Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/60

56 when nearing three score and ten." Despite dyspepsia and a susceptibility to erysipelas he always possessed "an unusual amount of physical energy." Verdi is another example—the old-man-progressive produced his greatest works after he was seventy, his "Otello" being first performed when he was eighty.

The executive musician especially needs a good physical balance, for the strain upon his nervous system is very great. We find no invalids in the list of great singers. Liszt, Rubinstein and Paderewski were physically strong and robust, while Joachim and Ole Bull were men of long, healthful and vigorous life. A partial exception to the rule is met with in that strange personage Paganini, the severity of whose early training damaged an already frail constitution. He was extremely temperate and had a marvelous use of muscle and nerve in the weaving of his musical magic. He died at fifty-six.

When it comes to the philosophers, among the ancients we must include Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. From what has come down to us we know that Socrates served as a hoplite, or heavy foot soldier, and that in more than one campaign he was conspicuous for both bravery and endurance. He was short, thick-necked and corpulent, although thoroughly schooled to temperance. He was evidently as finely robust physically as morally, until his untimely death at the age of sixty-six.

Of Plato we are positive only that he lived to be seventy years of age. From his writings we know how greatly he appreciated bodily development and well-working.

Of the details of Aristotle's life we know little, but there is no evidence to signify that he was not always in at least fair health, and it would seem from the amount of his work that he must have been a man of great vitality.

Philosophy does not seem to have agreed so well with the moderns, and it seems to have fitted better into inferior somatic conditions than a combination of brain and handiwork as in the artists and musicians. Hobbes was an enthusiastic tennis player until beyond seventy and wielded his pen vigorously after he was ninety. J. S. Mill was "healthy and high spirited." Comte, Leibnitz, and, after his youth, Descartes, were all in fair health and strength, but Locke, Spinoza and Kant could not boast such physique. Of the three, Spinoza alone was short lived, Locke living to the age of seventy-two and Kant to that of eighty.

Spinoza, always of delicate constitution, was early afflicted with pulmonary disease and suffered also from ague. He was extremely abstemious, which did not tend to improve his condition, but it was not until he was forty that he became a confirmed invalid. In Locke's case prudent habits seem to have kept a delicate constitution in even balance of health up to the age of thirty-five, but from this time on, with all his care of himself, he was seriously handicapped by complicated and