The greater the complexity of a piece of machinery, and the more labour it
is called upon to perform, the more rapid will be its wear and tear. This
applies to human life as well as to mechanism. The derangement of its
component parts--its springs and wheels, will also be in the ratio of
their complication. Thus do we find that the brute creation are less
subject to those affections that abridge their days than mankind. Their
life is natural, except when under the sway of domestication: ours is
artificial; and high civilization tends to render it still more unnatural
than it would most probably have been in a simple and patriarchal
existence. Endowed with more acuteness of sensibility than animals, we are
rendered more susceptible of the extremes of pleasure and of pain; and our
voluptuous enjoyments are perhaps more prejudicial than our sufferings.
Had not the Creator wisely granted us the faculty of reasoning, we should
have been the most wretched of all organized beings.
The tenure of life depends upon the sum of vitality originally deposited,
and the extent of our drafts upon this capital, which we too frequently
exhaust by untimely expenses. Experience has proved that under ordinary
circumstances, man can live six or seven times longer than the years
required to attain puberty. This epoch is placed at our fourteenth year.
This calculation would therefore yield from 84 to 98 years of age. Our own
imprudences, and the disorders resulting from them, are more hostile in
abridging this period than nature, all-wise and all-bountiful. Indeed,
when we reflect on all the excesses to which we expose our frail and
complicated being, as if we were resolved to try by every possible
experiment how far it possesses the power of resisting destructive agents,
we can only marvel in beholding so many instances of longevity. In this
wasteful existence how many valuable hours do we not lose? how many real
enjoyments have we not deprived ourselves of? When compared to the
immensity of time, life is but an idle span. Let us deduct even from old
age the years of infancy, the years of caducity, and the years of
sleep,--alas! what remaineth of our many and our energetic days?
Maupertuis calculated that in an ordinary life man could scarcely enjoy
more than three years of happiness, mixed up with sixty or eighty years of
misery or insipidity; and yet how miserable are we at the thought of
quitting this short-leased tenement, though every wretchedness renders our
abode a constant scene of uneasiness. It has been computed that out of
about nine hundred millions of human beings that are scattered over the
globe, it is more than probable that we could not find nine thousand
individuals blessed with happiness, even taking happiness in its most
limited sense--content. Were it not for the terrors of futurity, it is
more than probable that our existence would lose much of its value.
Socrates termed philosophy "the preparation for death;" the same may be
said of our existence.
Happily for man, life is a dream, all is illusion; sufferings alone are
positive; Pandora's box is its best illustration. Could we have slept away
our existence in constant visions, we should have lived as long as in a
waking state. When we contemplate the flocks of human beings scattered
like cattle on the face of the universe, with scarcely more intellect than
the beasts of the same field, we might ask for what were they created?
doomed to all the horrors of sickness or of war, victims of their own
follies or the ambitious projects of others! As far as regards this life,
it is worse than idle to seek a solution of the problem. In these
inquiries we too often seek to guess that which we can never know, and to
know that which we can never guess! We all complain and murmur like the
woodman in the fable, yet are loath to accept the relief we loudly call
for.
The longevity of the first races, and the patriarchs, are records foreign
to the investigations of natural history; we must seek for more recent
examples. Haller had collected the cases of many centenaries, amounting to
sixty-two who had reached from 100 to 120; twenty-nine from 120 to 130;
and fifteen from 130 to 140. Few instances are authenticated beyond this
period: yet we find one Eccleston, who lived 143 years; John Effingham,
who attained his 144th; a Norwegian, who counted a century and a half; and
our Thomas Parr would most probably have passed his 152nd year but for an
excess. Henry Jenkins lived to 169; and we have on record the case of a
Negress, aged 175. The Hungarian family of John Rovin were remarkable for
their longevity: the father lived to 172, the wife to 164; they had been
married 142 years, and their youngest child was 115; and such was the
influence of habit and filial affection, that this _child_ was treated
with all the severity of paternal rigidity, and did not dare to act
without his _papa's_ and _mamma's_ permission.
By the calculations of Sussmilch, out of one thousand individuals, only
one attained 97; and not more than one lived to the age of 100, out of one
hundred and fourteen thousand. In the census of Italy, taken under
Vespasian, there were found fifty-four of 100, fifty-seven of 110, two of
125, four of 130, and three of 140. In China, under Kien Long, in 1784,
there were only four individuals who had attained their 100th year.
According to Larrey, there were at Cairo thirty-five persons who had
exceeded their century. In Russia, in 1814, out of eight hundred and
ninety-one thousand six hundred and fifty deaths, were three thousand five
hundred and thirty-one from 100 to 132. In a register of deaths in Paris,
taken in 1817, there were found in twenty-one thousand three hundred and
ninety-two, nine from 95 to 100, and the general proportion of centenaries
in that city is one to three thousand.
What are the circumstances most favourable to longevity? This question is
not easily answered; for we find in instances of advanced age that some
individuals have led a most regular and abstemious life, while others have
indulged in various excesses. These observations, however, are by no means
calculated to form a conclusive opinion, as the constitutional vigour and
peculiar idiosyncrasies of individuals differ widely. It is probable that
a regular mode of living is the most likely to prolong our years, whatever
may be that regularity in a comparative point of view. A sober man, who
commits occasional excesses, is more likely to suffer than another man who
gets drunk every night, provided that these excesses do not differ in
regard to the quantity or quality of stimulus. In these melancholy
instances the excitement is constant, and the indirect debility which it
may produce has scarcely time to break down the system ere it is again
wound up to its usual pitch, to use the vulgar expression, "by a hair of
the same hound." The principal attribute of life that renovates for a
while its moral and its physical exhaustion is _excitability_, and a
constant _excitement_ is therefore indispensable, to serve as fuel to the
consuming fire. This was to a certain degree the basis on which Brown
founded his doctrine. He traced a scale of life like that of a
thermometer,--health in the centre, death at each extremity: one scale
ascending from health was graduated according to stimulating agency, the
other to debilitating causes; and therefore the system was to be
stimulated or lowered according to this gradation. It would be foreign to
this work to point out the absurdity of this theory, although we must
admit its ingenuity, and to a certain extent its correctness. The chief
practical objection to it was the diversity of constitutions and
idiosyncrasies, and the different action of stimulating or depressing
agents in health and in disease; the effects of alimentary and medicinal
substances being totally different in these several conditions.
According to habit, a certain sum of stimulus is requisite to keep up the
necessary excitement; and this sum cannot be immediately and suddenly
withdrawn in weak subjects without some risk; in health, perhaps, the
experiment may be safely made at all times, and under any circumstances,
although it might be wiser to operate the change by degrees; and it must
moreover be recollected, that an habitual drunkard is in a morbid
condition, and must be treated accordingly.
Six causes chiefly exert their influence upon life: