of your imagination shall once have vanished, when you shall have perceived the universal selfishness, idleness, and horror of work, when you yourselves shall once rightly have tasted the sweetness of plodding on in the customary rut—­then the desire to be better and wiser than all others will soon fade away.  They do not by any chance entertain these good expectations of you in imagination alone; they have found them confirmed in their own persons.  They must confess that in the days of their foolish youth they dreamed of improving the world, exactly as you dream today; yet with increasing maturity they have become tame and quiet as you see them now.  I believe them; in my own experience, which has not been very protracted, I have seen that young men who at first roused different hopes nevertheless, later, exactly fulfilled the kind expectations of mature age.  Do this no longer, young men, for how else could a better generation ever begin?  The bloom of youth will indeed fall from you, and the flame of imagination will cease to be nourished from itself; but feed this flame and brighten it through clear thought, make this way of thinking your own, and as an additional gift you will gain character, the fairest adornment of man.  Through this clear thinking you will preserve the fountain of eternal youth; however your bodies grow old or your knees become feeble, your spirit will be reborn in freshness ever renewed, and your character will stand firm and unchangeable.  Seize at once the opportunity here offered you; reflect clearly upon the theme presented for your deliberation; and the clarity which has dawned for you in one point will gradually spread over all others as well.

These addresses adjure you, old men!  You are regarded as you have just heard, and you are told so to your faces; and for his own past the speaker frankly adds that—­excluding the exceptions which, it must be admitted, not infrequently occur, and which are all the more admirable—­the world is perfectly right with regard to the great majority among you.  Go through the history of the last two or three decades; everything except yourselves agrees—­and even you yourselves agree, each one in the specialty that does not immediately concern him—­that (always excluding the exceptions, and regarding only the majority) the greatest uselessness and selfishness are found in advanced years in all branches, in science as well as in practical occupations.  The whole world has witnessed that every one who desired the better and the more perfect still had to wage the bitterest battle with you in addition to the battle with his own uncertainty and with his other surroundings; that you were firmly resolved that nothing must thrive which you had not done and known in the same way; that you regarded every impulse of thought as an insult to your intelligence; and that you left no power unutilized to conquer in this battle against improvement—­and in fact you generally did prevail.  Thus you were