and he answered that he would be glad to give us details of all these
matters if we insisted on it, but he thought it would be better for him to
present a general view of the state of their society, leaving it for us to
see with our own eyes how things were done, after we had reached our
destination.

I readily acquiesced, with an apology for my interruption, and Thorwald
resumed:

"The doctor spoke of accidents, sickness, and severe toil as among the
sources of your troubles. With us, at the present day, all natural laws
are so well understood and so faithfully obeyed that there are no
accidents. Machinery and appliances of all kinds are perfect; nothing is
left to chance, but everything is governed by law. And as we follow that
law in every instance nothing can ever happen, in the old sense of that
word. To take a homely example, you have of course learned that it is not
well to put your hand into the fire, and so, though you use a good deal of
fire you keep your hands out of it. You know what the law is, and you do
not tempt it. By our long experience we have learned the operation of all
laws, and in every position in life we simply avoid putting our hand into
the fire. To be sure, we have been assisted in this by superior skill and
by our general steadiness and ripeness of character. If I read history
aright accidents were caused by ignorance or neglect of law, and I am sure
the people of the earth, when they begin to realize fully how unnecessary
they are, will soon outgrow them.

"As for sickness, you cannot understand how strange the word sounds to me.
Just think for a moment how useless, how out of place, such a thing as
sickness is. Like the subject just spoken of, it comes from disobedience
to law, and although I know we were a long time in ridding ourselves of