly an idiot, lives in a carriage, and sees life from its best side. She is certainly the most happy member of all her family.

The good humour and megalomania of those affected with general paralysis of the insane also is well known. All such examples show that pessimism cannot be explained as depending on bad health.

Examination of the state of mind of a pessimist may throw some light on the subject. There has been within my own circle a typical case of a person who went through a phase of life in which everything seemed as gloomy as possible. My intimate knowledge of him makes it possible to apply my observations to the matter under discussion.

The subject was born of parents of good health and in comfortable circumstances, so that, from the beginning of his life, he was surrounded by a favourite environment. He lived in the country and escaped the diseases of childhood, so that he reached maturity in good health, and passed well through college and the university. Science attracted him, and he had the ambition to become a distinguished investigator. He threw himself into a scientific career with zeal and ability. His ardent disposition, although certainly favourable to work, was the cause of many troubles. He wished to succeed too quickly, and the obstacles he encountered embittered him. As he thought himself naturally talented, he conceived it to be the duty of his seniors to aid his development. And so, when he met with natural and very common indifference from those who had already become successful, the young man thought that there was a plot against him, to bring to nothing his scientific talents. From this view, many quarrels and difficulties arose, and as he could not overcome these sufficiently quickly, he fell into a mood of pessimism. In this life, he said to himself, the main thing is to adapt oneself to external conditions. According to Darwin’s law of natural selection, the individuals who do not succeed in adapting themselves go to the wall. The survivors are not the best but only the most cunning. In the history of the earth it has been seen that many lower animals have long survived creatures much higher in organisation and general evolution. Whilst so many of the higher mammals, the nearest relatives of man, have been crushed out of existence, simpler animals, such as evil-smelling cockroaches, have survived from the remotest times, and multiply in the neighbourhood of man in despite of his efforts to exterminate them. The animal series and human evolution itself show that delicacy of the nervous system, with its concomitant extreme development of the sensibilities, hinders the power of adaptation and brings with it insuperable evils. The least blow to his pride, or a slighting word from a comrade, threw this pessimist into a most painful condition. No, he would cry, it would be better to be without friends, if one is to be wounded so deeply by them. It would be best to seclude oneself in some remote spot and be engrossed in one’s work. He was very impressionable and a lover of music, and from his visits to the opera, he retained in his mind an air from the “Flûte enchantée.” “Were I as small as a snail, I would hide myself in my shell.” His moral hypersensibility was associated with physical hyperæsthesia. Noises of all kinds, such as the whistling of railway-trains, the cries of street-vendors, or the barking of dogs, excited extremely painful sensations. The least trace of light prevented him from sleeping at night. The unpleasant flavour of most drugs made it impossible for him to take medicine. He agreed thoroughly with the pessimistic philosophers who declare that the ills of life far surpass the good things. He required no experiments on the sense of taste to convince him. He believed that the organisation of his body prevented him from becoming adapted to external conditions and that he would have to disappear like the mammoth and the anthropoid apes.

The course of his life confirmed the convictions of our pessimist. He had no private fortune and married a woman who became affected with tuberculosis, and so was confronted with the greatest evils of existence. A young lady, hitherto in good health, contracted influenza in some northern town. It was a mere nothing, said the doctors; influenza is everywhere and no one escapes it; after a little patience and rest, she will be well again. However the “influenza” persisted and brought with it feebleness and wasting. The doctors then found that there was a little dullness in the apex of the left lung, but as there was no bad family history, there was nothing to fear. I need not describe the familiar course of events. The trifling influenza was replaced by degeneration of the left lung, and brought death after four years of great suffering. Towards the end, when there was no hope, the patient found her only solace in morphine. Under the influence of that drug, she passed hours free from pain and in relative calm, but her excited imagination passed almost into hallucination.

It is not surprising that the death of his wife was a severe shock to the husband. His pessimism became complete. He was a widower at the age of twenty-eight years, and, in his condition of mental and physical exhaustion, took to morphine like his wife. He knew that it was a poison which would complete the ruin of his constitution and make his work impossible. But what was the value of his life? As his organisation was too nervous for him to adapt himself to external conditions, was it not as well to come to the aid of natural selection and so make room for others? As it happened, a large dose of morphia did not solve the problem. It produced in him a condition of extraordinary happiness combined with extreme physical weakness. Little by little the instinct of life awoke in him, and he resumed his work. Pessimism, however, remained the fundamental quality in his character. Life was not worth the pains necessary to protect it. It would be a true crime to bring into the world other living beings doomed to elimination by natural selection. Moral and physical sensibility, as they continued to develop, brought with them so much evil that there could be no good end. The “injustice” of those who were unwilling to “understand” him made life painful to the man himself and to those about him. The closest absorption and hard work made his existence more tolerable, but his pessimistic conception was not in the least altered. Thus, he was easily driven to morphia for consolation, when he suffered from some act of “injustice” or vexation. A severe fit of poisoning, however, stopped this excess.

Years passed. When he discussed with his friends the problem of the goal of human life and similar topics, he was always ardent in supporting the point of view of pessimism. However, he occasionally wondered if his pleading for this were really sincere. As his nature was honest and frank, this question which he put to his conscience appeared most curious to him. Analysis of what passed in his mind revealed to him a change. It was not that his conceptions had changed in the course of years, but rather his feelings and sensations. As he was now in full maturity, between forty-five and fifty years old, he found that there was a great change in the intensity of these last. Disagreeable sounds did not trouble him to the same extent as formerly, and he was undisturbed by the caterwauling of cats or by harsh street cries. As his hypersensibility diminished his character became more tolerant. Even the injustices or wounds to his pride which formerly drove him to morphia, no longer provoked in him any painful reaction. He could easily conceal the bad effect of these upon him, and no longer felt them with the same intensity. Thus his character had become much more supportable to those with him, and much better balanced.