too short for mastery, we shall drift into far more disastrous wars that will leave even the victors exhausted, and mankind will either sink into an impotent senility or into a Tarzan bestialism, which from the standpoint of Clarence Day (_The Simian World_) would seem not impossible. CHAPTER II THE HISTORY OF OLD AGE The age of plants and animals--The Old Stone Age--Treatment of old age among existing savage tribes--The views of Frazer--The ancient Hebrews and the Old Testament--The Greeks (including Sparta, the Homeric Age, the status of the old in Athens, the views of Plato, Socrates’ talks with boys, Aristotle)--The Romans--The Middle Ages--Witchcraft and old women--Attitude of children toward the old--Mantegazza’s collection of favorable and unfavorable views of age--The division of life into stages--The relation of age groups to social strata--The religion of different ages of life--The Vedanta--The Freudian war between the old and the young--History of views from Cornaro to our own time--Bacon--Addison--Burton--Swift. Some plants live only a few hours; others, a few days; and very many only for a season. But trees are the oldest of all things that live. In the Canary Islands is an immense dragon tree, forty-five feet in circumference, which grows very slowly. This was vital enough to continue living fifty years after a third of it was destroyed. It must have been several thousand years old, but as its trunk was hollowed there was no way of ascertaining its age. In the Cape Verde Islands stood a tree thirty feet in diameter which Adanson estimated to be 5,150 years of age. Some of the old cypresses in Mexico are thought to be quite as old. The big trees of California are several thousand years old, the largest of which Sargent estimates to have lived 5,000 years. We have all seen cross-sections of the trunks of these monsters of the vegetable world with their concentric rings marked--“this growth was made during the year the Magna Charta was granted,” “this when Christ was born,” etc. Many botanists believe that trees of this sort do not die of old age as such, but of external accidents like lightning, tempests, etc.