our anæsthetics 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 any other physician can tell you. Life 'goes out,' like a lamp when the materials supplying the electric current are exhausted; and yet here all the waste of which physic can take cognisance is fully repaired, and the circuit is not broken."
