Civilised races do not act like the Fuegians or other savages; they neither kill nor eat the aged, but none the less life in old age often becomes very sad. As they are incapable of performing any useful function in the family or in the village, the old people are regarded as a heavy burden. Although they cannot be got rid of, their death is awaited with eagerness, and is never thought to come soon enough. The Italians say that old women have seven lives. According to a Bergamask tradition, old women have seven souls, and after that an eighth soul, quite a little one, and after that again half a soul; whilst the Lithuanians complain that the life of an old woman is so tough that it cannot be crushed even in a mill. We may take it as an echo of such popular ideas that murders of old people are extremely common even in the most civilised European countries. I have been astonished in looking through criminal records to see how many cases there are of the murder of old people, specially of old women. It is easy to divine the motives of these acts. A convict of the Island of Saghalien, condemned for the assassination of several old persons, declared naïvely to the prison doctor: “Why pity them? They were already old, and would have died in any case in a few years.” In the celebrated novel of Dostoiewsky, “Crime and Punishment,” there is a tavern scene where young people discuss all sorts of general topics. In the middle of the conversation a student declares that he would “murder and rob any cursed old woman without the least remorse.” “If the truth were told,” he goes on to say, “this is how I look at the thing. On the one hand a stupid old woman, childish, worthless, ill-tempered, and in bad health; no one would miss her, indeed she is a nuisance to everyone. She does not even herself know any reason why she should live, and perhaps to-morrow death will make a good riddance of her. On the other hand, there are fresh and vigorous young people who are dying in their thousands, in the most senseless way, no one troubling about them, and everywhere the same thing is going on.” Old people not only run the risk of murder; they very often end their own lives prematurely by suicide. They prefer death to a life oppressed by material hardships or burdened by diseases. The daily papers give many instances of old people who, tired of suffering, asphyxiate themselves by their charcoal stoves.