Carbon is the same thing, whether you call it wood, or coal,
or bread and cheese. A reverend gentleman demurred to this
statement,--as if, because combustion is asserted to be the sine
qua non of thought, therefore thought is alleged to be a purely
chemical process. Facts of chemistry are one thing, I told him,
and facts of consciousness another. It can be proved to him, by a
very simple analysis of some of his spare elements, that every
Sunday, when he does his duty faithfully, he uses up more
phosphorus out of his brain and nerves than on ordinary days. But
then he had his choice whether to do his duty, or to neglect it,
and save his phosphorus and other combustibles.
It follows from all this that THE FORMATION OF HABITS ought
naturally to be, as it is, the special characteristic of age. As
for the muscular powers, they pass their maximum long before the
time when the true decline of life begins, if we may judge by the
experience of the ring. A man is "stale," I think, in their
language, soon after thirty,--often, no doubt, much earlier, as
gentlemen of the pugilistic profession are exceedingly apt to keep
their vital fire burning WITH THE BLOWER UP.
- So far without Tully. But in the mean time I have been reading
the treatise, "De Senectute." It is not long, but a leisurely
performance. The old gentleman was sixty-three years of age when
he addressed it to his friend T.
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