strength.  Deserted by Venus, the old man likes to turn to Bacchus to make him merry.  In the place of wanting to see things, to travel and learn, comes the desire to speak and teach.  It is a piece of good fortune if the old man retains some of his love of study or of music or of the theatre,—­if, in general, he is still somewhat susceptible to the things about him; as is, indeed, the case with some people to a very late age.  At that time of life, what a man has in himself is of greater advantage to him that ever it was before.

There can be no doubt that most people who have never been anything but dull and stupid, become more and more of automata as they grow old.  They have always thought, said and done the same things as their neighbors; and nothing that happens now can change their disposition, or make them act otherwise.  To talk to old people of this kind is like writing on the sand; if you produce any impression at all, it is gone almost immediately; old age is here nothing but the caput mortuum of life—­all that is essential to manhood is gone.  There are cases in which nature supplies a third set of teeth in old age, thereby apparently demonstrating the fact that that period of life is a second childhood.

It is certainly a very melancholy thing that all a man’s faculties tend to waste away as he grows old, and at a rate that increases in rapidity:  but still, this is a necessary, nay, a beneficial arrangement, as otherwise death, for which it is a preparation, would be too hard to bear.  So the greatest boon that follows the attainment of extreme old age is euthanasia,—­an easy death, not ushered in by disease, and free from all pain and struggle.[1] For let a man live as long as he may, he is never conscious of any moment but the present, one and indivisible; and in those late years the mind loses more every day by sheer forgetfulness than ever it gains anew.

[Footnote 1:  See Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Bk.  II. ch. 41, for a further description of this happy end to life.]

The main difference between youth and age will always be that youth looks forward to life, and old age to death; and that while the one has a short past and a long future before it, the case is just the opposite with the other.  It is quite true that when a man is old, to die is the only thing that awaits him; while if he is young, he may expect to live; and the question arises which of the two fates is the more hazardous, and if life is not a matter which, on the whole, it is better to have behind one than before?  Does not the Preacher say:  the day of death [is better] than the day of one’s birth.[1] It is certainly a rash thing to wish for long life;[2] for as the Spanish proverb has it, it means to see much evil,—­Quien larga vida vive mucho mal vide.

[Footnote 1:  Ecclesiastes vii. 1.]

[Footnote 2:  The life of man cannot, strictly speaking, be called either long or short, since it is the ultimate standard by which duration of time in regard to all other things is measured.