The Force of Character and the Lasting Life

James Hillman

Preface

If the idea of soul (even if you can’t explain this idea) comes first in value, then our ideas should accord with our actual value system. This means we have to psychologize aging, discover the soul in it. (9)

Life may well depend on bacteria, molds, and chemical compounds, but thought achieves complexities that can’t be reduced to prior building blocks. This is one of the great puzzles of thought: It can originate its own species, select unnatural ideas, and show its own evolution; and much thought that is quite unfit survives. (12)

We need to recognize how helplessly our thinking about the last of life has been trapped in disparaging ageism—a class concept that relegates all older people to a category with definite, inescapable handicaps owing to the breakdown of the organism and the exhaustion of its reserves. (13)

Our ideas of older age need replacement. Like a hip that can no longer bear weight or a clouded lens that does not let you see out of your own head, we need to wheel our ideas into the operating room. But replacing outworn mental habits requires both attack and stamina. (15)