It was while thus together one day that Templemore asked him for some further information concerning the ‘Plant of Life.’
“You have told me,” he said, “that your people, with whom you lived in that secluded valley high up in the Andes, had with them the ‘karina’ and cultivated it. Therefore I suppose you yourself have been in the habit of taking it?”
“Always. And in my travelling to and fro in the world I always had with me a good supply of the dried herb. I was accustomed to leave stores of it in certain towns, so that if I lost what I had with me by any accident, there was more within easy reach.”
“I see. But what I am puzzled about is this: why, if the virtues of the plant are so great, do people ever die at all? And why do some live longer than others?”
“As to the first question,” Monella answered, “man was never intended to live on this earth for ever. The human frame must wear out sooner or later. As to the second query, some constitutions are naturally stronger than others, and these endure longer, just as is the case in the world outside where the plant is not known. The effect of the plant is simply to keep the blood pure, if originally pure. If, however, there is an inherited taint, that taint will make itself felt sooner or later and undermine the vitality of the system. In this case the plant will only result in ensuring a somewhat longer life than would otherwise have been the case. Sooner or later the vitality will fall off and gradual decay set in, although (the blood being kept still pure) ordinary diseases are kept at bay. Lastly, there is the question of the will.”
“The will?”
“Yes; that has a most powerful influence. If a man who has inherited a constitution that is absolutely sound, from ancestors who have possessed the same through many generations, and if he has, in addition, a strong will, powerful beyond the average, he may live longer—if he is so minded.”
“I—do not understand you,” said Templemore, somewhat puzzled.
Monella gazed at him with a smile that was full of sadness.
“You would,” he answered, “if you were old yourself; if you had outlived all that made life worth having—your wife, and others you love, your ambitions, your hopes. Then does the soul grow weary, and restless as well; it is like unto a bird that is caged whose time for migration has come. It will either fret or pine itself to death, or beat itself to death against the bars of its cage. Only two things can then keep the soul from taking its flight; the will to live to complete some unfinished work, or a delight in a worldly, wicked life. A nature superlatively evil, like Coryon’s, may enable its possessor to live on and on for an indefinite time; where better men take the ‘falloa’ and die. Or a man, not himself enamoured of life upon this earth, may exert his will to carry out to its end some great work to benefit his fellow-creatures, and he too may keep the ‘falloa’ at arm’s length for an unusually long period. In other words, the ‘falloa’ is a form of melancholia, of weariness with the world, of an inward sense that life’s work is completed. It is the result of that feeling that we are told took possession at last even of him who has been called the Wise Man of the World—King Solomon—whose wisdom and riches and power only brought him to the same point I have indicated—that at which the soul declares that all earthly things are but vanity.”