le the one
has a short past and a long future before it, the case is just the
opposite with the other. It is quite true that when a man is old, to
die is the only thing that awaits him; while if he is young, he may
expect to live; and the question arises which of the two fates is the
more hazardous, and if life is not a matter which, on the whole, it is
better to have behind one than before? Does not the Preacher say:
_the day of death [is better] than the day of one's birth_.[1] It is
certainly a rash thing to wish for long life;[2] for as the Spanish
proverb has it, it means to see much evil,--_Quien larga vida vive
mucho mal vide_.

[Footnote 1: Ecclesiastes vii. 1.]

[Footnote 2: The life of man cannot, strictly speaking, be called
either _long_ or _short_, since it is the ultimate standard by which
duration of time in regard to all other things is measured.

In one of the Vedic _Upanishads (Oupnekhat_, II.) _the natural length_
of human life is put down at one hundred years. And I believe this to
be right. I have observed, as a matter of fact, that it is only people
who exceed the age of ninety who attain _euthanasia_,--who die, that
is to say, of no disease, apoplexy or convulsion, and pass away
without agony of any sort; nay, who sometimes even show no pallor, but
expire generally in a sitting attitude, and often after a meal,--or,
I may say, simply cease to live rather than die. To come to one's end
before the age of ninety, means to die of disease, in other words,
prematurely.

Now the Old Testament (Psalms xc. 10) puts the limit of human life at
seventy, and if it is very long, at eighty years; and what is more
noticeable still, Herodotus (i. 32 and iii. 22) says the same thing.
But this is wrong; and the error is due simply to a rough and
superficial estimate of the results of daily experience. For if the
natural length of life were from seventy to eighty years, people would
die, about that time, of mere old age. Now this is certainly not the
case. If they die then, they die, like younger people, _of disease_;
and disease is something abnormal. Therefore it is not natural to die
at that age. It is only when they are between ninety and a hundred
that people die of old age; die, I mean, without suffering from any
disease, or showing any special signs of their condition, such as a
struggle, death-rattle, convulsion, pallor,--the absence of all which
constitutes _euthanasia_. The natural length of human life