teady
and motionless, there seemed a cynical smile in them. "What kind of
value? How do you measure it? Who values it?"

"I do," I made answer.

"Then what is it worth to you? Another man's life, I mean. Come now,
what is it worth?"

The value of life? How could I put a tangible value upon it? Somehow,
I, who have always had expression, lacked expression when with Wolf
Larsen. I have since determined that a part of it was due to the man's
personality, but that the greater part was due to his totally different
outlook. Unlike other materialists I had met and with whom I had
something in common to start on, I had nothing in common with him.
Perhaps, also, it was the elemental simplicity of his mind that baffled
me. He drove so directly to the core of the matter, divesting a question
always of all superfluous details, and with such an air of finality, that
I seemed to find myself struggling in deep water, with no footing under
me. Value of life? How could I answer the question on the spur of the
moment? The sacredness of life I had accepted as axiomatic. That it was
intrinsically valuable was a truism I had never questioned. But when he
challenged the truism I was speechless.

"We were talking about this yesterday," he said. "I held that life was a
ferment, a yeasty something which devoured life that it might live, and
that living was merely successful piggishness. Why, if there is anything
in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There is
only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is
demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the
fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me.
In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but
find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the
unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and
populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it
is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with
a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand
lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life
is left."

"You have read Darwin," I said. "But you read him misunderstandingly
when you conclude that the struggle for existence sanctions your wanton
destruction of life."

He shrugged his shoulders. "You know you only mean that in relat