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. Study the clouds, those visible emblems of human experience and institutions. A twist, a curve, a change in the shape and outline, and final disappearance into the universal blue—such is their destiny; and yet each instant they are permanent, apparently, so far as that instant is concerned.
"The rushing metamorphosis
Dissolving all that fixture is,
Melts things that be to things that seem
And solid Nature to a dream."
It will be useful, also, to consider the political machine. There is nothing which, in its day, is apparently more permanent or powerful; yet it dissolves in obedience to the very laws on which it is built. So, my friend, there is never a time that you can truthfully say that there is not, and never will be, any place for you in the order of society and affairs.
No, indeed; things are not fixed. Recall the story of the Oriental monarch. His wise men with all their wisdom could not produce a single truth that stood the test of time. As the tale runs, the ruler, weary of the falsehoods of so-called learning, called his wise men together and said to them:
"I sicken of your daily sagacities which the next day prove to be follies. Tell me one truth—only one. I ask but a single sentence. But let it be a sentence that will be as true next year as this year—a sentence which always has been true and always will be true. I give you one year to formulate one such sentence. If at the end of that time you cannot state an absolute verity, your lives will be forfeited."
At the end of the year the wise men came to their dread lord and said that they had found one universal truth. "State it," said their sovereign. They answered: "Here is the only sentence our wisdom can construct which is absolutely true: 'And this, too, shall pass away.'" And so shall your misfortunes, my friend past fifty, pass away. "It is a long road that has no turning," declares the maxim of the people. Your road is no exception.
The historic instances of great success past fifty are numerous and inspiring. They begin with Moses, who was forty years of age when "he slew the Egyptian," and they come down to our present day; to Bismarck, who, while so brilliant as a young man that he attracted the attention of Europe, was not great till he was past forty-five; to Disraeli, who, though so dazzling in his youth and early prime that he astounded Parliament and filled the press with comment, was not constructive or permanent in his success till comparatively late in life.
Think, too, of those historic successes of which there was not the faintest sign until far past middle life—they are not many, to be sure, but they are inspiring. Some of the great headlands that shoulder out into history—Washington, Lincoln, and the like—became visible to the world after forty-five.