YOUTH VERSUS AGE 



thought or experiment, some fresh field of literary or 

 philosophical investigation. Make sure that it is some- 

 thing that involves real freshness of effort, not merely 

 the revamping of your old ideas. The less zeal you 

 have for such new investigation, the more you need to 

 undertake it. Spur your mind onward, then, till it 

 develops eagerness for new effort. Shake off your lassi- 

 tude; rouse from your slumber. Cry, Forward! 



If so you will strive, with ever fresh resolve, there will 

 be for you, during the period of your reasonable working 

 days, no such problem granted average immunity from 

 disease as that of Youth versus Age. Like those other 

 exceptional and favored ones, you may come in due 

 course to be fifty, sixty, seventy years young; always 

 progressing, always striving, ever tasting the joys of 

 accomplishment. Die you must some day, as all the 

 other searchers after the Philosopher's Stone have died 

 in their turn. Grow decrepit you must, in the normal 

 course of events; but your efforts may in effect prolong 

 your life, by warding off the evils of a premature senility. 

 Old, in the opprobrious sense of the word, you need 

 never be. 



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