rty, content and chearful, I
never cease thanking the Divine Majesty for so great a blessing;
considering the usual fate of other old men. These scarce attain
the age of seventy, without losing their health and spirits;
growing melancholy and peevish; and continually haunted by the
thoughts of death; apprehending their last hour from one day to
another, so that it is impossible to drive such thoughts out of
their mind; whereas such things give me not the least uneasiness;
for, indeed, I cannot, at all, make them the object of my
attention, as I shall hereafter more plainly relate. I shall,
besides, demonstrate the certainty I have of living to an hundred.
But, to render this dissertation more methodical, I shall begin by
considering man at his birth; and from thence accompany him through
every stage of life to his grave.

I, therefore, say, that some come into the world with the stamina
of life so weak, that they live but a few days, or months, or
years; and it cannot be clearly known, to what such shortness of
life is owing; whether to some defect in the father or the mother,
in begetting them; or to the revolutions of the heavens; or to the
defect of nature, subject, as she is, to the celestial influence.
For, I could never bring myself to believe, that nature, common
parent of all, should be partial to any of her children.
Therefore, as we cannot assign causes, we must be content with
reasoning from the effects, such as they daily appear to our view.

Others are born sound, indeed, and full of spirits; but,
notwithstanding, with a poor weakly constitution; and of these some
live to the age of ten; others to twenty; others to thirty or
forty; yet they do not live to extreme old age. Others, again,
bring into the world a perfect constitution, and live to old age;
but it is generally, as I have already said, an old age full of
sickness and sorrow; for which they are to thank themselves; because
they most unreasonably presume on the goodness of their
constitution; and cannot by any means be brought to depart, when
brought to depart, when grown old, from the mode of life they
pursued in their younger days; as if they still retained all their
primitive vigour. Nay, they intend to live as irregularly when past
the meridian of life, as they did all the time of their youth;
thinking they shall never grow old, nor their constitution ever be
impaired. Neither do they consider, that their stomach has lost its
natural h