Again, the new lines of interest to which the old, set free from the tasks of their lives, sometimes turn show that there is a half-delusive and half-real sense of psychic rejuvenation associated with the pursuit of a new topic. On the whole, however, it would seem that withdrawal from exacting duties, the freedom from the necessity of self-support and the leisure thus resulting, the abatement of the _vita sexualis_ and the storm and stress this is now known to cause, the fact that one is now no longer anxious lest he do or say anything that would interfere with his own future career, and the sense that he can both live and think as he lists, would altogether constitute a loud call to revise his views, to get down to fundamentals, be more sincere and independent, to get better acquainted with his inmost self, review his past life, and draw from it its lessons. Morale, as I have elsewhere tried to show,[194] consists in keeping ourselves, body and mind, always at the tiptop of condition and this is ever harder to do as age advances. But I think we may conclude that just in proportion as this is done there is a perhaps prolonged and delightful “Indian summer” that is caused by the kind of mental housecleaning that dispenses with all non-essentials and consists in warming up the deeper emotions, quickening the intellect and reinforcing the will, and that this period combines uniquely the charm of summer and fall without excessive heat and without dangerous chill. All invites to synthesis, for the age of excessive and diverting specialization that is forced upon the young and immature in our day is past and the season for harvest has come. And it is just this that our distracted world now most lacks and needs. Sane and ripe old age has a new sense of values, relations, perspectives; and no form of culture man has ever produced is ripe until the fruitage it contributes to morals and life has been garnered. To show how all our achievements affect human conduct is the thing the world most needs to-day and needs far more than at any other period in history. This is what our age calls so loudly upon the old to supply. Just in proportion as civilization advances and life becomes more and more complex and distracting, the need of older and wiser men increases, for only from their outlook tower can things be seen in their true perspective. Wells’s new conspectus of history represents the old man’s view and one of my correspondents writes that in a long literary life he has never come upon anything quite so stimulating and absorbing. It is this sort of work that should have been done by an old man and such tasks can only be accomplished by those younger men who have the rare power of genius to anticipate the choicest gifts of age. Plato saw that the proper business of old men was to philosophize; and what is religion, to which so many senescents turn, but a condensed philosophy put in the form of symbol, myth, and rite.