The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [64]
13. They say that age is stealing upon them faster than they expected. In the first place, who compelled them to cling to an illusion?
14. For in what respect did old age steal upon manhood faster than manhood stole upon childhood?
15. In what way would old age have been less disagreeable to them if they were in their eight-hundredth year than in their eightieth?
16. All wisdom begins in first following nature, the best of guides.
17. If nature has written the narrative of our lives like a play, she will not be least careless about the last act as if she were an idle poet.
18. For the last act is inevitable, just as to the berries of a tree and the fruits of the earth there comes in the fullness of time a period of ripeness and eventual fall.
19. A wise man will not make a grievance of this. To rebel against nature is folly, but to follow her course brings all the benefits of doing what is wise.
Chapter 16
1. It is typical of some to complain, when they have grown old, that they have lost the pleasures of the senses, without which they do not regard life as life at all;
2. And, secondly, that they are neglected by those from whom they were used to receive attentions.
3. Such men lay the blame on the wrong thing. For if these things had been the fault of old age, then these same misfortunes would have been felt by all others of advanced years.
4. Yet many have never said a word of complaint against old age; for they were only too glad to be freed from the bondage of passion, and were not at all disregarded by their friends.
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