538 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



AGE AND EMINENCE. 



By Professor EDWIN G. DEXTER, 



UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 



OELDOM has the popular mind been so deeply moved by the casual 

 ^-' utterance of a savant as in the recent instance of Dr. Osier's now 

 famous valedictory at Johns Hopkins. Nothing was probably more 

 foreign to the speaker's mind than an intention to stir up the tumult 

 of newspaper contention that followed his remarks, and we may pre- 

 sume that he is not altogether pleased at the exact character of the 

 notoriety which he has achieved. The portion of his address that has 

 brought him so prominently into the public eye had to do with the age 

 of greatest usefulness in man, and runs as follows : 



I have two fixed ideas, well known to my friends, harmless obsessions, 

 with which I sometimes bore them, but which have a direct bearing on this 

 important problem. The first is the comparative uselessness of men above 

 forty years of age. This may seem shocking, and yet, read aright, the world's 

 history bears out the statement. Take the sum of human achievement in 

 action, in science, in art, in literature — subtract the work of the men above 

 fcrty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we 

 should practically be where we are to-day. It is difficult to name a great and 

 far-reaching conquest of the mind which has not been given to the world by a 

 man on whose back the sun was still shining. The effective, moving, vitalizing 

 work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty — these 

 fifteen years of plenty, the anabolic or constructive period, in which there is 

 always a balance in the mental bank, and the credit is still good. . . . 



My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years old, and 

 the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political and in professional 

 life if, as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age. Donne tells us in 

 his ' Biathanatos ' that, by the laws of certain wise states, sexagenari were pre- 

 cipitated from a bridge, and in Rome men of that age were not admitted to the 

 suffrage, and they were called deponati, because the way to the senate was per 

 pontem, and they, from age, were not permitted to come hither. In that 

 charming novel, ' The Fixed Period,' Anthony Trollope discusses the practical 

 advantage in modern life of a return to this ancient usage, and the plot hinges 

 upon the admirable scheme of a college, into which, at sixty, men retired for 

 a year of contemplation before a peaceful departure by chloroform. That incal- 

 culable benefits might follow such a scheme is apparent to any one who, like 

 myself, is nearing the limit, and who has made a careful study of the calamities 

 which may befall men during the seventh and eighth decades. 



The thoughts expressed in these paragrpahs were much more fully 

 elaborated by Dr. Osier in the delivery of his address, and we may 



