This is no longer so.

The clock does not wear out, but it goes more and more slowly and irregularly, and stops at last for some reason that the most skilful inspection cannot discover.

The body of him who dies, as we say, 'by efflux of time' at the age of fifty is as perfect as it was at five-and twenty.

[8] Yet few men live to be fifty-five, [9] and most have ceased to take much interest in practical life, or even in science, by forty-five." [10] "That seems strange," I said.

"If no foreign body gets into the machinery, and the machinery itself does not wear out, it is difficult to understand why the clock should cease to go." "Would not some of your race," he asked, "explain the mystery by suggesting that the human frame is not a clock, but contains, and owes its life to, an essence beyond the reach of the scalpel, the microscope, and the laboratory ?" "They hold that it is so.