In his day this
was true, since it was impossible fully to repair the waste and
physical wear and tear of the human frame. This is no longer so. The
clock does not wear out, but it goes more and more slowly and
irregularly, and stops at last for some reason that the most skilful
inspection cannot discover. The body of him who dies, as we say, 'by
efflux of time' at the age of fifty is as perfect as it was at
five-and twenty. [8] Yet few men live to be fifty-five, [9] and most
have ceased to take much interest in practical life, or even in
science, by forty-five." [10]
"That seems strange," I said. "If no foreign body gets into the
machinery, and the machinery itself does not wear out, it is difficult
to understand why the clock should cease to go."
"Would not some of your race," he asked, "explain the mystery by
suggesting that the human frame is not a clock, but contains, and owes
its life to, an essence beyond the reach of the scalpel, the
microscope, and the laboratory?"
"They hold that it is so. But then it is not the soul but the body
that is worn out in seventy or eighty of the Earth's revolutions.
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