THE SPAN OF LIFE
BERNARD SHAW'S OPINION SHOULD BE THREE CENTURIES (Rec. 1 a.mj NEW YORK. July 25. Mr Bernard Shaw, who will have his ninetieth birthday to-morrow, believes that people can and should live to at least 300 years, which is the necessary span of worth-while human life. The dramatist's views of longevity are contained in an interview published by the Review of Literature. Mr Shaw declared a lifetime of three denturies was essential for political maturity, and death was not to be regarded as natural and inevitable. “We die because we do not know how to
live and we kill ourselves by lethal habits. Mortality should be confined to murder, suicide, and accidents. Life is at present too short to be taken seriously. Give a man only 70 years and he sings ‘ Let’s eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die.’ I have lived to 89 and I am not yet fully adult politically. Give me a second century of apprenticeship as a ruler and at the end of it I may be qualified as a senator and an oracle for a third century. I do not admit there is any limit to human life except by a statistically certain fatal accident.
Bernard Shaw, author and playwright, was born in Dublin, and invaded England in 1876. His diet is vegetarian.
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Otago Daily Times, Issue 26214, 26 July 1946, Page 5
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223THE SPAN OF LIFE Otago Daily Times, Issue 26214, 26 July 1946, Page 5
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