Excerpt from Senescence: The Last Half of Life In this book I have tried to present the subjects of Old Age and Death from as many viewpoints as possible in order to show how the ignorant and the learned, the child, the adult, and the old, savage and civilized man, pagans and Christians, the ancient and the modern world, the representatives of various sciences, and different individuals have viewed these problems, letting each class, so far as I could, speak for itself. This part of the task has been long and arduous and my conspectus is not entirely encyclopedic, as it set out to be. I have also tried to develop an idea of death, and especially of old age, which I believe to be, if not essentially new, more true to the facts of life and mind than those now current, and which I think much needed by the world just now. Despite the great and growing interest that has impelled this study, its themes have proved increasingly depressing, so that its conclusion brings a unique relief that I may now turn to more cheerful occupations, although it would be craven to plead this as an extenuation of the shortcomings of which I am increasingly conscious. If I have at certain points drawn too frankly upon my own personal experiences with age I realize that this does not compensate for my limitations in some of the special fields I ventured to enter. I have had in mind throughout chiefly the nature and needs of intelligent people passing or past middle life quite as much as of those actually entering old age. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.