The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [65]
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