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.

The Stoics said that even temperament might be given steadiness and poise by an exercise of philosophy and will, and the lives of many of them seemed to prove it.  And if all this is true, your fifty years have given you an arsenal of power that is a considerable advantage over younger men, if you will but use it; and it is to point out some of the methods for its use, and some of the mistakes which I have observed men in your condition make, that this paper is written.

A great and natural desire of men such as those to whom this paper is addressed is to move from the places in which they have achieved no success to new locations, where, as they put it, they “can start life afresh.”  Do not do it.  Such a course is, ordinarily, as fatal as it is alluring.

If you have been an upright man—­and without this there can be no permanent success of any kind—­your long residence in your community has put you to no disadvantage, but precisely the contrary.  You have, during these years, secured the confidence of your community.  They know you to be loyal, truthful, sober, steadfast, industrious.  This popular faith in the elemental qualities of your character is the foundation of success, and usually it requires years to establish that.