438 Longevity of Brain-Workers. [OGtober, 
they are doing the least, and only become rich after they 
have ceased trying to be so.* 
With muscle-workers there is but little accumulation, 
and only a limited increase of reward; and in old age, after 
their strength has begun to decline, they must, with increas- 
ing expense, work even harder than before. 
To this should be added the consideration that manual 
employments cost as much force after they are learned as 
before ; they can never, like many intellectual callings, 
become so far forth matters of routine as to require little 
effort. It is as hard to lay a stone wall after one has been 
laying it fifty years as during the first year. The range of 
muscular growth and development is narrow, compared 
with the range of mental growth; the day-labourer soon 
reaches the maximum of his strength. ‘he literary or 
scientific worker goes on from strength to strength, until 
what at twenty-five was impossible, and at thirty difficult, 
at thirty-five becomes easy, and at forty a pastime; and 
besides he has the satisfaction that the work done so easily 
at thirty-five and forty is incomparably better than the work 
done with so much difficulty at twenty-five. 
6. Comparative longevity of the professions. Inasmuch as 
professional men do not usually change their callings, but 
die in the special profession in which they have lived, the vital 
statistics, at least of lawyers, physicians, and clergymen, 
become of value in determining their comparative longevity. 
I found in my researches, made several years ago, that lawyers 
and physicians lived to be about fifty-seven or fifty-eight. 
The difference in the longevity of lawyers and physicians is 
but trifling. My observations in this respect have been 
variously confirmed by other statisticians.T 
Longevity of the Precocious. 
That precocity predicts short life, and is therefore a symp- 
tom greatly to be feared by parents, has, I believe, never 
* The whole subject of ‘‘ The Relation of Age to Work,” I have discussed 
in my pamphlet on “ Legal Responsibility in Old Age,” to which I may refer 
those who are interested in the subje@. What is there written is preliminary 
to an exhaustive treatise now in the course of preparation. 
+ “An investigation made by a Berlin physician into the facts and data 
relating to human longevity shows the average age of clergymen to be 65; of 
merchants, 62; clerks and farmers, 61; military men, 59; lawyers, 58; artists, 
57; and medical men, 56. Statistics are given showing that medical men in 
England stand high in the scale of longevity. Thus, the united ages of 28 
physicians who died there last year, amount to 2354 years, giving an average 
of more than 84 years to each. The youngest of the number was 80; the 
oldest, 93; two others were 92 and 8g respectively ; three were 87; and four 
were 86 each; and there were also more than 50 who averaged from 74 to 75 
years.’ . 
