THE FOUR LAWS OF AGE 245 



an erroneous tendency. It would be better to have the 

 young man get to college earlier, graduate earlier, get 

 into practical life or into the professional schools 

 earlier, while the power of learning is greater. 



Do we not see, in fact, that the new ideas are indeed 

 for the most part the ideas of young people ? As Dr. 

 Osier, in that much-discussed remark of his, has said, 

 the man of forty years is seldom the productive man. 

 Dr. Osier also mentioned the amiable suggestion of 

 Trollope in regard to men of sixty, which has been 

 so extremely misrepresented in the newspaper discus- 

 sions throughout the country, causing biologists much 

 amusement. But I think that Dr. Osier probably took 

 a far too amiable view of mankind, and that in reality 

 the period when the learning power is nearly obliter- 

 ated is reached in most individuals very much earlier. 

 Permit me to read to you a quotation from a lecture 

 which I delivered last year (1906) before the Harvey 

 Society: 



" It may be true that that age (40) marks in intellectual men 

 usually a transition or the point where the accumulated losses 

 which have been occurring from birth on reveal their effects clearly, 

 but in the great majority of men comparative mental fixity surely 

 occurs at a much earlier period. If you will allow me to wander 

 for a moment from the strict discussion of our immediate theme, 

 I should like to refer to what may be called the theory of perma- 

 nent mental fatigue. The organic changes which go on in the 

 nervous system diminish its pliability and there comes a time when 

 the individual finds it exceedingly difficult to bring his mind into 

 any unaccustomed form of activity. How completely we are 

 mastered by this difficulty is often hidden, I believe, from our 



