{"id":271596,"date":"2024-08-26T12:00:02","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=271596"},"modified":"2024-08-15T07:39:15","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T06:39:15","slug":"old-age-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/08\/old-age-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Old Age"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_271597\" style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-271597\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-271597\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson-240x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson-819x1024.jpg 819w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson-768x960.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson.jpg 960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-271597\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ralph Waldo Emerson Wikimedia commons<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cSkill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/toc\/1862\/01\/\" class=\"ArticleTimestamp_link__5d7Qw\"  data-action=\"click link - magazine issue\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/toc\/1862\/01\/\">Jan 1862 Issue<\/a> &#8211; <\/em>O<span class=\"smallcaps\">n<\/span> the last anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge, the venerable President Quincy, senior member of the Society, as well as senior alumnus of the University, was received at the dinner with peculiar demonstrations of respect. He replied to these compliments in a speech, and, gracefully claiming the privileges of a literary society, entered at some length into an Apology for Old Age, and, aiding himself by notes in his hand, made a sort of running commentary on Cicero\u2019s chapter \u201cDe Senectute.\u201d The character of the speaker, the transparent good faith of his praise and blame, and the <em>na\u00efvet\u00e9<\/em> of his eager preference of Cicero\u2019s opinions to King David\u2019s, gave unusual interest to the College festival. It was a discourse full of dignity, honoring him who spoke and those who heard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">The speech led me to look over at home \u2014 an easy task \u2014 Cicero\u2019s famous essay, charming by its uniform rhetorical merit; heroic with Stoical precepts; with a Roman eye to the claims of the State; happiest, perhaps, in his praise of life on the farm; and rising, at the conclusion, to a lofty strain. But he does not exhaust the subject; rather invites the attempt to add traits to the picture from our broader modern life.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">Cicero makes no reference to the illusions which cling to the element of time, and in which Nature delights. Wellington, in speaking of military men, said, \u2014 \u201cWhat masks are these uniforms to hide cowards! When our journal is published, many statues must come down.\u201d I have often detected the like deception in the cloth shoe, wadded pelisse, wig and spectacles, and padded chair of Age. Nature lends herself to these illusions, and adds dim sight, deafness, cracked voice, snowy hair, short memory, and sleep. These also are masks, and all is not Age that wears them. Whilst we yet call ourselves young, and all our mates are yet youths and boyish, one good fellow in the set prematurely sports a gray or a bald head, which does not impose on us who know how innocent of sanctity or of Platonism he is, but does not less deceive his juniors and the public, who presently distinguish him with a most amusing respect: and this lets us into the secret, that the venerable forms that so awed our childhood were just such impostors. Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then a young heart beating under fourscore winters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">For if the essence of age is not present, these signs, whether of Art or Nature, are counterfeit and ridiculous: and the essence of age is intellect. Wherever that appears, we call it old. If we look into the eyes of the youngest person, we sometimes discover that here is one who knows already what you would go about with much pains to teach him; there is that in him which is the ancestor of all around him: which fact the Indian Vedas express, when they say, \u201cHe that can discriminate is the father of his father.\u201d And in our old British legends of Arthur and the Round-Table, his friend and counsellor, Merlin the Wise, is a babe found exposed in a basket by the river-side, and, though an infant of only a few days, he speaks to those who discover him, tells his name and history, and presently foretells the fate of the by-standers. Wherever there is power, there is age. Don\u2019t be deceived by dimples and curls. I tell you that babe is a thousand years old.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">Time is, indeed, the theatre and seat of illusion. Nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a century, and dwarfs an age to an hour. Saadi found in a mosque at Damascus an old Persian of a hundred and fifty years who was dying, and was saying to himself, \u201cI said, coming into the world by birth, \u2018I will enjoy myself for a few moments.\u2019 Alas! at the variegated table of life I partook of a few mouthfuls, and the Fates said, \u2018<em>Enough!\u2019\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>That which does not decay is so central and controlling in us, that, as long as one is alone by himself, he is not sensible of the inroads of time, which always begin at the surface-edges. If, on a winter day, you should stand within a bell-glass, the face and color of the afternoon clouds would not indicate whether it were June or January; and if we did not find the reflection of ourselves in the eyes of the young people, we could not know that the century-clock had struck seventy instead of twenty. How many men habitually believe that each chance passenger with whom they converse is of their own age, and presently find it was his father, and not his brother, whom they knew!<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">But, not to press too hard on these deceits and illusions of Nature, which are inseparable from our condition, and looking at age under an aspect more conformed to the common sense, if the question be the felicity of age, I fear the first popular judgments will be unfavorable. From the point of sensuous experience, seen from the streets and markets and the haunts of pleasure and gain, the estimate of age is low, melancholy, and skeptical. Frankly face the facts, and see the result. Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions: the surest poison is time. This cup, which Nature puts to our lips, has a wonderful virtue, surpassing that of any other draught. It opens the senses, adds power, fills us with exalted dreams, which we call hope, love, ambition, science: especially, it creates a craving for larger draughts of itself. But they who take the larger draughts are drunk with it, lose their stature, strength, beauty, and senses, and end in folly and delirium. We postpone our literary work until we have more ripeness and skill to write, and we one day discover that our literary talent was a youthful effervescence which we have now lost. We had a judge in Massachusetts who at sixty proposed to resign, alleging that he perceived a certain decay in his faculties: he was dissuaded by his friends, on account of the public convenience at that time. At seventy it was hinted to him that it was time to retire; but he now replied, that he thought his judgment as robust, and all his faculties as good as ever they were. But besides the self-deception, the strong and hasty laborers of the street do not work well with the chronic valetudinarian. Youth is everywhere in place. Age, like woman, requires fit surroundings. Age is comely in coaches, in churches, in chairs of state and ceremony, in council-chambers, in courts of justice, and historical societies. Age is becoming in the country. But in the rush and uproar of Broadway, if you look into the faces of the passengers, there is dejection or indignation in the seniors, a certain concealed sense of injury, and the lip made up with a heroic determination not to mind it. Few envy the consideration enjoyed by the oldest inhabitant. We do not count a man\u2019s years, until he has nothing else to count. The vast inconvenience of animal immortality was told in the fable of Tithonus. In short, the creed of the street is, Old Age is not disgraceful, but immensely disadvantageous. Life is well enough, but we shall all be glad to get out of it, and they will all be glad to have us.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">This is odious on the face of it. Universal convictions are not to be shaken by the whimseys of overfed butchers and firemen, or by the sentimental fears of girls who would keep the infantile bloom on their cheeks. We know the value of experience. Life and art are cumulative; and he who has accomplished something in any department alone deserves to be heard on that subject. A man of great employments and excellent performance used to assure me that he did not think a man worth anything until he was sixty; although this smacks a little of the resolution of a certain \u201cYoung Men&#8217;s Republican Club,\u201d that all men should be held eligible who were under seventy. But in all governments, the councils of power were held by the old; and patricians or <em>patres<\/em>, senate or <em>senes<\/em>, <em>seigneurs<\/em> or seniors, <em>gerousia<\/em>, the senate of Sparta, the presbytery of the Church, and the like, all signify simply old men.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">This cynical lampoon is refuted by the universal prayer for long life, which is the verdict of Nature, and justified by all history. We have, it is true, examples of an accelerated pace, by which young men achieved grand works; as in the Macedonian Alexander, in Raffaelle, Shakspeare, Pascal, Burns, and Byron; but these are rare exceptions. Nature, in the main, vindicates her law. Skill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power. And if the life be true and noble, we have quite another sort of seniors than the frowzy, timorous, peevish dotards who are falsely old, \u2014 namely, the men who fear no city, but by whom cities stand; who appearing in any street, the people empty their houses to gaze at and obey them: as at \u201cMy Cid, with the fleecy heard,\u201d in Toledo; or Bruce, as Barbour reports him; as blind old Dandolo, elected Doge at eighty-four years, storming Constantinople at ninety-four, and after the revolt again victorious, and elected at the age of ninety-six to the throne of the Eastern Empire, which he declined, and died Doge at ninety-seven. We still feel the force of Socrates, \u201cwhom well-advised the oracle pronounced wisest of men\u201d; of Archimedes, holding Syracuse against the Romans by his wit, and himself better than all their nation; of Michel Angelo, wearing the four crowns of architecture, sculpture, painting, and poetry; of Galileo, of whose blindness Castelli said, \u201cThe noblest eye is darkened that Nature ever made, \u2014 an eye that hath seen more than all that went before him, and hath opened the eyes of all that shall come after him\u201d; of Newton, who made an important discovery for every one of his eighty-five years; of Bacon, who \u201ctook all knowledge to be his province\u201d; of Fontenelle, \u201cthat precious porcelain vase laid up in the centre of France to be guarded with the utmost care for a hundred years\u201d; of Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams, the wise and heroic statesmen; of Washington, the perfect citizen; of Wellington, the perfect soldier; of Goethe, the all-knowing poet; of Humboldt, the encyclop\u00e6dia of science.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">Under the general assertion of the well-being of age, we can easily count particular benefits of that condition. It has weathered the perilous capes and shoals in the sea whereon we sail, and the chief evil of life is taken away in removing the grounds of fear. The insurance of a ship expires as she enters the harbor at home. It were strange, if a man should turn his sixtieth year without a feeling of immense relief from the number of dangers he has escaped. When the old wife says, \u201cTake care of that tumor in your shoulder, perhaps it is cancerous,\u201d \u2014 he replies, \u201cWhat if it is?\u201d The humorous thief who drank a pot of beer at the gallows blew off the froth because he had heard it was unhealthy; but it will not add a pang to the prisoner marched out to be shot, to assure him that the pain in his knee threatens mortification. When the pleuro-pneumonia of the cows raged, the butchers said, that, though the acute degree was novel, there never was a time when this disease did not occur among cattle. All men carry seeds of all distempers through life latent, and we die without developing them: such is the affirmative force of the constitution. But if you are enfeebled by any cause, the disease becomes strong. At every stage we lose a foe. At fifty years, \u2019t is said, afflicted citizens lose their sick-headaches. I hope this <em>hegira<\/em> is not as movable a feast as that one I annually look for, when the horticulturists assure me that the rosebugs in our gardens disappear on the tenth of July: they stay a fortnight later in mine. But be it as it may with the sick-headache, \u2014 \u2019t is certain that graver headaches and heart-aches are lulled, once for all, as we come up with certain goals of time. The passions have answered their purpose: that slight, but dread overweight, with which, in each instance, Nature secures the execution of her aim, drops off. To keep man in the planet, she impresses the terror of death. To perfect the commissariat, she implants in each a little rapacity to get the supply, and a little oversupply, of his wants. To insure the existence of the race, she reinforces the sexual instinct, at the risk of disorder, grief, and pain. To secure strength, she plants cruel hunger and thirst, which so easily overdo their office, and invite disease. But these temporary stays and shifts for the protection of the young animal are shed as fast as they can be replaced by nobler resources. We live in youth amidst this rabble of passions, quite too tender, quite too hungry and irritable. Later, the interiors of mind and heart open, and supply grander motives. We learn the fatal compensations that wait on every act. Then, \u2014 one mischief at a time, \u2014 this riotous time-destroying crew disappear.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">I count it another capital advantage of age, this, that a success more or less signifies nothing. Little by little, it has amassed such a fund of merit, that it can very well afford to go on its credit when it will. When I chanced to meet the poet Wordsworth, then sixty-three years old, he told me, \u201cthat he had just had a fall and lost a tooth, and, when his companions were much concerned for the mischance, he had replied, that he was glad it had not happened forty years before.\u201d Well, Nature takes care that we shall not lose our organs forty years too soon. A lawyer argued a cause yesterday in the Supreme Court, and I was struck with a certain air of levity and defiance which vastly became him. Thirty years ago it was a serious concern to him whether his pleading was good and effective. Now it is of importance to his client, but of none to himself. It is long already fixed what he can do and cannot do, and his reputation does not gain or suffer from one or a dozen new performances. If he should, on a new occasion, rise quite beyond his mark, and do somewhat extraordinary and great, that, of course, would instantly tell; but he may go below his mark with impunity, and people will say, \u201cOh, he had headache,\u201d or, \u201cHe lost his sleep for two nights.\u201d What a lust of appearance, what a load of anxieties that once degraded him, he is thus rid of! Every one is sensible of this cumulative advantage in living. All the good days behind him are sponsors, who speak for him when he is silent, pay for him when he has no money, introduce him where he has no letters, and work for him when he sleeps.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">A third felicity of age is, that it has found expression. Youth suffers not only from ungratified desires, but from powers untried, and from a picture in his mind of a career which has, as yet, no outward reality. He is tormented with the want of correspondence between things and thoughts. Michel Angelo\u2019s head is full of masculine and gigantic figures as gods walking, which make him savage until his furious chisel can render them into marble; and of architectural dreams, until a hundred stone-masons can lay them in courses of travertine. There is the like tempest in every good head in which some great benefit for the world is planted. The throes continue until the child is born. Every faculty new to each man thus goads him and drives him out into doleful deserts, until it finds proper vent. All the functions of human duty irritate and lash him forward, bemoaning and chiding, until they are performed. He wants friends, employment, knowledge, power, house and land, wife and children, honor and fame; he has religious wants, \u00e6sthetic wants, domestic, civil, humane wants. One by one, day after day, he learns to coin his wishes into facts. He has his calling, homestead, social connection, and personal power, and thus, at the end of fifty years, his soul is appeased by seeing some sort of correspondence between his wish and his possession. This makes the value of age, the satisfaction it slowly offers to every craving. He is serene who does not feel himself pinched and wronged, but whose condition, in particular and in general, allows the utterance of his mind. In old persons, when thus fully expressed, we often observe a fair, plump, perennial, waxen complexion, which indicates that all the ferment of earlier days has subsided into serenity of thought and behavior.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">For a fourth benefit, age sets its house in order, and finishes its works, which to every artist is a supreme pleasure. Youth has an excess of sensibility, to which every object glitters and attracts. We leave one pursuit for another, and the young man\u2019s year is a heap of beginnings. At the end of a twelvemonth, he has nothing to show for it, not one completed work. But the time is not lost. Our instincts drove us to hive innumerable experiences, that are yet of no visible value, and which we may keep for twice seven years before they shall be wanted. The best things are of secular growth. The instinct of classifying marks the wise and healthy mind. Linn\u00e6us projects his system, and lays out his twenty-four classes of plants, before yet he has found in Nature a single plant to justify certain of his classes. His seventh class has not one. In process of time, he finds with delight the little white <em>Trientalis<\/em>, the only plant with seven petals and sometimes seven stamens, which constitutes a seventh class in conformity with his system. The conchologist builds his cabinet whilst as yet he has few shells. He labels shelves for classes, cells for species: all but a few are empty. But every year fills some blanks, and with accelerating speed as he becomes knowing and known. An old scholar finds keen delight in verifying all the impressive anecdotes and citations he has met with in miscellaneous reading and hearing, in all the years of youth. We carry in memory important anecdotes, and have lost all clue to the author from whom we had them. We have a heroic speech from Rome or Greece, but cannot fix it on the man who said it. We have an admirable line worthy of Horace, ever and anon resounding in our mind\u2019s ear, but have searched all probable and improbable books for it in vain. We consult the reading men: but, strangely enough, they who know everything know not this. But especially we have a certain insulated thought, which haunts us, but remains insulated and barren. Well, there is nothing for all this but patience and time. Time, yes, that is the finder, the unweariable explorer, not subject to casualties, omniscient at last. The day comes when the hidden author of our story is found; when the brave speech returns straight to the hero who said it; when the admirable verse finds the poet to whom it belongs; and best of all, when the lonely thought, which seemed so wise, yet half-wise, half-thought, because it cast no light abroad, is suddenly matched in our mind by its twin, by its sequence, or next related analogy, which gives it instantly radiating power, and justifies the superstitious instinct with which we had hoarded it. We remember our old Greek Professor at Cambridge, an ancient bachelor, amid his folios, possessed by this hope of completing a task, with nothing to break his leisure after the three hours of his daily classes, yet ever restlessly stroking his leg, and assuring himself \u201che should retire from the University and read the authors.\u201d In Goethe\u2019s Romance, Makaria, the central figure for wisdom and influence, pleases herself with withdrawing into solitude to astronomy and epistolary correspondence. Goethe himself carried this completion of studies to the highest point. Many of his works hung on the easel from youth to age, and received a stroke in every month or year of his life. A literary astrologer, he never applied himself to any task but at the happy moment when all the stars consented. Bentley thought himself likely to live till fourscore, \u2014 long enough to read everything that was worth reading, \u2014 \u201c<em>Et tune magna mei sub terris ibit imago<\/em>.\u201d Much wider is spread the pleasure which old men take in completing their secular affairs, the inventor his inventions, the agriculturist his experiments, and all old men in finishing their houses, rounding their estates, clearing their titles, reducing tangled interests to order, reconciling enmities, and leaving all in the best posture for the future. It must be believed that there is a proportion between the designs of a man and the length of his life: there is a calendar of his years, so of his performances.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">America is the country of young men, and too full of work hitherto for leisure and tranquillity; yet we have had robust centenarians, and examples of dignity and wisdom. I have lately found in an old note-book a record of a visit to Ex-President John Adams, in 1825, soon after the election of his son to the Presidency. It is but a sketch, and nothing important passed in the conversation; but it reports a moment in the life of a heroic person, who, in extreme old age, appeared still erect, and worthy of his fame.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">\u2014\u2014\u2014, <em>Feb<\/em>., 1825. To-day, at Quincy, with my brother, by invitation of Mr. Adams\u2019s family. The old President sat in a large stuffed arm-chair, dressed in a blue coat, black small-clothes, white stockings, and a cotton cap covered his bald head. We made our compliment, told him he must let us join our congratulations to those of the nation on the happiness of his house. He thanked us, and said, \u201cI am rejoiced, because the nation is happy. The time of gratulation and congratulations is nearly over with me: I am astonished that I have lived to see and know of this event. I have lived now nearly a century: [he was ninety in the following October:] a long, harassed, and distracted life.\u201d \u2014 I said, \u201cThe world thinks a good deal of joy has been mixed with it.\u201d \u2014 \u201cThe world does not know,\u201d he replied, \u201chow much toil, anxiety, and sorrow I have suffered.\u201d \u2014 I asked if Mr. Adams\u2019s letter of acceptance had been read to him. \u2014 \u201cYes,\u201d he said, and added, \u201cMy son has more political prudence than any man that I know who has existed in my time; he never was put off his guard: and I hope he will continue such; but what effect age may work in diminishing the power of his mind, I do not know; it has been very much on the stretch, ever since he was born. He has always been laborious, child and man, from infancy.\u201d \u2014 When Mr. J. Q. Adams\u2019s age was mentioned, he said, \u201cHe is now fifty-eight, or will be in July\u201d; and remarked that \u201call the Presidents were of the same age: General Washington was about fifty-eight, and I was about fifty-eight, and Mr. Jefferson, and Mr. Madison, and Mr. Monroe.\u201d \u2014 We inquired, when he expected to see Mr. Adams. \u2014 He said, \u201cNever: Mr. Adams will not come to Quincy, but to my funeral. It would be a great satisfaction to me to see him, but I don\u2019t wish him to come on my account.\u201d \u2014 He spoke of Mr. Lechmere, whom he \u201cwell remembered to have seen come down daily, at a great age, to walk in the old townhouse,\u201d \u2014 adding, \u201cAnd I wish I could walk as well as he did. He was Collector of the Customs for many years, under the Royal Government.\u201d \u2014 E. said, \u201cI suppose, Sir, you would not have taken his place, even to walk as well as he.\u201d \u2014 \u201cNo,\u201d he replied, \u201cthat was not what I wanted.\u201d \u2014 He talked of Whitefield, and \u201cremembered, when he was a Freshman in college, to have come in to the <em>Old South<\/em>, [I think,] to hear him, but could not get into the house; \u2014 I, however, saw him,\u201d he said, \u201cthrough a window, and distinctly heard all. He had a voice such as I never heard before or since. He cast it out so that you might hear it at the meeting-house, [pointing towards the Quincy meeting-house,] and he had the grace of a dancing-master, of an actor of plays. His voice and manner helped him more than his sermons. I went with Jonathan Sewall.\u201d \u2014 \u201cAnd you were pleased with him, Sir?\u201d \u2014 \u201cPleased! I was delighted beyond measure.\u201d \u2014 We asked, if at Whitefield\u2019s return the same popularity continued. \u2014 \u201cNot the same fury,\u201d he said, \u201cnot the same wild enthusiasm as before, but a greater esteem, as he became more known. He did not terrify, but was admired.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">We spent about an hour in his room. He speaks very distinctly for so old a man, enters bravely into long sentences, which are interrupted by want of breath, but carries them invariably to a conclusion, without ever correcting a word.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">He spoke of the new novels of Cooper, and \u201cPeep at the Pilgrims,\u201d and \u201cSaratoga,\u201d with praise, and named with accuracy the characters in them. He likes to have a person always reading to him, or company talking in his room, and is better the next day after having visitors in his chamber from morning to night.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">He received a premature report of his son\u2019s election, on Sunday afternoon, without any excitement, and told the reporter he had been hoaxed, for it was not yet time for any news to arrive. The informer, something damped in his heart, insisted on repairing to the meeting-house, and proclaimed it aloud to the congregation, who were so overjoyed that they rose in their seats and cheered thrice. The Reverend Mr. Whitney dismissed them immediately.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleParagraph_root__4mszW\" data-flatplan-paragraph=\"true\">When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare, \u2014 muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and, dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise. I have heard that whoever loves is in no condition old. I have heard, that, whenever the name of man is spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; it cleaves to his constitution. The mode of it baffles our wit, and no whisper comes to us from the other side. But the inference from the working of intellect, hiving knowledge, hiving skill, \u2014 at the end of life just ready to be born, \u2014 affirms the inspirations of affection and of the moral sentiment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"western\">_____________________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson-e1677044072694.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-59000\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/Ralph-Waldo-Emerson-e1677044072694.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"115\" \/><\/a><i>\u00a0<\/i><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i> (25 May 1803 \u2013 27 Apr 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, and poet who led the <\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Transcendentalism\" ><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>transcendentalist<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i> movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Emerson gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay &#8220;<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nature_(Emerson)\" ><span style=\"font-size: large;\">Nature<\/span><\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>&#8220;. Following this work, he gave a speech entitled &#8220;<\/i><\/span><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_American_Scholar\" ><span style=\"font-size: large;\">The American Scholar<\/span><\/a><\/span><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><i>&#8221; in 1837, which Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. considered to be America&#8217;s &#8220;intellectual Declaration of Independence.&#8221;<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/1862\/01\/old-age\/518679\/\" >Go to Original &#8211; theatlantic.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jan 1862 Issue &#8211; \u201cSkill to do comes of doing; knowledge comes by eyes always open, and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":271597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[1177,1919,2237],"class_list":["post-271596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspirational","tag-inspirational","tag-ralph-waldo-emerson","tag-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271598,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271596\/revisions\/271598"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}