MAN. THE INSTINCT OF LIFE AND DEATH. 347 



contagion has enabled us to erect against them im- 

 pregnable barriers. Cholera, yellow fever, the plague 

 knock in vain at our doors. Diphtheria, dreaded by 

 every mother, has partially lost its deadly character. 

 Puerperal fever and blindness of the new-born child 

 are tending to disappear. Legend tells us that 

 Buddha in his youth, frightened at the sight of a 

 sick man, expressed in his father's presence the wish 

 to be always in perfect health and sheltered from 

 disease. The King answered: "My son! you are 

 asking the impossible." But it is towards the 

 realization of this impossibility that we are on our 

 way. Science is repelling the attacks of disease. 



§ 2. Old Age. 



Old age is another sorrow of humanity. The 

 stage of existence in which the strength grows less 

 and never grows greater, and in which a thousand 

 infirmities appear, is not, however, a stage universal 

 in animals. Most of them die without our perceiving 

 in them any apparent signs of senile weakness. On 

 the other hand, some vegetables exhibit these signs. 

 Some trees are old; but it is in birds and mammals 

 that this decay, with the train of evils which accom- 

 panies it, becomes a very marked phase of existence. 

 In man to debility is added a bodily shrinkage, grey 

 hairs, withered skin, and the wearing out and loss of 

 teeth. The exhausted and atrophied organism offers 

 a favourable field to all intercurrent diseases and to 

 every cause of destruction. It is this discrepitude 

 which makes old age so hateful. All desire to be 

 old, said Cicero; and when they are old, they say 

 that old age has come quicker than they expected. 



