The prolongation of life / by R.E. Dudgeon.

  • Robert Ellis Dudgeon
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The prolongation of life / by R.E. Dudgeon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    man can hardly expect to make new friends. He does not care to associate with old people, and young people are not fond of associating with him. “ Honour, love, obe- dience, troops of friends,” which Macbeth says should accompany old age, “ he must not look to have,” though he may not have done anything, like the Scottish usurper, to deserve their loss. Young people, whom he would like to associate with, do not care for the companionship of an old man— possibly because they fear he might inflict on them some unwelcome good advice, which they must despise if they hold, with the cynical Rochefoucauld, that “ les vieil- lards aiment a donner de bons preceptes, pour se consoler de n’etre plus en etat de donner de mauvais exemples.” There may be some young men who, according to Cicero, “ take pleasure in the lessons of the old, by which they are led to the pursuit of virtue,” but I have never met with these amiable youths, and probably the race is extinct in these degenerate modern times.
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