Age Age, that lessens the enjoyment of life, increases our desire of living. Those dangers which, in the vigor of youth, we had learned to despise, assume new terrors as we grow old. Our caution increasing as our years increase, fear becomes at last the prevailing passion of the mind, and the small remainder of life is taken up in useless efforts to keep off our end, or provide existence. Whence, then, is this increased love of life, which grows upon us with our years? Whence comes it that we thus make greater efforts to preserve our existence at a period when it becomes scarce worth the keeping? Is it that nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments; and, as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imagination in the spoil? Life would be insupportable to an old man, who loaded with infirmities, feared death no more than when in the vigor of manhood: the numberless calamities of decaying Nature, and the consciousness of surviving every pleasure would at once induce him with his own hand to terminate the scene of misery; but happily the contempt of death forsakes him at a time when it could only be prejudicial, and life acquires an imaginary value in proportion as its real value is no more.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 18:34:51 +0000
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