The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1916-01-08
That Thoughtful People
Live Long Is Proved By
Longevity of Thinkers

Generalities, while they may be gilt
tering. are usually false, or, at best,
but half-truths. 1t is an Indication
OF the growing intelligence of human
fty that many hoary old proverbs, once
widely quoted and universally accept
co, nave now been cast into the rub
Fplsh heap. OF all the proverbs which
our grandfathers liked to quote, per-
haps the most ridiculous was that
which asserted that ''The good die
yC ung." At last the world is awalxing
to the fact that ill health is usually
! g vice, either inherited or acquired
and that early death, far from being
| indicative of virtue, is most often the
reverse.
A generality that would be much
truer than the one just quoted, al
though having many necessary excep-
tons. would be that '"The thoughtful
live long, The great philosophers,
scientists and thinkers of the world
have usually been men who lived
sanely and nationally, and who thus
happy old age.
To-day is the anniversary of the
birth of the ''last of the nineteenth
century's mental giants who took part
in the discovery and development Of
the theory of natural selection or evo-
1ution-Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace. He
was co-worker with Darwin, ETux-
ley and the other intellectual Tftans
OF the past century whose inVestiga-
tons worked a revolution in the
thought of the century. DR.. Wallace
died in 1914 at the ripe old age OF
ninety-one, and to the last day of his
peaceful, studious life he maintained
his full intellectual vigor.
Charles Darwin had passed the
three-score-an d-ten mark by three
years when he died. Herbert Spen-
Ger, the founder of the system of syn
nh or n iG
birth day, although from his infancy he
was a physical weak1ing, and all his
life had to wage uneeasing wal
| against the forces of disease. Thorn
as Henry Huxley, also famous as an
evoluti onist aud as the father of, ag-
Mysticism, passed the seventy mark
ic life's journey. Robert Owen, All
other OF the great British, thinkers
of the nineteenth century,, died at
the age of eighty -seven. Sir Charles
Lye1l, the great geologist~ and one of
the profoundest thinkers in that
branch of science, was in his seventy
eighth year when he passed away.
I, What was true of the scientists and
philosophers of the nineteenth century
is equally true of those of the past and
the present. Thomas A. Edison VIII
soon begin his SEVENTEEN year, but
the fertile mind which has produced so
many epochal inventions is seemingly
undimiaished in vigor,s although the
great inventor is the hardest of work
ers, and probably gives his mental
machinery less rest than any other
man. Ernst Haecke1, the greatest of
modern German evolutionists and the
founder of the Monistic philosophy. is
now in his eighty-second year.
The brilliant intellectuals of the
Ell ghteenth century were for the most
part as Iong-hved as their successors.
Voltaire who combined philosophy
with a transcendant ability in liter
allure, combatted an inherited tendency
toward il1-hea1th successfully for
nearly eighty-four years. Jean
jacques Rousseau was only sixty-siz
when he died, but from infancy he had
suffered from constitutional ailments
which would almost certainly. have
resulted in the much earlier demise of
the average man. 9Diderot, the cele-
brated encyclopedias, was seventy
one at his passing from the worlds
stage, on which he had played so rev.
dictionary a part. Arthur Schopen-
hauer, the German thinker who for
mulated a philosophy based on pes
sfmisIn, lived in this worst possible
of worlds for nearly seventy two
years.