getting old

Found this to be interesting, from book 2 chapter 9 part 14

"Decay of perception in old age. But yet I cannot but think there is some small dull perception, whereby they are distinguished from perfect insensibility. And that this may be so, we have plain instances, even in mankind itself. Take one in whom decrepit old age has blotted out the memory of his past knowledge, and clearly wiped out the ideas his mind was formerly stored with, and has, by destroying his sight, hearing, and smell quite, and his taste to a great degree, stopped up almost all the passages for new ones to enter; or if there be some of the inlets yet half open, the impressions made are scarcely perceived, or not at all retained. How far such an one (notwithstanding all that is boasted of innate principles) is in his knowledge and intellectual faculties above the condition of a cockle or an oyster, I leave to be considered. And if a man had passed sixty years in such a state, as it is possible he might, as well as three days, I wonder what difference there would be, in any intellectual perfections, between him and the lowest degree of animals."

I find it to be really true, we weather away and our senses gain insensitivity. There's no preventing it from happening, it's a way for us to get weak and die due to the lack of sharp senses we could have had. Locke in the end of this rant seems to say that having dulled senses makes us just like the animals. Going back to Descartes, he says the same thing almost. The only thing that separates us from the animals is that we have a mind and we can think. Not the same exact note, but with dulled senses we cannot function like normal humans, our minds are slower because we cannot feel the stimulation.