unfavorable to the assertion of the value of things so incapable of numerical measurement.  Against the heavy battalions led by the statisticians, and the experimental psychologists, and the efficiency experts, what chance is there for successful resistance?  On the opposing side can be rallied only such mere irregulars as are willing to fight for airy nothings—­for the zest and colorfulness of life, for sociability and good fellowship, for preserving to each man access to those resources of relaxation and refreshment which, without injury to others, he finds conducive to his own happiness.

* * * * *

It is hardly necessary to say that, in taking up these various movements, no attempt has been made at anything like comprehensive discussion of their merits.  Whatever may be the balance between good and ill in any of them, they all have in common one tendency that bodes danger to the highest and most permanent interests of mankind; and it is with this alone that I am concerned.  What that tendency is has, I trust, been made sufficiently clear; but it will perhaps be brought out more distinctly by a consideration of the “Life Extension” propaganda more detailed and specific than that given to the other three.

Conspicuous in the literature of this propaganda is the appeal to standard modern practice in regard to machinery.  “Those to whom the care of delicate mechanical apparatus is entrusted,” says the New York Commissioner of Health, “do not wait until a breakdown occurs, but inspect and examine the apparatus minutely, at regular intervals, and thus detect the first signs of damage.”  “This principle of periodic inspection,” says the prospectus of the Life Extension Institute, “has for many years been applied to almost every kind of machinery, except the most marvelous and complex of all,—­the human body.”  To find fault with the drawing of this comparison, with the utilization of this analogy, would be foolish.  That many persons would be greatly benefited by submitting to these inspections is certain; it is not impossible that they are desirable for most persons.  And the analogy of the inspection of machinery serves excellently the purpose of suggesting such desirability.  What is objectionable about its use by the Life Extension propagandists is their evident complacent satisfaction with the analogy as complete and conclusive.  Yet nothing is more certain than that, even from the strictly medical standpoint, it ignores an essential distinction between the case of the man and the case of the machine.  The machine is affected only by the measures that may be taken in consequence of the knowledge arising from the inspection; the man is affected by that knowledge itself.  Whether the possible physical harm that may come to a man from having his mind disturbed by solicitude about his health is important or unimportant in comparison with the good that is likely to be done him by the following of the precautions or remedies