It first dawned on me that the process of aging was not simply the years passing, as I gazed at human nature in the law courts. As important, possibly more important, are the thoughts of a man or woman within. Nothing ages quicker than despair; nothing keeps young so much as ebullient hope. I first learned in the law courts that a fat woman, who has let herself go to seed mentally and physically, has fat thoughts. The thoughts she utters are an expression of the spirit of which her fat body is the manifestation. There may be many medical reasons for fatness; but there is in addition one other, that fatness expresses so perfectly the way the person has let his or her character go to seed. I can hear many people objecting at this, that people can go to seed in many ways besides getting fat. Of course they can. There are endless ways in which human nature can rot; and there are equally many ways in which the rot can manifest itself. Committing crime is one example; getting fat can be another. The habitual thoughts in the mind do imprint themselves on the body, as I suggested in the early chapters. It is enshrined in folklore, which says that the beauty of a woman of twenty is the gift of the gods, but the beauty of a…