Irving Fisher[126] says in Europe the span of life is double that in India. The death rate in Dublin is twice that of Amsterdam and three times that of rural Michigan. Life is probably twice as long as it was three or four centuries ago and is increasing more rapidly now than ever. The rate of progress is very variable in different countries, the maximum being in Prussia. Improvement is most in females and the rate of increase is accelerated perhaps four years a century on the whole, although during the last three-quarters of the nineteenth century Fisher thinks it has increased nine years. At least fourteen years could be added to human life by eliminating preventable diseases, which would be the equivalent of reducing the death rate about 23 per cent. In a table he shows that seven of the ninety causes of death are responsible for over one-half of the shortening of life. He gives us a diagram that shows where the saving of life has been and might be greatest. The area between the curves shows that from 1855 to 1897, 550,000 years were saved for a supposed group of 100,000 persons, or 5.5 years per person. The addition of 12.8 years to the lifetime of each of 100,000 persons might be divided into three groups, namely, that of preparation, the working period, and the decline. The chief cause of prolongation is found in new hygienic ideals. Metchnikoff thought that the lengthening of human life would at once decrease the burden on the productive period, which is some 55 per cent of the total years lived--assuming the working period to be from 17 to 60--and that the latter limit would shift forward. As life becomes complex and as knowledge increases the period of preparation should be prolonged. Men should graduate later. Life should be lived on a larger scale, with more utilization of accumulated experience and less disastrous immaturity. Now we have to force young men into positions prematurely because of their vitality. Metchnikoff says “Old age, at present practically a useless burden on the community, will become a period of work valuable to it.” Human life will become much longer and the par value of old people will become much more important than it is to-day. Willcox thinks the death rate in the United States is at least eighteen per thousand. Moreover, we have some three million persons always on the sick list, more among the old than the young since morbidity increases in age. But at least one-third are in the working period. The loss by consumptives alone is figured at sixty million dollars. Now, it costs no more to raise a man capable of living eighty years than it does to grow one who has the capacity of living only forty. Health means increased vitality and makes life, in Mallock’s phrase, better worth the living, for health is the first wealth. We can do much to raise American vitality.