PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 35 
better then than now would be inferred from the apologetic tone adopted 
by Jacob when questioned by Pharaoh as to his age: * The days of the 
years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil 
have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto 
the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their 
pilgrimage.’ David, to whom, before the advent of the modern 
statistician, we owe the idea that seventy years is to be regarded as the 
normal period of life,?° is himself merely stated to have ‘ died in a good 
old age.’ The periods recorded for the Kings show a considerable falling- 
off as compared with the Patriarchs; but not a few were cut off by 
violent deaths, and many lived lives which were not ideal. Amongst 
eminent Greeks and Romans few very long lives are recorded, and 
the same is true of historical persons in medieval and modern 
history. It is a long life that lasts much beyond eighty; three such 
linked together carry us far back into history. Mankind is in this 
respect more favoured than most mammals, although a few of these 
surpass the period of man’s existence.*! Strange that the brevity of 
human life should be a favourite theme of preacher and poet when the 
actual term of his ‘erring pilgrimage’ is greater than that of most 
of his fellow-creatures ! 
The modern applications of the principles ef preventive medicine and 
hygiene are no doubt operating to lengthen the average life. But even 
if the ravages of disease could be altogether eliminated, it is certain that 
at any rate the fixed cells of our body must eventually grow 
oe end of = old and ultimately cease to function; when this happens to 
cells which are essential to the life of the organism, general 
death must result. This will always remain the universal law, from 
which there is no escape. ‘All that lives must die, passing through 
nature to eternity.’ 
Such natural death unaccelerated by disease—is not death by disease 
as unnatural as death by accident ?—-should be a quiet, painless pheno- 
menon, unattended by violent change. As Dastre expresses it, ‘ The 
need of death should appear at the end of life, just as the need of sleep 
appears at the end of the day.’ The change has been led gradually up 
to by an orderly succession of phases, and is itself the last manifestation 
of life. Were we all certain of a quiet passing—were we sure that 
there would be ‘no moaning of the bar when we go out to sea ’—we 
could anticipate the coming of death after a ripe old age without appre- 
hension. And if ever the time shall arrive when man will have learned 
to regard this change as a simple physiological process, as natural as 
°° The expectation of life of a healthy man of fifty is still reckoned at about 
twenty years. : : ’ 
31 *Hominis e2vum ceterorum animalium omnium superat preter admodum 
paucorum.’—Francis Bacon, Historia vite et mortis, 1637. 
D2 
