The Good Book

by A. C. Grayling

  5. The fact is that blame for complaints of that kind is to be charged to character, not to a particular time of life.

  6. For the old who are reasonable and neither cross-grained nor churlish find age tolerable enough: whereas unreason and churlishness cause uneasiness at every time of life.

  7. Some might reply to this that it is wealth and high position that make old age tolerable: whereas such good fortune only falls to few. There is something in this, but by no means all.

  8. For the philosopher himself could not find old age easy to bear in the depths of poverty, nor the fool feel it anything but a burden though he were a millionaire.

  9. You may be sure that the weapons best adapted to old age are culture and the active exercise of the virtues.

  10. For if they have been maintained at every period – if one has lived much as well as long – the harvest they produce is wonderful,

  11. Not only because they never fail us even in our last days, though that in itself is supremely important,

  12. But also because the consciousness of a well-spent life and the recollection of many virtuous actions are exceedingly delightful.

  13. There is a quiet, pure and cultivated life which produces a calm and gentle old age, such as we have been told Plato’s was, who died at his writing desk in his eighty-first year;

  14. Or like that of Isocrates, who says that he wrote the book called The Panegyric in his ninety-fourth year, and who lived for five years afterwards;

  15. While his master Gorgias of Leontini lived a hundred and seven years without ever relaxing his diligence or giving up work.

  16. When someone asked Gorgias why he consented to remain alive so long, he replied, ‘I have no fault to find with old age.’

  17. That was a noble answer, and worthy of a scholar. But fools impute their own frailties and guilt to old age, instead of to themselves.

  Chapter 17

  1. There are four reasons for old age being thought unhappy: first, that it withdraws us from active employments;

  2. Second, that it enfeebles the body; third, that it deprives us of nearly all physical pleasures;

  3. Fourth, that it is the next step to death. Let us examine each separately.

  4. From which active employments does age withdraw us? Do you mean from those carried on by youth and bodily strength?

  5. Are there then no old men’s employments to be conducted by the intellect, even when bodies are weak?

  6. The great affairs of life are not performed by physical strength, or activity, or nimbleness of body, but by deliberation, character, expression of opinion.

  7. Of these old age is not only not deprived, but, as a rule, has them in a greater degree.

  8. Those who say that old age takes no part in public business are like men who would say that a steersman does nothing in sailing a ship,

  9. Because, while some of the crew are climbing the masts, others hurrying along the gangways, others pumping out the bilge water, he sits quietly in the stern holding the tiller.

  10. He does not do what young men do; nevertheless he does what is much more important and better.

  11. For rashness is the note of youth, prudence of old age.

  Chapter 18

  1. But it is said that memory dwindles. For some it does, but we can seek to retain it by practice and use.

  2. Old men might retain their intellects well enough, if they will keep their minds active and employed.

  3. Nor is that the case only with men of high position and great office; it applies equally to private life and peaceful pursuits.

  4. Sophocles composed tragedies to extreme old age; and being believed to neglect the care of his property owing to his devotion to his art,

  5. His sons brought him into court to get a judicial decision depriving him of the management of his estate on the ground of weak intellect.

  6. Thereupon the old poet is said to have read to the judges the play he had just composed – the Oedipus at Colonnus – and was acquitted by the jury.

  7. Did old age then compel this man to become silent in his particular art, or Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, or Isocrates and Gorgias whom I mentioned before,

  8. Or the founders of schools of philosophy, Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Xenocrates, or later Zeno and Cleanthus, or Diogenes the Stoic?

  9. Is it not rather the case with all these that the active pursuit of study only ended with life?

  10. Nor need one regret the loss of youth’s bodily strength, any more than, when young, we regretted not having the strength of a bull or elephant.

  11. We must use what we have, and whatever we may chance to be doing, do it with all our might.

  12. What could be weaker than Milo of Croton’s exclamation? When in his old age this famous wrestler was watching some athletes practising,

  13. And he is said to have looked at his arms and to have exclaimed with tears in his eyes: ‘Ah well! these are now as good as dead.’

  14. To this one might say: ‘Yes, in your case, Milo, for at no time were you made famous by your mind or real self, but by your chest and biceps alone.’

  15. Shall we not allow old age the strength to teach the young, to train and equip them for all the duties of life? And what can be a nobler employment?

  16. Nor should we think any teachers of the fine arts otherwise than happy, however much their bodily forces may have decayed and failed.

  17. And yet that same failure of the bodily forces is more often brought about by the vices of youth than of old age;

  18. For a dissolute and intemperate youth bequeaths a body to old age in a worn-out state.

  19. Xenophon’s Cyrus, for instance, in the discourse he delivered on his death-bed at a very advanced age,

  20. Says that he never perceived his old age to have become weaker than his youth had been.

  Chapter 19

  1. To reminisce and speak of himself is often an old man’s way, but it is generally allowed at that time of life.

  2. We see in Homer how frequently old Nestor talked of his own good qualities. He was living through a third generation;

  3. Nor had he any reason to fear that upon saying what was true about himself he should appear either over-vain or talkative.

  4. For, as Homer says, ‘From his lips flowed discourse sweeter than honey,’ for which sweet breath he wanted no bodily strength.

  5. And yet, after all, the famous leader of the Greeks nowhere wishes to have ten men like that giant of strength Ajax, but rather like Nestor:

  6. If he could get one Nestor, he feels no doubt of Troy shortly falling.

  7. Would one not rather be an old man a somewhat shorter time than an old man before one’s time?

  8. Accordingly, let there be only a proper husbanding of strength, and let each man proportion his efforts to his powers.

  9. Such a one will assuredly not have any great regret for his loss of strength.

  10. At Olympia the famous strongman Milo is said to have stepped into the course carrying a live ox on his shoulders. Which of the two would you prefer to have given to you – bodily strength like that of Milo, or intellectual strength like that of Pythagoras?

  11. In fine, enjoy the blessing of physical strength when you have it; when it is gone, don’t wish it back, unless we are to think that young men should wish their childhood back.

  12. The course of life has its bounds, and nature admits of being run but in one way, and only once; and to each part of our life there is something specially seasonable;

  13. So that the dependence of children, the joyous feelings of youth, the soberness of maturer years, and the ripe wisdom of old age, all have a certain natural advantage which should be secured in its proper season.

  14. Active exercise and temperance can preserve health in old age. Bodily strength may be diminished; but neither is bodily strength demanded from the old.

  15. Both by law and custom, the elderly are exempt from duties which cannot be supported without bodily str
ength.

  16. But, it will be said, many old people are so feeble that they cannot perform any duty in life of any sort or kind.

  17. That is not a weakness to be set down as peculiar to old age: it is one shared by ill health.

  18. How must we stand up against old age and make up for its drawbacks? By taking pains; we must fight it as we should an illness.

  19. We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength.

  20. Nor is it the body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and reason much more.

  21. For they are like lamps: unless you feed them with oil, they too go out from old age.

  22. Again, the body is apt to become gross either from over-exercise or over-eating;

  23. But the intellect becomes nimbler by exercising itself.

  24. For what Caecilius means by ‘old dotards of the comic stage’ are the credulous, the forgetful and the slipshod.

  25. These are faults that do not attach to old age as such, but to a sluggish, dull and sleepy old age.

  Chapter 20

  1. We may remember the words of Cato, when as an old man he was asked about age.

  2. ‘As I admire a young man who has something of an old man in him,’ he said, ‘so do I an old man who has something of a young man in him.’

  3. The man who aims at this may possibly become old in body, but in mind he never will.

  4. ‘I am now engaged,’ Cato continued, ‘in composing the seventh book of my “Origins”, for I collect records of antiquity.

  5. ‘The speeches delivered in all the celebrated cases in which I have acted I am now readying for publication.

  6. ‘I am writing treatises on law. I am, besides, studying hard at Greek, and after the manner of the Pythagoreans – to keep my memory in working order – I repeat in the evening whatever I have said, heard or done in the course of each day.

  7. ‘These are the exercises of the intellect, these the training grounds of the mind: while I sweat and labour on these I don’t much feel the loss of bodily strength.

  8. ‘I appear in court for my friends; I frequently attend the senate and bring motions before it on my own responsibility, prepared after deep and long reflection. And these I support by my intellectual, not my bodily forces.

  9. ‘And if I were not strong enough to do these things, yet I should enjoy my ease, imagining the very activities which I was now unable to perform.

  10. ‘And what makes me capable of doing this is my past life. For a man who is always living in the midst of these studies and labours does not perceive when old age creeps upon him.

  11. ‘Thus, by slow and imperceptible degrees, life draws to its end.’

  12. The third charge against age is that it reduces capacity for indulgence of the appetites, such as drinking and feasting.

  13. But what is the point of this complaint? It is to show that, if we were unable to scorn over-indulgence or drunkenness by the aid of reason,

  14. We ought to be very grateful to old age for depriving us of an inclination for that which it is harmful to do.

  15. For excessive indulgences hinder thought, are a foe to reason, and blind the eyes of the mind.

  16. Although old age has to abstain from extravagant banquets, it is still capable of enjoying modest festivities.

  17. It was a good idea of our ancestors to view the presence of guests at a dinner table as a community of enjoyment, which they called ‘convivial’, meaning ‘living together’.

  18. And there are many pleasures besides the pleasures of the feast and the inn. We have already spoken of study;

  19. Think also of the countryside, and the garden; and remember the story of Lysander’s visit to Cyrus, the great Persian king:

  20. When Lysander took Cyrus gifts from his allies, the king treated him with courteous familiarity and kindness, and among other things took him to see a carefully planted park near his palace.

  21. Lysander expressed admiration of the trees and their arrangement, the careful cultivation of the soil free from weeds,

  22. The sweet odours of the flowers planted there; and he asked who had planned and planted this garden.

  23. ‘It was I,’ said Cyrus, ‘many of the trees were placed in the earth by my own hands.’

  24. Then Lysander, looking at the king’s purple robe, the brilliance of his person, and his adornment in the Persian fashion with gold and many jewels, said:

  25. ‘People are quite right, Cyrus, to call you happy, since the advantages of high fortune have been joined to an excellence like yours.’

  Chapter 21

  1. The foregoing applies to an old age that has been well established on foundations laid by youth. It is a wretched old age that has to defend itself by speech.

  2. Neither white hairs nor wrinkles can at once claim influence in themselves: it is the honourable conduct of earlier days that is rewarded by possessing influence at the last.

  3. They say that Sparta was the most dignified home for old age; for nowhere was more respect paid to years, nowhere was old age held in higher honour.

  4. Indeed, the story is told of how, when a man of advanced years came into the theatre at Athens, no place was given him anywhere in that large assembly by his own countrymen;

  5. But when he came near the Spartans, who as ambassadors had a fixed place assigned to them, they rose as one man out of respect for him, and gave the veteran a seat.

  6. When they were greeted with rounds of applause from the whole audience, one of them remarked: ‘The Athenians know what is right, but will not do it.’

  7. But, it will be said, old men are fretful, fidgety, ill-tempered and disagreeable. But these are faults of character, not of the time of life.

  8. And, after all, fretfulness and the other faults I mentioned admit of some excuse – not, indeed, a complete one, but one that may possibly pass:

  9. For with some justification the elderly think themselves neglected, looked down upon, mocked.

  10. Besides, with bodily weakness every rub is a source of pain. Yet all these faults are softened both by good character and good education.

  11. There remains the fourth reason, which more than anything else appears to torment some older people,

  12. And to make the approach of age seem disagreeable to those who are younger: namely, the increasing nearness of death.

  13. But what a poor dotard must he be who has not learnt in the course of so long a life that death is not a thing to be feared?

  14. Death is no different from being unborn. It is sleep without dreams, it is rest, the final escape from all ills and passions.

  15. It is immunity from wrong, from calumny, error and spite. Who would not welcome this, who can think clearly and without fear?

  16. And in any case death is common to every time of life, and in many cases has a nearer approach to infancy and to youth, with its accidents and its own diseases.

  17. What sort of charge against old age is the nearness of death, when this is shared by youth?

  18. Yes, you will say; but a young man expects to live long; an old man cannot expect to do so.

  19. Well, the young man is a fool to expect it. For what can be more foolish than to regard the uncertain as certain, the false as true?

  20. ‘An old man has nothing even to hope.’ Ah, but it is just there that he is in a better position than the young man, since what the latter only hopes he has obtained:

  21. The one wishes to live long; the other has lived long.

  22. And yet! what is ‘long’ in a man’s life? For grant the utmost limit: let us expect an age like that of the king of the Tartessi, who reigned eighty years and lived a hundred and twenty.

  23. Nothing seems long in which there is any ‘last’, for when that arrives, then all the past has slipped away – only that remains which you have earned by virtue and righteous actions.

  24. Hours indeed, and days and months and ye
ars depart, nor does past time ever return, nor can the future be known.

  25. Whatever time each is granted for life, with that he is bound to be content.

  26. An actor, to win approval, is not bound to perform the whole play; let him only satisfy the audience in whatever act he appears.

  27. Nor need a wise man go on to the concluding applause. For a short term of life is long enough for living well and honourably.

  28. But if you go farther, you have no more right to grumble than farmers do because the charm of the spring season is past and the summer and autumn have come.

  29. The word ‘spring’ suggests youth, and points to the harvest to be: the other seasons are suited for the reaping and storing of the crops.

  30. And the harvest of old age is the memory and rich store of achievements laid up in earlier life.

  31. Again, all things that accord with nature are to be counted good. What can be more in accordance with nature than for old people at last to die?

  32. A thing, indeed, which also befalls the young, though nature revolts and fights against it.

  33. Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from the young, ripeness from the old.

  34. This ripeness is so delightful to those who are wise in their old age, that as they approach nearer to death,

  35. They seem as it were to be sighting land, and to be coming to port at last after a long voyage.

  36. Again, there is no fixed borderline for old age, and you are making a good and proper use of it as long as you can satisfy the call of duty and disregard death.

  37. The result of this is, that old age is even more confident and courageous than youth.

  Chapter 22

  1. That end of life is the best, when, without the intellect or senses being impaired, nature herself takes to pieces her own handiwork which she also put together.

  2. Just as the builder of a ship or a house can break them up more easily than anyone else, so nature, which knitted together the human frame, can also best unfasten it.