The British writer C. C. Montague once told a remarkable short story about a man in his early fifties who awoke one morning with a curious numb feeling in his right side, which affected him from head to foot. The man had lived an active life, achieved a reasonable degree of success, but was now alone in the world, his wife being dead and his children grown and married. He saw the numbness as the beginning of old age. As he pondered his situation, he came at length to a decision. This moment was an opportunity for him, while his strength and vigor remained, to carry out an experiment in which he had long been interested. He was a lover of the mountains and a first-rate climber. He would go to the Alps, and throw away all caution in climbing and climb higher than he had ever climbed before. …