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THE MAKROPOULOS SECRET

Let’s give everyone a three-hundred-year life. It will be the biggest event since the creation of man; it will be the liberating and creating anew of man! God, what man will be able to do in three hundred years! To be a child and pupil for fifty years; fifty years to understand the world and its ways, and to see everything there is; and a hundred years to work in; and then a hundred years, when we have understood everything, to live in wisdom, to teach, and to give example. How valuable human life would be if it lasted for three hundred years! There would be no wars. There would be no fear, no selfishness. Everyone would be wise and dignified. [Wringing his hands] Give people life! Give them full human life!

Yes, that is all very nice. Very nice, but—

Many thanks! To be a clerk for three hundred years—or to knit socks!

But

Or to know everything. And, besides Why, most people are willing to live as they do only because they are ignorant.