"Let's talk of something I can follow," he said—"the personal and material side of things. Your perennial condition of health, for example. Your apparent youth—"
"Oh, is it only 'apparent'?" laughed Santoris, gaily—"Well, to those who never knew me in my boyhood's days and are therefore never hurling me back to their 'thirty years or more ago' of friendship, etc., my youth seems very actual! You see their non-ability to count up the time I have spent on earth obliges them to accept me at my own valuation! There's really nothing to explain in the matter. Everyone can keep young if he understands himself and Nature. If I were to tell you the literal truth of the process, you would not believe me,—and even if you did you would not have the patience to carry it out! But what does it matter after all? If we only live for the express purpose of dying, the sooner we get the business over and done with the better—youth itself has no charms under such circumstances. All the purposes of life, however lofty and nobly planned, are bound to end in nothingness,—and it is hardly worth while taking the trouble to breathe the murderous air!"
He spoke with a kind of passion—his eyes were luminous—his face transfigured with an almost superhuman glow, and we all looked at him in something of amazement.
Mr. Harland fidgeted uneasily in his chair.
"You go too far!" he said—"Life is agreeable as long as it lasts—"
"Have you found it so?" Santoris interrupted him. "Has it not, even in your pursuit and attainment of wealth, brought you more pain than pleasure? Number up all the possibilities of life, from the existence of the labourer in his hut to that of the king on his throne, they are none of them worth striving for or keeping if death is the ultimate end. Ambition is merest folly,—wealth a temporary possession of perishable goods which must pass to others,—fame a brief noise of one's name in mouths that will soon be dumb,—and love, sex-attraction only. What a treacherous and criminal act, then, is this Creation of Universes!—what mad folly!—what sheer, blind, reasonless wickedness!"
There was a silence. His eyes flashed from one to the other of us.
"Can you deny it?" he demanded. "Can you find any sane, logical reason for the continuance of life which is to end in utter extinction, or for the creation of worlds doomed to eternal destruction?"
No one spoke.
"You have no answer ready," he said—and smiled—"Naturally! For an answer is impossible! And here you have the key to what you consider my mystery—the mystery of keeping young instead of growing old—the secret of living instead of dying! It is simply the conscious PRACTICAL realisation that there is no Death, but only Change. That is the first part of the process. Change, or transmutation and transformation of the atoms and elements of which we are composed, is going on for ever without a second's cessation,—it began when we were born and before we were born—and the art of LIVING YOUNG consists simply in using one's soul and will-power to guide this process of change towards the ends we desire, instead of leaving it to blind chance and to the association with inimical influences, which interfere with our best actions. For example—I—a man in sound health and condition—realise that with every moment SOME change is working in me towards SOME end. It rests entirely with myself as to whether the change shall be towards continuance of health or towards admission of disease—towards continuance of youth or towards the encouragement of age,—towards life as it presents itself to me now, or towards some other phase of life as I perceive it in the future. I can advance or retard myself as I please—the proper management of Myself being my business. If I should suffer pain or illness I am very sure it will be chiefly through my own fault—if I invite decay and decrepitude, it will be because I allow these forces to encroach upon my well-being—in fact, briefly—I AM what I WILL to be!—and all the laws that brought me into existence support me in this attitude of mind, body and spirit!"