Senescence, the Last Half of LifeHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Senescence, the Last Half of Life
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Geriatrics
Thus, in general it would seem, if our meager returns are at all
typical, that the clergyman makes less appeal to the old and knows less
about ministering to their nature and needs than do physicians. It must
not be forgotten, however, that, as one of our respondents says in
substance, the views of those this questionnaire appealed to, people of
intelligence and culture, are exceptional, and probably the majority
of the uneducated have at least a falsetto belief in some institutions
and teachings of the church. Our returns indicate, however, the same
growth of skepticism with years as that found by the far more extensive
conspectus of J. H. Leuba,[195] from which he gathered that the
percentage of those who believed in God and immortality decreased both
with age and with education.
_Do you think or worry about dying or the hereafter more or less than
formerly?_
Here, as was to be expected in our age of transition and
_éclaircissement_, there is the utmost diversity. All my respondents
answered but only four of them (three women) found anything like
the orthodox religious consolations afforded by the hope of a
personal immortality. Most were agnostic. “I know as much about
it as anyone who ever lived, which is absolutely nothing.” Four
were distinctly pantheistic and found pleasure in the belief of
extinction, annihilation, or absorption into the cosmos like a drop
of water returning to the sea. About one-half had lost confidence in
sacerdotalism and had no connection with any church and a few were
bitter against ecclesiastical assumptions. Most had ceased to worry
about death, a few professed never to think of it, two dreaded the
pain they associated with the act of dying, and one prayed that the
end might be instantaneous. Men of science wished and hoped that they
might go on “thinking God’s thoughts after Him” with renewed facilities
and incentives for getting nearer to the soul of the great _Autos_.
One’s life-long religion seems to have been based on the analogy of
the chick in the egg who regarded hatching as its death, when it was
really coming into a vaster life. Most disclaimed all terror, although
two in their youth had felt that this might recur in second childhood.
The attitude of most might be described by the phrases: “one world at
a time and this one now;” “consider the duty of the present moment
and leave the rest;” “never be anxious concerning anything beyond our
control,” etc. One wished to die like a pious Buddhist in thinking on
his good deeds. One expressed a strong contempt for a god who would
tolerate an orthodox hell and several felt that they would sooner or
later become wearied to the point of ennui with a heaven according to
any conception of it. Most had reckoned with the chance of death in the
plans of their business, making their wills, etc., but believed that
all thought concerning the hereafter was a waste of energy. Several
found consolation only in influential immortality and wanted to live
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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