The Young Man and the World

by Albert J. Beveridge

Get yourself into the current of Circumstance—"in the swim," as the colloquialism has it. A man of large experience and important achievement said to me not long ago: "I am afraid I am getting to be a back number." That was a distinct note of degeneration. If he thought so that thought was the best evidence of the fact.

Do not get it into your head that you are out of step with the times. That in itself will paralyze both intellect and will. It is an admission of permanent failure. No matter whether you think the changed conditions and methods of business, society, and affairs, which almost each day brings, are inferior or superior to the old conditions and methods or not, you must keep abreast of them; take in the spirit of them.

An attitude of protest against the progressive order of things may be heroic, but it is not practical or effective. These conditions and methods which make you feel like a "back number" may not be the best; if they are not, try to make them the best, if you will, but do not attempt to perfect them backward by returning to yesterday. The world is very impatient of apparent retrogression; it hurts its egotism.

"What! Go back to old conditions?" says the World. "Never! never! Progress, alone, for me!"

But sometimes it means motion, not progress; for true progress might possibly be a return to old and superior methods. No matter, I am speaking of your practical, personal, and material success now. I am not speaking to you as a reformer or as a teacher of the elemental truths. You are a searcher, past fifty years of age, after the flesh-pots. Very well, then. Do not run amuck of the world. Join in its progress, even if that progress seems to you to be unreal.

At the risk of iteration, I again urge constant mingling with people. It is from them that you must draw your success, after all. A man over fifty who feels that his life is a failure is apt to emphasize the outward manners and inward habits of thought of his earlier days, as he would, if he could, stick to the old styles and fashions of apparel of the days of his youth. To do the latter would be to call attention at once to his antiquity; but to retain his old mental attitude is antiquity indeed.

People are quick to see, feel, and know that you are in deed and in truth not of the present day. When they think that, you are discredited and at an unnecessary disadvantage. Therefore mingle with men. Don't withdraw into yourself. Don't be a turtle. Be an active and present part of society, not only that your whole mind and whole conscious being may be kept fresh and growing, but that people may not perceive the contrary.

Growing! Growth! It is only a question of that, after all. No man can ultimately fail who has kept himself alive, and therefore kept himself growing. If you find that you have ceased to grow, start up the process again. Make yourself take an interest in large and constructive things of the present moment in your city, county, state, and country, and in the world.

The mind and character of man are the two great exceptions to the entire constitution of the universe. Decay is the law that controls everything else except these; but thought and character need never decay. They may be kept growing as long as life endures. Who shall deny that the philosophers of India are right, and that mind and character may continue to grow throughout illimitable series of existences?

Only two classes of men are hopeless: those who think to prevail by fraud and the contrivances of indirection, and those whose minds and characters have begun to disintegrate, or degenerate, if you like the latter word better. There is every reason why character should each day get a truer bearing, why the mind each day should become more luminous, elevated, and accurate.