"There were some things all wrong," I replied, "that I know. You could not obliterate hereditary disease in ten--or thirty years. You couldn't make clean women of hundreds of thousands of prostitutes. You couldn't turn an invalid tramp into a healthy gentleman." He stopped me. "We could do better than that," he said, "and we have. I begin to see your central difficulty, John; the difficulty that used to hold us all. You are looking at life as a personal affair--a matter of personal despair or salvation." "Of course, what else is it?" "What _else_! Why, that is no part of human life! Human life is social, John, collectively, common, or it isn't human life at all. Hereditary disease looks pretty hopeless when you see one generation or two or three so cursed. But when you realize how swiftly the stream of human life can be cleansed of it, you take a fresh hold. The percentage of hereditary disease has sunk by more than half in thirty years, John, and at its present rate of decrease will be gone, clean gone, in another twenty. Remember that every case is known, and that they are either prevented from transmitting the inheritance, isolated, or voluntarily living single. Diseases from bad conditions we no longer endure, nor diseases from ignorance, those from bacilli we are able to resist or cure; disease was never a permanent thing--only an accident. As for the prostitutes--we thought them 'ruined' because they were no longer suitable for our demands in marriage. As if that was everything! I tell you we opened a way out for them!" "Namely?" "Namely all the rest of life! Sex-life isn't everything, John. Not fit to be a mother, we said to them; never mind--there is everything else in the world to be. You may remember, my friend, that thousands of men, as vicious as any prostitutes, and often as diseased, continued to live, to work, and to enjoy. Why shouldn't the women? You haven't ruined your lives, we said to them; only one part. It's a loss, a great loss, but never mind, the whole range of human life remains open to you, the great moving world of service and growth and happiness. If you're sick, you're sick--we'll cure it if possible. If not, you'll die--never mind, we all die--that's nothing." "Does your new religion call death nothing?" "Certainly. The fuss we made about death was wholly owing to the old religions; the post-mortem religions, their whole basis was death." "Hold on a bit. Do you mean to tell me the people aren't afraid of death any more?" "Not a bit. Why should they be? Every living thing dies; that's part of the living. We do not hide it from children now, we teach it to them." "Teach death--to children! How horrible!"