Mental age

“ Again, we find that some persons retain every indication of youth, both of mind and body, long after their contemporaries have reached and passed middle age. It is coming more and more to be admitted that age is relative, and that what we know as the relative is the effect of mental operations. ”

“ Others are in keeping with the mental age. The weakest organs govern, of course; they should live another thirty years, as if they really were in their seventies. However, locomotion and judgment should not be impaired until the very end. ”

“ Years had not made her old, simply because she had taken no cognizance of those years, nor said, “I am growing old.” Her belief that she was young proved the results of such a belief on the body. She could not age while believing herself young, for the mental state governed the physical. ”

“ Does not memory, wisdom's ally, lose strength as we advance in age? How many of us fall into a second childhood! And we almost all decrease in mental vigour as we grow old; or when our mind remains unimpaired, time, by means of some bodily disease, enfeebles our courage and firmness, and not infrequently deprives us of both attributes altogether. ”

“ Now, most of these traits belong more to the ideal of old age than to that of any earlier period in life. The most advanced regimen and hygiene of to-day—personal, mental, moral, social, political, judicial, and even religious—have little better to suggest for old age, in which all the qualities here implied should culminate, bringing poise and philosophic calm. ”

“ One morning while brushing his hair he will see a gray hair, and, however young he may be, the anticipation of old age will come to him. A solitary old age! A senility dependent for its social and domestic requirements on condescending nephews and nieces, or even more distant relations! ”

“ One writer104 even tells us that the old are beautiful and thinks it is a perverse precept of social134 condition to think of chronological age at all. “We should say eighty years young;” “properly speaking there is no old age,” etc. All this is really the state of mind of a mental healer who does not wish old age, disease, or death, and so denies their existence and turns his back upon reality. It is the state of mind mythically ascribed to an ostrich, although the best observers deny that it ever buries its head in the sand from fear of danger. ”

“ It may bear comparison with one of the great changes in the mental life of the individual man, perhaps rather with the expansion and fixing of the mind which accompanies the passage from infancy into youth, than with the later steps from youth into manhood, or from manhood into old age. ”

“ Failure of bodily strength in old age not to be regretted. 10. There is no need of full bodily strength, if there be an increase of wisdom. 11. Failure of strength and of mental vigor may be averted by a proper regimen of body and mind. 12. It is complained that old age renders one less susceptible of sensual pleasure ”

“ It judges the items of experience by their effect upon feeling and upon self, and oscillates readily and widely from pleasure to pain. Mature manhood is choleric, practical, executive, with definiteness of aim and fulfillment of ideas and even phantasies but with less excitability of emotion; while old age is phlegmatic, seeks repose, and has been taught by experience to abate the life of affectivity and take the attitude of laissez faire. ”

“ It was, however, the first time I had seen with my own eyes this desperate yearning of age for youth, or this something that is almost a death-blow which youth can inflict on age. My father used to say that fundamentally there is no such period as age, that only the outer husk grows old, while the inner self, the vital ego, is young eternally. ”

“ Instead of forming the habit of looking for [Pg 336] signs of age form the habit of looking for signs of youth. Form the habit of thinking of your body as robust and supple and your brain as strong and active. Never allow yourself to think that you are on the decline, that your faculties are on the wane, that they are not as sharp as they used to be and that you cannot think as well, because your cells are becoming old and hard. He ages who thinks he ages. He keeps young who believes he is young. ”

“ These more marked nodes in the unity of man’s individual existence are: (1) childhood, (2) adolescence from puberty to full nubility, (3) middle life or the prime, when we are at the apex of our aggregate of powers, ranging from twenty-five or thirty to forty or forty-five and comprising thus the fifteen or twenty years now commonly called our best, (4) senescence, which begins in the early forties, or before in woman, and (5) senectitude, the post-climacteric or old age proper. ”

“ As the body grows, the mind grows with it, and the childish mind of the child develops into the hasty, quickly-judging, half-informed, unbalanced youthful mind of the youth; with maturity of years comes maturity of mind, and body and mind are vigorous and in their prime. As old age comes on and the bodily functions decay, the mind decays also, until age passes into senility, and body and mind sink into second childhood. ”

“ The ability to hold mentally the picture of youth in all its glory, vivacity and splendor has a powerful influence in restraining the old age processes.
Old age begins in the heart. When the heart grows cold the skin grows old, and the appearances of age impress themselves on the body. The mind becomes blighted, the ideals blurred, and the juices of life congealed. ”

“ 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 sceptical. ”

“ Life takes great strides now. There is but one step from childhood to middle age, which begins now, I fancy, at eighteen, while senility sets in probably at thirty. The age loves suddenness—it has suppressed transitional periods; the world would abolish twilight if it could. ”

“ Certain it is that even those who do not make a clean break with their past develop views, interests, habits, modes of life, personal associations, or perhaps take pleasure in becoming novices, apprentices, or amateurs, in new fields and find thus a certain rejuvenation, the strong instinct for which has found so many unworthy forms of expression that the term “second childhood” as applied to age is commonly one of reproach and the affectations of youth by the old are ridiculous. ”

“ Youth fleets away, if not happily, at least tranquilly, while thus employed; and maturity glides into age, and age drops into the grave, scarcely conscious of the gradations of each, owing to the mind having been filled with a continuous train of thought, engendered by study. ”

“ I was witnessing the reactions of a nineteen-year-old girl who had never before seen the ravages of old age, and I could not but wonder if the subconscious effect of old age on youth accustomed to seeing it was not similar. ”

“ In youth, when health, and vigour, and animal spirits are at their highest, it is not developed, but when age comes on, and the body begins to feel the symptoms of decay, the mind grows weary and the spirits flag. ”

“ Before we advert to the nature of our adaptations for this period of life, we must draw a distinction between age and "premature old age." The former is the decline of nature, which must always take place, whilst the latter is the result of disease or improper habits. ”

“ It seems to me that our great problem, or rather our chief concern, should not be so much how to stay young in the sense of possessing all the attributes of youth, for the passing of the years does bring changes, but how to pass gracefully, and even magnificently, [Pg 41] and with undiminished vigour from youth to middle age, and then how to carry that middle age into approaching old age, with a great deal more of the vigour and the outlook of middle life than we ordinarily do. ”

“ In my middle forties business associates have asked me for the recipe for perennial youth. Before reaching my fortieth year, possibly no other male was so horrified as myself at the thought of waning youth and approaching old age. But now (1918) , in my middle forties, I am reconciled to growing old.
I am rather vain, and have been guilty of contemplating my reflection in a mirror. Prior to my middle forties I was of a bashful disposition and lacked self-confidence, except when following out my fairie instincts. ”

“ Life has its fixed course, and nature one unvarying way; each age has assigned to it what best suits it, so that the fickleness of boyhood, the sanguine temper of youth, the soberness of riper years, and the maturity of old age, equally have something in harmony with nature, which ought to be made availing in its season. ”

“ Most who answered were uneducated and the data they supplied were usually trivial, tediously and irrelevantly reminiscent, or else descriptive of surroundings in earlier life, complaints, wishes, fears, etc., so that I realized that true old age as I had conceived it was not to be sought in such institutions. There was pathos and pessimism galore, while disciplined tranquillity and serenity were very rare. There is doubtless material enough in even the most inarticulate and insignificant life to repay the longest and most painstaking study. ”

“ No extracts or epitome can do justice to the precision of style, the acuteness of self-observation, the range of social experience, and the depth of insight here shown in depicting the psychological processes that attend the beginnings of old age in women.
It is well at any stage of life, and particularly at its noonday, to pause and ask ourselves what kind of old people we would like, and also are likely, to be—two very different questions. In youth we have ideals of and fit for maturity. ”

“ The majority, however, promptly and ruthlessly suppress all such intimations beneath the threshold of consciousness, telling not only others but themselves that they are just as young and capable as ever, thus refusing to recognize that age is upon them till perhaps the sixth or seventh decade. Thus the old are often the last to recognize in themselves infirmities that have long been patent to others. ”

“ But because Adolescence does not begin at the beginning of life—taking it in the way which has been said—but about eight months from birth; and because our life strives to ascend, and curbs itself in the descent; because the natural heat is lessened and can do little, and the moist humour is increased, not in quantity, but in quality, so that it is less able to evaporate and be consumed; it happens that beyond Old Age there remains of our life an amount, perhaps, of about ten years, a little more or a little less; and this time of life is termed Extreme Old Age, or Senility. ”

“ That aged persons have, as is well known, a good memory for what is long past, and a poor one for recent occurrences is not remarkable. It is to be explained by the fact that age seems to be accompanied with a decrease of energy in the brain, so that it no longer assimilates influences, and the imagination becomes dark and the judgment of facts incorrect. ”

“ Many things meant or not meant to do so, remind us of our age. Friends and perhaps even critics show that they take it into consideration. Shortcomings that date from earlier years are now ascribed to age. We feel, often falsely, that we are observed or even spied upon for signs of its approach, and we are constantly tempted to do or say things to show that it is not yet upon us. Only later comes the stage of vaunting it, proclaiming openly our tale of years and perhaps posing as prodigies of senescence. ”

“ On the faces of the aged there are wrinkles made by sympathy, others by strong and pure thought, and others are carved by passion: who cannot distinguish them? With those who have lived righteously, age is calm, peaceful, and softly mellowed, like the setting sun. ”

“ Why talk of age, when it's just an appearance, an accident, when we are all young in soul and heart? We don't say, one to another, 'You are freckled in the forehead to-day,' or 'There's a yellow shade in your complexion.' Leave those disagreeable trifles. ”

“ I have had in mind throughout chiefly the nature and needs of intelligent people passing or past middle life quite as much as of those actually entering old age. It is hoped that the data here garnered and the views propounded may help to a better and more correct understanding of the nature and functions of old age, and also be a psychologist’svi contribution to the long-desired but long-delayed science of gerontology. ”

“ It is very hard for any but the strongest mentalities to realize the changes that age brings, to adjust to, feel at home in, and come to terms consciously with it, so that most would probably be surprised if they knew how clearly those closest to them understood their weaknesses, tolerated their idiosyncrasies, and made allowances for their failures. Self-control, poise, a calm, judicial state of mind even333 with regard to things that concern us most deeply, are among the chief, if also among the rarest, virtues of senescence. ”

“ If you really wish to stay the old age processes you must change your thoughts. Erase everything that has to do with age from your mind. Visualize youthful conditions. Say to yourself, "God is my life. ”

“ It may be more reckless than age, but it is not nearly so rash. It keeps thinking its long, long thoughts and questioning the conclusions to which age eagerly hobbles or hurls itself from its crutches. ”

“ Youth, large, lusty, loving—Youth, full of grace, force, fascination! Do you know that Old Age may come after you, with equal grace, force, fascination? ”

“ To determine the exact measure of the influence that the varied expressions of an age's intellectual process exercises upon any single mind belonging to that age is difficult to the point of impossibility. ”