Aristotle / 2008-06-06 00:00:00
350 BC
ON LONGEVITY AND SHORTNESS OF LIFE
by Aristotle
translated by G. R. T. Ross
1
THE reasons for some animals being long-lived and others
short-lived, and, in a word, causes of the length and brevity of
life call for investigation.
The necessary beginning to our inquiry is a statement of the
difficulties about these points. For it is not clear whether in
animals and plants universally it is a single or diverse cause that
makes some to be long-lived, others short-lived. Plants too have in
some cases a long life, while in others it lasts but for a year.
Further, in a natural structure are longevity and a sound
constitution coincident, or is shortness of life independent of
unhealthiness? Perhaps in the case of certain maladies a diseased
state of the body and shortness of life are interchangeable, while
in the case of others ill-health is perfectly compatible with long
life.
Of sleep and waking we have already treated; about life and death we
shall speak later on, and likewise about health and disease, in so far
as it belongs to the science of nature to do so. But at present we
have to investigate the causes of some creatures being long-lived, and
others short-lived. We find this distinction affecting not only entire
genera opposed as wholes to one another, but applying also to
contrasted sets of individuals within the same species.
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