ension" propaganda more detailed and
specific than that given to the other three.

Conspicuous in the literature of this propaganda is the appeal to standard
modern practice in regard to machinery. "Those to whom the care of
delicate mechanical apparatus is entrusted," says the New York
Commissioner of Health, "do not wait until a breakdown occurs, but inspect
and examine the apparatus minutely, at regular intervals, and thus detect
the first signs of damage." "This principle of periodic inspection," says
the prospectus of the Life Extension Institute, "has for many years been
applied to almost every kind of machinery, except the most marvelous and
complex of all,--the human body." To find fault with the drawing of this
comparison, with the utilization of this analogy, would be foolish. That
many persons would be greatly benefited by submitting to these inspections
is certain; it is not impossible that they are desirable for most persons.
And the analogy of the inspection of machinery serves excellently the
purpose of suggesting such desirability. What is objectionable about its
use by the Life Extension propagandists is their evident complacent
satisfaction with the analogy as complete and conclusive. Yet nothing is
more certain than that, even from the strictly medical standpoint, it
ignores an essential distinction between the case of the man and the case
of the machine. The machine is affected only by the measures that may be
taken in consequence of the knowledge arising from the inspection; the man
is affected by that knowledge itself. Whether the possible physical harm
that may come to a man from having his mind disturbed by solicitude about
his health is important or unimportant in comparison with the good that is
likely to be done him by the following of the precautions or remedies
prescribed, is a question of fact to which the answer varies in every
individual case. It may be that in the great majority of cases the harm is
insignificant in comparison with the good. However that may be, the
question is there, and it is of itself fatal to the conclusiveness of the
_argumentum ex machina_. That this is not a captious criticism, that it is
based on substantial facts of life, ordinary experience sufficiently
attests; but it may not be amiss to point to a conspicuous contemporary
phenomenon which throws an interesting light on the matter. The Christian
Scientists regard the _ignoring_ of disease as the primary requisit