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 pe