Bruce Birch[24] thinks the wreckage of youth spectacular; that of old age less discernible because more subtle and internal. The old should come to the fullest possible maturity. Youth must be served. The church focuses on young men. The old age here chiefly regarded is from forty-five on. Most lack intelligent encouragement to go on. They are thought too old to need advice and to only want comfort. Habits are supposed to be formed. The old are not thought to be heart-searchers. The fact is, senescence has very new and great temptations, namely, to go on in the old way of habit and belief. The temptations of the old are largely of the spirit but sometimes also of the flesh and the devil. It is hard to keep up the struggle for personal righteousness and there are periods of storm and stress. The church has not done its duty here. Most think the most dangerous period is that of wild oats--between 16 and 26--but this writer says it is between 45 and 65 when there is the most wreckage. 1. There is a tendency to low ideals. Youth tends to lofty ideals and to realize them, but now hope often fails. With the abbreviation of life there is loss of initiative, perhaps sickness of hope deferred. Age thinks it has become all it can hope to be; so enthusiasm wanes and the _tedium vitae_ makes us feel the game is not worth the candle and we are not willing to pay the price of sacrifice and struggle to maintain high ideals. So we aim lower. The _excelsior_ motive is lost. So there is often a degeneration of moral character. Cheap pleasures satisfy--perhaps even those of the table, for this is the easiest way of reviving some of the tendencies of former life. 2. Hence lowering and liberalizing of conduct creeds. The frontal lobes shrink as the period of endeavor wanes. The edge of desire is dulled and so is the power to distinguish right and wrong, true and false. “Twice a child, once a man.” The powers of imagination, aggression, and resistant effort flag, and we are content with the beaten path because the motor areas have decayed. There is ruttiness, the brain is set for habitual reactions, there are fixed points of view, the apperceptive mass is allowed to interpret all new ideas, and these cannot change it. Thus it is hard to adjust to progress. There is less resistance, self-control, courage for great deeds and high purposes, less tendency to ask advice of and be influenced by younger men. Politicians often recognize this in putting forward respectable elderly, pliant candidates. One is often weak where he thinks himself strong because there is no fool like an old one. He may yield to selfishness, acquisitiveness, curiosity, secretiveness, envy, jealousy, avarice, and other primitive traits. There is too frequent moral collapse here.