The right age

In the last essay of Book I of his Essays titled “Of Age” Montaigne talks about age and ageing. In this essay he discusses two themes: The right age to die and the right age to do something. As for the first, he tells us about Cato the Younger, who “said … to those who would stay his hand from killing himself, am I now of an age to be reproached that I go out of the world too soon?” And then Montaigne adds: “And yet he was but eight-and-forty years old.” This remark is a bit strange, for when in 1571 Montaigne retired from public life to this castle, he wrote on the wall of his study that he would spend there “what little remains of his life”. However, Montaigne was then only 38 years old, but he did as if he was already an old man. This illustrates that age is a relative idea and that you are as old as you feel. Some are apparently already old at the age of 48, while others are still “young” at the age of 100. I told you once about Robert Marchand, who stayed cycling almost till his death at the age of 109. 105 years old, he still felt fit enough to set up a world record in one-hour track cycling (see here), so at an age that most of us will not reach. Nonetheless, if a person dies “already” at the age of, say, 96 or 87, nobody will call this a premature death, though one would say so nowadays when a person dies at the age of 48, like Cato, or 59, like Montaigne. This raises the question what a “normal” age to die is. I think that such an answer cannot be given. It depends on the time in which you live, the country and the average age of dying in your country and on some other factors.
If there isn’t a normal age to die, is there then something like a “normal” death? I think that most of us will consider a normal death dying in your own bed in your own house, weakened by a high age, weary of life. Is it really normal? No, so Montaigne: Isn’t it “a kind of death of all others the most rare and very seldom seen? We call that only a natural death; as if it were contrary to nature to see a man break his neck with a fall, be drowned in shipwreck, be snatched away with a pleurisy or the plague, and as if our ordinary condition did not expose us to these inconveniences. … [However]; we ought rather, peradventure, to call that natural which is general, common, and universal. To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and, therefore, so much less natural than the others.” What should I add?
The other theme in “Of Age” is the right age to do something. For instance, what is the legal marriage age? In the Netherlands you must be 18 years old at least. Once your parents had to consent when you were not yet 30 years old; later this age was 21, and now you don’t need your parents’ consent any longer. However, the marriageable age varies according to country, culture and time. Even child marriages happen or happened. Other examples of age limits are the compulsory school age, the age to get a driver’s license, the age that employers must pay an adult wage, or, on the opposite side of life, the retirement age.
Many age limits separate young and adult, and they illustrate that adulthood is a relative affair. Montaigne himself thinks that “our souls are adult at twenty as much as they are ever like to be, and as capable then as ever.” Even more, Montaigne thinks that “a soul that has not by that time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after come to proof. The natural qualities and virtues produce what they have of vigorous and fine, within that term or never.” And if it is not when you are 20 years old, “of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort soever, I have observed, both in former ages and our own, more were performed before the age of thirty than after”. It’s what many people often thought and maybe still think. True, many scientists did their most important discoveries before the age of 30 (Einstein is a case in point), but generally it is not so, also not for scientists. Many qualities need time to ripen, and many people often become good just at a later age, when the right combination of creativity, knowledge, reflection, social experience and the like has developed.
Anyway, after the age of 30 the physical decay of human beings sets in. And mentally? Many older people say, for example at the age of 60: Physically I have become older. My body cannot do any longer what I could do when I was young. Mentally, however, I am still the same as when I was 20 years old. Is it true? Maybe it feels so, but it’s an illusion. Also your mind gradually decays; or at least it changes. Also in your head you don’t stay the same young girl or guy you once were. As Montaigne says, it can even happen that the mind faster submits to age than the body, but when this happens, people often don’t notice it and then “so much greater is the danger”. It’s an illusion to think that mentally you don’t change through the years. You shouldn't fool yourself.