To the rule of natural death there are a few exceptions. Unswerving in her great purpose for the universal good, Nature has imposed on the world of life her storms, earthquakes, lightnings, and all those sublime manifestations of her supreme power which, in the infant days of the universe, cowed the boldest and implanted in the human heart fears and superstitions which in hereditary progression have passed down even to the present generations. Thus she has exposed us all to accidents of premature death, but, with infinite wisdom, and as if to tell us that her design is to provide for these inevitable calamities, she has given a preponderance of number at birth to those of her children who by reason of masculine strength and courage shall have most frequently to face her elements of destruction. Further, she has provided that death by her, by accidental collision with herself shall, from its very quickness, be freed of pain. For pain is a product of time. To experience pain the impression producing it must be transmitted from the injured part of the living body to the conscious centre, must be received at the conscious centre, and must be recognized by the mind as a reception; the last act in truth being the conscious act. In the great majority of deaths from natural accidents there is not sufficient time for the accomplishment of these progressive steps by which the consciousness is reached. The unconsciousness of existence is the first and last fact inflicted upon the stricken organism: the destruction is so mighty, that the sense of it is not revealed. The duration of time intended by Nature to extend between the birth of the individual and his natural Euthanasia is undetermined, except in an approximate degree. From the first, the steady, stealthy attraction of the earth is ever telling upon the living body. Some force liberated from the body during life enables it, by self-controlled resistance, to overcome its own weight. For a given part of its cycle the force produced is so efficient, that the body grows as well as moves by its agency against weight; but this special stage is limited to an extreme, say, of thirty years. There is then another period, limited probably also to thirty years, during which the living structure in its full development maintains its resistance to its weight. Finally, there comes a time when this resistance begins to fail, so that the earth, which never for a moment loses her grasp, commences and continues to prevail, and after a struggle, extended from twenty to thirty years, conquers, bringing the exhausted organism which has daily approached nearer and nearer to her dead self, into her dead bosom.