Senescence, the Last Half of Life

by G. Stanley Hall

Our life, bounded by birth and death, has five chief stages, each of which, while it may be divided into substages, also passes into the next so gradually that we cannot date, save roughly and approximately, the transition from one period to that which succeeds it. These more marked nodes in the unity of man’s individual existence are: (1) childhood, (2) adolescence from puberty to full nubility, (3) middle life or the prime, when we are at the apex of our aggregate of powers, ranging from twenty-five or thirty to forty or forty-five and comprising thus the fifteen or twenty years now commonly called our best, (4) senescence, which begins in the early forties, or before in woman, and (5) senectitude, the post-climacteric or old age proper. My own life work, such as it is, as a genetic psychologist was devoted for years to the study of infancy and childhood, then to the phenomena of youth, later to adulthood and the stage of sex maturity. To complete a long-cherished program I have now finally tried, aided by the first-hand knowledge that advancing years have brought, to understand better the two last and closing stages of human life.

In fact ever since I published my Adolescence in 1904 I have hoped to live to complement it by a study of senescence. The former could not have been written in the midst of the seething phenomena it describes, as this must be. We cannot outgrow and look back upon old age, for the course of time cannot be reversed, as Plato fancied life beginning in senility and ending in the mother’s womb. The literature on this theme is limited and there are few specialists in gerontology even among physicians. Its physiological and pathological aspects have been treated not only for plants and animals but for man, and this has been done best by men in their prime. For its more subjective and psychological aspects, however, we shall always be dependent chiefly upon those who are undergoing its manifold metamorphoses and therefore lack the detachment that alone can give us a true and broad perspective.

Again, youth is an exhilarating, age a depressing theme. Both have their zest but they are as unlike as the mood of morning and evening, spring and autumn. Despite the interest that has impelled the preparation of these chapters there is, thus, a unique relief that they are done and that the mind can turn away from the contemplation of the terminal stage of life. An old man devoting himself for many months to the study of senectitude and death has a certain pathetic aspect, even to those nearest him, so that his very household brightens as his task draws toward its close. It was begun, not chiefly for others, even for other old people, but because the author felt impelled upon entering this new stage of life and upon retirement from active duties, to make a self-survey, to face reality, to understand more clearly what age was and meant for himself, and to be rightly oriented in the post-graduate course of life into which he had been entered. The decision to publish came later in the hope that his text might prove helpful, not only to fellow students in the same curriculum but to those just passing middle life, for the phenomena of age begin in the early forties, when all should think of preparing for old age.

Resent, resist, or ignore it as we will, the fact is that when we are once thought of as old, whether because of mental or physical signs or by withdrawal from our wonted sphere of activities, we enter a class more or less apart and by ourselves. We can claim, if we will, certain exemptions, privileges, immunities, and even demand allowances; but, on the other hand, we are liable to feel set aside by, or to make room for, younger people and find that even the new or old services we have a new urge to render may be declined. Many things meant or not meant to do so, remind us of our age. Friends and perhaps even critics show that they take it into consideration. Shortcomings that date from earlier years are now ascribed to age. We feel, often falsely, that we are observed or even spied upon for signs of its approach, and we are constantly tempted to do or say things to show that it is not yet upon us. Only later comes the stage of vaunting it, proclaiming openly our tale of years and perhaps posing as prodigies of senescence. Where the transition from leadership toward the chimney corner is sudden, this sense of aloofness and all its subjective experiences becomes acute, while only if it is very gradual may we pass into innocuous desuetude and hardly know it. Thus in all these and other ways isolation and the enhanced individuation characteristic of age separate us until in fact we feel more or less a caste apart. Despite all, however, there is a rapport between us oldsters, and we understand each other almost esoterically. We must accept and recognize this better knowledge of this stage of life as part of our present duty in the community.

Thus the chief thesis of this book is that we have a function in the world that we have not yet risen to and which is of the utmost importance—far greater, in fact, in the present stage of the world than ever before, and that this new and culminating service can only be seen and prepared for by first realizing what ripe and normal age really is, means, can, should, and now must do, if our race is ever to achieve its true goal. For both my purposes, the personal and later public one, it has seemed wisest to give much space to a conspectus of opinions by way of epitomes of the views of those who have considered the subject from the most diverse standpoints, and thus to let them speak for themselves. Both my own standpoint and my conclusions I believe to be justified by these data.

But, first, in a lighter and more personal vein and by way of further introduction, let me state that after six years of post-graduate study abroad, two of teaching at Harvard, and eight of professoring at the Johns Hopkins, I found myself at the head of a new university, from which latter post, after thirty-one years of service, I have just retired and become a pensioner. In this last left position I had to do creative educational work and shape new policies. I was given unusual freedom and threw my heart and soul into the work, making it more or less of a new departure. I nursed the infancy of the institution with almost maternal solicitude, saw it through various diseases incident to the early stages of its development, and steered it through several crises that taxed my physical and mental powers to their uttermost. In its service I had to do, as best I could, many things for which I was little adapted by training or talent and some of which were personally distasteful. But even to these I had given myself with loyalty and occasionally with abandon, as my “bit” in life, remembering that while men come and go, good institutions should, like Tennyson’s brook, “go on forever.”

There is always considerable publicity in such work and one has always to consider, in every measure, its effects upon the controlling board in whom the prime responsibility for its welfare is vested, the public, the faculty, and the students; and between the points of view of these four parties concerned there are often discrepancies so wide that if any of them knew how the others felt there might be serious trouble. Occasionally, too, my own opinion differed from all the others, and this involved a fifth factor to be reckoned with. Thus, much effort had to be directed toward compounding different interests and not infrequently the only way open seemed to be concealment, temporary at least, of the views of one of these elements, because untimely disclosure might have brought open rupture. However, I had muddled on as best I could, learning much tact and diplomacy and various mediatorial devices as the years rolled by.

And now I have resigned, and after months of delay and with gratifying expressions of regret, another younger captain, whom, happily, I can fully trust, is in my place. I had always planned that my retirement, when it came, should be complete. I would do my full duty up to the last moment and then sever every tie and entirely efface myself, so far as the institution I had served was concerned, and would distinctly avoid every worry, even as to the fate of my most cherished policies. This was only fair to my successor and all my interests must henceforth be vested elsewhere. But what a break after all these decades! It seemed almost like anticipatory death, and the press notices of my withdrawal read to me not unlike obituaries. The very kindness of all these and of the many private letters and messages that came to me suggested that their authors had been prompted by the old principle, De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

For more than forty years I have lectured at eleven o’clock and the cessation of this function leaves a curious void. My friends have already fancied that I tend to grow loquacious at that hour. If I speak or write now, it must be to a very different clientele. During all these years, too, I have held a seminary nearly every Monday night, and now when this evening comes around my faculties activate, even if bombinantes in vacuo. On those evenings I have been greatly stimulated by familiar contact with vigorous student minds, for on these occasions they and I have inspired each other to some of our best aperçus. But now this contact is gone forever. My Journal, which for more than thirty years had taken so much of my care and, at first in its nursling period, of my surplus funds and had become for me an institution in itself, is also now transferred to better hands.

Thus, I am rather summarily divorced from my world, and it might seem at first as if there was little more to be said of me save to record the date of my death—and we all know that men who retire often die soon afterwards. So my prayer perhaps should be Nunc dimittis. Ex-presidents, like founders of institutions, have often lived to become meddling nuisances, so that even those whom they have most profited, secretly and perhaps unconsciously long to participate in an impressive funeral for them. What can remain but a trivial postscript? And would not some of the suggested forms of painless extinction be worthy of consideration? Of course it is bitter to feign that I am suddenly dead to these interests I have so long lived for, as all the proprieties demand I should do and as I inexorably will to do for my very heart and soul went into them. But I did not build a monument to myself in any sense but strove only to fashion an instrument of service and such I know it will remain—and, I hope, far more effectively than under my hand.