But alas, its aging process remained that of a parakeet.
During its last year, it slowly grew morose and sullen; men tioned its improper words but rarely; took to walking rather than flying. And finally it died. And, of course, a similar process is taking place within me.
This thought makes me petulant. Each year I break my own previous record and enter new high ground as far as age is concerned, and it is remarkably cold comfort to think that everyone else is doing exactly the same thing.
The fact of the matter is that I resent growing old. In my time I was a kind of mild infant prodigy-you know, the kind that teaches himself to read before he is five and enters college at fifteen and is writing for publication at eighteen and all like that there. As you might expect, I came in for frequent curious inspection as a sort of ludicrous freak, and I invariably interpreted this inspection as admiration and loved it.
But such behavior carries its own punishment, for the moving finger writes, as Edward Fitzgerald said Omar
Khayyam said, and having writ, moves on. And what that means is that the bright, young, bouncy, effervescent infant prodigy becomes a flabby, paunchy, bleary, middle-aged non-prodigy, and age sits twice as heavily on such as these.
It happens quite often that some huge, hulking, raw boned fellow, checks bristling with black stubble, comes to me and says in his bass voice, "I've been reading you ever since I learned to read; and I've collected all the stuff you wrote before I learned to read and I've read that, too.",
My impulse then is to hit him a stiff right cross to the side of the jaw, and I might do so if only I were quite sure he would respect my age and not hit back.
So I see nothing for it but to find a way of looking at the bright side, if any exists…
How long do organisms live anyway? We can only guess.
Statistics on the subject have been carefully kept only in the last century or so, and then only for Homo sapiens, and then only in the more "advanced" parts of the world.
So most of what is said about longevity consists of quite rough estimates. But then, if everyone is guessing, I can guess, too; and as lightheartedly as the next person, you can bet.
In the first place, what do we mean. by length of life?
There are several ways of looking at this, and one is to consider the actual length of time (on the average) that actual organisms live under actual conditions. This is the
"life expectancy-)I
One thing we can be certain of is that life expectancy is quite trifling for all kinds of creatures. If a codfish or an oyster produces millions or billions of eggs and only one or two happen to produce young thal are still alive at the end of the first year, then the average life expectancy of all the coddish or oysterish youngsters can be measured in weeks, or possibly even days. I imagine that thousands upon thousands of them live no more than minutes.
Matters are not so extreme among birds and mammals where there is a certain amount of infant care, but I'll bet relatively few of the smaller ones live out a single year.
From the cold-blooded view of species survival, this is quite enough, however. Once a creature has reached sexual maturity, and contributed to the birth of a litter of young which it sees through to puberty or near-puberty, it has done its bit for species survival and can go its way. If it survives and produces additional litters, well and good, but it doesn't have to.
There is, obviously, considerable survival value in reach ing sexual maturity as early as possible, so that there is time to produce the next generation before the first is gone.
Meadow mice reach puberty in three weeks and can bear their first litter six weeks after birth. Even an animal as large as a horse or cow reaches the age of puberty after one year, and the largest whales reach puberty at two.
Some large land animals can afford to be slower about it.
Bears are adolescent only at six and elephants only at ten.
The large carnivores can expect to live a number of years, if only because they have relatively few enemies (al ways excepting man) and need not expect to be anyone's dinner. The largest herbivores, such as elephants and hip popotami, are also safe; while smaller ones such as baboons and water buffaloes achieve a certain safety by traveling in herds.
Early man falls into this category. He lived in small herds and he cared for his young. He had, at the very least, primitive clubs and eventually gained the use of fire. The average man, therefore, could look forward to a number of years of life. Even so, with undernourishment, disease, the hazards of the chase, and the cruelty of man to man, life was short by modern standards. Naturally, there was a limit to how short life could be. If men didn't live long enough, on the average, to replace themselves, the race would die out. However, I should guess that in a primitive society a life expectancy of 18 would be ample for species survival. And I rather suspect that the actual life ex pectancy of man in the Stone Age was not much greater.
As mankind developed agriculture and as he domesti cated animals, he gained a more dependable food supply.
As he learned to dwell within walled cities and to live under a rule of law, he gained oTeater security against hu man enemies from without and within. Naturally, life ex pectancy rose somewhat. In fact, it doubled.
However, throughout ancient and medieval times, I doubt that life expectancy ever reached 40. In medieval
England, the life expectancy is estimated to have been 35, so that if you did reach the age of 40 you were a revered sage. What with early marriage and early childbirth, you were undoubtedly a grandfather, too.
This situation still existed into the twentieth century in some parts of the world. In India, for instance, as of 1950, the life expectancy was about 32; in Egypt, as of 1938, it was 36; in Mexico, as of 1940, it was 38.
The next great step was medical advance, which brought infection and disease under control. Consider the United
States. In 1850, life expectancy for American white males was 38.3 (not too much different from the situation in medieval England or ancient Rome). By 1900, however, after Pasteur and Koch had done their work, it was up to
48.2; then 56.3 in 1920; 60.6 in 1930; 62.8 in 1940; 66.3 in 1950; 67.3 in 1959; and 67.8 in 1961.
All through, females had a bit the better of it (being the tougher sex). In 1850, they averaged two years longer life than males; and by 1961, the edge had risen to nearly seven years. Non-whites in the United States don't do quite as well-not for any inborn reason, I'm sure, but because they generally occupy a position lower on the economic scale. They run some seven years behind whites in life ex pectancy. (And if anyone wonders why Negroes are rest less these days, there's seven years of life apiece that they have coming to them. That might do as a starter.)
Even if we restrict ourselves to whites, the United States does not hold the record in life expectancy. I rather think
Norway and Sweden do. The latest figures I can find (the middle 1950s) give Scandinavian males a life expectancy of 71, and females one of 74.
This change in life expectancy has introduced certain changes in social custom. In past centuries, the old man was a rare phenomenon-an unusual repository of long memories and a sure guide to ancient traditions. Old age was revered, and in some societies where life expectancy is still low and old men still exceptional, old age is still revered.
It might also be feared. Until the nineteenth century there were particular hazards to childbirth, and, few women survived the process very often (puerperal fever and all that). Old women were therefore even rarer than old men, and with their wrinkled cheeks and toothless gums were strange and frightening phenomena. The witch mania of early modern times may have been a last expression of that.