it, it seems to me now that it must be one of the easiest of your troubles
to remove. With us the science of medicine became so perfect that it
accomplished a great deal of the reform, but more was done by each
individual acquiring full knowledge of himself and acting up to that
knowledge. In learning to love our neighbors we did not forget to foster a
proper love for ourselves. In fact, our creed teaches that self-love is
one of our most important duties. When one is instructed to love his
neighbor as himself it is presupposed that his affection for himself is of
that high quality that will always lead him to do the very best he can for
every part of his being. So, as our development continued, we came in time
to love ourselves too well to despise or abuse or neglect the bodies we
lived in. We studied how best to nurture and care for those bodies, and
when that lesson was thoroughly learned we found that sickness and pain
were gone, and with them, also, all fear of death. For now we die when our
days are fully ended. The span of our life has been doubled since we began
to know and care for ourselves, and, at the close, death is anticipated
and recognized as a friend."




CHAPTER VII.

RAPID TRANSIT ON MARS.


Here Thorwald paused and said he should be obliged to leave us a short
time to attend to some duty in the management of the vessel. When he
returned I remarked that neither he nor his companions seemed to have to
work very hard.