When You Are Old
Old Age : Its Compensations and Rewards. By A. L. Vischer. (Allen and Unwin. 12s. 6d.)
FOR twenty years Dr. Vischer of Basle has been in charge of furnished houses provided by the canton for elderly people. He
has thus had plenty of human material to draw on, but little scientific material, for as he points out, though there are innumerable books about children there are almost none about the old. " The one thing that every person looks forward to is the one thing for which no preparation is made." Though he quotes many comments on age, therefore, they are mainly by-the-way comments. He himself is breaking new ground.
The Compensations and Rewards of the title is a little misleading. The German is Schicksal and ErfUllung, and Dr. Vischer does not
at ali stress the " rewards " of old age. Indeed he begins with a list of physical changes which, taken as a personal destiny, are unpleasant ' • even frightening. But then as he goes oh to deal with old age in history—the average age of the population is increasing chiefly because of the decrease in infantile mortality so that in recorded time there have always been long lives—with old age in other civilisations and finally with the achievements of old age, there comes a slow sense of comfort. Deterioration of mental powers does not necessarily accompany physical decline ; there are always the Goethes and Verdis. Plates, whose value is somewhat lost by poor reproduction, provide a comparison of the work of great artists when they were young and old. There is a chapter on the women of eighteenth-century France who with their salons gracefully sub- stituted the pleasures of the mind for love. One European heritage from Greece, Dr. Vischer says, has been unfortunate ; we have inherited the Greek over-veneration for youth. But China is a paradise for the old. "People of middle age wait most eagerly for their fiftieth birthday. • . . Even the white-headed beggar is treated with perfect consideration."
Since old age is inevitable, how can it be made successful? Dr. Vischer suggests two desiderata. One is a full first half of life—
many interests so that there is much to draw on. The other is the attainment of some inner harmony, an acceptance of values outside temporary things. Then, when old age arrives, it should not be segregated or idle. The old people in Dr. Vischer's homes are given small tasks to do in the adjoining hospital—a hospital for people of all ages so that contact with the world is maintained. On this point Lord Amulree contributes a foreword, pointing out the need in Britain for similar homes. Here old people are only too often hidden away in hospitals for " chronic " cases where they drag out an idle and hopeless end of life.
Such a book as this, written for the general reader and dealing with a general subject under many aspects, is bound to be a little desultory. But, it is never dull, dealing as it does with experience which will some day be one's own. Reading, one suddenly becomes conscious that up to now one's attention has been directed to—at most—three-quarters of life ; that the other quarter has been ignored as something to be noticed in other people but never in one- self.- The book ranges widely in its quotations from German, French, American and British writers. The translation is workman-
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