[Editor’s Note: This essay is part of our series on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories of science, progress, and human nature.]
Wasting the Water of Life
The Fountain of Youth, were it ever found or invented, would be radically disruptive of the natural order, distorting the effects of time—perhaps even defying death. But the desire for the fresh feeling of youth and energy is as natural as the forces that erode it. And it would be unnatural not to balk at the abyss of death—if not our own annihilation, then the unfathomable loss of loved ones.
In his 1837 story “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment,” Nathaniel Hawthorne exaggerates this dilemma to the point of farce. Four buffoonish ne’er-do-wells at the end of their years are gathered together in the home of “that very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger....whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories.” His study, where the visitors assemble, is “a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs, and besprinkled with antique dust,” a spooky lair at once scientific and magical....
[This article appears in the Fall 2009/Winter 2010 print edition of The New Atlantis, available now in bookstores and on newsstands. To read this and other New Atlantis articles before they appear online, purchase a subscription here.]
Kevin Laskowski is a field associate at the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
