A NEW ELIXIE. 313 



the vigor of the human system, and a remedy for exhausted 

 and wasted energies ? It is not my purpose to advance a 

 theory based upon an affirmative answer to these inquiries, 

 but when we contemplate the stupendous pace at which the 

 world is moving forward, who will venture to assert where 

 the limit to this progress is to be found ? Yon tell me that 

 man cannot create; that he can only combine into new 

 shapes elements which God has furnished to his hands. I 

 do not know this. That he has not created I admit; but 

 that he has not capabilities, as yet undeveloped, as a crea- 

 tor, I do not KNOW. I will not venture the assertion that 

 the tune will ever come when he will have discovered 

 wherein lies the mystery of life; that he will ever find an 

 antidote to disease; that he will search out some recupera- 

 tive agency stronger than the law of decay, and that will 

 hold the human system in the perpetual vigor, and bloom, 

 and beauty of maturity. I will not assert that science will, 

 at last, be carried to such perfection, that there shall be no 

 more infirmities of age; that the pestilence will be stayed 

 from walking in the darkness, and destruction from wasting 

 at noonday; that men will cease to grow old, save in years, 

 or that death will be compelled to seek its victims only = 

 through the channel of accidents, against which forecast 

 will not, and science has no opportunity to guard. What 

 I mean to say is, that I do not KNOW that just such results 

 are beyond the capabilities of human progress. Measuring 

 the future by the past, I cannot demonstrate that such 

 results may not one day be attained.'- 



14 



