For myself, I feel thrice fortunate in having really found my _goru_, the one thing in which I am up to date and seething with convictions, which I have never before had the courage to express, and that I can now hope to devote myself to with all my spirit and understanding and with the abandon the subject really demands. I will not accept the subtle but persistently intrusive suggestion that it will do no good or that former colleagues whom I esteem, and whose judgment I greatly prize, will ignore it because other old men have written fatuously. I can, at least, speak more honestly than I have ever dared to do before, and if I am never read or even venture into print, I shall have the satisfaction of having clarified and unified my own soul. But before I can enter fully into the functions or the service age ought to render and begin the one thing I have always planned for this stage of life, I would know more about what it really is, find out its status, estimate its powers, its limitations, its physical and mental regimen; and especially, if I can, look death, which certainly cannot be very far off, calmly in the face. It is in this final stage of preparation for what I yet hope to do later that I invite the reader to accompany me through the following pages in the fond hope that not only the old may be helped to better realize their estate and their responsibilities and duties in the world of to-day but that those just emerging from middle life and for whom the shadows have just begun to lengthen may be better fitted to meet old age when it overtakes them. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION vii I. THE YOUTH OF OLD AGE 1 The turn of the tide of life--Relative amount and importance of work accomplished before and after forty-- The sexual life at the turn of the tide in man and woman-- Osler’s views and critics (E. G. Dexter, D. A. N. Dorland, E. S. P. Haynes)--Illustrations from Tolstoi, Fechner, Comte, Swedenborg--The typical cases of Segantini, Lenau, von Kleist, de Maupassant, Gogol, Scheffel, Ruskin, and Nietsche--Michaëlis’ “dangerous age” in women--The difficulty of determining this age--The nature of the changes, conscious and unconscious, and the lessons that people in this stage of life should lay to heart--H. G. Wells and Ross. II. THE HISTORY OF OLD AGE 32