:50:03
...that Father Perrault stumbled
into the valley, half-frozen to death.
:50:07
lt was typical of the man
that one leg being frozen...
:50:10
...and there being no doctors here,
he amputated the leg himself.
:50:16
He amputated his own leg?
:50:18
Oddly enough, when he had learned
to understand their language...
:50:22
...the natives told him
he could have saved his leg.
:50:25
lt would've healed without amputation.
:50:27
-They didn't actually mean that?
-Yes. They were very sincere about it, too.
:50:31
You see, a perfect body in perfect health
was the rule here.
:50:34
They've never known anything different.
:50:37
What was true for them, they thought
would be true for anyone else living here.
:50:41
Well, is it?
:50:43
Rather astonishingly so, yes.
:50:45
Particularly in the case
of Father Perrault himself.
:50:49
When he and the natives
had finished building Shangri-La...
:50:52
...he was 1 08 years old
and still very active...
:50:54
...in spite of having only one leg.
:50:56
1 08 and still active?
:50:59
You're startled.
:51:00
No, I'm just a little bowled over, that's all.
:51:04
Forgive me.
:51:05
I should've told you it's quite common here
to live to a very ripe old age.
:51:09
Climate, diet, mountain water,
you might say.
:51:13
But we like to believe it is
the absence of struggle in the way we live.
:51:18
In your countries, on the other hand,
how often do you hear the expression:
:51:23
"He worried himseIf to death,"
or, "This thing or that killed him"?
:51:26
-Very often.
-And very true.
:51:28
Your lives are, therefore, as a rule, shorter.
:51:30
Not so much by natural death,
as by indirect suicide.
:51:36
That's all very fine if it works out.
:51:38
A little amazing, of course.
:51:40
You surprise me.
:51:42
I surprise you ! Now, that's news.
:51:45
I mean your amazement.
:51:47
I could've understood it
in any of your companions, but you...
:51:50
...who have dreamed
and written so much about better worlds.
:51:54
Or is it that you fail to recognise
one of your own dreams when you see it?