Senescence, the Last Half of Life

by G. Stanley Hall

Plato did not himself agree with this view but thought the cause of this discontent lay not in age itself but in character. Still the humanist view of life does tend to some such position, and the Greeks really felt that it was better to be the humblest citizen of Athens than to rule in Hades.

Two unique characters stand out with great clearness and significance. The first is that of the Homeric Nestor, who had lived through three generations of men and in whom Anthon says Homer intended to exemplify the greatest perfection of which human nature is capable. His wisdom was great, as was his age, and both grew together. In his earlier years he had been as great in war as he became in counsel later. Very different is the figure of Tithonus, whom Tennyson has made the theme of one of his oft-quoted poems. He was a mortal, the son of a king, but Aurora became so enamored of him that she besought Zeus to confer upon him the gift of immortality. The ruler of Olympus granted her prayer and Tithonus became exempt from death. But the goddess had forgotten to crave youth along with immortality and accordingly, after his children had been born, old age slowly began to mar the visage and form of her lover and spouse. When she saw him thus declining she still remained true to him, kept him “in her palace, on the eastern margin of the Ocean stream, ‘giving him ambrosial food and fair garments.’ But when he was no longer able to move his limbs she deemed it the wisest course to shut him up in his chamber, whence his feeble voice was incessantly heard. Later poets say that out of compassion she turned him into a cicada.”

It is gratifying to turn from the depressing attitude toward old age that was characteristic of the Hellenic mind as a whole, because it came nearer than any other to being the embodiment of eternal youth, and to glance at the unique and, we must believe on the whole, very wholesome and suggestive relation that so often subsisted between men, not to be sure very old (unless in the case of Socrates) but aging and young men and even boys.

It was assumed that every well-born and -bred young male must have an older man as his mentor and to be without one was, to some degree, regarded as discreditable. Thus juniors sometimes came to vie with each other in their efforts to win the regard of their seniors, especially if they were prominent; while the latter, in turn, felt that it was a part of their duty to the community and to the state to respond to such advances, even to make them. These friendships between ephebics and sages were, at their best, highly advantageous to both. The man embodied the boy’s ideal at that stage of life when he realized that all excellencies were not embodied in his father and when home relations were merging into those of citizenship. To win the personal attention and interest of a great man who would occasionally exercise the function of teacher, foster parent, guardian, godfather, adviser, or patron, brought not only advantage but distinction if the youth was noble and beautiful. On the other hand, Plato thought no man would wish to do or say a discreditable thing in the presence of a youth who admired him but would wish to be a pattern or inspirer of virtue. He seems to have been the first to realize that there is really nothing in the world quite so worthy of love, reverence, and service, as ingenuous youth fired with the right ambitions and smitten with a passion to both know and be the best possible. The period between the dawn of sex and complete nubility has always been the chief opportunity of the true teacher or initiator of its apprentice into life.

Here we must recall the very pregnant sense in which, as I have tried in my Adolescence to set forth at greater length, education in its various implications began in the initiations of youth by their elders into the pubertal stage of life and slowly extended upward toward the university, and downward toward the kindergarten, as civilization advanced. The world has always felt that these pre-marital years, when the young have such peculiar needs and are subjected to so many dangers, are the great opportunity for the transmission of knowledge and influence from the older to the younger generation.

Thus while Socrates loved to mingle with men of all classes and ages, his most congenial companions were those of a younger generation. With the gracious boy, Charmides, “beautiful in mind and body, a charming combination of moral dignity and artless sprightliness,” he discussed temperance in the presence of his guardian, Critias. With Theætetus, “the younger Socrates,” like his master more beautiful in mind than in body, he conversed about the nature of knowledge, in the presence of his tutor. With the fair and noble young Lysis, invoked to do so by his lover, Hypothales, he discourses on the right words or acts best calculated to ingratiate himself with his ward, and the theme is friendship. In the presence and with the coöperation of four youths he discusses courage with General Laches, and to young Clineas and his adviser he narrates his amusing encounter with Euthydemus and his brother, the bumptious young Sophists, the “eristic sluggers.” He explains the true nature of his own art to Ion, the Homeric rhapsodist. In the Meno he brings out the essential points of the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid from the mind of an ignorant slave boy.[54]

This relation of old and younger men was thought to keep youth plastic, docile, and receptive, if not a trifle feminine. Plato would have these pairs of friends fight side by side to inspire each other with courage. But this relation, as we all know, had its dangers and often lapsed to homosexuality and inversion. In the Symposium, Alcibiades, that most beautiful and alluring of male coquettes, describes Socrates as a paragon of chastity because he remained cold and unmoved by all the seductive blandishments he could bring to bear upon him. This vice, now so fully explored by Krafft-Ebing, Tarnowski, Moll, Ellis, and Freud and his disciples, is favored by war, the seclusion of women as in Turkey, and even by female virtue; but the Platonic view was that true love was a wisdom or philosophy, although possibly they did not realize that even the custom of the Sophists, who first took pay for teaching—a practice they thought profanation—was nevertheless a step toward the reform of degraded boy love.

The chief function of wise and older men toward their juniors, they thought, was to prevent the premature hardening of opinions into convictions and to keep their minds open and growing. As we now often say that the chief function of religion and sex is to keep each other pure, so they thought that wisdom culminated in eros, which in turn found its highest deployment in the love of knowledge, which Aristotle later described as the theoretic life, the attainment of which he deemed the supreme felicity of man. From all this it follows that those who achieve complete ideal senescence are those who have entirely sublimated eroticism into the passion for truth and pursue it with the same ardor that in their prime attracted them to the most beautiful of the other sex; and that their chief function to the next generation is to lay in it the foundations for the same gradual transfer and transformation of it as old age advances.

Aristotle’s[55] physical theory of old age is that heat is lost by gradual dissipation, very little remaining in old age—a flickering flame that a slight disturbance could put out. The lung hardens by gradual evaporation of the fluid and so is unable to perform its office of heat regulation. He assumes that heat is gradually developed in the heart. The amount produced is always somewhat less than that which is given off and the deficiency has to be made good out of the stock with which the organism started originally, that is, from the innate heat in which the soul was incorporate. This eventually is so reduced by constant draughts made upon it that it is insufficient to support the soul. The natural span of life, he says, differs greatly in length in different species, due to material constitution and the degree of harmony with the environment. But still, as a general rule, big plants and animals live longer than smaller ones; sanguineous or vertebrates longer than invertebrates; the more perfect longer than the less perfect; and long gestation generally goes with long duration. Thus bulk, degree of organization, period of gestation, are correlated. Great size goes with high organization.

In his Rhetoric,[56] as is well known, Aristotle gives old age an unfavorable aspect. He says in substance that the old have lived many years and been often the victims of deception, and since vice is the rule rather than the exception in human affairs, they are never positive about anything. They “suppose” and add “perhaps” or “possibly,” always expressing themselves in doubt and never positively. They are uncharitable and ever ready to put the worst construction upon everything. They are suspicious of evil, not trusting, because of their experience of human weakness. Hence they have no strong loves or hates but go according to the precept of bias. Their love is such as may one day become hate and their hatred such as may one day become love. The temper of mind is neither grand nor generous—not the former because they have been too much humiliated and have no desire to go according to anything but mere appearances, and not the latter because property is a necessity of life and they have learned the difficulty of acquiring it and the facility with which it may be lost. They are cowards and perpetual alarmists, exactly contrary to the young; not fervent, but cold. They are never so fond of life as on their last day. Again, it is the absent which is the object of all desire, and what they most lack they most want. They are selfish and inclined to expediency rather than honor; the former having to do with the individual and the latter being absolute. They are apt to be shameless rather than the contrary and are prone to disregard appearances. They are dependent for most things. They live in memory rather than by hope, for the remainder of their life is short while the past is long, and this explains their garrulity. Their fits of passion though violent are feeble. Their sensual desires have either died or become feeble but they are regulated chiefly by self-interest. Hence they are capable of self-control, because desires have abated and self-interest is their leading passion. Calculation has a character that regulates their lives, for while calculation is directed to expediency, morality is directed to virtue as its end. Their offenses are those of petty meanness rather than of insolence. They are compassionate like the young, but the latter are so from humanity while the old suppose all manner of sufferings at their door. When the orator addresses them he should bear these traits in mind. Elsewhere[57] he says a happy old age is one that approaches gradually and without pain and is dependent upon physical excellence and on fortune, although there is such a thing as a long life even without health and strength.