order--a population nearly stationary,
and a soil much more than adequate to their support; a general
distribution of property, total absence of permanent poverty, and
freedom from that gnawing anxiety regarding the future of ourselves or
our children which is the great evil of life upon Earth and the
opprobrium of our social arrangements. You have carried out, moreover,
the doctrines of our most advanced philosophers; you have absolute
equality before the law, competitive examination among the young for
the best start in life, with equal chances wherever equality is
possible; and again, perfect freedom and full legal equality as
regards the relations of the sexes. Are your countrymen satisfied with
the results?"

"Yes," answered my host, "in so far, at least, that they have no wish
to change them, no idea that any great social or political reforms
could improve our condition. Our lesson in Communism has rendered all
agitation on such matters, all tendency to democratic institutions,
all appeals to popular passions, utterly odious and alarming to us.
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. 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