ly
dismissed from existence. Logically, of course, the same principle
should be applied to all incurable disease; and I suspect--indeed I
know--that it is applied when the household have become weary, and the
patient is utterly unable to protect himself or appeal to the law. But
the general application of the principle has been successfully
resisted, on the ground that the terror it would cause, the constant
anxiety and alarm in which men would live if the right of judging when
life had become worthless to them were left to others, would far
outweigh any benefit which might be derived from the legalised
extinction of existences which had become a prolonged misery; and such
cases, as I have told you, are very rare among us. A case of hopeless
bodily suffering, not terminating very speedily in death, does not
occur thrice a year among the whole population of the planet, except
through accident. We have means of curing at the outset almost all of
those diseases which the observance for hundreds of generations of
sound physical conditions of life has not extirpated; and in the worst
instances our anaesthetics seldom fail to extinguish the sense of pain
without impairing intellect. Of course, any one who is tired of his
life is at liberty to put an end to it, and any one else may assist
him. But, though the clinging to existence is perhaps the most
irrational of all those purely animal instincts on emancipation from
which we pride ourselves, it is the strongest and the most lasting.
The life of most of my countrymen would be to me intolerable
weariness, if only from the utter want, after wealth is attained, of
all warmer and less isolated interest than some one pet scientific
pursuit can afford; and yet more from the total absence of affection,
family duties, and the various mental occupations which interest in
others affords. But though the question whether life is worth living
has long ago been settled among us in the negative, suicide, the
logical outcome of that conviction, is the rarest of all the methods
by which life is terminated."

"Which seems to show that even in Mars logic does not always dominate
life and prevail over instinct. But what is the most usual cause of
death, where neither disease nor senility are other than rare
exceptions?"

"Efflux of time," Esmo replied with an ironical smile. "That is the
chief fatal disease recognised by our physicians."

"And what is its nature?"

"Ah, that neither I nor