WHY THINKERS ARE LONG-LIVED

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1678, 27 April 1904, Page 75 (Supplement)

WHY THINKERS ARE LONG-LIVED

Thinkers/ as a rule, live long, or, to put the proposition into more general terms, exercise of the mind tends to longevity. Herbert Spencer 'has died in his 84th year; Darwin reached his 73rd, Sir George Stokes his 84th, Carlyle Ilia 86th, Tyndall was accidentally poisoned at 73, but might have lived several years longer ;Huxley was 70 when he died, Gladstone in his 89th year, Disraeli in his 77th; Newton lived to he 85, and Lord Kelvin is still vigorous in research in his 80th. To a great extent the brain is the centre and seat of life, what Sir William Gull called the central battery, and its stimulation undoubtedly strengthens the forces that make for vitality. Healthy exercise of either mind .or body, cf course, favours length of days, but the strivings of the thinker and writer are seldom quite of the healthy order. Darwin, Carlyle, and Spencer were victims 'of nearly lifelong dyspepsia, and yet. exceeded three score and ten. Pleasant exertion without pleasure; a priori, one would not expect the abstract thinker to live so happily as the man of experimental research, and the experience seems to confirm the expectation.. No one waH question Sir James Paget’s dictum that undue fatigue is a common cause of disease, but so all so is indolence. What part’ of the human economy, mental or physical, is not made for activity?