But that we are happy I will venture neither to affirm nor to deny.
Physically, no doubt, we have great advantages over you, if I rightly
understand your description of life on Earth. We have got rid of old
age, and, to a great extent, of disease. Many of our scientists
persist in the hope to get rid of death; but, since all that has been
accomplished in this direction was accomplished some two thousand
years back, and yet we continue to die, general opinion hardly concurs
in this hope."
"How do you mean," I inquired, "that you have got rid of old age and
of disease?"
"We have," he replied, "learned pretty fully the chemistry of life. We
have found remedies for that hardening of the bones and weakening of
the muscles which used to be the physical characteristics of declining
years. Our hair no longer whitens; our teeth, if they decay, are now
removed and naturally replaced by new ones; our eyes retain to the
last the clearness of their sight. A famous physician of five thousand
years back said in controversy on this subject, that 'the clock was
not made to go for ever;' by which he meant that human bodies, like
the materials of machines, wore out by lapse of time.
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