In spite of the fact that the Bible gives many accounts of people who lived to be far past the century mark, even Christians of this day are inclined to question the correctness of the statements.

In Genesis 5: 5 we read: "And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died."

Seth, Adam's first son, is recorded to have lived nine hundred and twelve years. Enos, Seth's son, lived nine hundred and five years, while Methuselah broke the record at nine hundred and sixty-nine years - whatever else may be said regarding the matter, he was certainly old enough to vote.

If you accept this record as authentic, the claim that I am making that the average life of the race today should be not less than one hundred years is indeed modest. But if you choose to question the matter of the Bible record and ask for some proof that is more related to our own time, this can be furnished in abundance.

If no one had ever passed the one-hundred-mile post except in Bible history, there might be some ground for the skeptics to question my claim that men should live to that age. In an article in the November, 1912, issue of Technical World Magazine, by Dr. F. C. Walsh (read by the author after the manuscript for this book was in type), we find numerous modern instances of longevity cited.

Dr. Walsh states that in France alone there are over one hundred and fifty people each year who celebrate their one hundredth or more birthday. In Greece, he states, over fifteen hundred people are reported to reach annually the age of one hundred years. I am quoting directly from this article:

"There are conspicuous instances of individuals who have lived far beyond the century mark. Take the case of one Drakenberg, a Norwegian sailor who followed the seas for ninety-one years, and then, becoming tired of a sea-faring life, retired to a fishing village, where he stubbornly held on to life until he was a hundred and forty-six. In Hungary, a farmer named Pierre Zornay superintended his crops until he died at the age of one hundred and eighty-five. Thomas Parr, an English peasant, worked hard until he was a hundred and thirty, and then continued to live until he reached a hundred and fifty-two. This instance was vouched for by Dr. Harvey, the eminent discoverer of the circulation of the blood. He examined old Parr's body after death, and could find no traces of any organic disease. Just there lies an important point. Scientific hopes are based on the fact that if we can escape the accidental diseases of life, such as pneumonia and tuberculosis, and that by following a special course of régime planned for the sole purpose of arriving at a vigorous old age, there will be no reason to doubt that the average person will live to be a hundred, at the very least."

"Neither a wonderfully endowed constitution, nor heredity, explains such instances as that of Thomas Parr, though he left a son who attained the ripe age of one hundred and twenty-seven, retaining all his mental faculties to the end. But environment and the same habits and mode of living would seem to count for more than anything else. All through Europe, and particularly in eastern Europe, old couples are numerous, and the fact that two very old people attain old age together, even when their parents died young, eliminates the hereditary factor, and points very strongly to habit and dietary influence."

The statements above quoted strongly substantiate the claim of the author of this book that the race is committing suicide by living in an unhealthy environment and by disobedience to known laws of the physical organism, and that the average life of man should not be less than one hundred years, with "old age" passing close to the two-century mile post.

With such positive proof as this, is it not worth while, dear reader, that you take heed and give the ideas herein presented your most thoughtful consideration?

If life is at all worth while, the older one grows the more worth while it should become. Men should be in their prime, both physically and mentally, at from sixty to ninety years. Just think of the race of intellectual giants we would be if all these mature years beyond the miserable average stint of thirtyfive, as it now is, would be added to our lives. Just think of an Edison at ninety or one hundred years in the full possession of his mental faculties.

This idea that the "good" die young is foolish; it is the ignorant that die young, or at least it is through ignorance and a wrong environment that the race dies young; and it must be through intelligence and obedience to the physical laws of our being that the race will attain to its full stature of development and its full average years of life.

That there must be some decided changes in the methods of living in order to reach the desired goal is apparent. We certainly can't keep right on living the way we have been living, and not expect to keep on dying the way we have been dying. If some of the rules of health given herein seem drastic and startling, let it be known that the situation demands drastic and startling changes. The matter of adding sixty-five years to the average life of the race is no small proposition, and it is no joke; it is a possibility that should be made a reality, and it is the hope and the expectation of the author of this book that it will help to make this realization matter of immediate concern to all earnest men and women.