This is
itself, of course, an interminable subject upon which several papers
might be written; but perhaps I have said enough to make apparent to
you its practical application.
The stages of degeneration are as easy as they are fatal, and since to
resist them requires courage, force, and alertness, it is only too
probable that the man past fifty, who feels that he has failed, is
beginning to submit to them. Do not do it. Resort to every possible
device to prevent it; for degeneration, in itself, is failure; more,
it is death. It is exactly the same force which rots out the heart of
the oak, manifesting itself in human character.
Your problem is not to give way to your weaknesses. That is the
problem of all of us. "I see two men looking from your eyes," said the
Norse seeress, "a young man and an old man. Do not let the old man in
you conquer the young man in you." Very well! Barring the loss of
health, you can always make the young man in you the victor.
Do not conclude that things are fixed, that conditions are permanent,
and that, as there is no apparent place for you as circumstances now
exist, there never will be. Fix in your mind this dreadful and
glorious paradox, that even the most permanent things are transient.
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