to his sons, or accompanied by her, if she choose to attend him Let him be constantly engaged in reading the Vedas, patient of all extremities. Let him bear a reproachful speech with patience; let him not, on account of this frail and feverish body, engage in hostility with any one living. With an angry man let him not in his turn be angry; abused, let him speak mildly; nor let him utter a word referring to vain illusory things. . . Delighted with meditating on the Supreme Spirit, sitting fixed in such meditation, without needing anything earthly, without any companion but his own soul, let him live in this world, seeking the bliss of the next . . . A gourd, a wooden bowl, an earthen dish, or a basket made of reeds, has Manu, son of the Self-existent, declared fit vessels to receive the food of men devoted to God.'

It is still a comparatively common practice in India for the aged Hindu to retire into 'religion,' and the law, as administered by the British tribunals, makes provision in many places for the case of a Hindu who has embraced a religious life, and ceased to participate in any kind of secular business. There is nothing by itself surprising in the custom, considering the tremendous series of experiences which the devout believer in Hinduism is led to expect as awaiting him at the moment of his death. Nevertheless, there is reason for thinking that the withdrawal of the

aged from activity is more ancient than the Hindu theological system, and has existed independently of it, as a secular practice, in many early societies. The Patria Potestas, which is witnessed to by the ancient law or custom of so many communities, was founded on power quite as much as on parentage; and when the power fails, there are many signs that the patriarchal authority departs. In the Hindu law of Succession, death is not by any means necessarily the occasion of inheritance; the contingency quite as commonly contemplated is withdrawal from secular life; the householder quitting his family and dividing his substance among his children-nay, being even liable (though this is a violently disputed point) to be forced into retirement by his sons. There is some evidence, moreover, that, when the larger associations of Hindu kindred, the Joint Families, were in a more ancient state than that in which we see them, they recognised three classes of persons as entirely helpless and therefore dependent on the group at large; the children, the unmarried daughters and widows, and the old men. The seniors' not infrequently mentioned in the Irish Brehon law, and stated to be persons for whom the sept must make provision, are no doubt aged men.

There is reason, in fact, to believe that at some period of human history a revolution took place in the status of aged men, not perhaps unlike that which is

still proceeding in the case of women. There is abundant testimony that tribes, long pressed hard by enemies or generally in straits for subsistence, systematically put their members to death when too old for labour or arms. The place from which a wild Slavonic race compelled their old men to leap into the sea is still shown. And the fiercer savage has often in many parts of the world made food of them. Nevertheless, the ancient records of many communities, especially those of Aryan speech, show us old age invested with the highest authority and dignity. Mr. Freeman (in his 'Comparative Politics,' rp. 72, 73) has given a long list of honorific names belonging to classes or institutions, which indicate the value once set by advancing societies on the judgment of the old. Among them are, Senate, yepovσía (the Spartan Senate), δημογέροντες (its Homeric equivalent), πρέσ Beis (Ambassadors), Ealdorman, Elder, Presbyter, Monseigneur, Seigneur, Sire, Sir, and Sheikh; and Mr. Freeman closes with the Old Man of the Mountain. So great a number of titles, civil and ecclesiastical, are evidence of a very strong sentiment, and suggest that this exaltation of old age was a definite stage in the ascent to civilisation.

There is a story of a New Zealand chief who, questioned as to the fortunes of a fellow-tribesman long ago well known to the enquirer, answered, 'He gave us so much good advice that we put him

mercifully to death.' The reply, if it was ever given, combines the two views which barbarous men appear to have taken at different times of the aged. At first they are useless, burdensome, and importunate, and they fare accordingly. But at a later period a new sense of the value of wisdom and counsel raises them to the highest honour. Their long life comes to be recognised as one way of preserving experience. The faculty of speech, which separates man from the brute, and the art of writing, by which the society capable of civilisation is distinguished from the society condemned to permanent barbarism, are simply methods by which experience is enlarged, compared, and transmitted, and by which mankind is enabled to have more of it than is contained in single separate lives. Yet the individual life is always the original source of experience, and at some time or other it must have been perceived that the more the individual life was prolonged, the larger was its contribution to the general stock. This seems the best explanation of the vast authority which, in the infancy of civilisation, was assigned to assemblies of aged men, independently of their physical power or military prowess. It probably sprang up among communities which had no writings to learn from, and who were conscious that the importance of the arts which were necessary for their very existence was out of all proportion to the average shortness of

life. Almost everywhere in the advancing portions of the ancient world we find that the old, generally organised in assemblies, had a large share of the public powers, and there is a survival of these ideas in the minimum limit of age which has been made the condition of a seat in the artificial Second Chambers which have been constructed over most of the civilised West as supposed counterparts of the English House of Lords. But these modern Second Chambers reverse to a great extent the functions of the ancient assemblies, known, from their names and otherwise, to have originally consisted of old men. The Second Chamber is nowadays assumed to have a veto in the legislation of the Chamber which has the initiative; but the ancient Senates, in their primitive condition at all events, decided beforehand what measures should be submitted to the Popular Assembly, and if they legislated themselves, their enactments had reference to special departments of State, such as religion and finance. On the whole, they were rather administrative than legislative bodies. The nearest analogy to the very important control over the lawmaking power which they once possessed, must be sought in the indefinite but most real and effective authority which an English Cabinet enjoys through its virtual monopoly of the initiative in legislation.