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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76803 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+                              REGENERATION
+
+                               A REPLY TO
+                               MAX NORDAU
+
+                          WITH INTRODUCTION BY
+
+                         NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
+                  Professor of Philosophy and Education
+               in Columbia College in the City of New York
+
+                                New York
+                           G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
+                    London: ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO.
+                                  1896
+
+
+
+
+                             Copyright, 1896
+                                   BY
+                           G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
+
+
+              The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+Max Nordau is perhaps the most daring toreador of recent years. He
+challenged Modern Civilization to mortal combat in the presence of
+assembled thousands. Had the customs of the Roman arena prevailed, the
+thumbs of the interested spectators would doubtless have been extended
+or pressed down in about equal numbers, when the huge beast lay
+momentarily stunned by his blow. That Nordau had ingeniously tormented
+the monster was apparent; had he earned the right to put an end to
+its existence? The shrill cries of the excitable and easily moved
+predominated for a moment, but they were soon drowned by the insistent
+demands of the sober-minded for a calm consideration of the fairness of
+the blows that had been struck, as well as of the permissibility of the
+weapons that had been used. Yet the contest, whether fair or unfair,
+had been exciting; and it was not without its uses.
+
+It stimulated thought among the habitually unthinking. The habit of
+reflective analysis, like letter-writing and other accomplishments that
+require much leisure, is slipping away from us under the pressure of
+our complex modern life. The newspaper, with its surges of insensate
+passion and unreasoned opinion, thinks for large portions of the
+community; and its thinking, like the amusements of the nursery,
+expresses itself in ways that appeal chiefly to the eye and to the
+ear. Information about things is too often mistaken for knowledge of
+things. Highly specialized activities on the one hand, and the task of
+adjusting our part in the struggle for existence to economic conditions
+wholly new in the world’s history, on the other, mark off our
+civilization from any that have preceded it. The activities of modern
+men are so numerous, so varied, and so interesting, that we often omit
+to ask on what principles they are based and whither they are tending.
+Apparent success has led us to forget sometimes that all sound practice
+has a reason behind it, and reasons are seldom asked for or given.
+
+To say the least, then, it is somewhat surprising to be stopped on
+the street corner and assured, with due emphasis and the appearance
+of authority, that nineteenth-century men and women are absorbed in
+interests that mark a diseased type of mind, and are given over to a
+literature, an art, and a music that, themselves produced by madmen,
+are rapidly reducing us all to the mad-house level; in other words,
+that we and our boasted civilization are degenerates.
+
+There is, as I have said, a certain use in this brutal proceeding, for
+it causes us to stop and think. It shatters our conceit and shakes our
+confidence. If we pause only for a moment, yet pause we must. The mere
+daring of the attack forces this. So it has come about that Nordau’s
+_Degeneration_, quite apart from its intrinsic merits or demerits, has
+been widely read and much talked of throughout the civilized world. It
+has provoked some anger, not a little amusement, and a fair measure
+of contempt. Yet in a certain subtle way it has set us to examining
+the reasons that lead most of us to deny the essential viciousness and
+abnormality of some of the most salient and striking characteristics of
+contemporary culture.
+
+If Nordau’s indictment be classed as pessimism, it at least has the
+merit of novelty of statement. From Homer’s time to the present poets
+and philosophers have not forgotten, even in moments of highest
+exaltation, to remind man that his life has a dark and hopeless side.
+Our own century has listened to Leopardi, who envied only the dead,
+and to Schopenhauer, who called man both the priest and the victim of
+nature. And yet we have not been altogether unhappy.
+
+But Nordau is no ordinary pessimist. He does not lead us to despair
+through the by-paths of metaphysical subtlety, nor does he take
+advantage of the awful mystery of pain to perplex and distract us.
+Rather he drags us into the laboratory and, stretching us on a table
+of definitions made for the purpose, proceeds to measure our faces
+and our skulls, our teeth, the lobes of our ears, and our palates;
+we pay the penalty of our individuality in being found to be “morbid
+deviations from an original type,” and are therefore degenerate. Next
+comes an examination of a selected group of man’s newer interests. The
+music of Wagner, the dramas of Ibsen, the romances of Zola, the art of
+the pre-Raphaelites, the mystics, the symbolists, the Parnassians—who
+but a “decadent” would treat all these alike?—are passed in review
+and pronounced to be proofs of the decadence of mankind even more
+conclusive than those based upon physical measurements. All this is
+done in the name of Science, which, reversing the procedure of Saturn,
+thus hastens to devour the parent that begot it, Modern Civilization.
+
+A long chapter might be written on the credulity of men of science.
+The hypotheses that they have chased out of the door complacently fly
+in at the window. Many scientists, fresh from apparently important
+discoveries in narrow fields, need to be reminded of the lesson
+contained in the legend of St. Augustine, who when walking on the shore
+one day, absorbed in meditation, suddenly perceived a child that with
+a shell was ladling the sea into a hole in the sand. “What are you
+doing, my child?” asked St. Augustine. “I am emptying the ocean,” was
+the reply, “into this hole.”—“That is impossible.” “Not more impossible
+than for you to empty the universe into your intellect,” said the
+child, and vanished. Nordau is particularly prone to regard the small
+achievements of a certain school of alienists as having supplied him
+with a conclusive test of all excellence. Indeed, no part of his
+diatribe is more open to criticism than the use he makes of Science.
+If modern science is demonstrating any one thing more clearly than
+another, it is that the insights of the seers of our race as to the
+highest human aspirations and the deepest needs of the human spirit,
+meet not with contradiction but with support as knowledge of the cosmos
+becomes more extensive and more accurate. Nordau has neglected to
+reckon with the profound truth that finds expression in the celebrated
+saying of Lotze:
+
+“The more I myself have laboured to prepare the way for acceptance of
+the mechanical view of Nature in the region of organic life—in which
+region this view seemed to advance more timidly than the nature of the
+thing required—the more do I now feel impelled to bring into prominence
+the other aspect which was equally near to my heart during all these
+endeavours.... It is in such mediation [between the two aspects] that
+the true source of the life of science is to be found; not indeed in
+affirming now a fragment of one view and now a fragment of the other,
+but in showing how _absolutely universal is the extent_, and at the
+same time how _completely subordinate is the significance, of the
+mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world_.”
+
+There is also hidden from Nordau’s view that noble conception of the
+place and significance of Science to which Tyndall gave expression in
+the eloquent peroration of his Belfast address more than twenty years
+ago:
+
+“Science itself not unfrequently derives motive-power from an
+ultra-scientific source. Some of its greatest discoveries have been
+made under the stimulus of a non-scientific ideal.... The world
+embraces not only a Newton, but a Shakspere—not only a Boyle, but a
+Raphael—not only a Kant, but a Beethoven—not only a Darwin, but a
+Carlyle. Not in each of these, but in all, is human nature whole.
+They are not opposed, but supplementary—not mutually exclusive, but
+reconcilable. And if, unsatisfied with them all, the human mind, with
+the yearning of a pilgrim for his distant home, will still turn to
+the Mystery from which it has emerged, seeking so to fashion it as to
+give unity to thought and faith, so long as this is done, not only
+without intolerance or bigotry of any kind, but with the enlightened
+recognition that ultimate fixity of conception is here unattainable,
+and that each succeeding age must be held free to fashion the
+mystery in accordance with its own needs—then, casting aside all the
+restrictions of Materialism, I would affirm this to be a field for the
+noblest exercise of what, in contrast with the knowing faculties, may
+be called the creative faculties of man.”
+
+Why, then, should not literature and art and music enter and occupy
+the very field that the apostles of Science assign to them, without
+being exposed to the alienists’ sneers for their symbolism and their
+mysticism? The truth is that Nordau is the slave of one idea, and that
+the logical outcome of his definition and conception of abnormality.
+Ribot described such a case perfectly when he said that “nothing is
+more common or better known than the momentary appropriation of the
+personality by some intense and fixed idea. As long as this idea
+occupies consciousness, we may say without exaggeration that it
+constitutes the individual.” Degeneration constitutes Nordau. He is
+himself an abnormality and a pathological type. Every large hospital
+for the insane knows his representative—the one sane man in a world of
+lunatics.
+
+To perceive the true direction and to estimate the relative force of
+a large human movement requires a long interval of time. Caught in
+an eddy of the moment, we may seem to be drifting backward, when in
+reality to the spectator on the shore we are being swept onward with
+great rapidity. The same world of experience seemed to Parmenides to
+exclude by its very nature all motion, and to Heraclitus to derive its
+only reality from its perpetual change. It is the standard and the
+point of view that control such judgments, and we are entitled to ask
+of any standard or point of view, _Quid juris?_ Nordau, however, has
+not asked himself that question. Seizing upon some partially completed
+anthropological investigations, with their half-speculative inferences,
+he has fashioned for himself a yard-stick with which to measure
+civilization. Aristotle long ago pointed out that the true difference
+between the poet and the historian is to be found in the fact that the
+former relates what may happen, the latter what has happened. One might
+similarly distinguish the man of science, who applies what has been
+proved, from the charlatan, who seeks to apply what has not been proved.
+
+As a result of dissenting from Nordau’s premises, method, and
+conclusions, it is by no means necessary to be forced to defend all the
+phases of modern civilization that he attacks. Some of them, no doubt,
+are unwholesome, but for reasons other than those which this critic
+adduces. Many of them are mere fleeting phenomena, confined within
+the narrowest limits, and the world at large first heard of them from
+Nordau’s pages. It is only a lack of humour that can elevate such
+traits and tendencies into the position of powerful forces in human
+culture, such as Platonism, Humanism, or Christianity. The old Sophist
+was right when he commended humour as the test of gravity.
+
+The author of _Regeneration_ is successful in turning the flank of
+Nordau’s attacking forces at more points than one. He is able at times,
+without over-exertion, to convict Nordau not only of lack of knowledge,
+but of what is far worse—knowledge of things that are not true. His
+view of life is more sane and better-balanced than that of Nordau,
+despite an anti-Teutonic tendency that perhaps partakes of the nature
+of an argument _ad hominem_. The judgment of the average man who knows
+the history of the past two centuries will sustain him in holding that
+“there are a host of indications in all civilized countries pointing
+to an increase in intellectual power, moral strength, and æsthetic
+refinement.” Those to whom Lincoln applied the affectionate designation
+of “the plain people” have advanced and are advancing by tremendous
+strides in knowledge and refinement. They, and not a group or two of
+men and women in each of the capitals of Europe, are the real index
+to the degeneracy, or the contrary, of modern life. If democracy is
+to establish itself more widely and more efficiently as a form of
+government, it must rest upon the common sense of the plain people.
+So far from being influenced by the tendencies that Nordau exploits
+with so much vigour, it is not improbable that even the names of the
+representatives of most of those tendencies are unknown to them.
+Progress in education, in philanthropy, in commerce and industry, and
+in the comforts of life, has developed a seriousness and a sense of
+responsibility that have brought into many an English and American face
+the lines that distinguished the countenance of the typical Senator
+of Rome. The higher altruism of our time believes that life is not
+only worth living, but worth working for. Long ago Mr. Herbert Spencer
+remarked that the current conception of progress is vague, and that it
+is in a great measure erroneous. It takes in, he said, not so much the
+reality of progress as its accompaniments—not so much the substance
+as the shadow. Nordau, with all of the superficiality, the absence of
+any sense of proportion, and the lack of humour that so often mark the
+extreme specialist, has hardly come in sight of even the shadow.
+
+                                             NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER.
+
+  Columbia College,
+    _January, 1896._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER I                                       PAGE
+
+  Who is the Critic?                                 1
+
+  CHAPTER II
+
+  Dusk or Dawn!                                     27
+
+  CHAPTER III
+
+  Mysticism and the Unknowable                      44
+
+  CHAPTER IV
+
+  The Bankruptcy of Science                         73
+
+  CHAPTER V
+
+  Symbolism and Logic                               94
+
+  CHAPTER VI
+
+  The Light of Russia                              108
+
+  CHAPTER VII
+
+  The Real Ibsen                                   132
+
+  CHAPTER VIII
+
+  Richard Wagner                                   183
+
+  CHAPTER IX
+
+  The Religion of Self                             230
+
+  CHAPTER X
+
+  An Ethical Inquisition                           241
+
+  CHAPTER XI
+
+  Vigorous Affirmations                            258
+
+  CHAPTER XII
+
+  Regeneration                                     290
+
+
+
+
+REGENERATION
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_WHO IS THE CRITIC?_
+
+
+Voltaire said that if all the celestial bodies are inhabited, our earth
+must be the mad-house of the universe. To us who know the era of the
+great cynic only as recorded by the history of Dryasdusts, and the
+flippant memoirs and autobiographies of his contemporaries, his biting
+sarcasm cannot be considered undeserved. But, with regard to our own
+times, most of us would probably hesitate to brand our present state of
+culture, our modern civilization, as a fool’s paradise.
+
+It is a truism that an historical epoch can only be correctly studied
+at a distance in time, as the outlines of a mountain can only be
+studied at a distance in space. The actor in a piece, though intimately
+acquainted with his own part and the accessories with which he comes
+in contact, cannot form a just idea of the impression which the play,
+with its more or less successful rendering, its scenery, and other
+spectacular effects, produces on the mind of the average spectator. A
+super who is ignorant of stage management and of the precise results
+the manager aims at might deem many things going on behind the stage
+both foolish and ridiculous. To him the frantic efforts of some actor,
+or scene-shifter, to produce some ordinary effect might well appear as
+lunacy.
+
+The judgment we form concerning the time we live in runs a great risk
+of being biassed by the narrowness of the vista we can command. The
+interdependence of causes simultaneously at work, the co-operation of
+impulses active at a great distance, the peculiarities of circumstances
+surrounding each leading phenomenon, the real intentions of leading
+characters, secret motives in groups and parties—all this represents so
+many sealed books to the contemporary to be gradually opened only by
+future historians.
+
+There are no doubt many facilities ready to hand for the man who in
+modern times desires to study his own epoch, which were not available
+in the past. Distances are practically suppressed, the whole of
+civilized humanity has been placed in intimate connection, a highly
+developed Press records daily events everywhere in a minute fashion,
+to the making of books there is no end, and in every direction an
+elaborate mechanism is established for the obtaining of rapid and
+precise information. In fact, the _Kammergelehrte_, who, like Kant,
+would study the world-phenomenon without leaving his native town, would
+in our days stand a better chance of obtaining completer and exacter
+information than any philosopher before him.
+
+But, despite the quasi-ubiquitousness the modern philosopher enjoys, he
+would indulge in self-deception were he tempted to believe that he had
+secured all the data requisite to judge the contemporaries of his race
+as they act, live, feel, and think during the closing years of this
+century.
+
+For, against the easy access to information, must be placed the mass
+of intricate problems that arise with every step of progress, the
+multitude of ideas which strive for realization, the bewilderment
+which ensues on crumbling systems and religions, new discoveries,
+new theories, new and complicated associations of ideas, new and
+hazy aspirations, sympathies, and yearnings—for all of which words
+cannot be coined fast enough. Every day we witness political, social,
+economic, and psychological phenomena, the explanation of which would
+demand not only an enormous amount of knowledge, but reasoning powers
+and a freedom from bias seldom blended in one human mind. Facts,
+circumstances, theories, human actions, and human ideas, change and
+intermingle so constantly and so rapidly as to produce bewilderment
+capable of misleading any philosopher who attempts to gauge them with
+the instruments of the past and in conformity with the doctrines of the
+school to which he belongs.
+
+What renders it still more difficult to appraise any epoch, and
+especially the present one, is the intimate interdependence of all
+the phenomena to be observed. The idiosyncrasies of a sovereign, or
+of a minister, influence legislation, legislation influences public
+institutions, public institutions influence the upper classes, and the
+upper classes influence the masses. But legislation, institutions,
+the upper classes, and the people are influenced from a great number
+of other directions, while they again influence the sovereign and
+the minister. Thus it would be impossible to attribute with accuracy
+a given number of effects to special causes: for every cause is the
+effect of another cause, and every effect produces other effects.
+For instance, art and literature may strongly influence men in power
+as well as the masses, while no one will deny that men in power, as
+well as the political and social condition of the masses, exercise
+a strong influence on art and literature. And then, on top of it
+all,—as if worse to confound the confusion of the man with a system,
+trivial incidents intervene and bring about a new series of causes
+and effects evidently destined to operate as long as humanity lasts.
+So interdependent are the actors in the human drama, so complete is
+the intricate and sensitive mechanism of causes and effects, and so
+overcharged with energy are the social dynamos, that any fool, any
+child, any trivial accident, may move one of the countless points
+arranged by circumstances, and thus hurl the engine of events in new
+and dangerous directions.
+
+These and many other difficulties encountered by the student of his own
+time are largely responsible for his opinions, often savouring as much
+of his idiosyncrasy, his professional and national prejudices as of an
+independent inquiry. In order to choose between the maze of highways
+and by-ways, in order to judge whether he moved forwards, backwards,
+or in a circle, he gropes for some kind of a compass and naturally
+clutches at that which his idiosyncrasy proffers. When we therefore
+meet with an appraiser of his own epoch, it behooves us to bear in mind
+the standpoint from which he has contemplated the world-phenomenon,
+and with what bias and prejudice his views have been coloured. The old
+Greek story of the sandal-maker who became prejudiced against a work
+of art because the artist had made a mistake in the arrangement of the
+sandal-strings, points its moral. The prejudices arising from trade,
+personal interests, and many other palpable sources are not difficult
+to trace and to evade, but where is the man whose views have not been
+influenced by his nationality, his religion, his favourite science or
+art, his love, his hatred, or his ambition?
+
+It is to such influences, often considered by the influenced as so many
+advantages and seldom sufficiently noticed by his critics, that we
+often owe the apparent profundity and exhaustiveness of an appreciation
+which in reality is one-sided.
+
+Education, and, still more, an intense study of one special branch
+of knowledge, rich in important and striking results, naturally tend
+to strengthen the student’s faith and his belief in the capabilities
+of his favourite science. The brain-cells, influenced by the will,
+and habitually becoming stimulated by presentations—emanating from
+the subject on which the student has concentrated his attention—adapt
+themselves gradually to the perception of such presentations, and by
+re-acting on other cells render the whole organism disposed to seek
+such presentations. In plain language, the specialist in one science
+has a great aptitude for discovering such causes and such effects
+as his favourite science has best elucidated, while he is tempted
+to overlook other causes and other effects which may be of equal or
+greater importance.
+
+The specialist attains to a mastery of his own subject, and often
+acquires a strong bias regarding other subjects, because he pursues his
+inquiries somewhat after the same fashion as the dog follows the scent
+of the game. By training, the dog is familiar with the smell of the
+animal pursued, and, bent on following the trail, he pays no attention
+to any other scents or smells that he encounters in his course. In
+the same way the specialist rapidly perceives and minutely studies
+any phenomena, however slight, with which his favourite science has
+rendered him familiar, while he is apt to disregard phenomena demanding
+fresh studies and threatening to be inexplicable by investigation
+confined to the lines which he prefers to follow.
+
+Thus, if a law-student were to write a treatise on our epoch, he would
+endeavour to show that the jurisprudence, the law, and the courts—in
+fact, the whole legal mechanism—is the most important feature in our
+civilization, and that on which progress or retrogression most depends.
+As remedies for our evils, he would propose simpler or more complicated
+forms of procedure, more or less enactments, according to his own
+idiosyncrasies.
+
+A military man would consider a development on military lines as true
+progress. He would yearn to draft the whole nation into the army! He
+would favour universal conscription, as Lord Wolseley does, and might,
+like Count Moltke, look upon war as a healthy bracing, an epuration, of
+a race, and as an indispensable corrective to over-population. He would
+cite the expansion of the chest in Germany as a proof of the power of
+military training to further physical development, and would look upon
+strict military discipline as the means of establishing moral order in
+a country.
+
+A theologian would point to the immense influence exercised by
+Christianity upon humanity, and would insist upon the religious aspect
+of every question, and, like Mr. Drummond, would see in every new
+discovery a confirmation of his peculiar dogmas. His remedy would be
+more ritualism, or more liberal doctrines, or more emotion in religion,
+according to his High Church, Broad Church, or Low Church creed.
+
+Philosophical religionists, like Mr. Benjamin Kidd and others who
+pin their faith to the development of the altruistic feeling in
+human beings, would endeavour to reconcile all phenomena under their
+observation with their theory of social evolution.
+
+If therefore we wish to form a correct judgment of our own time and
+our own contemporaries, we must not allow ourselves to be guided
+exclusively by a scientist of one specialty. We ought to be all the
+more on our guard, as the great erudition and the profound study which
+each modern specialist has brought to bear on his subject gives to his
+theories a striking plausibility, a savour of exact science to such an
+extent as to sway our opinions in favour of the latest treatise we have
+read.
+
+Politicians, sociologists, economists, biologists, theologians, and
+the æsthetes have had their say and have each in their turn exercised
+a periodical spell over the public mind. It is now the turn of the
+alienists. Dr. Max Nordau has by his book entitled _Degeneration_
+produced no small sensation throughout the world, and not least
+in this country. Though his work may not have made the stir of a
+sensational novel read by the millions, there can be little doubt
+that it has imposed itself on every educated mind in the country. It
+is no exaggeration to say that, like a sharp trumpet-blast, it has
+awakened the educated classes from the lethargy consequent upon the
+din of clashing opinions and contradictory systems. This volume has
+once more roused us to the fact that we, as individuals, as a nation,
+as a race, are travelling at comet-speed towards a goal of which we
+have no inkling. It sternly suggests that we are on the wrong road and
+that a fate of a most horrible description is rapidly befalling us—an
+affliction in most people’s view worse than annihilation. Madness is
+shown to be insidiously invading our minds, and by its contagious
+nature threatening to prove Voltaire’s biting sarcasm a stern prophecy.
+
+It is no wonder that his work has become as it were a nightmare
+to millions of minds. If its diagnosis and its conclusions are as
+irrefutable as to most people they appear to be, we indeed live in a
+fool’s paradise: our leaders, our authorities, our men of genius,
+are not the beacons we have held them to be, but will-o’-the-wisps
+luring us into the bottomless quagmires of lunacy; the progression we
+vaunted is a slippery plane sliding us back to bestiality; our means
+for raising the masses are so many slashes at the bonds of moral
+order and decency, calculated to unloose the brutish Loke of modern
+democracy; unbridled animal appetites threaten to take the place of
+law and religion; all social order is being undermined; and the vilest
+instincts press for gratification in lust, rapine, and murder. With
+all the solemnity, moral persuasiveness, and scientific authority of
+a medical practitioner, Max Nordau tells us that a mortal disease is
+invading our race, and that with the end of the century the “dusk” of
+humanity begins.
+
+Before we accept the views of Max Nordau, before we have recourse
+to the drastic remedies he seems to recommend, it is right that we
+should subject his theories to the closest investigation. If his work
+were one of exact science, there would be no necessity to refer to
+the personality of the author, to his peculiar point of view, and to
+his predilections. But, as his work partakes largely of the nature
+of special pleading, as his methods of reasoning are those of the
+enthusiastic specialist, and as his postulates are strongly coloured
+by racial, national, and professional bias, the more we know of him
+the more easily shall we follow him in his progress on the highways of
+logic and in his deviations from them. Human language is not so perfect
+as to allow us to dispense with the additional light on expressed
+ideas which may be derived from one’s knowledge of the speaker who
+gives utterance to them. To study the author as well as his work is
+all the more permissible, as this volume is not intended as a complete
+refutation of Max Nordau’s conclusions, but rather aims at separating
+the dross from the gold and at giving him, as well as his work, their
+right place and their true value as telling factors in the development
+of our race. Indeed, this is exactly the method adopted by Max Nordau
+in his study, not to say dissection, of his contemporaries.
+
+It must be clearly understood however that there is no intention of
+going to the length to which Max Nordau has gone in speaking of men of
+the day—an abuse of literature which recalls the literary squabbles
+of past generations. The gross vituperation and the coarse calumny
+he levels against those he denounces will certainly not enhance his
+popularity or inspire confidence in his methods in England. In fact,
+his frequent indulgence in personalities would have prejudiced his work
+enormously were it not for the overwhelming testimony it offers of the
+fact that its author’s mind is conspicuously devoid of the sense of
+the ridiculous. Had it not been for this peculiar mental defect, his
+treatment of his opponents could not have failed to remind him of the
+disputing doctors in Molière’s _Malade Imaginaire_.
+
+Here we have to do not with the man, but with the author,—not with his
+relations to his private surroundings, but with his relation to the
+presentations he receives, the ideas he elaborates, and the conclusions
+he proclaims.
+
+In _Degeneration_ Max Nordau evidently strives to take a cosmopolitan
+standpoint. Only in three or four places does he speak of Germany as
+his own country, while he displays a remarkable erudition in foreign
+literature, but only a superficial knowledge of foreign circumstances.
+Unconsciously however he constantly betrays his German nationality.
+To say that he is a typical German involves by no means any slur upon
+his views, has nothing to do with the fact that the Germans are at
+this moment—for reasons entirely independent of German worth—rather
+unpopular in this country. It is his book that clearly announces him
+as a German, just as the books of Drummond and Benjamin Kidd announce
+them to be English. In other words, his methods, his views, his
+predispositions, his standards, his ideals, are thoroughly German.
+
+Few countries have so strong a power of inspiring love for their
+institutions and their characteristics as Germany. Not only is the
+German spell over those who are born and bred in the country, but
+foreigners who reside there any length of time generally become
+thoroughly Germanized. Even English people, whose characteristic it is
+to create a little England around them wherever they go, are remarkably
+susceptible to German influence when living in the country.
+
+Despite the propensity of many Germans, complained of by Max Nordau in
+his book, to imitate French art and literature, the German people have
+strongly pronounced characteristics, opinions, feelings, and views.
+We, here in England, have ample opportunity of observing the tenacity
+of the German bias. We sometimes meet with Germans who have conquered
+their native propensities and thoroughly assimilated themselves with
+the English nation. But, on the other hand, many Germans, when settled
+among us, continue to look on everything through German spectacles,
+and utterly fail to grasp, or even superficially to understand, the
+English spirit. This refers, of course, only to those who are actually
+born in Germany. The second generation is invariably more English
+than the English. We often meet with Teutons who have come young to
+England, gained a position here, married English wives, brought up a
+large family of English children, and who yet remain as German as any
+_Spiesbürger_ in Berlin. They do not appear so to the casual observer.
+Their business relations, their acquaintances, their wives, and their
+children, being all English, expect them to be English. They therefore
+assume an English outward garb, but as soon as circumstances allow them
+to drop their English character the German characteristics of these
+“tame Englishmen” come out as strong as ever. These facts are elicited
+in no critical spirit, but simply as proofs of the tenacity of the
+German bias.
+
+The practical result of this bias is an open or secret contempt for
+English views, a distrust in English institutions, a want of sympathy
+with the English race, and doubts about the future of the British
+Empire.
+
+If we wish Max Nordau’s nationality to throw light on the working of
+his mind, we must realize what are the most essential traits of the
+average German.
+
+Not yet completely freed from feudal institutions, it is natural that
+the German people should associate moral and political order, good
+administration, and personal protection, with feudal institutions.
+Hence an immense respect for those in authority and a contempt for
+the masses, even on the part of the masses. Democratic government and
+individual liberty inspire the German with great distrust, because he
+considers that the introduction into Germany of such features would
+mean a social upheaval in which the meagre advantages which now each
+individual enjoys might be lost.
+
+As in Germany all initiative belongs to the authorities, the people
+have become accustomed to bend to superiors, and where an Englishman
+would attempt to establish a Free Order, the Germans can conceive
+nought but discipline. A great number of enlightened Germans submit
+tacitly to all kinds of authorities because they are morally convinced
+that this is best for themselves and their country; but a large part
+of the masses, having always found that the authorities gain their
+ends by the use of police and military force, submit only because they
+are obliged. Hence a deep-rooted feeling of discontent in a nation
+constantly compelled to do the bidding of others. This discontent has
+engendered a hatred against the upper classes similar to that which in
+France paved the way for the first Revolution. The fear of the outbreak
+of this hatred gives, in the eyes of the German middle-class, an extra
+halo to authority.
+
+The love of following authorities, instead of standing alone, is in
+Germany not confined to the domain of politics. While Englishmen, down
+to the wage-earning labourer, have, or believe they have, their own
+opinions about politics, administration, religion, social affairs, and
+even scientific problems, the Germans have an accepted authority in
+each of these branches. Were we to question, say, a hundred Germans
+in a _Bierhalle_, or any other public place, as to their opinions on
+the above-named subjects, the replies would be simply an enumeration
+of their authorities in each branch of knowledge. Though this
+characteristic is a misfortune to Germany, to the Germans it savours
+of a quaint reasonableness. A German Socialist, asked why he blindly
+accepted Liebknecht’s views, replied: “I should be both silly and
+conceited if I, a scantily educated man, with no leisure and means for
+study, could believe myself capable of forming a better opinion than
+Herr Liebknecht, who has brought a remarkable mind and great knowledge
+to bear on political questions.”
+
+This reasoned self-depreciation, this blind faith in authorities,
+accounts for much in Germany which would be impossible in England. The
+way, for example, in which the youths of the country are forced into
+the ranks of the army against their will and inclination would be out
+of the question with us. Here, the great majority of young men would
+simply refuse, and to coerce them by military executions would involve
+a wholesale slaughter against which the whole nation would revolt.
+There have been young men in Germany who, on principle, have resisted
+the compulsory service, but brutal punishment has quickly dissuaded
+those of their comrades who secretly admired them from following their
+example. Nothing could be more unjust to the German people than to
+attribute to cowardice this lamb-like submission. German youths are
+as brave as those of any other nation, and what to us English might
+appear a want of both moral and physical courage is simply the powerful
+influence of the German bias.
+
+Enough has been said to show that German education and German
+surroundings tend to foster in the human mind veneration for authority
+and aristocracy, contempt for the plebeian, distrust of liberty, a firm
+belief in the unquenchable power of man’s lowest instincts, a nervous
+demand for authoritative repression of human passions, contentment with
+a prosaic existence, small resources, and poor prospects.
+
+It is natural that a nation whose mind is moulded in such a form
+should despair of the practical realization of its ideals; that the
+aspirations of the German race for liberty, enjoyment, and romance
+should seek an outlet in the realms of the imagination; and that the
+Germans should be a sentimental race. In this they differ diametrically
+from our nation. The young German, when his humdrum work-day is over,
+will plunge into books of poetry, romance, and adventure. He will
+worship and eagerly follow his pet heroes, but to emulate them in
+practical life, as a rule, does not occur to him.
+
+His romantic admiration of female beauty, and his sentiment of love,
+have nothing to do with his marriage. He postpones, as a rule, the
+taking to himself a wife until he is fairly successful in life, when
+pure romantic love has ceased to exercise any spell over him, and
+he expects that his marriage should improve his social position and
+procure him a circle of desirable friends. His poetical notions of love
+do not interfere with the choice of a wife. What he looks for is a
+young woman with practical qualities, likely to be a useful _Hausfrau_,
+and when he has found her, he loses no time in suppressing all her
+poetical notions and soon reduces her to a submissive drudge.
+
+No suspicion of inconsistency enters the mind of an average German
+when he reads or writes romances of love and chivalry in which the
+hero shows the most refined courtesy, commits deeds of self-abnegation
+and daring in honour of his lady-love, and exercises the utmost tact
+in shielding her from every harsh and unpleasant impression, and at
+the same time treats his wife as one devoid of all claims upon his
+consideration. He will exact from her such small menial services as the
+slave performs for his master. He will expect her to work constantly
+for him, the family, and the house. He will not allow her enough
+time or money for her toilet, for pleasure, for book, and social
+intercourse. He will not stir to save her trouble or fatigue. He will
+come to the table in dressing-gown and slippers, and coolly look for
+special dishes for himself, while his wife and children have to content
+themselves with cheap garbage.
+
+Germans of the middle-class who come to England frequently express
+their amazement at the way in which English husbands constantly pay
+attention to their wives. They call it undignified for the breadwinner
+and master of the house, on return from a day of professional work, to
+“dance attendance” on his wife, whose duty it is to serve her husband.
+
+The German, prior to marriage, allows his poetical notions to be
+disturbed as little by his sexual emotions as by his marriage plans.
+In a methodical and business-like way he gratifies the former
+in police-supervised establishments, and what he looks upon as
+“constitutional sprees” are never allowed to interfere with the course
+of his affairs. After a night of debauch he will turn up in his studio,
+his office, or his home, smiling and happy as if nothing had happened.
+
+We record these observations with no desire to criticise or to
+underrate the German character. Nor do we wish to insinuate that
+hypocrisy and profligacy are non-existent in England. We simply wish
+to show that the development of the German race has induced them to
+conceive ideals entirely unrealizable, and to dream of aims so far off
+in time as to render them unattainable.
+
+It will be evident to all who have read _Degeneration_ that Max Nordau
+is under the influence of a strong German bias. As we proceed, we shall
+have occasion to point out how in many instances this bias has warped
+his perceptions, his reasoning, and his conclusions.
+
+From characteristics revealed in his work, the observant reader will,
+no doubt, conclude that Max Nordau belongs to the Jewish race. The view
+he takes of the disgraceful Jew-baiting tendencies now prevailing in
+Germany is based on exactly the same mistakes committed by the Jews
+themselves, as we shall have an opportunity of verifying later on. He
+is evidently a free-thinking Jew, a type which we meet with everywhere,
+and against which as few objections can be raised as against any
+other type of man. The free-thinking Jew is generally clever,
+well-instructed, moral, and cheerful. His good qualities however
+do not prevent him from having his peculiar characteristics, which
+naturally influence his perceptions and his feelings. He has generally
+a cut-and-dried life-philosophy based on science and common-sense as
+well as on Jewish authorities. He distrusts democracy, especially
+Christian democracy, and feels never quite safe except under laws and
+institutions which allow him to assume such ascendancy as his mental
+qualifications can secure for him, and those who think with him. He
+does not seek for primary causes, and sets up no spiritual ideals.
+Though he may not be religious, he has yet retained something of the
+monotheist creed, the predilection for worldly affairs, and the habit
+of looking forward to a future life rather in his descendants than in
+a heaven—a view which always characterized his race. His philosophy is
+nothing if not practical. His aims are immediate, and, as a rule, he
+eagerly embraces all the teachings of the materialist scientists.
+
+Max Nordau is a modern scientist. He is not a pioneer in science, but
+a most persevering and plodding student of the works of others. He
+belongs to that class of _savants_ who spend almost all their time and
+all their energy in reading up the authorities. So vast an erudition
+as he has acquired cannot be attained to without some sacrifice in
+other directions. The constant absorption of other peoples’ opinions
+and theories compels the judgment to lean more and more on authorities,
+and this unfits it, to some extent, for independent action. It is the
+indefatigable readers who most blindly follow authorities, and it
+suffices to glance at Max Nordau’s dedication to Professor Lombroso
+to understand to what an extent he is subject to the influence of
+“Masters.”
+
+The pride taken by a scientist in his science, and the great practical
+results achieved by scientific investigations, naturally tend to
+foster an implicit confidence in its tenets. This has been especially
+the case during the last decades, so remarkable for religious
+tolerance. As the faith in old dogmas has receded, science has
+advanced, and in many cases taken its place. That such has been the
+case has naturally flattered the votaries of science, and tempted them
+to become prophets as well as investigators. They have come to look
+upon systems as dogmas, speculations as absolute truths, and in this
+fashion scientific superstition tends to take the place of religious
+superstition.
+
+The scientifically superstitious man is an example of the dangers
+of a little knowledge. Not that our men of science, including the
+superstitious scientists, are defective in such knowledge as is
+attainable at our present stage, but the sum total of all human
+knowledge is still, and is probably destined ever to be, only partial
+and extremely superficial. Compared with the knowledge in the past,
+modern science represents an immense progress, but as to throwing light
+on the great secret of the Universe, far from having done anything of
+the sort, it has, on the contrary, revealed more and more inexplicable
+wonders, and placed us face to face with more insoluble problems.
+Though trite, the aphorism that the more we learn the more we realize
+our ignorance is truer to-day than ever. It is natural and excusable
+that devotees of a science which to them has revealed wonderful
+results should raise abnormal expectations with regard to its future
+possibilities, and also that vanity, a weakness often co-existent with
+vast knowledge, should prompt a scientist to extol and glorify science
+far beyond the bounds of reason; for any worship offered to science
+rebounds necessarily on its high priests. This impossibility to realize
+the limits in which science moves, and the yearning for admiration, lie
+at the base of scientific superstition.
+
+The scientifically superstitious man believes that science has
+adequately replied to those great questions which humanity has been
+asking itself for the last five thousand years. How was creation
+originated? For what purpose did it come into existence? What is man?
+What does the scheme of humanity involve? Have we existed before our
+birth? Shall we live after death? What is the origin of evil? What
+is eternity? What is boundlessness in space? What is reason? What is
+instinct? and so on.
+
+If his excessive study has not seriously impaired his independent
+reasoning powers, the superstitious scientist may confess that these
+questions have not been replied to by science, but there will still
+lurk in his mind the belief that one day science will answer them.
+
+He does not distinguish between nomenclature, registration, and
+classification on the one hand, and explanation on the other. When he
+has named any newly-discovered substance, force, or phenomenon, he
+imagines that he has explained them. He believes that he has accounted
+for what is called matter when he has evolved the atom, and that he has
+unveiled the secret of life when he has discovered the protoplasm or
+the cell.
+
+All scientists are not affected by scientific superstition. They
+generally suffer from it in an inverse ratio to the actual knowledge
+they have acquired. The pioneer in science generally exhibits less of
+this weakness than those who simply act as commentators and elaborators
+of other men’s discoveries.
+
+The votaries of certain sciences are less apt to indulge in scientific
+superstition than those of other branches. Thus, astronomers rarely
+exhibit any such symptoms, while biologists are more apt to do so, and
+psychologists are more scientifically superstitious than any other
+class of scientists. It might be hazardous to attempt an explanation
+of this fact, but may it not be found in the obviousness of outward
+infinity, and the impalpability of inward infinity?
+
+Later on we shall have ample occasion to show to what an extent Max
+Nordau’s mind has been clouded by scientific superstition.
+
+Finally, it must be pointed out that Max Nordau is an enemy to France.
+It is only human in any German. The stupendous armament of France
+is ostentatiously promoted with the object of revenge upon Germany.
+France, in her sulks over the lost provinces, takes every opportunity
+of showing animosity, and this despite the conciliatory attitude of her
+Government.
+
+Though nearly a quarter of a century has elapsed since the disastrous
+war between Germany and France, the bad feeling between the two
+nations has unfortunately been kept up. France cannot forget the loss
+of her provinces, and, though the attitude of the French Government
+is conciliatory, outbursts of a feeling of hatred against Germany,
+accompanied by provocative language on the part of irresponsible men,
+constantly occur.
+
+The German people, with a vivid recollection of the French invasion
+early in the century, and perhaps taking the expressions of the
+war-party in France too seriously, look upon the French nation as
+their arch-enemies. By the celebration of anniversaries painful to the
+French, and other means, the German Government keeps the animosity
+between the two nations alive, and impresses the people with the
+opinion that the heavy taxes it has to pay for armaments are made
+indispensable by the enmity of France. It, is therefore, natural that
+hatred against France should prevail in Germany.
+
+We understand that Max Nordau for a considerable time was the Paris
+correspondent of German papers, and we may take for granted that he
+would not have been able to please his German readers had he not been
+strongly biassed in favour of Germany against France—a fact to which
+his work bears ample witness.
+
+Such is, then, the man who, in his undaunted faith in his science and
+in himself, in the name of truth and the welfare of humanity, and
+undeterred by the penalties of the Great Council and Hell Fire, has
+said to his brethren,—to the one, “You are Raca!” and to the other,
+“Thou fool!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_DUSK OR DAWN!_
+
+
+Nordau’s theory is that the educated classes of the world are
+degenerating; that the peculiarities in passions, tastes, pastimes, and
+moods, bear witness to such degeneration; that the cause must be found
+in the physical condition of the brains of such authors and artists as
+for the time being have the ear and the eye of the public; that the
+remedy against degeneration may be found in a moral quasi-compulsory
+supervision on the part of the non-degenerate over degenerate authors
+and artists. If we are not entirely exact in this summary of his
+postulates and conclusions, it is to a great extent Nordau’s fault,
+because nowhere does he give any decided statement of the scope of his
+book.
+
+In his first chapter he goes out of his way in order to protest against
+the misconception which represents him as having insinuated that the
+whole of humanity exhibited signs of decay, and he declares that his
+remarks apply exclusively to the educated classes. Were this absolutely
+true, there would have been but small occasion for his remarkable
+work. But over and over again in the pages of _Degeneration_ he speaks
+of the masses as partly affected by degeneration, and of the danger of
+the contamination spreading from the educated classes to the masses. He
+mentions the extreme Socialists and the Anarchists as the victims of
+the mental disease he investigates. And yet he flatters himself that
+the proletariat is not as the upper classes are, and bases his opinion
+on the fact that they appear satisfied with the old forms of art and
+poetry, that they prefer George Ohnet’s novels to the works of the
+symbolists, and Mascagni’s music to that of Wagner.
+
+These statements evidently emanate from one who has mingled little with
+the people. The truth is that the newest books, the newest music, the
+newest pictures, only slowly reach the working classes, and when such
+works are the outcome of temporary fashion and mood, they might not
+reach them at all. But this by no means proves that the working classes
+do not experience the impulses which prompt the predilections of the
+upper classes.
+
+If Nordau’s views of the proletariat in general were confirmed by
+actualities prevailing among the German proletariat, a heavy load would
+be lifted from the shoulders of the German Government. But, judging
+from the German Press—the official Press as well as the Socialistic—or
+from the speeches of so high an authority as the Emperor himself,
+there exists but little of the Philistine contentment with the present
+order of things of which the author speaks. On the contrary, the
+Emperor complains that the discontented working classes are losing
+their respect for things that used to be sacred to them, such as
+patriotism, feudal loyalty, religion, etc.
+
+Does Nordau mean to tell us that the pornographic novels of certain
+French authors, that the works of Émile Zola and other realists, are
+not read by the masses in France? Who then pays for the enormous
+editions issued after millions have read them in _feuilleton_? Or does
+he wish us to believe that only the aristocracy and the upper classes
+in France have been affected by the mysticism which finds its outlet in
+the pilgrimage to Lourdes?
+
+As to the working classes in the English-speaking countries, which, by
+the way, signify so little to Nordau that he not even once mentions
+them in his work, are they not children of their time, and do they
+not reflect every tendency, every virtue, and every vice in the
+upper classes? Not only would Nordau find, were he to investigate
+the matter, that those stigmata of degeneration which he refers to
+as such—Individualism and Anarchism—are making big strides among the
+English-speaking working classes, but that the taste for criminal and
+realistic literature is growing in popularity. He would even find
+Wagner’s music intensely applauded by audiences recruited from the
+working class.
+
+Far from developing ethically in different directions, the upper and
+the lower classes in this country move together, each simultaneously
+influencing the other. While the lower classes follow the upper classes
+in many things—for example, politics, dress, etc.—the upper classes
+obtain their comic songs, their humorous stories, and most of their fun
+from the lower classes.
+
+The impartial observer cannot fail to notice the kinship which exists
+between the proclivities of the two extremes of English society—the
+wealthiest nobility and the poorest labourers. Both these classes are
+intensely fond of sports, both degrade sport by betting, both are given
+to lavish expenditure, both pride themselves on physical force and
+pluck above everything. Both are prone to disregard the sanctity of
+marriage. Both indulge freely in the pleasures of eating and drinking.
+Individuals of both classes get on together better than they do with
+the middle classes. And both are only superficially religious.
+
+Perhaps this remarkable community of tastes and views may account
+for what has always been an inexplicable enigma to foreigners,—the
+conservative working man.
+
+Nordau classes, among the indications of decay, the yearning for
+freedom from outward control and for complete personal independence. It
+is true he takes for granted that such yearnings for individual liberty
+aim at the realization of bestial propensities now, according to him,
+kept in check only by law, police, and public opinion. We shall, later
+on, find that he has completely misunderstood the attempts to shake
+off all shackles which he has noticed. Here it suffices to point out
+that the longing for individual freedom, which manifests itself in a
+thousand ways unobserved by Nordau, and in the upper classes takes
+the shape of a revolt against conventionality, is conspicuous among
+the working classes of Great Britain. This year’s elections have
+proved beyond doubt that the tendency towards State Socialism which
+characterized the Liberal policy is fast becoming distasteful to the
+rank and file of voters. The tyranny, which, in the name of Socialism,
+was exercised by the Trades Unions, will soon be a thing of the past.
+When at its height of development the Trades Unions hardly comprised
+one-fifth of the working classes, and now already the movement is in
+full retrogression. The Free Labour Association, though only lately
+called into existence, meets with increasing support, and may no doubt
+be looked upon as an expression of our working classes’ new-born love
+of freedom.
+
+This change of mind, or, as Nordau would call it, this degeneration,
+also accounts for the present halt in the advance of the Socialistic
+propaganda and the rapid spread of moderate but decisive Anarchist
+opinions which in no small degree contributed to the recent
+Conservative victory at the polls.
+
+What is here stated regarding the British working classes is true
+regarding the working classes of all the English-speaking countries.
+Everywhere we find a strong yearning for freedom from control. The
+remarkable point about the expressions of this yearning is that, though
+the votaries of the revolt against State tyranny have so far not been
+able to formulate any complete or practical scheme for the life of
+a State, or community, governed by the best instincts of the human
+being instead of by law, their views are rapidly gaining ground. This
+is especially the case in the United States, where Mr. Tucker, the
+editor of a little journal called _Liberty_, is steadily extending his
+influence.
+
+The author of _Degeneration_ distorts reality when he supposes that
+the upper classes of a country can be corrupt and degenerate, while
+the masses conform to that German Philistine ideal—a very poor one
+indeed—which Nordau would fain hold up to them. This is proved by the
+fact that it is in their relations with the masses that the corruption
+of the upper classes becomes conspicuous, and that only through
+response from the masses can many forms of such corruptions become
+possible.
+
+It would take us too far to record all the proofs that actualities
+furnish of this fact. We shall simply point out one of the many
+conditions in the masses which promote corruption in the educated
+classes, namely, poverty. The appalling, demoralizing, brutalising
+poverty in the large modern cities—this poisonous fungus grown out of
+modern government and political corruptions, not only kills the sense
+of self-respect and decency in its victims, but renders prostitution,
+through sheer hunger and suffering, the trade of millions. It is
+poverty among the masses which undermines the artistic feeling of the
+nation, stands in the way of applied art, and compels the caterer of
+popular amusements to appeal to low passions and brutal instincts. Our
+epoch is not the first example in history where masses of destitute
+people exercise all their ingenuity in corrupting the wealthy citizens
+in the hope of snatching some crumbs of their wealth.
+
+Dire poverty it is, with its hovels, its rags, and its diseases, which
+gives riches their immense value in the eyes of the people. It creates
+a thirst for gold. No man thinks himself safe from falling into the
+abyss of modern poverty until he has amassed a large fortune and placed
+himself in the position of amassing more. The love of wealth corrupts
+Literature, Art, the Press. It is at the base of all financial,
+political, administrative scandals. It is responsible for mercenary
+marriages, which fill the law courts, pollute society, and contaminate
+the home.
+
+The poverty of the masses paralyses the efforts of honest industries,
+honest trades, and honest professions. The men who succeed are not
+those who benefit their fellow-men, but those who ruthlessly trample
+them under foot in their heedless race for gold. It is a well-known
+fact that the upper classes are not prolific, and would die out were
+they not recruited from the ranks; if therefore the state of the masses
+is such as to allow its worst element to rise to influential positions
+in society, demoralization of the masses must inevitably produce
+demoralization of the classes.
+
+We will leave it to the thinking public to consider to what extent
+other conditions of the masses, besides poverty, react in all countries
+on the upper classes—what the effects are, first on the masses, and
+then on the classes, of corrupt and retrograde churches, compulsory
+service in the army, police tyranny, bad and unjust laws, tutelage
+under pragmatical Philistines, caste institutions, official newspapers,
+State-regulated arts and entertainments, administrative favouritism,
+etc.
+
+But Nordau takes no heed of such all-powerful causes of corruption.
+He sees degeneration only in the upper classes, and, placing the cart
+before the horse, he regards what he considers the degenerated author
+and artist as the cause of a state of affairs of which they are the
+very last products.
+
+There are many passages in his book that strongly suggest that he is
+not completely sincere in his one-sided view. The savage blows he
+sometimes deals at the Anarchists bear witness that this form of—as he
+would call it—degeneration among the masses caused him a considerable
+amount of uneasiness. Judging by the similarity of his language and
+that of the Emperor of Germany, he might well be commissioned to brand
+both Socialists and Anarchists as wild beasts. Be this as it may, his
+few allusions to the corruption of the masses serve to enhance the
+untrustworthiness of the signs of degeneration which he points out in
+the upper classes.
+
+Among these figure prominently—who would believe it?—modern female
+toilets. And why? Not because they are indecent, as they have often
+been in other periods, but because they are eccentric. Is there then a
+normal dress for ladies? Or what code is there in existence to which
+Nordau can appeal? Is it a sign of degeneration to hold that one of the
+chief objects of toilets is to be beautiful and to enhance the beauty
+of the wearer? And ought a lady who dresses according to this principle
+to be put down as a dweller on the border-land of madness? If women
+love to dress well, and men love to behold them well-dressed, would it
+not be madness to adopt ugly and monotonous toilets?
+
+It is, of course, not difficult to see that the author’s standard of
+female toilet is the plain and ugly dress of the German housewife, and
+that he has never realized the delight which an Englishman takes in
+seeing his wife richly dressed, and in a way that suits her face and
+form. If Nordau’s standard of female dress is the severe draperies of
+the antique, he does not say so. But, if it be, we must remind him that
+the beauty of the classic draperies was borrowed from the beauty of the
+forms they revealed or partly displayed.
+
+With the best will, we could not in northern Europe emulate the
+Greeks in dress. There are two objections: the climate, which
+demands warm covering; the sense of may-be false modesty, inherited
+from the early Christian ages, which prevents the display of human
+forms. The time will no doubt come when humanity is sufficiently
+pure-minded—sufficiently degenerated, as Nordau would probably say—to
+dress in clinging draperies, to expose the form more freely indoors
+and in warm weather; and who would say that morality would not be
+the gainer? A movement in this direction is already apparent. The
+skirt-dance represents one stage. The appearance of an actress without
+shoes or stockings might well herald a return to sandals, and the
+abandonment of the barbarous fashion of cramping children’s feet in
+pointed shoes.
+
+But to call the women of European society degenerate because, under the
+present circumstances, they do not go about in light tunics, displaying
+their feet, their arms, and one leg, is hardly fair.
+
+Our great alienist is very severe on the men of society as well, more
+especially for the manner in which they trim their beards. We cannot
+help sympathizing with men who wear a double-pointed beard when they
+are told that they are on the high road to lunacy because they ape
+Lucius Verrius, a gentleman whose portrait they have probably never
+seen. Such stigmata of folly could have been pointed out only by a man
+whose mind is completely devoid of a sense of the ridiculous.
+
+To anybody who has not a special point to prove at all cost, it will be
+patent that throughout the whole course of history educated men never
+dressed more soberly than now. In this matter English fashion governs
+the world, and the ruling ideas in Englishmen’s dress are durability,
+comfort, and adaptability to the occasions on which it is worn.
+Continental men may not adhere so strictly to these ideas, but there is
+good reason to believe that in a short time they will do so.
+
+Modern room and house decorations are, according to Nordau, so many
+indications of degeneration and decay. That there are many rooms
+and houses eccentrically furnished and decorated throughout the
+civilized world no one would deny. But compared with the number of
+houses and rooms chastely furnished and decorated in a manner which
+is incomparably more pleasant and attractive than the average rooms,
+especially in Germany and England thirty years ago, these abodes of
+eccentrics sink into insignificance. As to the decoration of public
+halls and places of amusement, we surely notice an improvement which
+could not point to degeneration. Hardly in any European town would such
+wall decorations be now permitted as disfigured the walls of public
+places of amusement and dancing-halls in Germany some thirty years
+ago—the Apollo Saal of Hamburg, to wit, the walls of which represented
+hell in the worst taste possible.
+
+Here, again, Nordau gives us no standard to go by. He does not tell
+us what the house or the room of a rational being should be like, or
+to what extent a wealthy man may indulge in a freak, or amuse his
+friends by grotesque furniture and bizarre decorations, without being
+degenerated.
+
+The enjoyments of society especially present symptoms which cause our
+psychologist to tremble for the sanity of the upper classes. Under this
+head, we expected him to say something of the increasing taste for
+healthy games and sport, for travel, and the amateur practice of the
+arts for amusement’s sake. Had he been willing to look at the question
+from both sides, he might have said something about the increasing love
+of science, especially social science; of good books as well as bad
+ones; of the high prices fetched by the paintings of the old masters,
+even those not belonging to the pre-Raphaelite period, consequently
+real works of art according to Nordau. He might have acknowledged
+the improved tone in social gatherings and the marked diminution in
+convivial drunkenness.
+
+While sitting in judgment upon the upper classes of Europe, why
+should he not have noticed the more serious side of their lives as
+well as their enjoyments, as manifested in subscriptions to hospitals
+or orphanages, and institutes of every description; sick-nursing
+establishments, where ladies of high rank and wealth give their
+personal services, sacrifices of time and comfort in the endeavour
+to brighten the lives of the poor, to save fallen women, to assist
+released prisoners, to protect children and even animals from cruelty?
+We say, purposely, nothing of all the charitable work done in
+connection with churches, because Nordau and his admirers might not
+recognise any results of religious feeling as a proof of sanity.
+
+But all these emphatic and unmistakable indications of the state of
+society—at least as valuable as the manifestations of vice, hysteria,
+and eccentricity—are ignored. On the other hand, he makes much of the
+attempts which here and there have been made, especially in Paris,
+with representations appealing to many senses at once; for instance,
+pictures exhibited with music, musical recitals in darkened rooms,
+etc. Such cases are not only extremely rare, but simply are another
+combination of many arts hardly more complicated than that represented
+by operas, in which dance[,] music, poetry, and painting are mingled in
+order to please.
+
+In what recorded period, and in what nation, have there not been
+attempts to create new sources of enjoyment? Why should not attempts
+be made at advance in amusements as well as in any other feature of
+our civilization? That many of these experiments appear silly, and
+end in utter failure, ought to surprise nobody, and scientists the
+least. Any one who has tried to invent something new, to ascertain by
+experiments some scientific fact, or to solve a physical or mechanical
+problem, ought to know that a very large number of experiments are
+bound to fail before success is achieved. It is strange to find in
+our days a scientist condemning, as the beginning of folly, that
+dissatisfaction with existing things which is the primary motor of all
+progress and all knowledge. By doing so he ranges himself on the side
+of those Philistines who burnt the apostles of progress as heretics and
+imprisoned the pioneers of science as madmen.
+
+The unrest which our psychologist notices in the educated classes
+exists as well among all the lower classes of Europe, though among them
+it reveals itself in other manifestations. It springs however from
+the same source—a strong instinctive feeling, largely corroborated by
+judgment, that human life in all spheres is, in the present epoch,
+utterly out of harmony with nature, with our irresistible instincts,
+and all those noble aspirations, on the realization of which our
+self-respect, our ease of mind, and our happiness alone can be based.
+It is not alone the present feeling of incongruity which disturbs
+humanity, but the fast-ripening conviction that we are moving in a
+wrong direction inspires despair, pessimism in some, and a desire for
+hazardous new departures in others.
+
+This sense of unrest, this craving for change, far from being symptoms
+of degeneration, are the first faint indications of renewing vitality.
+If decay there be, it is simply the fermentation which precedes
+germination.
+
+Two opposing principles, two different systems, two classes of
+antagonistic institutions, cannot exist in the same place and at the
+same time. When therefore old things have been tried _ad nauseam_ and
+constantly found wanting, any unprejudiced man, nay, even an animal,
+must experience a desire to destroy them. This feeling naturally
+becomes strongest in the man with an imaginative and aspiring mind:
+for besides the general disgust of old things, he sees in them the
+chief obstacles to better and higher things. The axe must precede the
+plough, because the forest cannot co-exist with the wheat-field. The
+growing enmity against old dogmas, old authorities, old forms among
+the educated and artistic classes, the kindling rage of the masses
+against existing institutions, signal the clearing of the rank jungle
+and the pestilential swamps prior to cultivation. The leading features
+of modern culture have up till now been submission to authorities,
+violation of nature, sacrifice of individual liberty, and progression
+on Collectivist lines. What wonder then that those who keenly feel the
+present degradation of man, achieved under old conditions, should turn,
+against these and clamour for liberty, nature, and self?
+
+Nordau, with his German-Philistine ideas, with his head crammed
+full of authoritative teaching, and biassed by the clap-trap of the
+commonest Collectivism, has utterly misunderstood the phenomena which
+he has only partially observed. He does not allow for the mistakes,
+the exaggerations, and the eccentricities committed by men who try to
+give expression to their feelings, their yearnings, their aspirations,
+unhampered by traditional bonds. He is bewildered because a movement
+springing entirely from feeling and instinct does not follow a fixed
+programme, or some dry philosophical system. He under-estimates the
+value of an ethical revolution, because so far it has not reached
+its constructive stage; and because the new apostles of liberty,
+intoxicated by their self-liberation, run amuck indiscriminately
+against all old things, be they good or bad; because the movement is in
+the hands of extremists, enthusiasts, and sentimentalists, and still
+awaits the guiding hand of the unbiassed logician, the cool-headed
+sociologist and economist, capable of harmonizing it with practical
+life and moral order.
+
+Nordau, by his book, has forfeited his claim to be one of these.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_MYSTICISM AND THE UNKNOWABLE_
+
+
+Of the good things contained in Nordau’s book which should secure for
+it a place in the study of every educated man, his fourth chapter
+entitled “Etiology” figures conspicuously. He deals here with the
+causes—not the primary economic and sociological causes, but the
+immediate causes—of the increasing bodily debilities and mental
+derangements characteristic of our epoch. Such facts, or generally
+assumed facts, as that the average term of human life is extending;
+that the average stature of man has increased since the middle ages,
+rendering the armour of mighty men of those days too small for
+middle-sized men of our generation; that the average chest-measure
+in the German army is expanding; that personal beauty of children,
+women, and men is in the ascendant; that many men attain to a great
+age without the slightest sign of diminished mental power;—all these
+facts might appear so many contradictions to Nordau’s assertions in the
+chapter alluded to.
+
+But, though the consideration of them might induce him to modify
+some of the minor points, they are not completely inconsistent with
+his general reasoning. He warns us that the excessive consumption of
+spirits and tobacco, the use of opiates and poisons in general, produce
+debility and premature death. Bad food, bad air, bad dwellings, and a
+great number of other disadvantages which town dwellers, especially
+the poor, must endure, are no doubt at least as harmful to body and
+mind as he proves. He rightly attributes a great number of nerve
+diseases to the prostration and fatigue consequent upon over-exertion
+and over-excitement, which seems inevitable in an epoch of railways,
+telegraphs, and machinery.
+
+The whole of his chapter “Etiology,” however, dealing as it does with
+the degeneration of the masses, seems to contradict what he says in
+his first chapter about the upper classes only being affected by _fin
+de siècle_ degeneration, while the masses experience only a more or
+less slight touch of it. It also seems to disprove his theory that
+degenerate authors and artists are the chief cause of degeneration
+among the upper classes, a view which leads him to overlook the
+most palpable and most powerful causes for the production of those
+psychological phenomena throughout civilized humanity which he notices
+only among the upper classes.
+
+In discussing degeneration it is of the utmost importance to know how
+the affliction progresses—whether certain authors and artists were
+degenerated, and then affected the upper classes—or whether the upper
+classes were degenerated and thus produced the degenerated authors
+and artists. Nordau seems to vacillate between the two opinions, or
+he considers the pernicious influence to have been reciprocal. It
+is however clear that he regards these authors and artists, as well
+as those members of the upper classes who sympathize with them, as
+dwellers on the border-land between sanity and madness. The stigmata,
+or the signs of distorted minds, he divides—as they necessarily must be
+divided—into bodily stigmata and mental stigmata. The bodily stigmata
+are of course malformations of the head, and he lays particular stress
+on the conformation of the ear, its more or less projecting position,
+the shape of the lobe, or its clinging to the head. It would have
+been charity and justice on his part to have explained that, while
+these stigmata are frequently found on lunatics and idiots, there are
+probably millions of people who bear them without being demented, or
+even eccentric.
+
+On the other hand, it cannot be denied that there are thousands of
+lunatics who possess well-shaped heads and ears.
+
+He relies however but little on the bodily stigmata, and finds them
+only on a few of his subjects. He deals, of course, chiefly with the
+mental stigmata, and among these he gives mysticism a prominent place.
+He quotes from Legrain to the effect that “mystical thoughts are to
+be laid to the account of insanity and degeneration,” but Legrain
+adds at once that they are observable in two states—in epilepsy and
+in hysterical delirium. According to his authority we consequently
+know that those who suffer from epilepsy and delirium are apt to be
+mystical. But Legrain would probably be the first to object to the
+conclusion that all those who are mystically inclined suffer from
+epilepsy and delirium.
+
+In his definition of mysticism Nordau says that “the word describes a
+state of mind in which the subject imagines that he sees or divines
+unknown and inexplicable relations amongst phenomena, discerns in
+things hints at mysteries, and regards them as symbols.” But he adds,
+“by which dark powers seek to unveil, or, at least, to indicate all
+sorts of marvels which he endeavours to guess, though generally in
+vain.”
+
+We have divided his definition into two parts, because placed in one
+sentence it seems an incorrect and unfair definition, the former part
+of which might be used as a proof of degeneration in a perfectly sound
+mind, while the latter part is the essential of the whole definition.
+
+As we have already pointed out, science and all researches have utterly
+failed to furnish replies to all questions regarding the origin,
+aim, plan, and final destiny of the universe and of humanity. Under
+such circumstances, the world around us, that which has preceded
+it, that which will follow it, as well as ourselves, necessarily
+remain mysteries. Can then any one who perceives or divines unknown,
+and to us now inexplicable, relations between phenomena and who
+discerns mysteries be regarded as a degenerate? All the scientific
+facts of which we are now in possession were mysteries before they
+were discovered, and the scientists who, guided by slight hints and
+sometimes by guesses, have unravelled the marvels of nature, could not
+surely be put down as lunatics. It is therefore evident that the phrase
+“dark power” is a most essential part in Nordau’s definition, and
+that a man can behold mysteries, dwell on them, study them, sometimes
+unravel them, and remain a perfectly sane man, and that he only who is
+mystical and deals with mysteries in an irrational way is a degenerate.
+
+Nordau says as much in his illustration of the peasant who is a
+mystic in his religion and in his belief in the weather-witch, but a
+matter-of-fact man in his farming and in his business. But he is not so
+lenient to the exponents of the mystic school in art and literature.
+With regard to these, he is rather prone to determine the state of
+their mind according to that part of a quotation from Morel which he
+has italicised in his book, “_a morbid deviation from an original
+type_.” The word morbid alone would have sufficed, but he seems to
+attach more importance to the other part of the sentence and to regard
+all who deviate from an original type as degenerate. He does not allow
+for extenuating circumstances in the authors and artists as he does in
+the case of the peasant. If he did, he could not class any of these, or
+their admirers, among the degenerates, unless he could also prove that
+they were irrational in their daily life and their business relations.
+
+He acknowledges that the emotional nature of man has played a more
+important part in the world than his intellect, and yet he seems
+to have before his eyes an original type consisting exclusively
+of intellect and devoid of emotions. If man’s destiny, his moral
+condition, his education, his happiness, and his usefulness in the
+world, were to be determined chiefly by his intellectual power, the
+progress of the race would have been infinitely more slow than it has
+been, and the bulk of individuals now alive would be far less removed
+from the animal than they are.
+
+It might be contended that, if not all, at least a large number of
+religions have brought with them many evils, but, taking a broad view
+of the work accomplished by them in comparison, not with what they
+would have done had they been more perfect, but with that state which
+would have prevailed had they never existed, no unprejudiced historian
+will deny that civilization and the progress of our race have been
+considerably accelerated through the influence of religions.
+
+No religion is based on logic, and hardly ever were religious precepts
+and dogmas accepted exclusively on intellectual grounds. Faith and
+reasoning, considerably modified by emotion, have always formed the
+basis of religious beliefs.
+
+Not only in connection with religious matters, but in every event and
+every development in human affairs, emotion has played an active and
+prominent part. Such feelings as love, friendship, ambition, lust,
+gratitude, hatred, revengefulness, patriotism, loyalty, chivalry, etc.,
+are the great motive powers in the human drama, and when the intellect
+steps in it is as their counsellor and their servant.
+
+It is therefore legitimate and reasonable for those who wish to sway
+human beings, who wish to educate them, elevate them, to address
+themselves to their emotional nature. In the position in which man
+is placed—living on a cosmic grain of sand, moving in space by an
+inexplicable power at an inconceivable speed, without knowing who he is
+and why he is—the mystical must perforce have a great attraction for
+him. To be easily impressed by the mystical is therefore one of his
+natural conditions, be it good, bad, or indifferent. When the emotional
+nature of human beings is appealed to it is as rational for artists and
+poets to address themselves to the love of the mystical as to the love
+of the beautiful, and therefore there should be a legitimate place for
+mysticism in art and poetry.
+
+It is almost inconceivable that an educated, well-balanced mind
+should never dwell on those immensities still unexplored, and the
+innumerable enigmas still unsolved or insoluble, and content itself
+with lingering over those comparatively insignificant truths which
+science so far has revealed. To what an extent a man remains satisfied
+with quasi-explanations of scientific research depends on the strength
+of his imagination. It is pardonable if alienists should look upon
+imagination as a doubtful blessing; but though it may appear a
+dangerous gift in their patients, there can be little doubt that it is
+an indispensable attribute to a well-equipped mind. It is the mental
+faculty which most distinguishes man from the animals—the one on which
+he could with the greatest appearance of legitimacy base his claim to
+divine origin. Dogs may dream and horses may see ghosts, but their
+hallucinations are vastly different from the imagination of man, which
+allows him to receive and retain almost any number of presentations,
+to elaborate them into new combinations, thus reconstructing pictures
+of the past and daring conceptions of the future, capable of easy
+realization. A powerful imagination is essential not only to the
+poet and the artist, but to the engineer, the mechanician, the
+statesman,—in fact, to all who set themselves a practical task or a
+distinct ideal.
+
+It is the imaginative strength of the scientist which renders him
+a pioneer and a discoverer, and without it he is to his science
+what the performer of music who cannot compose is to music. From
+everyday experience we are justified in believing that the cramming
+of the memory, much reading for examinations or other purposes,
+and a developed habit of relying on authorities tend to weaken the
+imagination in a man. This seems to be confirmed by the theory of
+psychologists: that desuetude of a faculty tends to its decay; and
+might well be the explanation of the often-confirmed fact that great
+discoverers and inventors have seldom emerged from the ranks of the
+omnivorous readers of the universities.
+
+In the same manner we may explain what we have before called the
+scientific superstition discernible in so many scientists. The more
+they are satisfied with their systems, the more they take nomenclature
+and classification for adequate explanation, the less they are
+attracted by the spheres into which science has not penetrated or
+cannot penetrate. There is this similarity between the scientifically
+superstitious and the theologically superstitious—that they both
+believe that they have explained all, and they thereby place themselves
+beyond the possibility of being right; for the mass of unexpected
+facts revealed by science, eclipsing as they do the wildest flight of
+the imagination, renders it possible for any man to be right in his
+speculations on the secrets of the universe save those men who say that
+they know all.
+
+It is therefore not surprising that a scientist by erudition, and
+especially an alienist, who, by dint of studying the mechanism which
+connects what some call the soul, and others designate as the trinity
+of the consciousness, the judgment, and the will, with the body, has
+persuaded himself that there is nothing beyond nerves, cells and the
+gray matter, should look with contempt on imagination, and yet more
+so on the love of the mystical, and that his ideal man, his “original
+type,” should possess so little imagination as to remain unaffected by
+the mystical.
+
+Lack of information and of observation has caused the multitude to
+regard a great number of men—distinguished in the eyes of the world
+exclusively by their intellectual powers—as non-mystics to such a
+degree as to class them as atheists. The majority of such men, though
+distinctly at variance with the dogmas and views of established sects,
+have been and are, in their inner consciousness, both mystics and
+religionists. When in public they have seemingly attacked religion
+and mysticism, they have in reality only attacked churches and
+superstition. In the judgment of a great many intelligent men the
+controversy between Professor Huxley and Dr. Martineau goes far to
+confirm this view. When humanity, including scientists, learns to
+distinguish between religion and churches, it will be understood that
+almost all men in the past and present who have deservedly been called
+great, have been religionists, and therefore mystics.
+
+Let us instance Faraday. He belonged all his life to a sect which must
+be classed among the mystics, and he died a believer in its creed.
+Are we then to class this keen observer, accurate investigator, and
+brilliant logician, this daring pioneer of science, this ingenious
+unraveller of nature’s secrets, among the degenerates? If we do, where
+should we class average scientists, including Nordau? Or should we
+place ourselves in the position of the common-sense German Philistine,
+and declare that mysticism is not mysticism when it takes the shape of
+the belief of a sect tolerated by the police?
+
+But is not Faraday’s mysticism perfectly compatible with a sound mind?
+He was one of those scientists with unclouded reasoning powers, whose
+knowledge—gained by investigation, not from authorities—had taught him
+how little he knew of the great mysteries of creation. He recognised
+that our emotional cravings cannot be satisfied by science in its
+present stage, but only by emotional realization. Hence his religious
+attitude towards the great mysterious power of which he knew nothing,
+but whose work became more and more manifest as his investigation
+proceeded. What wiser course could a man adopt, who was so capable
+of distinguishing essence from form, than to give that form to his
+religion which had gratified his emotional nature as a child?
+
+If sound minds may be mystically inclined, if our emotional nature can
+be reached by mysticism in poetry and art, and if our emotions are
+acknowledged to be receptive to elevating and pleasing impressions,
+the pre-Raphaelites could not all have been as degenerate as Nordau
+would have us believe. They were, no doubt, emotionalists, mystics,
+and even symbolists, and they frankly claimed the right to be regarded
+as such. They considered themselves as having a mission, and the fact
+that a man throws himself heart and soul into his mission is no sign of
+degeneration.
+
+Now, there are walks in life, callings, missions, which involve no risk
+to those who undertake them; there are others that involve great risks.
+
+Some callings expose a man to bodily harm, others to mental harm.
+Nothing could be more uncharitable and cruel than to revile a man,
+to attack his reputation, to wound his feelings, and to lower his
+self-esteem, because he returns maimed and invalided after having
+fought the good fight.
+
+A shopkeeper, a shoemaker, an author of sensational books, runs but
+little risk of damaging either his body or his mind. The sailor, the
+miner, the leader of a revolution, exposes himself to great bodily
+danger. The man who acquires a vast erudition may dull his imagination
+and his judgment; the man who strains his brain to the utmost, who,
+perhaps, overstrains it, in the solution of difficult problems, the
+man whose mission lies in the domain of the emotions, exposes his mind
+to injury. If there be truth in this, mysticism in poetry and art may
+cause degeneration in the poet’s or the artist’s mind, especially if it
+be a weak one; but to conclude from this that mysticism in art springs
+from diseased minds is to confound cause with effect.
+
+If we accept Nordau’s Philistine definition of art and his views as
+to its mission, mysticism would have no place in art or in poetry.
+He would certainly exclude it, but in doing so he would contradict
+himself glaringly. We have already complained that he does not explain
+his standards, and that he does not give his ideals. But from his work
+before us, it is evident that the standard by which he would measure
+poetry is the work of Goethe and Shakespeare, especially the former.
+Goethe owes his fame largely to his _Faust_—a mystical work if ever
+there was one. The prologue is religious mysticism, the first part is
+diabolism, the second part is arch-mysticism, which so far has resisted
+all attempts at interpretation. In the same manner _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_,
+and other plays of Shakespeare derive their great charm and their
+artistic value largely from mysticism.
+
+All this however does not prove that either irrational or dishonest
+mysticism is acceptable, and much that Nordau says regarding
+pre-Raphaelitism should be taken to heart by the camp-followers of
+the movement. In this term we include, of course, those painters
+who, unable to draw and paint, try to force their pictures upon the
+market by sheer bounce; and empty-headed critics who insolently
+assume a mental, or, as they would call it, a spiritual, superiority
+by writing obscure, unintelligible rigmaroles in praise of pictures
+which attract attention by means of nought but their eccentricity.
+This class of people cannot be considered as representing the
+pre-Raphaelite movement, nor can they be called degenerate in the
+sense Nordau means, for there is a method in their degeneracy which
+yields pounds, shillings, and pence. We also include in this category
+a class of people whose conceit may border on degeneracy, and who
+believe that any one who cannot draw and paint is qualified for a
+pre-Raphaelite painter, and who sincerely assume and enjoy the position
+as misunderstood geniuses.
+
+As to the crowds in the exhibitions that gather before an
+incomprehensible eccentricity made conspicuous by the log-rolling
+process, they surely do not all deserve the epithet of degenerates.
+Many are drawn there by sheer curiosity; others damn with faint praise,
+in order to escape the wrath of the fanatic. There are also, of
+course, many who, for the purpose of giving themselves airs, admire
+traits of beauty which they really fail to see. The behaviour of these
+hypocritical æsthetes is, of course, deplorable, but they yield to a
+weakness not confined to the end of our century. Andersen’s story of
+the king’s clothes, inspired by a very old German tale, is one of many
+evidences of the antiquity of such folly.
+
+The sincere pre-Raphaelites deserve the sympathy of every thinking man,
+though they may be guilty of many imperfections. According to Nordau,
+the mission of the painter is to serve as a vehicle of beautiful
+impressions to the public. A man who fulfilled this mission might
+indeed be called an artist, and his painting might be the limits of
+painting as such. But this does not prevent a picture from containing
+a story, a moral, or the expression of an emotion, if the painter be a
+good story-teller, a true poet, and a sound teacher. If a work of art
+can thus fulfil two high purposes instead of one, everybody is a gainer
+by it, and the fact that it is the embodiment of two arts instead of
+one cannot reasonably be made an objection. The artist who succeeds in
+thus blending two arts should surely not be called a degenerate.
+
+Ruskin did not, as Nordau confesses, advocate any neglect in the art
+of painting as such, but he warned artists not to waste their time on
+unworthy subjects. He is a philanthropist as well as a writer on art,
+and feels aggrieved when the artist neglects so good an opportunity of
+teaching as a well-executed painting offers, and yet more when he sees
+art abased in order to gratify sensuality or morbid cravings for the
+horrible.
+
+That Ruskin did not so absolutely disregard beautiful pictures which
+have no story to tell and no teaching to impart becomes incontestable
+when we remember his panegyrics of Turner.
+
+Victor Hugo in his _Notre Dame de Paris_ makes Claude Frollo say,
+when he has a book in his hand and the old cathedral before him, that
+the one will kill the other, meaning, of course, that books were
+predestined to supersede symbolism in buildings and other arts. Nordau
+takes for granted that this has already been done. He sees no good
+in works of art giving expression to ideas and emotions which could
+so much better be described and more clearly defined in books. But
+is there not a great inconsistency in first admitting that art keeps
+within its rational limit when it presents the beauties of nature to
+the public in such a manner as to make them more evident, which is
+equal to teaching that nature is beautiful, and then to say that art
+oversteps its limits when it teaches, or attempts to teach, anything
+else?
+
+If we survey all the means available to humanity for the conveyance
+of thoughts and emotions, they present a scale which begins by speech
+and ends with music. Though it must be acknowledged that speech only
+with difficulty lends itself to the expression of one or a considerable
+number of interdependent and intertangent complex ideas perfectly
+clear in a sound mind, it is however the best means we possess for
+lucid expression. Written prose has the same merit as speech, and may
+be used to express the driest mathematical facts, as well as the most
+poetical imaginings. Verse, we think it will be generally allowed,
+is better calculated to convey poetical ideas and expressions, as it
+admits of greater liberty, more stirring language, bolder metaphors,
+and because rhythm and rhyme, in virtue of their musical qualities,
+appeal to the imagination and stir the emotions.
+
+When to poetry melody is added, it becomes song, a mode of expression
+which appeals fully as much to our emotional nature as to our
+intellect. When instrumental music is added to song, to evoke emotion
+becomes the cardinal object, and intellect receives hardly any
+impression. Music without words is the mode of conveying emotions—and
+possibly ideas, too subtle, so to say, too spiritual to be analysed by
+the intellect—in so distinct a way that the emotions of the composer,
+and may be of the performer, are faithfully reproduced in the hearers.
+A mutual understanding is thus established between them as clearly as
+any understanding arrived at through exhaustive verbal explanation.
+
+Scientists have endeavoured to explain on materialist lines the charm
+exercised by music over us, but their explanations obviously never
+touch more than the mechanical motion of the sound-waves and the
+receptive mechanism of the ear and the brain. Their dogmatizing is
+moreover so dry, halting, and one-sided as to convince musical people
+that their attempt at explanation is hopeless. Music belongs to the
+sphere of emotions, which lie beyond the ken of science, and will be as
+long as scientific progression is hampered by the materialist bias.
+
+And yet the most unimaginative scientist will not deny that all the
+methods of conveying ideas and emotions enumerated in the above scale,
+including instrumental music, are legitimate arts. Why then should
+there not be the same latitude allowed to the arts appealing to us
+through the sight as to those appealing to us through the hearing? If
+the architect, sculptor, or painter, or two of them, or even three of
+them, combined in collaboration, wishing to convey an impression, or
+to evoke an emotion, why should they not be allowed to do so by any
+of the means which fall within their sphere? If they should wish to
+evoke emotions similar to those evoked by music, and they can do so by
+choosing a certain subject, by introducing certain symbols, or even by
+recalling sentiments of the past—the time of our first love, our youth,
+or even our childhood,—why should they not be free to do so?
+
+The pre-Raphaelites claim the freedom to thus expand the scope of
+pictorial art, to sanctify it, and to make it appeal to the inmost
+recesses of our emotional nature; and as the movement was started at
+a time when art was in decadence and tended to become subservient,
+abroad to pruriency, and at home, to abominable Philistinism, the
+pre-Raphaelites deserve a better treatment than they have received at
+the hands of Nordau.
+
+That they should commit mistakes was inevitable. It is probable that
+they had not realized completely to themselves the exact results to be
+aimed at. Like the composer of music, they wished to convey to others
+such of their own emotions as they deemed legitimate, beautiful, and
+ennobling, and had to grope in the dark, or to trust to momentary
+inspiration, for the means. Being, and wishing to be emotional, they
+may have neglected their intellectual powers, forgetting that even
+when emotion reigns supreme it can express itself truly only by the
+aid of intelligence. Vivid emotions and powerful imaginations are not
+in themselves stigmata of degeneration, but rather the signs of a rich
+mind, so long as they remain under the control of the intellect. It is
+only when they run riot, unheeding the criticism of intellect, that the
+balance of the mind is imperilled.
+
+In their desire to emphasize the spiritual meaning and the emotional
+nature of their works, the pre-Raphaelites may have committed the
+mistake of neglecting execution, truthfulness to nature, and the laws
+of optics. Finding pictures appreciated by the public in virtue of the
+subject and the conception, despite faulty treatment, many of them no
+doubt have been induced to realize their ideas and emotions on canvas
+before they had sufficiently trained their eye and their hand.
+
+Every educated Englishman will understand that Nordau somewhat distorts
+facts and conveys wrong impressions in the account he gives of the
+movement. Though the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was dissolved, the
+movement has not been so devoid of results as he insinuates. Though the
+first exhibition of the Brotherhood was also the last one, pictures
+by the same artist have been constantly exhibited, and some of them
+have fetched fabulous prices. He says that Millais, amongst others,
+has retained that characteristic of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
+consisting of minuteness in details, draperies, and backgrounds. Any
+one who has seen Millais’ striking portraits, his “Cherry Ripe,”
+“Bubbles,” “Caller Herrings,” and other pictures could not possibly
+make such an assertion. We must, of course, allow for the circumstance
+that Nordau’s knowledge of the pictures he criticises is second-hand.
+
+It is evident that he has not seen Millais’ latest pictures. Had he
+done so, he would not have jeopardized his whole system of reasoning
+by holding Millais up as an example of degeneration. Here, as in many
+other cases, Nordau, while exhibiting an enormous erudition, reveals a
+remarkable want of logic. To call Millais degenerate is a desperate way
+out of a dilemma in which he has landed himself by asserting, on the
+one hand, that those who paint pictures such as Millais painted years
+ago are people with degenerate brains, and, on the other, that people
+who produce pictures such as Millais paints now are people of sound
+mind. If degeneration is the first step towards a high, normal, and
+sound development, Nordau has been guilty of much ado about nothing.
+
+Had he ever beheld Holman Hunt’s “Shadow of the Cross” even in an
+engraving, he could not in his description of it have committed the
+mistakes he has unless his mind is impervious to pictorial impressions.
+He says that “the shadow of his (Christ’s) body falling on the ground
+shows the form of a cross.” This is not true. The shadow of Christ’s
+body falls on the wall, where a tool shelf and suspended tools simulate
+a cross. Nordau’s erroneous description will certainly prejudice those
+who have not seen the picture against Holman Hunt.
+
+It is natural that the materialist, the pseudo-scientifically
+superstitious, and the Philistine tendencies of our age, so eminently
+embodied in the mind of Nordau, and against which the pre-Raphaelite
+school is a protest, should militate against a fair appreciation of the
+tentative departure of these innovators.
+
+The essence of their mysticism and their symbolism is their belief
+in what, for lack of a better term, has been called their spiritual
+life—the belief that the mind is not a condition of matter, but
+that our thinking _Ego_ might have existed before it was incarnated,
+and that it will live after our body has decayed. Could our earthly
+existence be proved finite with certainty, could any future existence
+be proved a vain dream, incompatible with reason, then indeed would
+pre-Raphaelitism be the beginning of folly, as, in fact, would most of
+the things which now tend to lighten and beautify our lives. We shall
+not here endeavour to determine the five-thousand-year-old discussion
+regarding eternal life. We shall simply point out that the proofs on
+which the so-called materialists base their conclusions are not so
+absolutely convincing as to stigmatize their opponents as lunatics.
+
+Any one who has glanced at the development of science from old times
+up to the present is well aware of that weakness in the mind of
+scientists—especially the non-pioneer scientists—which induces them
+to believe that the conclusions they have arrived at, generally in
+opposition to predecessors, are the whole truth and nothing but the
+truth. For thousands of years it has been the same. For each step
+that science has climbed upwards, its votaries, with a few brilliant
+exceptions, have believed themselves to be at the top, and have with
+scorn rejected, as sheer folly, any suggestion that the step on which
+they stand is rotten and that there are sounder steps higher up. The
+scientists of other days in their turn looked upon Columbus, Galileo,
+and Tycho Brahe as fools. A hundred years ago the scientists would have
+laughed to scorn any one who had told them that their senses deceived
+them with regard to light, darkness, colours, silence and sound,
+and that all these presentations received by our senses were simply
+movement or manifestations of energy. The theory which regarded atoms
+as minute subdivisions of matter is quite a modern dogma, and yet it is
+already tottering to its fall. More rational scientists already speak
+of atoms as centres of force, an expression which twenty years ago was
+regarded as rank heresy. If the theory that atoms are centres of force
+is accepted, with all its consequences, science is on the threshold of
+a new departure which may cause the materialists to look small indeed;
+for if what to our senses appears as matter is a condition of force,
+instead of force being a condition of matter, a vista entirely opposite
+to that of the materialists is open to science—a vista disclosing
+possibilities before which we might well stand in awe.
+
+Though it is incontestable that invention and discovery have been
+enormously accelerated by often apparently wild suggestions by the
+imagination, by emotion, and by instinct, it is especially such
+suggestions which are visited by the most furious onslaughts on the
+part of the superstitious scientists. When these reject as utter folly
+imaginings prompted by faith or any other emotions, it is because such
+suggestions are not only entirely out of harmony with the scientific
+ideas of the moment, but because they appear so extraordinary, so
+utterly destructive to the views familiar to them. They would be
+less positive in face of suggestions and speculations justified by
+emotion, if they did not constantly forget that every scientific
+discovery reveals facts which are not only diametrically opposed to
+opinions previously held, but also so marvellous as to baffle human
+understanding. Bearing recent scientific discovery in mind, no one
+will deny the folly of the man who a hundred years ago would have
+prophetically declared: “What we now have proved true and reasonable
+will in a hundred years be proved error and folly, and what to us now
+appears as sheer madness and rank impossibility will then be scientific
+truth.”
+
+Any contemporary scientist, unaffected by scientific superstition,
+would unhesitatingly acknowledge the probability of present scientific
+dogmas being declared errors, and that what would now appear as the
+hallucinations of an overheated imagination may become scientific truth
+a century hence.
+
+Though the narrow-minded scientist who takes up his stand on the so
+far explored speck of the universe has no right to blame the artist or
+poet who, guided by emotion and faith, plunges his imagination into
+the surrounding abyss of the mystical, which no well-balanced mind
+can ignore, it would be both unjust and absurd to blame the prosaic
+and plodding scientist who concentrates his whole mind on scientific
+details, and, to use a happy metaphor of Nordau himself, is building a
+bridge, arch by arch, out into the unknown. It is good that the Alpine
+climber should concentrate his attention on the steps he hews in the
+ice and the safe resting-point he can find for his feet, and not allow
+his mind to wander in the dark precipice below him or among the lofty
+peaks he hopes to reach. Man being two personalities, one emotional,
+the other intellectual, stands in need of the services of both the
+logical scientist and the emotional artist and poet.
+
+Once it has been recognised that the emotions may be conveyed by
+pictorial art, we cannot quarrel with the _raison d’être_ of the
+pre-Raphaelites, though we might disagree with them as to the means
+they are using. They can however justly demand that those who criticise
+their means of expression should show the possibility of better ones.
+Holman Hunt has aimed at evoking by his pictures a feeling of respect
+and admiration for religion, and in many cases has succeeded; and
+the means he has employed are a reverential treatment, a style of
+old associated with religious representations and suggestions of the
+supernatural. Burne Jones, whose object seems to be to emphasize the
+higher significance of our spiritual being over our bodily, does so
+by giving us pictures of maidens whose beauty is of a kind devoid of
+all those attractions which coquetry, roguishness, animal spirits,
+and exuberance of health may confer. Their vacant and inward look
+suggests a contemplative mood and a yearning to see the invisible. As
+if to still further quicken the sluggish imagination of the masses, he
+cloaks his figures in draperies and surrounds them by objects which of
+old have been used in representing holy people. He comes as near as
+possible to the representation of wingless angels, without presenting
+anything that could not be seen in reality.
+
+Such pictures may not appeal to everybody, but we have overwhelming
+evidence that they do appeal to a great number; and if the belief
+in a superiority over animals, in a spiritual personality, in a
+responsibility for our development, and in a future life contributes
+to our happiness and exercises an ennobling influence on our race, the
+pictures of Burne Jones cannot be the work of a degenerate aiming at
+the degeneration of others.
+
+What by many is considered Rossetti’s masterpiece, “Dante’s Dream,”
+would by a painter, in his capacity of craftsman, be found to contain
+many defects, and only one great merit—exquisite colouring. The
+conception is eccentric, the surroundings are symbolic and mystical,
+and the anatomy is incorrect. There are faults of perspective, some
+of them glaring. For instance, the left shoulder of the angel of
+love who stands on the left hand of Beatrice, facing her and bending
+over her, is partly hidden by Beatrice’s right shoulder, which could
+not be possible in reality unless the two figures had only two
+dimensions—height and breadth, with no thickness. And yet this picture
+has been bought by the Corporation of Liverpool for a large sum, and is
+considered as a thing of joy and beauty by a mass of people among whom
+Nordau could detect but a few with malformations of the heads and the
+ears, and who in the whole of their life have given abundant proof of
+practical rationalism far greater even than that of the superstitious
+peasant he instances as having a sound mind.
+
+The charm of the picture does not lie in the execution, but in the
+conception. It is probable that it evokes exactly the same emotion felt
+by Rossetti while painting it. The subject being a dream, the many
+symbols tend to throw the spectator into the mood in which the picture
+should be contemplated. There is an atmosphere of Sabbath—presentiment
+of bliss—which is produced by the introduction of such presentations
+which in our youth or childhood have been associated with that day.
+The artist has succeeded in intensifying the belief in the sacredness
+of love and the consolations which, amid the troubles of life, may be
+drawn from the faith in a spiritual existence.
+
+The conceiving and representing of pictures like this, the outcome of
+intense emotion, might well endanger the balance of the painter’s mind,
+but the soothing influence they exercise on the spectator would surely
+assuage rather than excite any restless mind which, deprived of a
+profound philosophy and a far-reaching scientific knowledge, must needs
+cling to faith.
+
+The painter who produces on the canvas a beautiful scene from nature,
+beautiful flowers, or other beautiful objects, pleases and elevates
+the beholders of the picture. Nordau admits as much. But he does not
+analyse the methods by which this result is accomplished. He would
+probably not deny that one of the feelings which such a picture calls
+forth is a sympathy with nature and the Creator, and that this sympathy
+favours the conception of the distinct idea that the great power of the
+universe suggested by natural beauties—as the painter is suggested by
+the picture—loves the beautiful, and consequently the good.
+
+The signification of the pre-Raphaelites in the progress of art is
+that they strive to teach, in the production of groups and figures,
+similar emotions and thoughts to those produced by the representation
+of natural beauties. They have therefore contributed considerably
+to the elevation of art so far as aims and subjects go. If they
+believe that a purpose can be attained only by the imitation of the
+unskilled pre-Raphaelite painters, by violating nature, by eliminating
+perspective, and by apotheosizing ugliness, they do not further that
+regeneration which we believe they are striving for. But there is every
+reason to hope that modern art will come out ennobled from the crisis
+into which it has been plunged, and that rising painters will see their
+way to paint reverently and realize their noblest aims and highest
+ideals, represented in naturally beautiful forms, painted with the
+greatest skill of a painter proud of his craft.
+
+Whether this hope be realized or not, it seems to us that a
+regeneration of art would be impossible without the attempts at new
+departure which Nordau has mistaken for degeneration.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+_THE BANKRUPTCY OF SCIENCE_
+
+
+In his chapter entitled “Symbolism” Nordau seeks confirmation for his
+theory of degeneration in the tendency, more or less perceptible all
+the world over, on the part of contemporary artists and poets, to
+have recourse to symbols in giving expression to ideas and emotions
+impossible to convey in ordinary language. Every one who has had to
+do with intricate syntheses of ideas, even of the driest and the most
+clearly definable kind, is well aware that language often appears
+inadequate to convey such syntheses from one mind to another. How
+much more difficult then must it be to convey in exact language a
+presentation conjured up from the imagination, an artistic conception,
+a poetical mood, a strong emotion, or a chord of emotions, to use an
+expression that may in itself serve as an illustration. The use of
+symbols, as we have just used the word chord, has not only enormously
+widened the capability of language, but has rendered it far more lucid,
+laconic, and agreeable.
+
+A modern orator, or writer, could not possibly dispense with symbols,
+for without them his speeches or his books would be intensely wordy,
+tiresome, and difficult to comprehend. Language is constantly being
+enriched by new symbols, either invented and introduced by authors, or
+taken from such literary works as have become classic. Often an author
+creates a character or an idea which typifies characters and situations
+frequently met with, and for which symbols have long been needed. Thus,
+for instance, Andersen’s _Ugly Duckling_ became a symbol largely used
+as soon as his fable was published, and when Ibsen’s _Doll’s House_ was
+played for the first time in London, one newspaper, which, by the way,
+took Nordau’s view of Ibsen and declared his characters impossible, in
+another article, if we remember aright, on the subject of marriage,
+used with great effect Ibsen’s Nora as a symbol.
+
+But such symbols are as old as language, and the new tendency of
+_littérateurs_ who call themselves, or who are called, symbolists,
+is not to invent and to use symbols that stand for well-known and
+perfectly undisputed characters and situations, but such as represent
+new ideas, difficult to define, or undefinable, because incomplete, and
+concerning emotions. The same authors are also prone to use symbols
+for things, beings, and powers, the existence of which has not been
+ascertained by the senses, but simply guessed at, or evolved from
+consciousness.
+
+Many such symbols were not symbols when first introduced into the
+language, but nouns that stood for things, or beings, supposed to be
+perfectly real. Thus, for instance, the word “devil,” which in olden
+times stood for a satanic majesty, adorned with horns and tail, has
+now become a convenient symbol, a thing only too real, but covering
+such immense ground, and presenting such innumerable aspects, that a
+symbol expressing the whole conception is extremely convenient. Nothing
+is commoner than to hear a clergyman use the words “the devil” in his
+sermon, though it be part of his creed and of his teachings that God is
+so omnipresent throughout the universe that there is not a square inch
+for a personal devil to place his foot on.
+
+It is this kind of symbolism which Nordau is bent on crucifying as
+degeneration. As we have already said, there is a general tendency
+among artists to indulge in it, in order to produce moods and suggest
+emotions. Thus, for example, in the picture spoken of in our last
+chapter, “Dante’s Dream,” an atmosphere of love is represented by red
+birds, and sleep is represented by poppies strewn on the floor. In
+Rossetti’s picture Nordau would have taken objection to such symbols,
+though he seems reconciled to the symbols used by Raphael and his
+school, and would probably not object to those of German allegorical
+painters and sculptors.
+
+It is significant that the symbolism which he most vehemently holds up
+as a stigma of degeneration, is that of the modern French poets who
+have made religious symbolism their speciality. It is not difficult to
+see why these have been chosen as the scapegoats for the symbolism of
+every art and every country. It is true they boldly call themselves
+symbolists. But this would not be enough to elicit from Nordau a
+chapter of forty-five pages. Besides calling themselves symbolists,
+they have the audacity to be French. Their symbolism is religious, and,
+what is worse, is Roman Catholic, and, what is worst of all, it is
+antagonistic to science.
+
+Though the now prevailing love for symbols does not always manifest
+itself in a religious way, it is natural for it to find its widest
+application in speeches and writings on religion. Religion avowedly
+deals with things not of this earth, is based not on knowledge and
+investigation, but on faith, and appeals not to our intellect, but to
+our emotional nature.
+
+The French symbolists have created greater sympathy with their
+religious views than might have been expected in our rational times
+because, unlike the Catholic clergy of the past, they treat as symbols
+what before were considered as representations of actual facts. They
+are not orthodox; and if the Church of Rome is anxious, as it seems
+to be, to turn this neo-Catholicism into a means of resuming its
+influence, it can only do so by enormously modernizing its fundamental
+ideas. It will be interesting to see whether the Church of Rome will
+accept the symbolists as co-operators, or finally spurn them as
+heretics.
+
+What especially rouses the animosity of Nordau against the symbolists
+is the fact that the new movement is based on the supposition that
+science is bankrupt, or, in other words, that it has failed in all its
+promises to humanity; that it has usurped the throne of religion under
+false pretences; and that its incapacity to supplant religion has been
+demonstrated by the latest scientific discoveries. According to the
+idea underlying the French symbolist movement, science has during the
+present century aimed at the destruction of religion, and has caused
+religion to be neglected, discredited, and scorned.
+
+Such a movement founded on such premises and aiming at such aims must
+be of the greatest interest to any man who watches attentively the
+development of our race. To study its true cause, its real nature, and
+its real aims should be the desire of every earnest investigator; and
+if Nordau falls back on obloquy, indelicate insinuations, and blunt
+accusations, after the fashion of the militant _literati_ of the past,
+the reason of his animosity is easily explained.
+
+Nordau, like many scientists before him and with him, has taken sides
+in the absurd fight—the _querelle allemande_—between science and
+religion, which has done so much to discredit both. To the unprejudiced
+observer, any scientist who joins in the fray is induced to do so
+by his inability to distinguish between religion and church, and
+consequently to realize that the whole progress of science during the
+present century has had the result, amongst many others, of justifying
+such an attitude of mind towards God, the original cause, universal
+energy, or whatever scientists choose to call it, which religion
+implies.
+
+Whoever distinguishes between church and religion will at once
+understand that an ascendency of religious views throughout the world
+may be perfectly compatible with the decay of sectarian dogmas, and
+that therefore many phenomena which appear to indicate the decay of
+religious views—such as church-going, for example—may in reality mean a
+deeper religious life. If we take a comprehensive view of that progress
+in religious views which has been accelerated by science, we shall find
+that church-going, the rosary, and the images of the saints indicate
+the preliminary stages of a religious evolution which in its later
+development requires truer expressions.
+
+So long as we have such a number of sects and churches, many of which
+differ essentially, and all of which differ to some extent, it cannot
+affect any one’s feelings to be told that church is not religion.
+It is this truth that science has accentuated, and the inevitable
+consequence has been that the churches, though they at first might
+have vehemently opposed certain scientific facts, and yet more certain
+rash speculations founded on them, have afterwards quietly striven to
+modify their views and their dogmas so that they should not clash with
+absolute scientific truths. That many such attempts at reconciliation
+between science and churches have been feeble and absurd does not
+disprove, but confirms, the existence of the above tendency. Though
+perhaps it would be difficult to give a true definition of religion
+as distinguished from church, the conception which every thinking man
+forms of it is probably clear enough to allow him to realize that some
+churches are farther from the ideal than others.
+
+If it be true that the progress of science has been instrumental in
+impelling the development of churches in the direction of a future
+religion of ideal beauty and ideal truth, and that such a religion must
+necessarily be in complete harmony with scientific facts, then the
+animosity of science and religion is to a sound mind incomprehensible.
+
+Yet Nordau unhesitatingly takes for granted that religion and science
+are naturally antagonistic. He takes very seriously the assumption of
+the French neo-Catholics that henceforth science will have to make
+room for religion. Had he any sense of humour, he would not have thus
+betrayed how _jalousie de métier_ animates him to no small extent. He
+mixes up science and the scientists in a most amusing manner when he
+compares the neglected scientist with the idolized saint, and asks,
+“What saintly legend is as beautiful as the life of an enquirer who
+spends his existence bending over the microscope?” Does our alienist
+aspire to go down to posterity with a halo around his head? He regrets
+the good old time when the daily Press of that date said, “We live in
+a scientific age,” when “the news of the day reported the travels and
+the marriages of scientists, the _feuilleton_ novels contained witty
+allusions to Darwin, etc.”
+
+Nordau completely denies that there is any foundation for the assertion
+of the French symbolists that science has become bankrupt—that it has
+not fulfilled its promises to humanity. In order to refute it, he gives
+us the long list of scientific achievements to which scientists who
+militate against religion have accustomed us, beginning with spectrum
+analysis and finishing up with instantaneous photography. He demands
+for science the respect and trust of humanity, not only on the ground
+of what science has accomplished, but also on the ground of what it
+will accomplish.
+
+His faith in his mission deserves sincere admiration, and proves him to
+be one of those earnest enthusiasts who alone can advance humanity. But
+he does not see that his prophecies regarding future achievements are
+not science, but faith and religion—based, it is true, on reasonable
+grounds, but still faith and religion.
+
+Nor does he see that his proud asseveration of the achievements of
+science, and his prophecy with regard to its future, do not constitute
+a refutation to the cry of the symbolists that science is bankrupt.
+The promises which the symbolists refer to as being dishonoured by
+science, are not of the kind that could possibly be redeemed by the
+achievements referred to in Nordau’s splendid list. They allude to
+promises not really made by science, but by rash and prejudiced
+scientists. These have over and over again proclaimed that religion had
+been supplanted by science, and that science could, or else soon would,
+explain all those mysteries which religion claimed to explain or to
+symbolize, such as first causes, final aims, existence or non-existence
+before birth and after death, the origin of evil, the essence of
+morality, and so on. Science, according to them, was not only to
+bring about perfect serenity in man’s mind regarding himself and the
+universe, but to satisfy the mysterious longings and the uncontrollable
+emotions, either hereditary, or part of man’s nature, which hitherto
+religion alone had satisfied. Science was also to supply rational
+motives for purity, morality, self-sacrifice, and all the virtues
+and exertions which are indispensable to the elevation of our race.
+Finally, science was to transform us into an ideal race, living in an
+ideal manner, thus substituting a terrestrial heaven for humanity, for
+the spiritual heaven which religion promised for the individual.
+
+Nordau cannot blame the scientists who made these promises; for the
+whole of his book shows that he is in entire sympathy with them.
+
+There was a time when the educated world believed in the arrogant
+promises of the scientists; when it confidently expected that
+mysteries, so far unexplained, would be cleared up within a reasonable
+time, and that systems and speculation, which were to take the place
+of religion, would gradually be so amended as to become capable of
+fulfilling so great an object.
+
+But the rapid scientific discoveries which followed one upon each
+other, far from tending to fulfil the promises of the scientists, had
+the effect of persuading the world that science was not going to keep
+any of these promises. For each mystery it unravelled revealed a series
+of new mysteries behind it, and the explanatory task of science grew
+with its own progress. In fact, while the explanations increased by
+simple arithmetical progression, the mysteries rose up in geometrical
+progression.
+
+At the same time better schools, public lectures, and innumerable
+periodicals initiated the masses into the secrets of the scientific
+freemasonry, and people began to perceive that what they, in their
+awe of science, believed to be perfect knowledge of the very essence
+of the world-phenomenon was only a series of acute observations, an
+intelligent classification, backed by arbitrary speculations and the
+superstitious faith in the omnipotence of science, culminating simply
+in a barren religion of humanity.
+
+As to eternity and infinity of space, all that science could do
+was to tell the masses not to trouble their heads about them; as
+to causality, they were asked to regard it simply as “a form of
+thought which had nothing to do with the phenomena.” As to morality,
+the religion of humanity seemed extremely untrustworthy: for the
+removal of all personal responsibility, and the certainty of complete
+annihilation after death, seemed to give the strong-minded and clever
+people the strongest possible inducement to make their fellow-beings
+tools for their own happiness. The promised earthly paradise was not
+only thousands of years ahead in time, but was to be constituted on
+principles which even a superficial knowledge of economy and sociology
+was bound to expose as an Inferno.
+
+It was natural then that a great number of people, unable to climb to
+the height of abstract and unsatisfactory reasoning of the kind that
+the scientists had attained to, and whose emotional nature utterly
+rebelled against a progression which was intended constantly to violate
+their best instincts, should spurn science, which offered them no other
+compensation than freedom from personal responsibility.
+
+It was not only the hollow arrogance of the scientists and the failure
+of science to fulfil the promises of its superstitious votaries which
+had created disgust with scientific atheism: the practical results of
+the anti-religious tendencies became alarmingly apparent; experience
+began to prove that the discarding of all personal responsibility did
+not produce the _ultra_ man—_der Uebermensch_—of which the scientists
+claimed to be the prototypes.
+
+Many of them had been in the habit of speaking scornfully of those
+selfish natures who live irreproachable lives, and who devote
+themselves to the promotion of the good of their fellow-men under the
+impression that in a future state they would reap their reward. The
+atheist-scientist represented himself as a man of different metal: he
+was fully as moral as the religionist; he spent his life in serving
+humanity, well knowing that his self-control and self-sacrifice
+would bring him no reward; he did his duty, not induced by any mean,
+religious consideration, but because he was a perfect man.
+
+The lesser mortals, those from whose ranks the symbolists are
+recruited, began to entertain doubts of the infallibility of these
+first-fruits of the religion of humanity. The very arrogance of these
+perfect men told against them. If they disbelieved in the rewards of a
+future life, they were not averse to the rewards in this, and eagerly
+accepted the money and the distinction their works brought them. There
+was especially this about them: they unhesitatingly attacked that
+which the masses could alone rely on for moral guidance, equanimity,
+consolation, and encouragement—religion—while the religion of humanity
+was thousands of years in the future, and thus left the people a prey
+to mental bewilderment, doubt, and unrestrained passions. The scientist
+stood accused of acting like a man depriving a cripple of his only
+crutch, against the promise of supplying his remote descendants with
+better ones.
+
+But atheism had a far worse effect on ordinary mortals, who had not
+to sustain a reputation as apostles of the new scientific creed.
+Convinced that no personal responsibility attached to them, and caring
+little for what would happen to the next generation, or still less to
+generations thousands of years hence, they tried to persuade themselves
+that conscience was an inherited weakness, developed by evolution, or
+a product of wrong religious teaching. Wishing to rise above such a
+weakness, they did their best to silence conscience, and to live for
+self-gratification. In this manner selfishness, if not Egomania, was
+strongly developed.
+
+Capitalists and politicians strove to acquire wealth and power,
+regardless of other people’s rights, of their own conscience, and of
+their sense of honour, so long as their dishonour was known only to
+themselves. Society became frivolous, and exhibited the same stigmata
+of degeneration noticed before in decaying commonwealths. Art became
+lascivious and corrupting; literature became realistic and offensive.
+In fact, a host of clever men who ought to have been benefactors of
+their race cared not to what extent they ruined and demoralized their
+fellow-beings so long as they safeguarded their own health, their own
+future, and their social position.
+
+The working classes being told by men, far superior to them in
+intellect and education, that their only chance was in their lives here
+on earth, and that death was annihilation, began to sympathize with
+violent Nihilists and Anarchists, and were less averse to risk their
+lives, if it were only to avenge themselves on those who deprived them
+of their terrestrial happiness.
+
+But it was not only in the effect on their fellow-beings that the
+neo-Catholics, the symbolists, and their sympathizers all over
+the world beheld the results of scientific atheism. Many of these
+themselves became “frightful examples” of these results. Nordau commits
+a great mistake in studying the French symbolists as authors and poets.
+It is as children of their times that they should be studied. He looks
+upon them as causes of the symbolist movement, whereas we should
+have regarded them as the indicators of a remarkable stage in the
+development of our race.
+
+It was inevitable that the theories of the scientists should have been
+accepted more widely in France than in any other civilized country. In
+the English-speaking countries the Churches and sects had not assumed
+the same uncompromising attitude with regard to the mediæval doctrines
+as the Church of Rome. They had gradually receded from one contested
+point after another and many of their old forms and texts were given
+a more liberal interpretation. Urged on by the example of the Broad
+Church, the Congregationalists, and especially by the Unitarians, the
+clergy and the ministers ceased their opposition to any established
+scientific facts, though they rejected scientific speculations. The
+influence of the scientists in the English-speaking countries tended
+therefore to modernize religion, instead of bringing it into contempt.
+
+In Germany, where the people are slow to oppose any authority, and
+where they are extremely shy of their real religious opinions,
+scientific atheism simply encouraged the free-thinkers existing there
+of old and induced a mass of young men to masquerade as free-thinkers
+who in reality held no opinions at all, and who were destined to become
+devout in their old age.
+
+In Italy and Spain the teachings of the scientists only somewhat
+strengthened the hands of the Liberals, but produced no effect on the
+Ultramontanes. In Russia, where the nobility and the middle classes
+had for a long time been free-thinkers, or perhaps non-thinkers, in
+regard to religious questions, the religion of humanity affected only
+that portion of the people which was already under the influence of
+Nihilism, and tended to render them more reckless.
+
+In France however, and perhaps in such countries as are
+directly influenced by French views—for instance, Belgium and
+Switzerland,—circumstances were different. The atheism which broke out
+with the first French Revolution had begun to subside, the nobility
+and the upper classes were the allies of Rome partly by conviction
+and partly from policy. In the country districts the _curés_ had
+resumed their influence over the peasantry, but the labouring class
+in the towns was divided into two camps, the free-thinkers and the
+Ultramontanes; and the difference between them was emphasized by the
+circumstance that the Ultramontanes were generally conservative in
+siding with the powers that be, while the free-thinkers were more or
+less extreme Republicans, Socialists, or Communists.
+
+Such was the situation in France when the influence of the scientists
+on religious opinion began to make itself felt there. The materialist
+views were eagerly taken up by the Bohemians of Paris and by the
+extreme wing of the Republican Press. The upper classes read, or
+skimmed, the English scientists, and up to the beginning of the
+Franco-German war the German philosophers were much in vogue amongst
+the upper classes and in literary circles. In this fashion the Church
+of Rome had to face an attack differing widely from the French
+Revolution. Then the corruption, and the siding of the Church with
+those who were regarded as the enemies of the country, exposed it
+to open violence prompted by strongly roused passions. During the
+latter days of the Second Empire it was assailed in its dogmas with
+arms borrowed from scientific research and speculation. The latter
+attack was by far the more dangerous. The discontent with the Imperial
+Government did much to draw the urban working classes into the ranks
+of the free-thinkers, where the theories of the scientists confirmed
+them in their new atheism. Parisian society had become atheistic, and
+the whole male population of the middle class prided themselves on
+their freedom from all religious prejudices. What remained of religion
+in France was represented by the old nobility, who had a political
+interest in being religious; by the peasants, who were supposed to be
+too stupid to grasp the new scientific truths; by old men, who had not
+the courage to face the grave without the consolation of religion; and
+by the women, to whom, it was confessed even by the most debauched
+_roués_, religion gave an extra charm.
+
+When the Third Republic was launched it had a strong atheistic
+character, and the working classes in all the cities, the sincere
+free-thinkers, patriots, and philanthropists, hoped that under
+a Republican form of government the religion of humanity of the
+scientists would at last have a fair trial. But they were destined to
+bitter disappointment. The new Republic turned out to be _bourgeois_
+in the worst sense of the word. Politics passed into a profession.
+Politicians and administrators became corrupt. Scandals multiplied.
+Even the Press was unable to show clean hands. Wealth became
+all-powerful, and the plutocrats acquired an enormous influence which
+they did not hesitate to use to their own advantage. Speculators
+and adventurers pulled the strings of the home, and especially of
+the colonial, policy, and in order to further private interests the
+indebtedness of the State was carried to such a point as to threaten
+the most gigantic financial catastrophe the world has ever witnessed.
+In the meantime the working classes and even the agriculturists
+naturally suffered from the result of a system of government which
+disregarded their interests. The proletariat of the cities grew, labour
+troubles became frequent, wages fell, and poverty rapidly increased.
+
+While this growing penury invaded the homes of the working and
+lower middle class of a nation which has only partially realized
+the happiness and healthy influence flowing from decent and moral
+homes, scientific atheism took possession of the minds of the people,
+especially of the men. It urged them to make the most of their lives,
+and enticed them into a whirlpool of dissipation.
+
+Scientific atheism was bound to produce a vast increase in immorality
+in a country like France, where the Church of Rome, in order to enhance
+its influence over the people, favours unhappy relations between the
+sexes. The clergy do all they can to estrange the sexes prior to
+marriage, and thus prevent pure love and love-marriages, while they
+encourage _mariages de convenance_. They are animated no doubt by the
+best intentions, but, living themselves in enforced celibacy, have no
+idea to what an extent they thus undermine the morality of the people.
+
+As love counts for little in the tying of the matrimonial knot, and the
+_dot_ counts for much, French unendowed girls stand a poor chance of
+ever getting married. This exclusion of an enormous number of the best
+women from the marriage market explains, to a large extent, the many
+irregular households to be met with in France. The fact that lovable
+and high-souled women accept the position of mistresses has largely
+tended to multiply mock marriages. The refusal on the part of the
+Church of Rome to permit divorce, and the lovelessness of the regular
+alliances, tend in the same direction. The sum total of all this is
+that a majority of Frenchwomen have to choose between an unhappy
+married life without love, and an immoral one with it. Those who are
+forced into the former in a great many cases seek consolation in an
+illicit _liaison_; those who drift into the latter become debauched.
+While thus the young, respectable, and pure-minded girls are relegated
+to schools and nunneries and excluded from all association with
+young men, among these licentious pleasure often takes the place of
+romantic love. Hence physically and morally unhealthy lives, absence of
+happiness, craving for excitement, morbid passions, pessimism, contempt
+for life, depraved tastes, hysteria.
+
+Scientific atheism had however only aggravated a state of things
+created by sacerdotal influence on social habits. But it was only
+natural that a nation, so biassed in social questions as France, should
+ascribe the decay of morality and of so many other virtues to the
+weakening of that influence which for centuries had proclaimed itself,
+and had been considered by the masses as the only check upon wickedness
+among great and small alike.
+
+Hosts of young men who entered life with noble aspirations to fight for
+high ideals, soon perceived, when left to shift for themselves, that
+the society around them irresistibly opposed the realization of their
+hopes. They found it difficult, almost impossible, to reconcile success
+with self-esteem, love with morality, and their poetical aspirations
+with their manner of living. Many, in despair of happiness and success,
+or in order to forget their crumbled illusions, threw themselves into
+a feverish quest for excitement, in which health of body and mind were
+jeopardized.
+
+Awakening to the full consciousness of the depth of their fall, they
+could not fail to see that the social system under which they lived
+was largely responsible for their miseries. In looking back over
+their wasted lives they saw nought but shattered hopes. What they had
+forfeited were a happy and vigorous youth, transports of romance, the
+love of a pure-minded woman, a strong and active manhood, a chivalrous
+fight for the good, the pure, the true, and the beautiful, the respect
+of their fellow-men, an ideal home.
+
+The social conditions which they held responsible for their miserable
+career, and even for the regret they experienced, could not be laid at
+the door of an Emperor or a dynasty: for their country was governed by
+universal suffrage. Finding government, legislation, institutions, and
+social conditions vitiated, they had to blame Society. They found that
+Society was atheistic, and was deprived of the only check and guide
+that came within their ken—religion. They were filled with an intense
+longing to destroy the atheism which science had created, and to return
+to a belief which would re-endow Society with moral order, health,
+romance, love, purity, and beautiful emotions.
+
+Science was the enemy, as under the Empire the priest was the enemy.
+To discredit it was the first essential step. When therefore the
+actual power of science, its actual possibilities, became popularized,
+and each successive scientific discovery rendered the prophecies of
+the superstitious scientists more and more preposterous, the French
+symbolists took up the cry that science was bankrupt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+_SYMBOLISM AND LOGIC_
+
+
+The French symbolists, and all poets and artists who move in the
+world of emotions, are invited by Nordau to “take their place at the
+table of science, where there is room for all.” Were they to accept
+the invitation, how would the emotional nature of our race find
+expression? Would it be possible, or wise, to ignore emotions in face
+of the fact that our lives are essentially emotional? Or does Nordau
+push his scientific superstition to such a point as to believe that
+human emotions can ever be investigated by means of the lancet, the
+microscope, and the thermometer? In spite of his sneer at Rossetti’s
+remark regarding his indifference as to whether the sun turned round
+the earth or the earth turned round the sun, he cannot fail to
+acknowledge that what humanity yearns for is beautiful and pleasing
+emotions, not scientific facts. The glorious sunshine, the balmy
+breeze, the radiant flowers, the inscrutable attractions of woman, her
+love, her esteem, her faith, the affection of children, the confidence
+of our fellow-beings, our trust in the good, our struggle against
+evil—such are the elements of life and happiness. Science acquires all
+its importance from being the means by which beautiful and pleasing
+emotions are safeguarded, and unpleasant emotions are avoided. When
+science mistakes its mission, when it attempts to distort and vilify
+their expressions, it has become unreal and fatal.
+
+Nordau wishes us to regard science—progressing as it has done by
+replacing old errors of our senses by new errors of our senses—as
+embodying all facts worth noticing, and to disregard emotions which are
+eternally unchangeable.
+
+To turn our back upon emotions and to take our place at the table of
+science means to ignore all that is beautiful, lovable, ennobling, and
+hopeful, to shut our eyes to the charms of form, colour, motion, and
+our ears to music, and to concentrate our attention upon the repast
+spread on the table of science: the pleasure of discovering bacteria in
+human tissue, the curiosity of counting the throbs of a frog’s heart
+after being torn from the living body, the sensation of ascertaining
+the effect of the gastric juices on the foot of a living rabbit
+inserted into a living dog’s stomach.
+
+We take no side in the question of vivisection, or any other scientific
+methods, but without in the least minimizing the great services
+rendered, and to be rendered, by science to humanity, we must express
+our astonishment that any sound mind, knowing what scientific methods
+are, and must be, can seriously suggest that scientific investigation
+should supersede art and poetry. If we believed in degeneration, such
+opinions would be the first examples of it we should quote.
+
+Poets and philosophers who deal with emotions, so to say with
+immaterial phenomena, impalpable to every one of our senses, but
+demonstrated as eternally real by their effects, must needs make use
+of symbols, or, to be more exact, of more symbols, vaguer symbols,
+and bolder symbols than those which naturally enter into language. To
+deny them this right is equal to denying the mathematician the use
+of the letter _X_, which stands for unknown quantities, and which is
+handled by him as dexterously as if it were the most familiar object
+in the world. If human beings were not allowed to speak about what
+their imagination conjures up, what their feelings prompt, and what
+irresistible instincts point to, they would be brought alarmingly near
+to the level of the beast.
+
+The French symbolists being poets, might not have formulated into
+distinct thoughts what we have said above, but they have certainly
+felt it all, and much more. They have felt themselves surrounded by
+undefined and undefinable _X’s_ of far greater moment to their lives,
+to their happiness, and to their best instincts, than all the known
+and half-known quantities of science. In attempting to give expression
+to their feelings and to their thoughts regarding the all-important
+unknown, and to evoke among their fellow-beings an interest in them,
+they have found themselves justified in using any means, including
+symbolism, for their purpose.
+
+Nordau has entertained no such considerations in dealing with the
+French symbolists. In obedience to his professional prejudices, he
+looks for no other causes, no other influences, than those that can be
+found in the mechanism of their brains. This is all the more amazing
+as he over and over again recognises that external circumstances,
+conditions of life and habits, exercise a strong influence on the
+brain, or, in other words, that the mechanism which connects the _Ego_
+with matter may be influenced by the _Ego_. The result of his criticism
+presents therefore a want of fairness which to the English mind is
+especially objectionable.
+
+The manner in which he pries into the private life and antecedents
+of Paul Verlaine, and the indelicate manner in which he refers to
+the personal appearance of the poet, impress us English people as so
+many unfair means of giving plausibility to his conclusions. When a
+hunchback is good-humoured enough to make fun of his own deformity,
+those of gentle feelings sympathize all the more with his misfortune,
+and become all the more anxious not to refer to it. When a poet, in
+his love of truth and in his anxiety to rouse a certain emotion, makes
+confessions, when he instances his own sad experiences and failings,
+when he, so to say, throws himself into the flames on the altar of
+truth, we in England count it indelicate and unfair to base criticism
+on facts thus revealed. Had Nordau read Verlaine’s poetry with an
+unbiassed mind, he could not have failed to be struck by the extent to
+which the poet typifies the movement going on around him: his failings,
+his errors, and, maybe, his bad habits—all this is the fate of millions
+who have been induced by the materialist tendencies of recent times
+to disregard personal responsibility, and who, after rejecting such
+guides as the nobler instincts of humanity had proffered, attempt to
+follow the dictates of the lower instincts and animal impulses. His
+terrible remorse and despair, while he is still unmoved by religion,
+bear witness to aspirations which the materialist would fain deny.
+His instinctive groping for the consolations of religion shows to
+what an extent he attributes his failings to an irreligious life, and
+that he experiences within him yearnings for a happiness which the
+gratification of the senses, prompted by atheism, has never afforded
+him.
+
+Nordau would object to this expression—the gratification of his senses
+prompted by atheism—and would tell us that atheism ought to have
+implanted into Verlaine the religion of humanity, and that he should
+have sacrificed all his inclinations for the future happiness of his
+race. But, surely, it would require a good dose of hypocrisy for a
+man, sincerely convinced that death puts him personally beyond any
+consequences of his life, to persuade himself that he is practising
+a life-long abnegation for the good of posterity. Is it not much
+more likely that in so frank a nature as Verlaine’s the disbelief in
+personal responsibility would turn him into a devil-may-care vagabond
+until he learned in the school of experience the dangerous mistakes of
+materialism? Does Nordau not recognise the logic and the frankness in a
+young man who, in the exuberance of his animal life, when convinced of
+personal irresponsibility, lives up to the motto of a “short life and a
+merry one”?
+
+The need of love and affection—a need generally so strongly felt by
+all poets—Nordau is pleased to call eroticism, and when the poet finds
+that he has profaned love, implanted in his soul by God, Nordau fancies
+he has discovered in Verlaine that blending of religious fervour and
+morbid eroticism which, when irrational, is a sign of lunacy.
+
+When Paul Verlaine invokes the Virgin Mary, a form of religious
+expression which millions of sane people indulge in daily, Nordau at
+once imagines he has discovered another trace of insanity. In order to
+show that we are not unfair to our alienist, we will quote one of the
+poems of Verlaine he refers to, and the conclusions he draws from it,—
+
+    Et comme j’étais faible, et bien méchant encore,
+    Aux mains lâches, les yeux éblouis des chemins,
+    Elle baissa mes yeux, et me joignis les mains,
+    Et m’enseigna les mots par lesquels on adore.
+
+“The accents here quoted,” says Nordau, “are well known to the clinics
+of psychiatry. We may compare them to the picture which Legrain gives
+of some of his patients. ‘His speech continually reverts to God and the
+Virgin Mary, his cousin.’ [The case in question is that of a degenerate
+subject who was a tramway conductor.] ‘Mystical ideas complete the
+picture. He talks of God, of heaven, crosses himself, kneels down, and
+says that he is following the commandments of Christ.’ [The subject
+under observation is a day-labourer.] ‘The devil will tempt me, but I
+see God who guards me. I have asked of God that all people might be
+beautiful,’ etc.”
+
+So far Nordau.
+
+Because a mad tramway conductor thinks he is cousin of the Virgin
+Mary, Verlaine, who symbolizes in the Virgin Mary the power that draws
+him towards the good, is on the road to madness! From this it follows
+that, if a mad tramway conductor were to believe himself the cousin
+of Professor Lombroso, Nordau’s quasi-worship of that authority would
+indicate degeneracy in Nordau’s mind.
+
+One of Nordau’s characteristics is a weak or dull logical faculty,
+often to be observed in those who over-study for examination and in
+specialists fanatically inclined. Without this peculiarity he could
+not possibly have omitted to ask himself the question, “How about
+all other worshippers of Christ?” when he concludes that Verlaine’s
+mind is degenerate because he speaks devotedly of the Virgin Mary,
+while a lunatic labourer says that he follows the commandments of
+Christ. Nordau does not see that in this manner he completely gives
+himself away, and lets us perceive that it is not the symbolist whom
+he considered degenerate, but the whole Christian populations of the
+world that have existed during two thousand years, and that still
+exist. Only his lack of a sense of the ridiculous, already pointed out,
+has prevented him from remembering that the man in his cups considers
+himself the only sober man of the company.
+
+The verses which Verlaine has written in praise of a vagabond life
+Nordau holds up as a sure sign of lurking lunacy. Are then all poets
+who write in praise of a vagabond life degenerates? Is not the true
+secret of Nordau’s conclusion to be found in the fact that he entirely
+misses the satire against our modern system which underlies Verlaine’s
+and other writers’ poems on this same subject? He does the same with
+regard to Verlaine’s poem addressed to the demented king, Louis II. of
+Bavaria. When we behold the follies of reigning sovereigns, who are
+supposed to be in the full enjoyment of their faculties, making such
+poor use of their opportunities, degrading and ruining their people,
+rousing a hatred against themselves and their dynasty, or striving at
+low _bourgeois_ aims, or even, to use Nordau’s own expression, selling
+their royalty for a big cheque; when we read of the monarchs of the
+past, of their crimes and their meanesses, how can we wonder that the
+unfortunate King Louis should inspire sympathy in a poet, and that he
+should satirize the so-called reasonable monarchs by eulogizing the
+demented one?
+
+Nordau makes much of that form of mental weakness which manifests
+itself in echolalia, or the mania of repeating for no reason the
+same words and the same sentences. But to deny the poet, who aims at
+conveying an emotion and for that purpose wishes to create a certain
+mood in his listeners, the use of choruses, refrains, and cadenced
+repetitions, he runs counter to the oldest literary tradition in the
+world. He would surely not object to repetitions in verses intended to
+be sung; and if we are right in placing poetry half way between speech
+and music in the list of the vehicles of thought, as we have done in a
+previous chapter, euphonies, musicalities of words, and repetitions are
+both permissible and rational.
+
+Many poetical emotions may be quickened by reminiscences from
+childhood; and a style of writing, or the use of words or sounds,
+reminding us of early days, might be the most effective methods
+of expression. Thus, for instance, a drowsy repetition of
+pleasant-sounding words may be very telling in a lullaby, even if
+they convey no scientific meaning, or do not contribute to the sense
+of the poem, and so long as they do not distort it. The examples of
+repetitions from degeneracy in Verlaine are chosen so unhappily
+as to place Nordau in the wrong and Verlaine in the right in the
+judgment of unbiassed persons; the one is a serenade, and the other
+is entitled “Chevaux du Bois,” in which the sensation of a child on
+a merry-go-round is suggested. Another is supposed to be sung by, or
+suggests, Pierrot Gamin, that is a young idiot. When Verlaine wishes to
+qualify a noun in a manner which is difficult to express in ordinary
+adjectives, he, like millions of his fellows, has recourse to the
+method of giving a new, or symbolic, signification to an old adjective,
+and this, according to Nordau, is a sign of mental degeneration. To
+prove his case he quotes such terms as “a narrow and vast affection,”
+“a slow landscape,” “a slack liqueur,” “a gilded perfume,” “a terse
+contour,” etc. He does not seem to know that the paucity of language
+renders such expressions not only legitimate but extremely useful in
+many professions and trades, let alone poetry. Has he never heard
+of a warm colour, a lively tint, a cold tone, etc.? Are the French
+wine-growers mad when they say that wine is heavy, light, full, dead,
+alive, slack, round, green, angular, smooth, velvety, etc.?
+
+We are glad to see that he recognises Verlaine’s ability as a poet and
+does not find fault with some of his poems. Thus he says of “Chanson
+d’Automne” that “there are few poems in French literature that can
+rival” it. While rejoicing at the fairness that Nordau here displays,
+we must however point out the eccentricity of his logic. He desires
+to warn us against degeneration, and therefore points to a poet
+whose degeneracy has not prevented him from writing a masterpiece of
+literature. It should also be noticed that the “Chanson d’Automne,”
+which meets with such ample praise from Nordau, is on the same theme
+which underlies other pieces of poetry quoted in his work as examples
+of legitimate and sane poetry. When he does intimate that a poet might
+burst into song over flowers, trees, books, and twittering birds, but
+not over the sympathy he feels in his consciousness with the powers
+that have called them forth, simply because science has not so far been
+able to analyse and classify those powers, he only shows that he is
+illogical enough to proffer his limited view of what is poetical as an
+infallible standard of the poetry of the world.
+
+Nordau blames Verlaine and other symbolists for dealing with moods
+instead of with definite ideas. But is there a single poet in the
+past or the present who did not largely deal in moods, and who did
+not labour to give the world an impression of his own feelings?
+Nordau’s ideal author—Goethe—has gone further. He wrote a whole novel,
+_Werther’s Leiden_, which is little else than a lengthy description of
+his hero’s moods.
+
+Another symbolist, Stephane Mallarmé, who in France as well as in
+England enjoys a reputation as a poet, or rather as an authority on
+poetry, is attacked by Nordau in a manner which suggests other motives
+than fair criticism. He gibes at the symbolists and at all who consider
+Mallarmé a poet, because he has produced only a few original works and
+translations. As our alienist cannot very well put this down as a sign
+of degeneration, having treated those who write much as graphomaniacs,
+he gives us no other reasons for placing Mallarmé among the examples
+of degeneration than that he has “long, pointed, faun-like ears,” a
+fact which he seems not to have noticed personally but which he has
+obtained, like most of his facts, from a book.
+
+He distinctly insinuates that the admiration for Mallarmé’s poetical
+gift indicates degeneration, especially as Mallarmé has written so
+little. We meet here again with a striking example of his curious
+logic. He imagines that he strengthens his case by quoting from
+Lessing, who in _Amelia Galotti_ makes Conti say that Raphael would
+have been the greatest genius in painting, even if he had unfortunately
+been born without hands. From this, English readers who happen to know
+nothing of Lessing or Conti would conclude that either Lessing was
+a lunatic or that his character, Conti, was mad. But neither is the
+case, and the quotation consequently tells against Nordau. Whoever
+would deny that a man cannot be a poet and an authority on poetry
+without publishing verse must attach an extremely narrow meaning to
+the word poet. If Lessing, or Conti, means by the word painter, not
+the craftsman, but the man with the painter’s soul, the symbolist may
+surely be allowed to call Mallarmé a poet. Has Nordau never met with
+mute poets, blind painters, and deaf musicians? One of the greatest
+musicians of the world composed marvellous music while stone-deaf.
+Now if we suppose that Beethoven had lost his hearing before he had
+mastered the technicalities of music, would he therefore not have
+remained a musician?
+
+Nordau is very severe on several other symbolists and certainly does
+his best to represent them in an unfavourable light. In order to show
+that Charles Morice, the author of _La Littérature de tout à l’heure_
+is literally insane and a graphomaniac, he quotes Morice’s rhapsodical
+conception of God, which he pretends to take as an exact definition in
+order to reduce it to twaddle. To any unprejudiced reader it is evident
+that Morice intended to convey by this wild attempt at description how
+impossible it is to define God. Nordau’s prejudice against the French
+nation becomes palpable when speaking of the fact that the French
+language lends itself badly to blank verse and that a freer treatment
+of it in French poetry is a comparatively modern departure which by
+other countries was taken long ago. He says: “But to any one but a
+Frenchman, they merely make themselves ridiculous when they trumpet
+their painful hobbling after the nations who are far in front of them,
+as an unheard-of discovery of new paths and opening up of new roads
+and as an advance inspired by the ideal into the dawn of the future.”
+This gratuitous insult of a whole nation gives us a vivid insight into
+the working of his mind. He would not have penned a sentence of such
+bad taste, and so marked by the echolalia he condemns in others, had he
+not been prompted by feelings stronger than his judgment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+_THE LIGHT OF RUSSIA_
+
+
+With regard to the Russian novelist, Count Leo Tolstoi, Nordau pursues
+the same mode of criticism as he employed against other writers. He
+also aims at the same object, firstly, to show that authors suffer
+from mental aberration; and, secondly, that the public who read their
+books do not do so on account of their literary merit, but because the
+readers are mentally afflicted in the same way as the authors.
+
+To prove this against Tolstoi and his admirers is no light enterprise,
+and Nordau does not acquit himself of his self-imposed task without a
+great deal of shuffling.
+
+He allows nothing for Tolstoi’s surroundings, the social condition
+of the country in which he lives, and the life he has led, but lifts
+him out of all that tends to interpret this ultra-Russian writer, and
+regards him as one who has evolved some extraordinary notions in a
+studio far from his native land.
+
+He who says Russia says a great deal: for the expression denotes a vast
+empire, consisting of many nationalities and races, held together
+by a strong pressure, which seems, like the gravitation of huge
+heavenly bodies, to be determined by the size of the body from which
+it emanates. The inclusion of so many elements does not prevent Russia
+from remaining a great and powerful State, provided its Government soon
+becomes to some extent rational. The predominant nationality is made up
+of genuine Russians, whose characteristics are such as to render them
+capable of being, according to their rulers in the immediate future, an
+imminent danger to Europe, or a model nation to be followed by the rest
+of the world.
+
+The Russian is good-tempered, patient, loyal, generous, kind-hearted,
+and superstitiously religious. He is extremely emotional and dangerous
+when aroused. His easy-going manners, his immense self-esteem, and his
+intense vitality render him an easy victim to the numerous temptations
+which aliens are not slow to hold out to him. He is straightforward
+and strongly averse to hypocrisy, and when he is convinced that duty
+demands from him that he should assist in filling a trench with his
+dead body for the artillery to pass over, or to throw a bomb at the
+Czar, he will do it without a murmur.
+
+His passiveness, his loyalty, and long-suffering have been cruelly
+taken advantage of by a long succession of Governments, chiefly
+consisting of aliens. In Russia the most powerful bureaucracy in the
+world, composed chiefly of a German element, has taken possession
+of the power, and holds to it in a quasi-unconscious fashion, like a
+bull-dog unable to relax his hold.
+
+The Government, with such legislation as exists, has gone on for
+centuries with scarcely any regard for the well-being of the people,
+and the inevitable results are slowly but surely manifesting
+themselves, and point to some terrible catastrophe.
+
+The emancipation of the serfs, from which sanguine people, unacquainted
+with Russian circumstances, hoped so much, shook the old institutions
+to their very foundations, but brought only momentary relief to the
+suffering people. The _mir_-eaters, or village usurers, have swallowed
+up the land of the peasants, their cattle, and their implements, and
+compelled large hordes of people to move about the country in search
+of work. Employment is scarce and labour ill paid. The tax-collectors
+are as implacable and the Government officials as corrupt as ever.
+The tendency—to be observed all over the civilized world—of dividing
+humanity into two classes, the wealthy and the poor, has nowhere
+developed to the same extent as in Russia. The rich, comparatively
+few in number, are becoming extremely rich, but the great mass of the
+people miserably poor.
+
+Extreme poverty, intensified by the pressure of the tax-gatherer and
+the inhuman methods of the money-lender, has a gnawing effect on a
+people living in an intensely rigorous climate, in miserable villages
+sparsely scattered over vast monotonous plains.
+
+The Russians being a sentimental people, it is natural that their
+forlorn condition should cause them to brood over their sad lives
+during the long and lonely winter nights, or that they should be driven
+to drown their consciousness in _vodka_.
+
+Such is the stage on which alone a character like Leo Tolstoi can
+become intelligible.
+
+But it is not only the powerful influences from external circumstances
+which give that direction to Tolstoi’s mind which Nordau insists in
+interpreting as a sign of degeneracy. The mode of life and the sphere
+of action he has adopted, in pursuance of the large and noble traits
+of his character, must have been powerfully conducive to his peculiar
+mood and ideas. Nobody who has read his works, even if only those works
+Nordau holds to be of the smallest literary merit and fullest of signs
+of degeneracy, would ever conceive the idea that Tolstoi’s mind was
+weak or distorted. But if this novelist had been driven to lunacy,
+it would have been extremely irrational to account for his mental
+aberration without considering the outward circumstances that would
+have produced it.
+
+Tolstoi’s sympathies were roused, as those of every noble-minded man
+would have been roused, by the miserable existence of a people who
+possess all the elements of a great nation. In Russia no such ways
+are open to the reformer as in free States. There is no Parliament, no
+organized political parties, no free Press. A political career is out
+of the question, except in the form of a consistent toadying of those
+in power, and of a blind obedience to those who crush the people. Any
+opposition to Government, or even proffered suggestions, would lead to
+exile in Siberia, and abruptly cut short any man’s activity. Tolstoi
+had therefore only two courses open to him: either to expatriate
+himself and to thunder forth in a foreign Press against the abuses of
+the Russian Government, unheard and unheeded by his own censor-ridden
+compatriots or to adopt the line of action he did.
+
+In the cities, where the alien element prevails, and where the scum of
+the Russian nation congregates, he would be out of contact with his
+people. His emotional nature would have revolted against the police
+tyranny and spying rampant in the cities, and he would soon have been
+landed in the clutches of the authorities. He therefore elected to live
+among the peasants as one of them, convinced both by his feelings and
+his reason that he would thus directly benefit his surroundings by his
+example and form that leaven by which the whole mass might in time be
+leavened; while his writings simultaneously appealed to those of his
+countrymen who read books, and those who, outside Russia, sympathize
+with the Russian people.
+
+We do not pretend to know Tolstoi’s secret thoughts and his ultimate
+hopes, but we believe it possible that he may, without being an
+irrational enthusiast, or even a dreamer, have reckoned on his writings
+and opinions reaching the highest personages in the Russian empire
+through being read by all the upper classes of the world. He may have
+hoped that, after establishing his reputation throughout the literary
+world, and after having become the pride of his own nation, he would
+one day dare to speak such words to the rulers of all the Russians as
+might save him and his nation.
+
+Whatever may have been his expectations, there can be little doubt that
+he has met with dire disappointment, not so much in his personal career
+as in his hopes for his fellow-countrymen.
+
+To the framers of paper constitutions and to theoretical
+revolutionists, it may seem easy to introduce a new form of Government
+and to regenerate a nation, but, to one who, like Tolstoi, is in close
+contact with the masses to be regenerated, who has daily experienced
+all the frailty of the material he has to work with, who alone tries to
+swim against overwhelming currents,—to him, the uplifting of a nation
+or a race is a herculean task impossible to approach with the clap-trap
+of the modern agitator.
+
+Tolstoi, finding that it is the _morale_ of the people he has to work
+upon, that it is in the religious tendencies of his fellow-men that
+their strength lies, concludes, with the full consent of his emotional
+being, that religious conceptions, different from the Russian orthodox
+Church and from the western university theology, must be the foundation
+on which he has to build. What therefore is more rational than that he
+should plunge into religious speculation, and thus expose himself to
+the mistake of adopting religious views which are prompted as much by
+the needs of the situation, the circumstances, his own and his people’s
+characteristics, as by logical deductions. Greater men than he—Moses,
+Mahomet, and others—had done so before him.
+
+Besides, as the postulates he starts from do not spring from exact
+knowledge, but from faith and emotion—as all religious postulates
+necessarily must do,—and as these, his postulates, are diametrically
+opposed to those which Nordau would pre-suppose, Tolstoi’s conclusions
+must be the opposite of his; but to differ from Nordau is to be
+degenerate.
+
+It is no wonder then that Tolstoi’s books should be more than novels.
+He had a higher purpose in view than gathering in royalties and
+entertaining his readers. His books are jam with a considerable amount
+of powder in them. If, despite this, they have been widely read
+throughout the world, ordinary minds would conclude that in creating
+them their author has accomplished tasks which alone a mind of a high
+order could hope to perform. Our alienist, determined to come to no
+such conclusion, supposes that all those who read Tolstoi’s works are
+degenerates, and that the large sale of his books is consequently a
+confirmation of Tolstoi’s degeneracy.
+
+Would Nordau apply the same kind of reasoning with regard to the sale
+of his own works? He would probably; but instead of starting with the
+supposition that contemporary readers of books are incipient lunatics,
+he would very likely take for granted that the readers who approve of
+his works are highly intelligent, and that the great sale they have
+attained proves the soundness of his own mind.
+
+In support of his view, Nordau, who fairly acknowledges the great
+qualities of Tolstoi as a writer of fiction, has the audacity to
+assert that it is not this great quality of his works that has secured
+him his world-wide fame, but that it is due to his mysticism, which
+a degenerate race prefers to a literary and moral value. The only
+semblance of proof he gives for this view is that Tolstoi’s best
+works have not contributed to his reputation so much as the _Kreutzer
+Sonata_, “an inferior creation, which in the public opinion of the
+western nations placed him in the first rank of living authors.” But
+who has decided that the _Kreutzer Sonata_ is inferior to Tolstoi’s
+other works? Only Nordau, whose opinion runs counter to the “western
+nations.” If therefore there is any value in Nordau’s argument it rests
+entirely on the astounding fact that the “western nations” are all
+degenerate and Nordau alone is sane.
+
+Nordau, like most German bookworms, evidently believes that references
+to an authority, however obscure, are enough to prove any assertion. He
+has manifestly worked with any number of “conversations-lexicons” and
+encyclopedias about him, in quest of some printed confirmation of the
+extraordinary opinion that the _Kreutzer Sonata_ is a poor book, and
+that the preceding works of Tolstoi alone contain those grand qualities
+which Nordau recognises. He finds that Franz Bornmüller, an author of
+a biographical dictionary, said in 1882 of Tolstoi: “He possesses no
+ordinary talent for fiction, but one devoid of due artistic finish, and
+which is influenced by a certain one-sidedness in his views of life and
+history.”
+
+It should be noticed that Nordau gives this quotation in order to
+show that Tolstoi had not attained any European fame in 1882, that
+is, before the _Kreutzer Sonata_ was written; but with that amazing
+want of logic characterizing his whole work, he does not see that this
+Franz Bornmüller thinks very little of the early works of Tolstoi. He
+consequently differs from Nordau, and shows every sign of sharing the
+opinion of the “western nations.”
+
+Nordau makes a sharp distinction between Tolstoi’s novels as such
+and the philosophy they enforce. He is thereby enabled to give some
+plausibility to the sophistical assertion that it is not Tolstoi’s
+novels, but his philosophy, which brought him popularity. This
+philosophy, which is supposed to prove that Tolstoi’s mind is not
+sound, Nordau sums up in the following way: “The individual is nothing,
+the species is everything, the individual lives in order to do his
+fellow-creatures good; thought and inquiry are great evils; science is
+perdition; faith is salvation.” Among these items there is only one
+which differs from the views of the bulk of humanity—from that ordinary
+common-sense which Nordau so often takes as a standard of sanity, even
+in the superstitious peasant. We refer to the item in which he says
+that thought and inquiry are great evils. Nowhere in Tolstoi’s writings
+can such a nonsensical phrase be found. It is one of those little
+touches that Nordau so dexterously applies, or which his prejudice
+causes him to apply, in order to strengthen his case in his readers’,
+or perhaps in his own, eyes. He appears to ignore such works as _My
+Confession_, _My Faith_, _A Short Exposition of the Gospel_, and _About
+my Life_, all works built up by elaborate thoughts. The whole life of
+Tolstoi has been one of “thought and inquiry,” and all his literary
+work is an invitation to think and to inquire. Tolstoi objects only
+to such thought and inquiry as vainly attempt to carry the methods of
+inductive science into spheres where the observation of our senses
+is of no avail, and where their failure tempts us to believe in the
+non-existence of that all-important portion of the universe into which
+faith alone can penetrate.
+
+That Tolstoi should distrust science, after the presumptuous attitude
+which scientists have taken up, will surprise nobody who has read
+what we have said about this bankruptcy of science. Many scientists,
+including Nordau, have in their gratuitous attacks on religion so
+recklessly mixed up scientific fact with scientific speculation, that
+they must blame themselves if people use the term “science” when it
+would be more correct to employ that of “unscientific speculations.”
+
+That a thinker, who is at the same time the instructor of the ignorant
+masses, should look upon faith as a means of salvation, is not new, and
+cannot be considered as a sign of mental aberration; for millions of
+sane common-sense men have for thousands of years held this opinion.
+Even if we apply the word salvation exclusively to society in general,
+to the race, or to one nation, leaving out any references to individual
+salvation in another world, faith of some kind is the only source from
+which it could spring. Scientists of Nordau’s type seem unable to
+understand that science means the knowledge of absolute facts which,
+while quite capable of undermining and destroying the foundations
+on which a more or less primitive religion rests, cannot possibly
+come into collision with faith in the widest sense of the term. When
+a scientist and a religionist differ about things which have not
+come under scientific inquiry—such as the final aim of the scheme of
+humanity, for example—the dispute is not between science and faith, but
+between two different faiths. Science therefore cannot regulate our
+conduct, determine our views, or save a nation. This alone can be done
+by faith, be it based on science, on tradition, or emotion. A great
+scientific knowledge might be degraded into an excuse for, and a means
+of, an irresponsible, selfish, and wicked life; or it might ennoble the
+mind, intensify the sense of responsibility, and serve as the means of
+rendering great services to humanity. All depends on the faith of the
+scientist.
+
+The end of what we may call the era of scientific atheism, now at hand,
+presents most deplorable results, as we have already pointed out, of
+removing the only foundations of a moral balance available to those who
+have not had any opportunity of drawing from scientific studies that
+strength of character, and those noble aspirations to be met with in
+scientists who have a genuine faith—a faith in their science and in
+humanity, if in nothing else. Tolstoi, who, like every thinking man of
+our time, had seen the disastrous effects which scientific atheism had
+produced, cannot possibly be regarded as of weak intellect because he
+rejected scientific superstition and proclaimed faith as the true basis
+of conduct and character.
+
+Nordau finds traces of degeneracy in Tolstoi’s question, “Wherefore
+am I alive?” and in the manner in which Tolstoi finds a reply to that
+question. It seems however that Nordau too has asked, himself that
+question, for in his book _Degeneration_ (page 149) he replies to it
+in a close, well-reasoned, passage, which deserves to be read to its
+full extent. We shall quote only a part of it in order to compare the
+reply he himself obtains with the reply obtained, by Tolstoi. After
+having shown that the aim of a man’s life is necessarily involved in
+the greater question—the aim of the universe—and that such an aim
+cannot exist objectively in time or space, he says: “But if it is not
+objective, if it does not exist in time and space, it must, in order
+to be conceivable, exist somewhere, virtually, as idea, as a plan
+and design. But that which contains a design, a thought, a plan, we
+name consciousness; and consciousness that can conceive a plan of the
+universe, and for its realization designedly uses the forces of nature,
+is synonymous, with God. If a man however believes in a God, he loses
+at once the right to raise the question, ‘Wherefore am I alive?’ since
+it is in that case an insolent presumption, an effort of small, weak
+man to look over God’s shoulder, to spy out God’s plan, to aspire to
+the height of omniscience. But neither is it in such a case necessary,
+since a God without the highest wisdom cannot be conceived; and if
+He has devised a plan for the world, this is certain to be perfect,
+all its parts are in harmony, and the aim to which every co-operator,
+from the smallest to the greatest, will devote himself is the best
+conceivable. Thus man can live in complete rest and confidence in the
+impulses and forces implanted in him by God, because he, in every case,
+fulfils a high and worthy destiny by co-operating in a, to him, unknown
+Divine plan of the world.”
+
+We here notice his words: “that which contains a design, a thought,
+a plan, we name consciousness.” Now, nobody knows better than the
+scientists that so far all scientific discovery has revealed plan,
+method, and purpose, in the smallest thing and the smallest phenomena
+in the universe. Is it then necessary to be degenerate to believe in
+a self-conscious Providence? John Stuart Mill observes that the fact
+that we find in nature, especially in human and animal bodies, physical
+and mechanical problems solved in the same way as engineers had solved
+them long before they knew of such solutions in nature, points not only
+to the existence of an intelligent Creator, but to a similarity of His
+intelligence to that of human beings.
+
+According to the passage from Nordau, then, the planning in nature
+proves a conscious force, a conscious force is synonymous with God, and
+the man who believes in God can live in complete rest in his faith.
+Tolstoi obtained a reply to his question in a manner which he describes
+in the following words:
+
+“It was quite the same to me whether Jesus was God or not God; whether
+the Holy Ghost proceeded from the one or the other. It was likely
+neither necessary nor important for me to know how, when, and by whom
+the Gospels, or any one of the parables were composed, and whether
+they could be ascribed to Christ or not. What to me was important was
+that the light which for eighteen hundred years was the light of the
+world is that light still; but what name was to be given to the source
+of this light, or what were its component parts, and by whom it was
+lighted, was quite indifferent to me.”
+
+The difference in the two replies is one of words only. If therefore
+Nordau acknowledged that a sensible man could ask such a question, and
+if the reply of Nordau we have just quoted is recognised by him as his
+own opinion, he and Tolstoi would stand very much in the same category.
+But Nordau does not think that a perfectly sane mind would ask such
+a question; and if it was asked, he has another reply. This reply is
+however far from being so clear as the other. “If,” he says, “on the
+other hand, there is no belief in a God, it is also impossible to form
+a conception of the aim, for then the aim existing in consciousness
+only as an idea, in the absence of a universal consciousness, has no
+locus for existence; there is no place for it in nature.” From this it
+ought to follow that, if a man does not believe in God, there is no
+God, and consequently there can be no aim. He then proceeds to argue
+that, if there be no aim, it is useless to ask the question, “Wherefore
+am I alive?” but that we can ask the question, “Why do we live?”
+His reply to this is characteristic: “We live in obedience to the
+mechanical law of causality, which requires no plan and no universal
+consciousness.”
+
+It is curious to behold how Nordau cannot perceive that his question,
+“Why do we live?” implies the question, “Whence the mechanical law of
+causality?” and that his reply is simply, “We live because we live.”
+Once he has accepted this self-delusion as a solid foundation, his
+reasoning again becomes rational, and does not bear on the point before
+us. The most astounding part of it is that Nordau considers Tolstoi,
+and all others whose instinct, whose emotion, and whose immutable
+reasoning point to a cause behind Nordau’s home-made mechanical law of
+causality, as thereby showing signs of mental degeneration.
+
+Nordau, in order to prove the confusion existing in Tolstoi’s ideas,
+seems to take for granted that the tendency towards Pantheism,
+perceptible in the Russian’s reasoning, is utterly at variance with
+Christianity. We would simply point out that Tolstoi has his own
+Christianity, framed on his own interpretation of the Gospels, and not
+any previously existing Christianity, and is therefore at liberty to
+proclaim a creed which has a Pantheistic tendency without exposing
+himself to the reproach of being inconsequent. But we consider it more
+important to notice the fact that the Gospels, far from laying down any
+dogmas, are the record of the life of a man—divine or not divine—whose
+mission it was to protest against dogmas. He called God “Father,” in
+order to speak of universal consciousness only in its relations to man,
+leaving it to the doctrinaires and the philosophers to agree as best
+they could on the question of Pantheism or no Pantheism. Besides, the
+Gospels certainly emphasize the omnipresence of the Creator; and if
+this Pantheistic tendency had not existed among the disciples, it is
+not likely that St. Paul would have said, “In Him we live, we move, and
+have our being.”
+
+The shallow, superficial manner in which Nordau treats Tolstoi’s
+ethics is certainly unworthy of him, and amounts simply to a quibble.
+These ethics, correctly summed up, “Resist not evil, judge not, kill
+not,” which correspond precisely with the teachings of Christ, Nordau
+does not regard as ethics, but proceeds solemnly to test them as
+expediencies in peculiar cases, and comes to the conclusion that they
+are ridiculous.
+
+Must we then conclude that Nordau has no such ethics, but that he
+believes it right to return evil for evil,—_vendetta_ fashion,—that
+he objects to suffer wrong for a good cause, and that he revels in
+indiscriminate murder? Tolstoi’s ethics, as ethics should do, hold
+up the ideal for which we should strive, and as a practical test of
+them we must consider not the murder and plunder of one good man by
+a bad one, but the state which would ensue if all men conformed to
+them. The practical moral we ought to draw from them is not that laws
+and law courts should be abolished, but that laws should be framed
+and law courts should be managed in such a way as to favour a general
+acceptance of such ethics. Here again Nordau indulges in illogical
+reasoning, and in contradictions of himself. He takes for granted
+that humanity is so utterly depraved that if “the fear of the gallows
+did not prevent it, throat-cutting and stealing would be the most
+generally adopted trade.” This means that Nordau in one place in his
+book declares human beings are too good, too noble, too honest to need
+any belief in a hell, but in another place declares that they are far
+too depraved to do without the fear of the gallows. He forgets that
+good ethics have sprung from the good instincts of our race, and that
+crime has largely been fostered by bad laws, bad law courts, and bad
+institutions.
+
+In one of his stories, entitled _From the Diary of Nechljudow_,
+Tolstoi’s hero, Prince Nechljudow, is a most eccentric character,
+created probably for the purpose of showing the absurdity of
+indiscriminate charity and other impulsive actions of the erratics of
+our day. Nordau gives an account of one of the instances in which the
+Prince’s selfish way of practising charity is forcibly brought out.
+He evidently does this in order that the Prince’s action should be
+accepted as an illustration of what Tolstoi means by charity. This is
+both absurd and unjust. It amounts to an identification of the author
+with the character he represents—a way of insinuating degeneracy in
+authors who simply hold it up in their characters as a warning. To thus
+mix up authors with their characters is a mistake frequently committed
+by unintelligent readers, but it is surprising to find that with Nordau
+it is an habitual method.
+
+With regard to the character Pozdnyscheff, Nordau does the same thing.
+He takes for granted that the opinions expressed by this character are
+those of the author. The passages he extracts from _Short Expositions_,
+in which Tolstoi’s own opinions are expressed, in no wise justify such
+a supposition.
+
+Nordau’s explanation of the enormous success Tolstoi’s books have
+achieved is that it is due to general degeneration among the upper
+classes throughout the world. If he could personally meet the hundreds
+of thousands of English people who have read Tolstoi’s works, he would
+be able to form an idea of the immensity of his mistake. He would find
+that the majority of these people belong to a middle class, consisting
+of persons who are not overworked and who indulge in none of the vices
+of the continental aristocracies. Their muscles and their nerves have
+been strengthened and fortified by a healthy education, and by a love
+of bodily exercise, sport and even danger, and by a moral life. They
+live in a country where the authorities have found that to proscribe
+any licentious book is to promote its sale, and where consequently
+there is hardly any check upon morbid literature. Yet there is not a
+country where less of it is circulated than in England. It is true
+that these readers of Tolstoi have not attained to that height of
+intellectual development which would permit them to accept Nordau’s
+“mechanical causality” as a satisfying explanation of the universe;
+but, on the other hand, it would be difficult to find a people so
+religiously inclined, and yet so free from superstition and fanaticism.
+
+Some of them may like Rossetti’s pictures, and many of them Burne
+Jones’s, but as a rule they have an equal admiration for Raphael,
+Tintoretto, Correggio, and others. They cannot be classed among the
+mystics on that account. As few of them write books, they cannot be
+called graphomaniacs. Nor do they show any signs of being egomaniacs.
+Nor have they any physical stigmata of degenerates. The heads of this
+class are generally beautifully shaped, and the ears of the women
+are by all foreigners who visit this country proclaimed to be the
+finest and daintiest ears in the world. Personal beauty among this
+class is decidedly on the increase; for each generation seems to be
+better-looking, and the youngest is generally the most beautiful. The
+latter fact, we may mention, is no doubt due to the increasing tendency
+of the upper and middle classes in England to beautify their homes and
+to surround themselves with exquisite objects, as well as to a more
+intellectual education, pastimes, pleasures, and arts.
+
+Why then must these readers of Tolstoi’s works be classed as degenerate?
+
+It is not denied that in England there are people who exhibit signs
+of mental degeneration, but they are to be found more in literary
+and political circles than in the close ranks of the upper and
+middle classes. We would not undertake to class them under the
+headings established by the alienist, and it would be difficult even
+for Nordau to do so. Perhaps they are not sufficiently advanced in
+degeneracy to be so classed. Such signs as they exhibit are some of
+them as old as the hills, and others are clearly the manifestations
+of that intellectual and moral daze which generally follows on the
+destruction of the religious foundations of belief involved in the
+acceptance of belief in scientific atheism. But the most prevalent
+form of degeneracy is that which is palpably the result of financial
+depression, felt not only in financial but artistic and literary
+circles. For reasons which we leave to the economists to explain,
+England’s commerce and agriculture seem to have come to a dead-lock.
+The result seems to be diminished incomes all round. Many artists,
+_littérateurs_, and politicians are at their wits’ end how to make
+an income, and there can be little doubt that this has fostered a
+certain amount of demoralization. Extraordinary attempts are made
+to produce sensational pictures, to write eccentric poetry, to send
+forth books that will shock, and to treat of risky subjects on the
+stage. Politicians are obliged to make politics a profession, and, as
+popularity is indispensable to it as a profitable profession, they
+worship majorities. Any one who is acquainted with London cannot doubt
+for a moment that these forms of demoralization spring entirely from
+a necessity of making a living. Artists, authors, and politicians
+of this class are no more inclined to lunacy than the vast class of
+people who do distasteful work, as well as those who have to appear
+before the public in dangerous but not much esteemed performances. If
+the financial depression is destined to disappear, there can be little
+doubt that the majority of these signs of demoralization will also
+disappear.
+
+There are in this country, as everywhere else, real degenerates, people
+who have weakened their brains and moral faculties by drink, debauch,
+overwork, or persons who have inherited mental debility. There are
+also among us, we regret to say, an alarming number of destitute people
+who have been driven into mental derangement by those terrible pangs
+that misery inflicts. But all these degenerates care as little for
+Tolstoi’s novels as they do for Rossetti’s or Burne Jones’s pictures.
+
+Though English circumstances are vastly different from continental,
+there can be no doubt that the causes which have rendered Tolstoi’s
+novels popular are the same here as in other countries. The scientific
+atheists have introduced into literature a materialist, selfish,
+sceptical, pessimistic, and cynical tone which was tolerated by the
+public for a long time. On the continent they had Zola and his wretched
+imitators, whose books found their way among us, while England has
+produced a crop of neurotic storytellers, playwrights, and versifiers,
+made up for the most part of masculine women and effeminate men, who
+have exploited to the utmost the atheistic vein.
+
+The noble spirit which atheism was to bring to the front somehow did
+not take to literature, and the reading classes of the world began to
+miss those pure joys which reading used to afford them. The books of
+the day offended their religious feelings, their sense of decency,
+their loftiest conceptions of the world, and their self-esteem, without
+amusing them. The whole literature of fiction had become stilted, and
+the morbid and pessimistic authors departed so widely from nature
+and evinced so many signs of utter insincerity that the reading world
+longed to be face to face with a man who spoke his innermost thoughts.
+The world was therefore ready for a new departure in literature.
+
+What wonder then that Tolstoi’s works were well received. They bore
+witness to consummate ability, a close study of human nature. They
+presented a true picture of social Russia. They afforded an insight
+into the Russian mind. His readers experienced the intellectual treat
+offered by few books,—that of feeling the presence of a master-mind,
+and of following the thoughts of a thoroughly sincere writer, free from
+the cheap ready-made materialist philosophy—a man who devotes both his
+life and his work, with almost superhuman energy, to the regeneration
+of his race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+_THE REAL IBSEN_
+
+
+In reading Nordau’s chapter on Ibsen, one cannot help wondering why
+our alienist has given his book the form he has. The feeling which
+the preceding contents of his work have more or less inspired—that
+there is a discrepancy between the apparent plan of the work and its
+execution—almost ripens into conviction on the perusal of his chapter
+on Ibsen.
+
+He says in his dedication to Professor Lombroso: “Now I have undertaken
+the work of investigating the tendencies of the fashion in art and
+literature, of proving that they have their source in the degeneracy
+of their authors, and that the enthusiasm of their admirers is for
+manifestations of more or less pronounced moral insanity, imbecility,
+and dementia.” He also says that he “ventures to fill a void in your
+[Lombroso’s] powerful system.” From what he says higher up on the same
+page about the power of books and works of art to influence the masses,
+and his many hints in other parts of the book, as, for example, in its
+concluding pages, we must understand that his great object is to do
+what he can to arrest the downward movement of human intelligence.
+
+He thus assumes that there is a degenerating process going on
+throughout civilization, but attentive readers of his book feel the
+whole time that this assumption, far from being proved to be correct,
+rests on data supplied by Nordau, which strongly warn his readers to
+accept them only with a grain of salt.
+
+On the other hand, there are a host of indications in all civilized
+countries pointing to an increase in intellectual power, moral
+strength, and æsthetic refinement. Some of these indications would
+probably not be undervalued by Nordau himself: the rapid progress of
+science, the increasing education among the masses, the large number of
+newspapers and periodicals dealing intelligently with various branches
+of knowledge, professions, and trades, the wider application of
+scientific methods to industry, wonderful inventions, not the outcome
+of discovery, but of intelligent induction, the decay of superstition,
+love of investigation, etc. Nordau, having allowed that the test of
+a sound mind is its ability to attend rationally to one’s business,
+ought to recognize that the growth of intellectual power is manifest in
+improved business methods, skill, manufacturing, complicated and daring
+financial schemes, ingenious co-operative systems, well-managed and
+disciplined trades’-unions, nay, even cleverly laid plots to defraud.
+
+An increasing moral strength is proved by the growth of the altruistic
+feeling, the devotion with which the cause of humanity, morality, and
+progress is served by people who, thanks to scientific scepticism,
+expect no reward in another world; the greater sincerity observable in
+all religious bodies, the magnitude of charitable institutions, the
+magnificent heroism displayed by captains and crews on sinking ships,
+by our life-boat men in attempting to save the shipwrecked, by our
+colliers’ efforts to rescue the victims of explosions, etc. The great
+victories of the Germans over the French and the complete success
+of the commanders’ daring tactics have been largely, and probably
+correctly, ascribed to the moral qualities of the German army, while
+the utter defeat of the French cannot be ascribed to the want of moral
+qualities, but to bad leadership. A quarter of a century has elapsed
+since the Franco-German war, but there is no reason to believe that the
+moral qualities of the German army have degenerated. That no degeneracy
+has taken place in the English, French, and Italian armies has been
+proved by the Chitral expedition, by the French war with Madagascar,
+and by the Italian operations in Africa.
+
+If, despite these manifest signs of growing intellectual power and
+moral strength, Nordau’s deep insight into psychological matters
+has revealed to him a mental degeneracy in the civilized world, his
+way of investigating such decay, his mode of dealing with it, and
+especially the causes he attributes to it, are too vacillating, too
+contradictory, and too biassed to inspire confidence. While sometimes,
+as in his chapter entitled “Etiology,” he refers to such causes as
+the increase in the consumption of spirits and tobacco, the factory
+system, overwork, overcrowding—all causes palpable to all who have
+given any attention to social questions,—in the rest of his book he
+seems to regard certain popular writers and artists as the great
+cause of general degeneration who should be specially noticed. This
+contradiction cannot be explained away on the plea that his book is
+only part of a wider investigation which has already been made, or
+might be made, regarding the causes of degeneration, and that, so long
+as his work is intended to treat of the influence of literature and
+art, his ignoring of other causes is legitimate. If an effect is first
+attributed to one cause and then to another, we may be sure that there
+is something wrong with the reasoning. We cannot prove first that
+the tendency to hysteria, so common in people engaged in a certain
+class of business, is due to overwork, and afterwards prove that the
+same tendency in the same people is due to Rossetti’s pictures or to
+Swinburne’s poems.
+
+Nordau never furnishes an explanation of the enormous importance
+he attaches to the influence of writers and artists, and the small
+importance he attaches to the more palpable causes of degeneration,
+of the existence of some of which he is aware. Nor does he tell us
+how he reconciles the two facts, alternately insisted upon by him,
+that degeneration in artists is the cause of degeneration in their
+surroundings; and again, that the degeneration of their surroundings is
+the cause of degeneration in artists and authors.
+
+If such artists and authors as Nordau believes to be degenerate are
+the effect of degeneration all round, they are surely the smallest and
+least deplorable results, and it was certainly not worth while to write
+so bulky a volume about them. Nordau mentions about a score; and what
+is a score compared to the mass of humanity, or to the five hundred
+million people included in western civilization? A degeneration that
+would not have other results than that of producing twenty degenerate
+men, who, though they are in many respects a source of enjoyment to
+many, may have a grain of insanity in their brains, would not be worth
+noticing. If, on the other hand, these supposed degenerates are not
+what, to the ordinary mind, they decidedly appear to be—the children of
+their time—but the actual causes of such serious psychological effects
+which statistics seem to reveal, we are face to face with a phenomenon
+which surely demanded a different method of investigation.
+
+The real connection between the causes and the effects should have been
+ascertained. For instance, the most alarming feature of degeneration
+in England—that weak-mindedness which leads to drunkenness—should
+have been connected with the mystical painters and poets, and should
+have been proved not to have been the result of those causes which
+seem palpable to every man. Then the influence of individuals on the
+masses in general should have been ascertained. History offers a wide
+field for such an investigation. If it had been found that authors
+and artists exercise less influence than other individuals, such as
+sovereigns, statesmen, prophets, reformers, revolutionary leaders,
+discoverers, explorers, and others, the influence of these should have
+at first been studied, and what could not be attributed to them might
+have been laid at the door of artists and authors.
+
+In examining history, old and new, we are struck with the extremely
+slight effects which have been produced by _littérateurs_ and
+artists, and the enormous, all-powerful influence exercised by other
+individuals. Books have influenced books, poets have influenced
+poets, painters have influenced painters, but the political, social,
+intellectual, moral, and æsthetical development of a nation has over
+and over again been completely determined by men who have been neither
+artists nor authors.
+
+In modern times the same fact is palpable. Has ever the world been
+influenced more than by such men as Cavour, Prince Bismarck, Mr.
+Gladstone, Napoleon III.? and how might not the fate of humanity
+be determined in the near future by such men as, for example, the
+Emperor of Germany and the Czar of Russia? On the mental qualities
+of the Emperor of Germany depends largely whether Germany is to be
+crushed under the army system; whether it is to be ruined by financial
+blunderings; whether there shall be peaceful development of its
+resources, or war to the knife between its classes; whether healthy
+reforms shall gradually clear away its social anomalies, or whether a
+revolution of unprecedented atrocity shall uproot its very foundations;
+whether its inhabitants shall develop those characteristics to which
+peace and happiness are conducive, or those which would inevitably be
+fostered if Germany were made the battle-field of modern armies.
+
+On the mental qualities of the Czar depend directly the destiny of a
+hundred million people, and indirectly the peace of the world. Russia
+is only too willing to progress under an imperial leader. On the
+occasion of his accession to the throne and his marriage, millions
+of people anxiously scanned his portrait and tried to read in his
+features the fate of Europe. The presence of lines supposed to indicate
+weak character produced prophecies of clerical domination, opposition
+to progress, and death to Russia; while a kindly expression of the
+eyes inspired many with hopes of a new era for Tolstoi’s unfortunate
+countrymen.
+
+It is not only personages of high rank and sovereign power whose mental
+state is of utmost importance to humanity. The political situation
+in most countries is capable of producing at any moment a man who,
+without being either an author or an artist, might be able to change
+the destiny of nations. It is not the opportunity that is wanting,
+it is the men. France is panting for a man. The working classes in
+America and in England stand in need of a good leader. In Germany
+Liebknecht threatens to divide the power with the Emperor. A political
+Tolstoi might, at the head of the Russian people, sweep the recreant
+bureaucrats from his Fatherland.
+
+It is then sovereigns, politicians, and popular leaders whose
+mental state is of the utmost importance, and whose influence may
+overwhelmingly determine the mental and moral development of humanity.
+An answer to the question whether they are degenerates, or whether
+they are of mentally or morally sound mind, is momentous to the whole
+civilized world, especially if it be admitted that the minds of the
+race are so susceptible of being moulded by the minds of influential
+men.
+
+But who are the men whom Nordau blames for the degeneracy for which
+he finds the proof in statistics? Poets and artists, whose very names
+are known only to the educated classes, and who for the most part
+supply what the market demands, or simply reflect the society around
+them. The most surprising of all is that he himself denies any power
+or any talent in some of these men, calling them—to omit his worse
+epithets—such names as drivelling idiots, weak-minded graphomaniacs,
+etc.
+
+One condition seems however necessary before a man can receive the
+compliment of being called names by Nordau—he must have attracted
+public attention. We have therefore said, and repeat it, that his
+desperate attempt to make out Ibsen to be a degenerate renders it
+impossible to form a clear idea of his object, or of his reasons, for
+the methods he has adopted.
+
+Henrik Ibsen aims not at being a prophet, a teacher, or a regenerator
+of mankind either by literary or scientific methods. No one can
+detect in his works special ethics, or particular religious or social
+views. It is characteristic of his pieces—and according to many of
+his opponents a great fault in them—that he points no moral, that the
+questions involved remain at the end of the piece exactly where they
+were at the beginning, that his heroes and heroines are no heroes and
+no heroines, and cannot serve as models of conduct. His opponents and
+admirers alike complain that they cannot get at his meaning, and that
+he will not explain himself. It is therefore surprising that there
+should be so much talk about the influence he exercises, and that
+Nordau himself should speak about “Ibsen’s dogmas,” “Ibsen’s code of
+morals,” and about Ibsen himself as a “reformer.”
+
+Those who speak about Ibsen’s influence on the ethics of our time
+cannot, as a rule, give any explanation of their meaning which can
+justify the importance they attach to it. They are apt to point to
+his influence on the English drama and blame him for certain of its
+objectionable features. But to those who understand his pieces it is
+perfectly clear that he has not been followed by English dramatists in
+such things as have made him famous and popular. They have contented
+themselves with imitating certain situations and with referring to some
+objectionable feature in modern society, which Ibsen does reluctantly,
+compelled to do so by the situation, and in order to emphasize types of
+character which are only too common in every civilized country, but are
+so closely draped in hypocrisy as to require the great dramatist’s lens
+to show them up. His imitators however exemplify entirely exceptional
+cases and conjure up characters the prototypes of which it would be
+extremely hard to find. He aims at presenting stern reality; they aim
+at producing risky situations. Indeed, his imitators cannot be said to
+have been influenced by him more than has his brilliant parodist, Mr.
+F. Anstey.
+
+In Germany, as in the Scandinavian countries, complaints are sometimes
+raised against Ibsen’s influence on women, especially young women.
+Our daughters are getting Ibsenized, is the cry raised by a number of
+Philistine parents. It is perhaps natural that Ibsen’s influence on
+women in those countries, where the staging of Ibsen’s pieces recalls
+more familiar presentations should be greater than in England, where
+the Norwegian manner of life is but little known. But too much weight
+might easily be attached to the difference in acquaintance with Norway.
+There is a far more powerful reason why Ibsen’s so-called influence
+should appear to be more marked on German and Norwegian women than on
+English women.
+
+With the exception of the United States, there is no country in the
+world where respectable women are better treated than in England. An
+old adage says, with a great deal of truth, that the wife of the German
+is his slave, the wife of the Frenchman is his mistress, and the wife
+of the Englishman is the queen of his house. The German woman certainly
+has of old held a position in her home which might well lead her to
+envy the English woman, and as the Scandinavian countries have been
+largely affected by Germany in their social manners and habits, the
+women of these countries have ample cause for dissatisfaction. Since
+the time of Frederika Bremer, a woman’s revolt has been brewing in
+the Scandinavian countries, and the aspirations for more liberty, a
+more natural life, and more happiness have been constantly becoming
+stronger, and were highly developed before Ibsen’s first piece
+appeared. Besides, the spread of English fiction in Germany and in the
+northern countries of Europe has shown the women of those countries
+that a happier life is quite possible.
+
+The road to the realization of such aspirations was however barred by
+custom and the selfish view of the question taken by the men. They
+had no objection to high-spirited, talented, well-dressed, and lively
+women, whose attractions could evoke in them romantic and ardent
+feelings; and a great many knew well enough that leisure, exemption
+from hard work, good food, plenty of exercise, suitable friends,
+artistic surroundings, good books, a fair amount of pleasure, and
+considerate treatment were required to transform a young woman into
+that feminine ideal which they worshipped in their imagination. But
+they repudiated entirely the idea of having such ideals in their wives.
+It would have clashed far too much with the traditional type of a good
+wife, and to marry one deviating from this type would have set the
+whole circle of acquaintances talking. Besides, a wife conforming to
+the ideal was considered an expensive luxury, leading to waste of money
+which could be much better employed.
+
+Mothers of girls, well acquainted with the marriage market,
+consequently exerted all their energy to form their daughters for
+the positions they were expected to occupy. House-cleaning, washing,
+cooking, darning, etc.,—this was what they had to learn. A demure
+demeanour was what they had to practise. The society of men was what
+they had to avoid. Romantic ideas had, above all, to be suppressed,
+and only such love as would come after marriage, or at least after
+betrothal, was considered legitimate and decent.
+
+A great feature in their education was to closely observe the evils and
+troubles which followed upon poverty, and how much more comfortable
+life would be with a prosperous though unattractive husband than with a
+beloved man who might not succeed in the world. The idea of refusing a
+proposal of marriage from a well-to-do man, however old and prosy, was
+regarded as preposterous, and any respectable girl dreaming of such a
+thing would have been considered as a romantic, ungrateful hussy.
+
+As the men seldom married young, the girls were taught to ask no
+questions about their past, and were trained to sacrifice all their
+ideals of purity, their dreams of love, what a free woman would call
+her self-respect, their future happiness, their healthful youth, on the
+altar of Philistine respectability.
+
+There are other ways of degrading women besides yoking them with an
+ox to a plough, and that they were degraded and de-naturalized the
+thinking German and Scandinavian women had felt long before Ibsen
+wrote plays. The struggle for better treatment was however extremely
+weak and the progress towards emancipation extremely slow. Just
+as oppressive government, with its police persecution, gags open
+discontent and drives the forces of revolt under ground, so the tyranny
+over the German and Scandinavian women—when tradition and prejudice
+prevented open manifestations—developed in the hearts of women,
+especially among the most gifted, a dangerously strong spirit of revolt.
+
+Already at the time when Ibsen began to write there were numerous
+but isolated outbreaks. The old treatment, which generally resulted
+in turning the married woman into a dull, despondent house-slave, a
+soured invalid, a nagging scold, or a gossiping zany, began to produce
+scoffing Aspasias, neurotic adventuresses, and here and there avenging
+furies.
+
+This tendency to revolt among the women was stronger in Norway than in
+the other countries, because it developed parallel with that ethical
+awakening—the new _Aand_[1]—which during the latter part of this
+century has taken possession of so many Norwegian minds; also because
+the strongly imaginative and contemplative character of the Norwegian
+people, and the intensely emotional nature of their women, led them
+to brood over their wrongs in a thoroughly Norwegian fashion. Better
+education and wide reading tended in the same direction.
+
+    [Footnote 1: _Aand_, the Norwegian for spirit, inspiration.]
+
+Ibsen has therefore not Ibsenized the Scandinavian ladies. He has
+simply seized upon a social phenomenon and, understanding its gravity,
+has held it up to his contemporaries for a study and a warning.
+
+Nordau, having committed the egregious mistake of believing that Ibsen
+has invented whereas he has in reality only copied, and that a social
+phenomenon which is natural to intellectual and moral progress is a
+result of Ibsen’s writings, is, in his capacity of the most German of
+Germans, naturally wroth with Ibsen for representing as a social evil
+what a normal sound-minded common-sense German—the very type of the
+non-degenerate—would consider as a useful and comfortable arrangement.
+There are several excuses for Nordau’s belief that Ibsen misrepresents
+reality. The improvement in woman’s status in society has no doubt
+advanced more in Germany than in the Scandinavian countries. It is
+possible that the Dowager Empress’s influence as an Englishwoman has
+not been so great as is generally supposed, but there can be little
+doubt that English novels, from Charlotte Bronté’s _Jane Eyre_ upwards,
+have considerably furthered justice towards German women. The close
+business connections between Germany and England, the numerous Germans
+who have had a long experience of English life, have no doubt done much
+to spread English social views in Germany.
+
+The German women may therefore now have less cause for discontent and
+revolt than the Scandinavian women, and it is excusable if the Germans
+consider that they treat them fairly and well.
+
+To observing Englishmen who visit Germany it is however clear that the
+whole Philistine idea of the housewife is still prevailing in that
+country. A great number of husbands consider it a distinct advantage
+to be able to throw off all restraint in their own homes and to compel
+their wives to accommodate themselves as well as they can to their
+whims, their habits, their indulgences. That exasperating type, the
+house-tyrant, which is found in all countries, and not seldom in
+England, is especially prevalent in Germany.
+
+German men are well aware that their wives have nothing in common
+with the fascinating ideal woman of their imagination, and they are
+quite satisfied that it should be so. Their work, their studies, their
+profession, or their business demands all their attention, and they
+could not dream of dismissing them from their minds when they enter
+their homes. A woman who would distract her husband’s attention from
+such important subjects would be an impediment to his success, while
+the typical housewife, by her cares and ministrations, furthers it.
+Like most men, Germans have chivalrous leanings, and enjoy a courteous
+intercourse with ladies, but it is generally not their wives who reap
+the advantages of this taste. It is the other ladies, those they
+meet in society, and not seldom do they muster all their powers of
+gallantry, all their means of pleasing, and all their faculty to amuse
+in the company of women of light character, often in every respect
+inferior to their wives.
+
+It is those German women who feel that their happiness and their
+lives have been sacrificed, not for their husbands, but to a vicious
+conception of married life, who sympathize with the women of Ibsen, and
+have thus contributed largely to the fame of that dramatist in Germany.
+
+Ibsen has not Ibsenized the German ladies, but his pieces have revealed
+the existence of a grudge long harboured by German women.
+
+It is only just to record that, though Englishwomen, especially those
+who live and are treated up to the English ideal, as we mentioned
+before, live under much happier circumstances as children, girls,
+_fiancées_, and wives, there are many of our countrywomen whose
+marriages have been a cruel disillusion. Many Englishmen marry too
+young, before they know their own minds, and under the feverish
+impulse of a first love. When such young husbands are thoughtless,
+selfish, or when they have made a bad choice, a miserable married
+life is the result. In a great number of young households happiness
+prevails, thanks to the strong-mindedness and tact of the young wife,
+who can take care of herself and of her husband also. But thousands of
+marriages turn out utter failures, not for want of love, but from the
+husband’s utter ignorance of how to take care of his wife’s health,
+beauty, and happiness.
+
+Though it is the fashion in this country not to adapt but to translate
+literally Ibsen’s pieces, there would be no difficulty to so adapt them
+as to render them exact representations of the state of many an English
+home. And this is sufficient to explain his fame in England. Here,
+as on the continent, it is the selfish, mean, bullying husbands who
+cannot find any sense in Ibsen’s pieces, and who are extremely shocked
+at what they consider Ibsen’s perversion in attempting to enlist, by
+inexplicable devices, the sympathies of the audience for the erring
+wife, when these should be vouchsafed to the husband, who appears to be
+such a respectable, common-sense man.
+
+When Ibsen thus calls attention to the importance and the gravity of
+the feeling of revolt which has long rankled in the minds of thinking
+women all over the world, and which manifested itself long before
+Ibsen’s pieces were known outside Norway, he cannot fairly be said
+to be responsible for the growing discontent. In reality, he has
+rendered the world a great service: for the new views and aspirations
+of modern educated women can neither be suppressed nor ignored without
+considerable danger to society.
+
+In order to understand that the demand for the purification of
+marriage is not a transitory whim, it will suffice to consider who
+made the marriage laws, and, what is more important, who inaugurated
+the traditional views concerning them. Men alone did. Not the young
+men, who would be largely swayed by the yearning for true love and
+by chivalrous considerations, but the law-makers of old; that is to
+say, elderly men of influence and fortune. In the olden times, when
+the foundations of social customs were laid, the rights of women
+were considerably less respected than in our days; and under such
+circumstances the law-makers did not feel called upon to consider woman
+to any large extent, but made laws and introduced customs which suited
+themselves. What they wanted was, firstly, to marry young and beautiful
+wives, despite all objections that might be raised against their
+age, their looks, or their characters, and without much troublesome
+courtship; and, secondly, to keep their young wives in subjection by
+sheer force and legal compulsion.
+
+It is not reasonable to suppose that the fair sex should submit for
+ever to such treatment, and, as the women in the English-speaking
+countries have already gained large concessions, it is natural that
+their sisters in the rest of the civilized world should struggle for
+reform.
+
+It is therefore difficult to see why Nordau should consider Ibsen’s
+influence so dangerous to society as to deem it necessary to hold him
+up as a degenerate. The enigma becomes more puzzling when we find that
+Nordau frankly allows that Ibsen has great merits and great talents.
+He says, for instance: “Henrik Ibsen is a poet of great verve and
+power.” “He has the gift of depicting in an exceptionally lifelike
+and impressive manner that which has excited his feelings.” “He has
+the capacity for imagining situations in which the characters are
+forced to turn inside out their inmost nature, in which abstract ideas
+transform themselves into deeds, and moods of opinion and of feeling,
+imperceptible to the senses but potent as causes, are made patent to
+sight and hearing in attitudes and gestures, in the play of feature,
+and in words.” “He knows how to group events into living frescoes
+possessing the charm of significant pictures... not like Wagner, with
+strange costumes and properties, architectural splendour, mechanical
+magic, gods and fabulous beasts, but with penetrating vision into the
+background of souls and the conditions of humanity.... But he does not
+allow the imagination of the spectator to run riot in mere spectacles;
+he forces them into moods, he binds them by his spell in circles of
+ideas, through the pictures which he unrolls before them.” “The power
+with which Ibsen, in a few rapid strokes, sketches a situation, an
+emotion, a dim-lit depth of the soul, is very much higher than his
+skill, so much extolled, of foreshortening in time... Each of the terse
+words which suffice him has something of the nature of a peep-hole,
+through which limitless vistas are obtained. The plays of all peoples
+of all ages have few situations at once so perfectly simple and so
+irresistibly affecting.”
+
+Further on he again says: “It must be acknowledged that Ibsen has
+created some characters possessing a truth to life and a completeness
+such as are not to be met with in any poet since Shakespeare... None
+the less no poet since the illustrious Spanish master (Cervantes) has
+succeeded in creating such an embodiment of plain, jolly, healthy
+common-sense, of practical tact without anxiety as to things eternal,
+and of honest fulfilment of all proximate, obvious duties without a
+suspicion of higher moral obligations, as this Gina.... Hjalmar also
+is a perfect creation, in which Ibsen has not once succumbed to the
+cogent temptation to exaggerate, but has exercised most entrancingly
+that ‘self-restraint’ in every word which, as Goethe says, ‘reveals the
+master.’”
+
+We have quoted somewhat lengthily from this eulogy of Ibsen in order
+to render justice both to him and to Nordau. There is no passage in
+Nordau’s book which displays more insight into dramatic art and a more
+intelligent appreciation of some of the subtle but marvellous merits of
+Ibsen’s plays. We should not have thought it possible that so keen an
+appreciation could have been formed without seeing Ibsen’s pieces acted
+in the original language. This eulogy becomes all the more valuable
+when we remember that it emanates from one of Ibsen’s opponents—from
+a man who would fain restrain Ibsen from writing at all, and who
+evidently has not paid any attention to the slow but important social
+struggle which Ibsen so frequently illustrates.
+
+Most people who have read these and other acknowledgments on the part
+of Nordau of Ibsen’s talent, will be struck with the reckless manner
+in which Nordau defeats his own object. He wishes to warn the world
+against “degenerates” of Ibsen’s type, and at the same time praises him
+as few writers have been praised, seemingly without considering that in
+this manner he inspires thousands of young writers with the ambition to
+be degenerates as Ibsen is.
+
+To the average reader Nordau suggests the idea of the impossibility
+of reconciling so much power, genius, talent, and craftsmanship with
+decayed mental faculties. This all the more as Ibsen’s pieces are
+financial successes, and he consequently shows a solid capacity for
+the management of his own affairs, which, as Nordau has already told
+us, and every alienist would tell us, is the safest test of a sound
+brain. The conclusion seems inevitable that Nordau is either utterly
+wrong when he sees all these merits in Ibsen’s work, or else when he
+considers him to be degenerate.
+
+In examining the grounds on which Nordau strives to establish his
+theory of degeneracy we shall no doubt find that the latter alternative
+is the true one.
+
+Nordau first impeaches Ibsen’s reputation for realism, but takes
+this term in its most literal sense. The stage has its limitations,
+and the dramatist must have a certain licence in the creating of
+his situations. Ibsen is not called a realist because all that he
+represents on the stage is in closer conformity with reality than the
+representations of practically any other dramatist ever were, but
+because his characters, besides being individually true to nature, are
+types—strongly coloured types, it may be, but not too strongly coloured
+to be understood by an average audience. In a piece not intended to be
+played the characters may be more delicately moulded, but when they
+are to be grasped in a few flashes before the footlights they must,
+like the statue intended for an elevated position, be hewn in bold
+proportions.
+
+In order to show how unreal Ibsen is, Nordau asks whether it is
+probable that the joiner, Engstrand (in _Ghosts_), wishing to open
+a tavern for sailors, should call upon his own daughter to be the
+odalisque of his “establishment.” By using the word “odalisque,” and
+by placing the word “establishment” between inverted commas, he gives
+a distorted idea of the tavern Engstrand is going to open. It is a
+question of a real tavern, not of an “establishment.” Girls in similar
+taverns in Norway are of course exposed to temptations and sometimes to
+insults, but they are by no means necessarily unchaste. In selecting
+the employment in the tavern, Ibsen succeeds in giving an insight into
+the Philistine character of Engstrand, who for the sake of money would
+risk his daughter’s reputation, but who could always fall back on the
+excuse that he did not intend to ruin her.
+
+Nordau may be right when he says that no Paris doctor would have told
+Oswald Alving in _Ghosts_ that he had softening of the brain. But Ibsen
+does not say “softening of the brain”; he makes Alving say “a kind
+of softening of the brain,” an expression which might very well be
+Oswald’s interpretation of what the doctor had told him in very guarded
+words. Moreover it is not as an alienist that Ibsen has gained his
+fame; it is as a dramatist.
+
+Nordau quotes as another example of unreality, the sense in which the
+term “society” is used by the characters in the _Pillars of Society_.
+This is an error into which Nordau has evidently been led by reading
+a bad German translation of the piece. Ibsen’s characters do not
+mean “social edifice,” as Nordau pedantically will have it, but the
+well-to-do people in the community.
+
+Again, he thinks that excuse very unreal which Berneck gives to his
+foreman, whom he has not taken into his confidence. But this unreality
+is precisely what Ibsen wishes the public to see, and he has evidently
+not accentuated the unreality sufficiently, as this has escaped even
+Nordau. Nordau does not find the speech of Pastor Rörlund realistic
+enough. The fact is that the speech is a delightful parody, in no way
+exaggerated, of those addresses which toadying sycophants all the world
+over are in the habit of delivering to a magnate whom they desire to
+propitiate. Any one who has heard such a speech in Norway will be
+amusedly surprised by its comic realism.
+
+It would be tiresome to go minutely into the proofs of unreality
+Nordau finds in Ibsen’s pieces, and the bare mention of the following
+examples will suffice to show the futility of his attempt. He considers
+it impossible for a man of forty-three to inspire love, and this in
+Norway, where people develop and ripen so slowly. He thinks it unreal
+for an excitable girl to describe as a storm on the sea the passion
+which induces her to encourage her rival’s suicide, and then when
+the rival is out of the way patiently to devote a year and a half
+to gaining the love for which her sin was committed. Our alienist,
+who displays throughout his book an utter lack of the sense of the
+ridiculous, finds the scene between Ellida, Wangel, and the Stranger
+in _The Lady from the Sea_ ridiculous, a scene which thousands of
+audiences have followed in breathless silence and with deep emotion.
+
+The puzzle is why Nordau is so anxious to show that Ibsen is not a
+realist, and how his not being a realist can possibly be construed into
+an argument in favour of his insanity. Are then all the people who, as
+a matter of taste or as a matter of business, supply the public with
+unrealistic dramas to be considered more or less demented? If this is
+the case, what becomes of the mental sanity of Nordau’s great model,
+Goethe, the author of the intensely unreal _Faust_?
+
+Referring to the theory of heredity, frequently alluded to in Ibsen’s
+works, Nordau says he cannot preserve his gravity when Ibsen displays
+his scientific or medical knowledge. Here again we are tempted to refer
+to the sandal-maker and the sandal-strings; but there is actually no
+occasion to do so, because Ibsen displaying his medical knowledge is a
+picture conjured up by Nordau’s own imagination. We do not know what
+Ibsen does in his private life, but in his dramatic works he does not
+display his medical knowledge. What suits Nordau’s purpose to give
+as Ibsen’s opinions are the opinions of his characters, who, being
+true to nature, speak as their prototypes in reality speak. It suits
+Ibsen’s dramatic purposes to make use of certain views on heredity,
+and he is all the more entitled to do so as such opinions are very
+prevalent nowadays, and not without exercising a considerable influence
+on people’s minds. Ibsen may have exactly the same opinion as his
+characters give expression to, or he may think the very opposite,
+but those who thoroughly understand Ibsen’s method will be convinced
+that he would not commit the mistake, so common among dramatists, of
+allowing his characters to reflect the author’s personality. When
+Regina, in _Ghosts_, in reply to Mrs. Alving, who is harping on
+heredity, says, “What must be, must be... I take after my mother I dare
+say,” she does not express Ibsen’s opinion about heredity, but that
+fatalistic notion which is unfortunately extremely common among women,
+especially when in trouble or at fault, and a reference to her mother
+is only a confirmation of her fatalistic belief, at which she clutches
+that she may rid herself of her responsibility.
+
+If we must look for a tendency in Ibsen’s works, it might be found in
+his attempt to show up this generally prevailing weakness in will and
+character which Nordau himself finds everywhere and which he calls
+degeneration. Regina, as well as Oswald, are “frightful examples” of
+this weakness, and in placing them on the stage Ibsen has the same
+object as Nordau, namely, to exhibit a deplorable defect in modern
+society. Ibsen may therefore be looked upon as Nordau’s co-operator,
+and even precursor, because Ibsen’s characters are types of that very
+degeneration which Nordau desires to combat. In fact, the importance
+that our alienist attaches to Ibsen’s characters suggests the idea
+that if there were no Ibsen there would be no Nordau. By the aid of an
+extremely confused and distorted reasoning, he condemns Ibsen for that
+very weakness which he, like Nordau, has discovered in modern society
+and incarnated in his characters as a warning to his contemporaries.
+
+If we had not a strong objection to the _tu quoque_ argument, and were
+not resolved to avoid it, we could here say a great deal about Nordau’s
+condemnation of Ibsen’s supposed illogical references to heredity,
+while Nordau himself yields to the temptation of using the absurdest
+logic in order to discover supposed proofs in favour of his own pet
+theories.
+
+Even supposing that Ibsen did believe in heredity, is he not in harmony
+with his time? One does not require to be an alienist or a biologist
+to understand that the Darwinian theory of evolution is the theory of
+heredity; and one does not require to be very old to have observed
+that the characteristics of parents often repeat themselves in their
+children. In his criticism of Ibsen, Nordau seems to go too far when
+he casts discredit on the theory of heredity, with regard to which he
+himself goes to an extreme when he attributes to heredity the lurking
+belief in a personal God in the inmost recesses of the consciousness of
+certain scientists. The manner in which he refers to little Hedwig’s
+blindness will certainly induce his readers to infer that he himself
+does not believe in cases of hereditary blindness—an affliction
+which has however come within the knowledge of many. Nordau, in his
+purposeless eagerness to tear Ibsen down from his pedestal, seems to
+imagine that he would further his object if he could show that Ibsen
+is influenced by the religion of his childhood, of his youth, and of
+his country. To be influenced by such religion has been the case with
+many sane people of strong mind, especially in countries where the
+morality implanted in young children is based entirely on religious
+instruction. Even when a man ceases to believe literally all that has
+been taught him, it is natural that his religious thoughts should mould
+themselves on the early impressions, which then become symbols instead
+of fact. This is especially natural with people whose walk in life has
+precluded them from giving that absorbing attention to psychology and
+biology which to a sound mind is indispensable before it can master,
+or believe, the scientists’ theories of “mechanical causality,” and
+the annihilation of the conscious _Ego_. Nordau, like many other
+scientific enthusiasts, seems to labour under the impression that all
+the loud-voiced people, who affect complete irreligiosity, and who pose
+as free-thinkers, are really convinced that the scientific discovery
+of yesterday, which might be upset by the discovery of to-morrow,
+sufficiently explains the world and themselves. This is far from being
+the case. How often when we scratch the atheist do we not find the
+superstitiously devout. How many men could be found in the world who
+are so capable of satisfying all their curiosity regarding the unknown
+by scientific theories that they might be quoted in support of the
+artificiality of religious instincts? They would certainly number very
+few. And yet scientists of Nordau’s stamp are apt to regard such men as
+the only really sane ones, and the rest of humanity as to some extent
+degenerate.
+
+But how does Nordau know anything about Ibsen’s religious opinions? He
+simply studies the characters in Ibsen’s pieces and takes for granted
+that Ibsen must necessarily hold the same opinions as his characters.
+This absurd assumption, indispensable to his purpose, leads him
+sometimes into ridiculous dilemmas from which he escapes in a not less
+ridiculous manner. When he finds that Ibsen has _dramatis personæ_ of
+diametrically opposed opinions and beliefs, he does not know which
+of them represents Ibsen’s opinions and Ibsen’s beliefs. Determined
+not to notice the simple fact that none of them represent Ibsen’s
+views, he falls back on the expediency of declaring that, because his
+characters differ, Ibsen does not know his own mind, a fact which in
+our alienist’s view points to degeneracy.
+
+He quotes copiously from Ibsen’s pieces in order to show that those
+characters who have committed evil deeds, without having resigned
+themselves to being utterly bad, yearn for confession. From this
+we must conclude that Nordau considers a longing for confession in
+those who have sinned as an obsession and as pertaining to stigmata
+of degeneration. To make capital out of this, Nordau sticks hard to
+his assumption that Ibsen’s object is to preach some kind of creed by
+proclaiming his own opinions through his characters. Few people in the
+world really know what Ibsen’s final object and real aims are; but his
+immediate object, it will be granted, is to show his contemporaries
+what they really are, and so sternly and so cogently does he pursue
+this object that, while other dramatists show their spectators the
+defects of others, Ibsen lays bare their own.
+
+In showing sinners’ yearnings for confession, Ibsen could not therefore
+be wrong unless a longing for confession in sinners is unreal or
+unusual. Far from being unusual, we find it in almost every human
+being, from the innocent child down to the brutal criminal. The police
+and law-court reports in England frequently relate cases in which
+men and women confess crimes which would never have been discovered,
+simply to satisfy a conscience yearning for confession. We have nothing
+to do here with the question as to whether this first step towards a
+better life is longed for in obedience to an instinct implanted in the
+emotional nature of man by a Creator, or whether it is the consequence
+of an inherited tendency originated by religious teaching and moral
+civil laws. We have only to deal with the fact that the conscience of
+all evil-doers, and especially of those who are willing to abandon
+evil and return to good, prompts them to confess. Nordau has only to
+consult a Catholic priest in order to learn how strong and general this
+yearning is.
+
+It must also be remembered that confession, if not to priests yet to
+God, is part of the Lutheran creed prevailing in Norway, and that
+consequently confession is regarded by the people as the test of
+true repentance. Though auricular confession is not a sacrament in
+the Lutheran Church, the Norwegian ministers could tell Nordau how
+often sinners and criminals ease their consciences by confessing to
+them. It is hardly possible to write a serious dramatic piece without
+representing a struggle between good and evil. And how then could Ibsen
+write dramas true to Norwegian life, without instancing that yearning
+for confession which is the outward sign of the inward struggle between
+good and evil?
+
+Nordau instances the French assassin Avinain, who before being
+guillotined gave out as his life’s motto “Never confess,” as an example
+of a strong and healthy mind—or, at least, he regards this motto as one
+which only a strong and healthy mind can follow. On the other hand, he
+regards confessing men as men “in whom the mechanism of inhibition is
+always disordered, and who therefore cannot escape from the impulse to
+confess when anything of an absorbing or exciting character exists in
+their consciousness.”
+
+In this comparison Nordau omits the chief factor—the religious opinion,
+or the philosophy which necessarily determines whether the confession
+is a sign of strength or weakness. If the murderer Avinain was a
+confirmed atheist, and if his emotional nature was such as to glorify
+murder, then he had no impulse to confess, and consequently required no
+strength of mind to resist confession. If the man who glories in what
+is good—or, to use an expression of Nordau’s, who has social instincts,
+and consequently believes that confession is his duty and an heroic
+action—should shun the ordeal and prefer to spend the rest of his life
+as a self-despising hypocrite, this would be weak-mindedness. Of course
+Nordau may always argue that to believe in the good and in personal
+responsibility is in itself a sign of degeneration. But this would be
+simply to place the question on another plane, where we have already
+discussed it.
+
+What is said here about confession applies equally to what Nordau says
+about redemption. It is not, as he states, an obsession of Ibsen’s, but
+a symbol very natural to a people of strong religious feelings. His
+characters could not possibly express their ideas and their emotions
+in any other way than that in which they have been in the habit of
+thinking all their lives.
+
+Nordau cannot rid himself of the obsession that the dramatist must
+necessarily take a side in the squabble between religion and science,
+and between the devotees of different social panaceas, and seems
+exasperated because he cannot get at Ibsen’s real opinion on such
+questions. When he persists in his egregious error of taking the
+opinions of Ibsen’s characters as those of Ibsen, his mind gets into
+a maze, which leads him to the conclusion that it is Ibsen’s mind,
+not his own, that has got into a confused state. It is very common to
+find a man, who, by dint of study or by natural talent, has become an
+authority on one subject, so far losing his power of self-criticism as
+to believe himself a universal genius, capable of dogmatizing on every
+subject under the sun. It is this conceit that induces successful
+men to imagine that their natural specialty is not that one which has
+rendered them famous, but some other specialty for which in reality
+they have no aptitude whatever. A successful comedian believes himself
+to be hardly dealt with because he is not acknowledged as a tragedian.
+A musician considers himself an authority on the drama. The poet thinks
+he ought to have been a politician. Biologists imagine they would shine
+as social reformers.
+
+It is because Ibsen has not yielded to this weakness, because he has
+not the conceit to lay down the law on questions outside his own
+province, but simply aspires to be a dramatist, that Nordau complains
+so bitterly of Ibsen’s omission to express a distinct opinion on all
+sorts of subjects on which Nordau burns to break a lance with him. He
+tilts against the opinions expressed by Ibsen’s characters with the
+wasted fury of Don Quixote attacking windmills.
+
+We are at a loss to account for the contradictions of which Nordau
+appears to be guilty. Much of what he says in the latter part of his
+essay on Ibsen is in direct contradiction to what he says in the
+earlier part, where his praise of Ibsen’s talents and abilities is
+conspicuous. We will give an example of what we mean. He says at the
+beginning of his chapter: “Each of the terse words which suffice him
+[Ibsen] has something of the nature of a peep-hole, through which
+limitless vistas are obtained.” Towards the end of it he says: “Thus
+Ibsen’s drama is like a kaleidoscope in a sixpenny bazaar. When one
+looks through the peep-hole, one sees at each shaking of the cardboard
+tube new and parti-coloured combinations. Children are amused at this
+toy, but adults know that it contains only splinters of coloured glass,
+always the same, inserted haphazard and united into mystical figures by
+three bits of looking-glass, and they soon tire of the expressionless
+arabesque.”
+
+Can this contradiction be the result of his great trust in authorities,
+and has he made use of two that clash, or does he write for writing’s
+sake, differently each day according to the mood he happens to be in?
+
+When Ibsen’s characters give expression to their yearnings for greater
+personal liberty, for a revolt against social traditions which threaten
+to wreck their lives, and which they have beheld wrecking the lives of
+hundreds around them, they are intended by the dramatist to show what
+is going on in modern society. Nordau of course concludes that Ibsen is
+an egomaniac who resents any bonds on his worst instincts. Supposing
+that Ibsen shares personally that same longing for more individual
+freedom which Nordau so warmly deprecates, it is evident that they
+differ simply because Nordau starts from the supposition that men’s
+instincts are necessarily bad, and Ibsen from the supposition that they
+are good.
+
+The fundamental difference in opinion mainly springs from the different
+circumstances amongst which the two men have been born and brought up.
+The German, who has all his life been impressed with the necessity of
+officialism and police government, who has lived under the impression
+that his castle would be attacked by a lower caste when free to follow
+its inclinations, would naturally attach great importance to existing
+institutions. If he at the same time be illogical enough to sap at the
+root of that great order-producing institution—religion—and beholds
+that this safeguard is becoming more and more unreliable, he naturally
+looks for something to take its place.
+
+The German social system, so unjust to the working classes, has
+naturally embittered the people and enlisted a number of working men
+into the revolutionary parties, and this growing army of so-called
+enemies to society naturally alarms the German middle-class man and
+prejudices him against the proletariat. Passions and destructive
+instincts, instilled by long suffering, he is apt to regard as human
+nature from which the worst must be expected. This explains many
+of Nordau’s contradictions. He wishes to abolish religion because
+its abolition would glorify science, but he wishes to retain the
+marriage laws because he fears that without them an unspeakable state
+of immorality would ensue. He denies a divine plan in creation which
+might account for the moral instinct in man, but he does not believe
+that morality has sprung from the only remaining source, namely, man’s
+experience of the advantages of morality. His habit of bowing to
+authorities causes him to believe that morality and a pure family life
+are the result of the marriage laws, and not that the marriage laws are
+the result of man’s love of morality and of a pure family life.
+
+The Norwegian is born and brought up in a country where liberty has
+been the basis and safeguard of moral order; where few police are found
+in the cities, and where, throughout vast tracts of country, man’s good
+instincts are the only police; where the peasant and working classes
+have no desire or intention to attack the wealthy; where the people
+are religious because they are honest and not honest because they
+are religious; where self-esteem and justice would take the place of
+religion were it to crumble. The Norwegian has noticed that the poor
+are more generous than the rich, that the people are more honest than
+their officials, that the free man and woman are more moral than the
+tied ones, and that liberty elevates and oppressive laws degrade. If
+the Norwegian seems to attach little importance to legal marriage, it
+is because, in cleansing it from mercenary considerations and other low
+motives, he hopes to base it on such foundations as moral instinct,
+love, self-respect, honour, and possibly on religious belief, and
+thereby make it a life-long reality. It is not to gratify low instincts
+and licentious passions, as Nordau would have it, that he wishes for
+reform. He may be mistaken in his motives, but this is no excuse for
+attributing vile motives to him.
+
+Nordau is not the only one who is puzzled by the many peculiarities
+of Ibsen’s plays. Like him, many English theatre-goers wonder why
+his best types and his leading characters, as a rule, are so void of
+nobility, fine feeling, and high principles; why he always places his
+scenes in small towns, and not among the romantically wild country
+and the picturesque peasants, as Björnsen and Jonas Lie have often
+done; why he represents the so-called respectable and official classes
+in so unfavourable a light; why his women seem to be morally and
+intellectually superior to his men.
+
+In order to elucidate these questions and many other peculiarities
+in Ibsen’s plays and characters, as well as some of the reasons why
+a German critic should disapprove of Ibsen, it should be remembered
+that in Norway two cultures have met and struggled—the German and
+Scandinavian—but have not blended.
+
+Of the Scandinavian nations, the Norwegians may be considered as the
+extreme type. While they differ from the Danes and Swedes considerably,
+they differ still more from the Germans. Their characteristics arise
+not only from race, but largely from surroundings and modes of life.
+The genuine Norwegian people have of old lived scattered over a vast
+area of country, separated by high fjelds and broad fjords, foaming
+torrents and dense woods, only sparingly communicating with each other,
+and still less with strangers, and hearing little of the outside world,
+they have grown into a silent, thinking, and deep-feeling nation.
+They have inherited from the old Viking times an unquenchable love of
+liberty, and all their institutions, their customs, their principles,
+have developed in freedom, and such virtues as they have and of
+which they are most proud, are the outcome of personal independence.
+Accustomed to personal danger on the snow-clad mountain-paths, in the
+vast forests, and in small open boats upon the stormy fjords, they
+have acquired an extraordinary degree of self-reliance. Unused to,
+and distrustful of, foreign ways, and seldom successful in foreign
+countries, they harbour an intense love of Norway and for anything
+Norwegian; and while they may conceitedly think that everything that
+is Norwegian is great and noble, they certainly endeavour to put a
+stamp of nobility and greatness on everything that is Norwegian. They
+are proud, generous, loyal, hospitable, and can never be persuaded
+that lowly circumstances or poverty could possibly be an excuse for an
+unroyal conduct.
+
+Born and bred amid snow-capped mountains, deep valleys, perpendicular
+rocks, a jagged, stormy coast—the whole wearing an air of solemn
+and lonely grandeur—the Norwegians are a meditative and highly
+imaginative people. The stirring natural phenomena peculiar to the
+country cannot fail to stimulate their imagination. The snow-storms,
+the ice-avalanches, the light summer nights, the brilliant moonlight
+diffused over the abrupt mountains, the dark forests and the glittering
+fjords, the raging storms from the Atlantic, the flaming midnight
+winter skies, the sunsets which so wondrously illumine the whole
+coast-line—such scenes, such pictures, sink into their minds and
+quicken their emotions.
+
+What wonder, then, if they are full of folk-lore and the supernatural
+has for them an irresistible charm? They are superstitious, and believe
+that their actions and lives are influenced by gnomes, fairies, and
+trolls. Old heathen ceremonies for the propitiation of the spirits are
+still in vogue. They are deeply moved by music and poetry, and have a
+strong predilection for all that is heroic and great.
+
+It is not surprising that in German translations of Norwegian
+writings—for which Nordau blames Ibsen’s degeneracy—adjectives should
+have taken a new meaning; for in Norway they have been influenced by
+nature’s grandeur. When Norwegians say “great,” they mean great as the
+fjeld, great as the boundless ocean; when they say “silent,” they mean
+silent as the wood in the short summer night. Consequently, when a
+man, an action, a thing, is described to them, they are apt to measure
+it by the standard of nature’s extremes around them. They are always
+disappointed when they behold the wonders of civilization described to
+them as great and wonderful. They would call the ruins of the Coliseum
+mean, and think no more of the pyramids than of ant-hills. Their ideas
+of a great man could probably never be realized, and their wonder is
+considerable at finding the mighty lords of England so unlike demi-gods.
+
+It was the Hanseatic League that brought this stern and haughty people
+into contact with German culture. This remarkable federation of
+enterprising German merchants discovered that profits could be made out
+of the rough products of Norway, and they founded a German colony in
+Bergen, which rose to considerable importance. German traders gradually
+settled in all the other important Norwegian centres, and the whole
+commercial life of Norway became more or less Germanized.
+
+At the time Germany was far ahead of Norway in everything appertaining
+to industry, and was already then bent on doing business with foreign
+countries by offering them a mass of German manufactured goods of
+attractive appearance, but of little value, and not indispensable
+to a people like the Norwegians. Competition was already severe in
+Germany, money had acquired an immense importance, success in life
+was most easily attained by intense application to business, saving,
+and grinding. The German traders stood in the same relation to the
+Norwegians as that in which English traders stand to the native races
+whom they first approach for business purposes. The traders and agents
+who went as far as Norway—a long distance before the days of steamers
+and railways—were daring and reckless men, bent upon making money,
+just as the pioneers of British commerce were and are in Africa. What
+interested them was not the great and noble aspect of the Norwegian
+character, but the desire on the part of these people to buy gewgaws,
+and the facility with which they parted with their money and their
+goods.
+
+Though Norway is a poor country, it yielded to the not over-ambitious
+Germans a satisfactory harvest, and a great number of them settled
+permanently in the Norwegian towns. They became sufficiently numerous
+and influential to impress a German stamp on Norwegian urban life, on
+the people who worked and lived with them; and these became Germanized
+to no small extent.
+
+These middle-class Germans were no doubt excellent, respectable people
+in their way, but they had little in common with the Norwegian country
+folk. They were better educated, they had more worldly wisdom, their
+experience in their own cities had trained them to subject their
+emotional nature to their intellect. In order to push on to success in
+their German communities, where antagonistic and powerful magnates left
+but little scope for daring and straightforwardness, they had learned
+to value diplomacy and discretion.
+
+They had no sympathies with the natives, whom they regarded as
+semi-barbarians, and all their intercourse with them was diplomatic and
+insincere, and their sole motive was profit. The honesty, the pride,
+the generosity of the Norwegian peasantry were well known to them, but
+they took advantage of these characteristics, which they regarded as
+expensive luxuries.
+
+The cities however became the seats of the educational establishments,
+and the Norwegian youth who were intended for the professions came to
+the cities and mingled there with the German element. On the other
+hand, the sons of the citizens went into the country in professional
+capacities and created there a middle class strongly impregnated with
+German culture. In this manner a sharp line of demarcation arose
+between the upper and middle classes on the one hand and the peasantry
+on the other, the former being strongly influenced by German culture,
+the latter clinging tenaciously to the Norwegian.
+
+It is no slur on the German character and German culture to say that it
+involved degeneration in no small degree. It partook of the drawbacks
+of our civilization, and what happened in Norway has happened in every
+country where modern civilization has come into contact with nations
+whose virtues and noble qualities have rested as much on ignorance and
+the absence of temptation as on inborn worth. Thanks to the historical
+development we have indicated, the Norwegian upper and middle
+classes, as well as the whole of the urban populations, developed
+characteristics which drew upon them the contempt of the peasants.
+Their eagerness for profit, their love of money, their indifference
+to the great, the noble, and the beautiful, their cringing attitude
+towards authorities and towards the wealthy, their sacrifice of public
+interests to private welfare, their susceptibility to the influence of
+foreign fashion, manners, and vices,—all this tended to lower the upper
+and middle classes in the eyes of the peasants.
+
+When the phenomenon witnessed in all civilized countries—the
+impoverishment of the masses—made its appearance, public-spirited
+men began to inquire as to the causes. It was in the middle of this
+century, when a spirit of revolution and reform was abroad, that the
+yearning for a better state of things began to manifest itself. There
+were no aristocracy, no established Church, and no privileged class to
+blame for the unsatisfactory state of the country, and consequently
+the investigators turned their attention to the ethical condition of
+the people themselves. Comparison between the olden and the modern
+times was instituted. The discrepancy between the two classes became
+striking, and the corrupting influences were traced to the towns. A
+strong desire to revive and strengthen the old culture took possession
+of many men and women, who, though educated, had a keen sympathy with
+the peasants. To found the future development of Norway on the basis of
+the old Norwegian culture became the object of a new national party,
+including some of the best elements of the Norwegian nation. These
+enthusiasts found their expression in composers like Tjerulf, and in
+the writings of men like Björnstjerne Björnsen, Jonas Lie, and Ibsen.
+
+The greatest mistake of these writers—the one that has entirely escaped
+Nordau—is their belief that a nation can realize its best aspirations
+by methods that have utterly failed in the celestial empire of China.
+The hope of preserving the grand feature of the old Norwegian culture
+by exclusiveness, by isolating Norway, and by offering a stubborn
+resistance to foreign influence, be it good or bad—in this they
+have set themselves an impossible task. A thorough national life and
+development produced by such artificial means would, even if attended
+by the highest degree of success, partake of a theatrical nature. The
+more it succeeded, the more it would attract foreigners, and features
+which in olden times sprang from the character of the people and from
+natural circumstances, would fall into the line of carnivals organized
+at the expense of the municipalities and of railways to Alpine summits.
+
+These Norwegian enthusiasts have yet to learn that though foreign
+tourists, foreign literature, and foreign art place temptations in the
+way of their single-minded nation, there are in every country large
+numbers of people who fight for progress as sedulously as themselves,
+and whose co-operation would outweigh the dangers of European
+modernity. In the old culture, in the past life of nations, especially
+in nations like Norway, there are great virtues and noble features
+which may well serve as a goal. But to again render them a reality, to
+base them on lasting foundations, a people must pass through the fiery
+trials of modern temptations, and, instead of yielding plastically to
+outward circumstances, must shape their destiny through sheer strength
+of character. What Norway has of good and noble she should give to
+other nations, and freely accept their best from them. This is an
+exchange which, like mercy, blesses both giver and receiver.
+
+Though the struggle against degeneration is, in Norway, hampered by the
+national prejudices of the leaders, it is still progressing. Ibsen’s
+mission in the fight is to ruthlessly expose the stagnant pools of
+corruption. He finds them in the cities and among the middle class,
+where the old German Philistine features have been most distinctly
+preserved. Many of his characters bear German names, and those who
+take the part of the traditional villain wear often the garb of that
+respectable, common-sense, matter-of-fact, self-absorbed German whom
+Nordau would exempt from any stigma of degeneration.
+
+Thorvald Helmer, in _The Doll’s House_, has, or would have, the
+sympathies of millions, not in Germany alone, but in England and
+everywhere, of people whose emotional nature, whose love for the high
+and noble, has been compressed by that worldly wisdom which in our
+large crowded cities becomes prudence, and to obey which is often a
+duty—people who are not aware that it is not only possible, but even
+easy, to be both diplomatic and discreet in obedience to noble emotions
+and exalted aspirations, and that to root these out of our nature is
+degeneration.
+
+Helmer, in his sleek reasonableness, is an excellent type of meanness,
+and his character is brought out in a consummately artistic way. It
+exasperates Nordau that this man, who comes so near his standard of
+sound-mindedness, should inspire in audiences all the world over,
+especially in the female element, a sense of aversion, apparently
+without any effort on the part of the author. Helmer has a keen eye
+for the main chance. His reputation and his position have his first
+consideration. He trembles at the idea of fighting the world without
+them. His love of his wife is the quintessence of selfishness. He
+loves her in the two only ways which Nordau thinks reasonable in a
+human being, as a companion, as a pleasant thing to toy with; and as
+the female of his race, at such periods when he, as the normal man of
+Nordau, is actuated by animal impulses—for example, under the influence
+of champagne. Of the pure love for a woman which in a man’s heart
+remains as a spring of living water, giving him a pang of joy each
+time his thoughts revert to her, and which casts a rosy tint of poetry
+over life, nay even over death—of such love Helmer is as incapable as
+Nordau’s normal man.
+
+Nora yearns for the higher, nobler love, and her lack of experience in
+character-study has left her in doubt, though in hope, regarding her
+husband. The moment comes when she gains certitude; and when Helmer
+reveals himself in his Philistine hideousness, her spirit revolts.
+
+Though of course exaggerated for the sake of dramatic effect, she
+is a good type of an intelligent and emotional Norwegian woman.
+Norwegian girls receive a great deal of instruction, and as they have
+no professions to prepare for, their education is more literary and
+artistic than that of the men. They read voraciously the Norwegian
+modern writers, and sympathize consequently more than the men with
+the extreme nationalists. They are often strongly possessed by the
+_Aand_—that indefinable yearning for all that is great and noble—in
+Norwegian culture already alluded to. They have a fair knowledge of
+foreign literature, and read a great many English novels. With their
+admiration for English pure love, for English home life, grafted on the
+grand aspirations which the new _Aand_ fosters, they may well appear
+uncanny and troll-like to the prosaic German.
+
+We trust that the struggle between the Norwegian and the German
+cultures, of which we have endeavoured to give an idea, will make it
+easier for students of Ibsen to understand his characters. It is in
+_The Doll’s House_ where the two inimical cultures are most clearly
+personified, the old Norwegian culture being represented by the
+uncompromising, impulsive, and intense Nora, and the imported German
+culture by the pedantic, commonplace, and animal Helmer.
+
+If our interpretation is right, it is impossible that Ibsen’s work
+could in any way indicate degeneration. It ought, on the contrary,
+to be evident that his pieces, rendering objective as they do
+the struggle for a higher and better life, based not on pedantic
+considerations of immediate and unworthy advantages, but on the noble
+impulses of a strong and healthy nation, are at once a summons to rise
+higher, and signals pointing the way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+_RICHARD WAGNER_
+
+
+We all have met with people who, without being degenerates to any
+great extent repeat stories of their own invention so persistently,
+that they end by believing in them. In this kind of folly, if folly
+it be, there is a great deal of method when indulged in by people
+who are anxious, for some reason or another, that their views should
+_nolens volens_ be accepted by others. When one comes to deal with the
+intellectual development of a nation or a race, and wishes to prove
+certain forms of progress or retrogression, it is half the battle
+to bring your opponent to believe in the existence of some special,
+well-defined psychological phenomenon or social tendency, and to give
+it a high-sounding name. What would astrology have been without the
+horoscope, or alchemy without the philosopher’s stone? What would
+modern statecraft be without such terms as “foreign competition” and
+“international jealousy”? What would German socialism be without the
+term “revolutionary socialism”? What would bi-metallism be without
+the phrase, “the stability of the currency”? And what would Nordau’s
+theory of degeneration be without the “mystic movement”?
+
+He takes for granted that there is such a thing as mysticism, as well
+as that it constitutes a movement, and then endeavours to explain
+everything as partaking of or resulting from it. According to him,
+Wagnerism is the reappearance in Germany of that romanticism which
+originated there, and afterwards travelled through France and England.
+It reappeared, according to him, through Wagner’s degeneration, and
+spread in virtue of the degeneration of his contemporaries. He says
+that he finds in Wagner a greater abundance of degeneration than in
+all the other degenerates put together. “The stigmata of his morbid
+condition,” he says, “are united in him in the most complete and most
+luxuriant development.”
+
+This is a bold assertion, and will appear bolder yet to any one who
+has read his chapter in _The Richard Wagner Cult_. Wagner’s dislike
+of the Jews, which Nordau calls anti-semitism, and his views on
+social questions, which our alienist calls Anarchism, are pointed
+out as unfailing stigmata of degeneration. One of the methods of our
+alienist is to notice and make much of certain extreme opinions in
+people who are actually made, or who have made themselves, intensely
+objectionable, and then to point out that similar opinions and ideas
+are present in the mind of some celebrity, and then to draw the
+conclusion that this celebrity must be on the road to madness. Either
+he does not see himself, or he trusts his readers will not see, that
+by such methods every man in the world might be proved to some extent
+deranged. He forgets that exaggerated virtues become vices, and that
+some of the most prominent men in the world have had idiosyncrasies
+to which they have even given considerable play without at all coming
+within the range of degeneration.
+
+The anti-semitism in Germany, which Nordau ascribes to
+degeneration—probably with the approval of the majority of Jews—in that
+country, as well as in Russia, France, and the United States, springs
+from causes so patent, that no man who aspires to be considered an
+acute observer of his time should ignore them.
+
+Let us instance Russia first—a country where the latest wave of
+anti-semitism first took a violent form. Can any one who is acquainted
+with the typical financial history of the Russian villages wonder
+that the Jews in Russia should be looked upon as a scourge? What has
+happened in thousands of such villages is this. An energetic, clever
+Jew settles amongst the Russian _moujiks_, who combine thriftlessness
+and love of an easy life with many of the good qualities and innocence
+of primitive races. The Jew is bent on making money, and caring little
+about the opinion the community may form of him, and too brave to fear
+their enmity, he has no hesitation in taking up any kind of business,
+however unpopular it may render him. He willingly becomes a publican,
+a pawnbroker, a land-grabber, and, in combination with other Jews, a
+speculator and cornerer. His attention to business, his self-denial,
+his hardheartedness to his customers, his knowledge of the tricks of
+trades and finance, the ready support he gets from his co-religionists
+in other districts in carrying out his purposes, however derogatory
+they may be to the community—all this soon renders him the master of
+the situation. The stranger, who at first in such a friendly spirit
+invited his customer to drink his _vodka_ and borrow his money, is soon
+transformed into a harsh tyrant who, by hook or by crook, came into
+possession of all the belongings of the villagers, and calmly makes
+use of their destitution to extort from them their future earnings.
+The Jews, as a rule, on the one hand, and the Russians on the other,
+form diametrically opposite views on this social phenomenon. The Jews
+say, and Nordau evidently sides with them, that this successful village
+tyrant has done nothing to deserve blame. He has only been more frugal,
+more thrifty, and more intelligent than the Russians, who were bound by
+their inferior character to go to the wall; and that if Russia hates
+the Jews, it is with that hatred against successful men common in
+human failures.
+
+The ruined Russian peasants simply know that the Jew who came among
+them is rich and they are poor, that what used to be their possessions
+form his wealth, and that the means he has used to obtain it would not
+have been used by them under any circumstances. They think they have
+been robbed, and that they and their descendants would be robbed by
+the Jew and his descendants if they cannot be freed from him. Hence
+anti-semitism in Russia.
+
+Nordau has no right to call the anti-semitists degenerate, even
+though they be wrong in their logic, because he is wrong himself, and
+he cannot point to ruined homes and wrecked lives as a substantial
+foundation for his opinion.
+
+In Germany the Jews play the same part, though under modified
+conditions. Though bad, German laws and German officialism are better
+than those of Russia, and the German people do not so easily fall a
+prey to the strong-minded Jew. But, on the other hand, the Jews make
+themselves obnoxious in other ways, both in Germany and Austria. Here
+they act everywhere as trade-spoilers. The Jew undersells everybody. He
+stops short of nothing, save breaking the law, to extend his business.
+He is obsequious to those in power and in wealth, but relentlessly
+hard to competitors and to creditors. Many of them will take the
+greatest possible advantage of other people’s, especially Christians’,
+misfortunes, and will gain their end by deliberately wounding other
+people’s feelings. It is the Jews who generally pay the lowest wages,
+and who are found in the ranks of the sweaters.
+
+We hasten to state that there are in Germany a great many exceptions to
+the types here referred to. But either they are not numerous enough, or
+the Jew must possess some inability to show his better qualities, for
+no one acquainted with the circumstances in Germany would deny that the
+Jew-haters there look upon their enemies in exactly the light we have
+described.
+
+But this is not all. Accusations are levelled against the Jews which
+are partly untrue, or else vastly exaggerated, and those who make them
+should be called upon to prove their statements. Whether they may be
+able to do this or not, the fact remains that the Jew-hating Germans
+believe that the Jews have formed one vast conspiracy, the object of
+which is to secure for the Jews large advantages at the expense of the
+Christians. It is alleged that the methods employed are as follows: The
+Jews are supposed to meet in secret conclave, in which those of them
+who desire to accomplish any special aim state it to their brethren,
+who then combine in assisting them. Such aims may be the possession
+of a house or a shop in the hands of a Christian, the ruin of some
+obnoxious competitor, the miscarriage of some public auction of goods
+coveted by some Jew, and so on. With such ideas prevailing, how is it
+possible to ascribe Jew hatred to degeneracy? Such logic is all the
+more surprising as it remains a palpable fact that the fortunes of the
+Jewish houses are growing apace, that Jews seem to succeed no matter
+what they undertake, that they certainly are more charitable to their
+co-religionists than to Christians, and for that matter than Christians
+are to Christians, while at the same time poverty and misery are on the
+increase among the Christian masses.
+
+Nordau does a bad service to the Jews of Germany when he attempts
+to lay the blame for anti-semitism exclusively at the door of the
+Christians and calls them degenerates, while he entirely exempts the
+Jews. This partiality, coupled with his contempt for the masses and his
+belief in government by the more strong-minded men, points to a future
+state in Germany in which the Jews should be the ruling aristocracy.
+His unfairness thus, instead of abating the persecution against the
+Jews, might easily be construed into an excuse for a more bitter
+anti-semitism.
+
+This error of his is due to his besetting habit of taking his
+postulates from doubtful authorities and of drawing illogical
+conclusions. It is a common thing for men who have been successful
+in one branch of knowledge, and who are regarded as authorities in
+a specialty by others, to jump at rash conclusions with regard to
+subjects on which authorities differ or do not exist. This is exactly
+what Nordau does when he comes to consider facts which cannot be
+rightly understood without a clear insight into sociology and other
+social sciences. He then evinces impossible opinions, and gives us to
+understand that he has a ready-made scheme for reconstructing society
+on a new and perfect plan.
+
+It is not difficult to see what this plan is. It is quasi-Collectivism
+and Communism. He wishes the State to become the universal heir
+of all fortunes and the universal benefactor. The absurdity and
+impracticability of this scheme—which, by the way, is always the very
+one that first enters the head of a young student who tackles social
+science for the first time—are obvious. As however he does not insist
+upon his scheme in his volume _Degeneration_, it would be out of place
+to explain its hollowness here. We have referred to it simply to show
+that his superficiality regarding the anti-semitic question is not
+incidental. It will be evident to anybody who tackles this question
+with an unprejudiced mind that the Christians in Russia and Germany are
+utterly at fault when they believe that they can escape from their
+troubles by persecuting Jews, and also that the Jews are utterly at
+fault when they attribute anti-semitism to the jealousy and wickedness
+of the Christians. Both these parties, as well as Nordau himself,
+allow their feelings instead of their intelligence to determine these
+questions. But they are not necessarily degenerate.
+
+The true explanation of the imbroglio is as follows: The Jewish race,
+which might have acquired a few unpleasant characteristics by no fault
+of their own but through a cruel and unjust persecution for centuries,
+is a highly-gifted one, distinguishing itself by strong-mindedness,
+great will-power, remarkable powers of endurance, morality, and
+singleness of purpose. Deprived, in a great number of countries
+of social rights and the privileges of citizenship, they have for
+centuries found only one way open to them by which they could attain to
+independence, security, and consideration—the accumulation of wealth.
+In modern times, when social institutions and laws tend to render
+wealth almost omnipotent, its acquisition has become to this people of
+greater importance than ever. Success in a business, however small,
+may mean millions in the future, while failure may result in life-long
+misery. Consequently, the Jews apply themselves to their trades or
+professions with an energy and assiduity such as few races can command.
+
+They therefore represent a power in the development of humanity
+which is bound to produce far-reaching effects. Whether these will
+constitute a blessing or a curse to the nations among whom the Jews
+live and work depends entirely on the institutions and the laws of
+those countries. If these are such as to render the oppression of the
+poor, the workers, the borrowers, the tenants—in fact, all the sections
+of society on which the Jews now batten,—a condition for the thriving
+of the capitalists, the employers, the lenders, the tenants, and the
+fortunate classes in general—if the laws are of this description, then
+the Jews will be conspicuous as the oppressors of others. But if, on
+the contrary, the laws and institutions of the countries are such as to
+render the success of the upper classes and leaders of trade, industry,
+and finance dependent on the welfare of the workers, then the Jews will
+be the most liberal lenders, the most generous employers, and the most
+accommodating landlords. In fact, the question resolves itself simply
+into one of demand and supply; as long as there is a greater demand
+for Jews’ services than the Jews are able to supply, the latter will
+dominate; but when there are more services offered on the part of the
+Jews than the people can avail themselves of, these can dictate terms
+to the Jews. And this relation of demand and supply depends on laws and
+institutions.
+
+Even if Nordau’s prejudices prevented him from taking this view of
+the anti-semitic question—which is not only the correct one but which
+greatly facilitates the solution of the question, and thus would
+prevent the disgraceful persecution which in many countries threatens
+to become more serious—he might have found, by simply looking at the
+actualities, in the different countries that anti-semitism prevails
+in an inverse ratio to good government. He could not have asked for
+a better proof of the fact that laws and institutions are at fault
+and not the Jews or the Christians. To take only the two extremes:
+in Russia, where the Government, from the people’s point of view,
+is probably the worst in Europe, anti-semitism is most vehement; in
+England, where the Government is more influenced by the consideration
+of the good of the people than in any other country, there is scarcely
+any animosity against the Jews, and this in spite of the efforts of
+certain politicians to promote it.
+
+The reception of Dr. Stöcker, when he attempted to address a public
+meeting in London in favour of anti-semitism, would have convinced
+Nordau, had he been present, what a poor chance anti-semitism has
+in a country where the working classes are free to follow those
+instincts which Nordau fears so much. We may relate that hardly had
+the proceedings begun when the hall was filled by labourers, who,
+contrary to their habit on such occasions, had not changed their dress,
+and who hooted Dr. Stöcker, stormed the platform, overpowered the
+anti-semitists, and cleared the hall.
+
+In face of the fact that anti-semitic questions turn so entirely on
+prejudices and mistakes, one cannot surely accuse Wagner of madness
+because he sided with what may be called a national party, and approved
+of a movement the object of which was to stay the progressive influence
+of an alien race over the destiny of the Fatherland.
+
+In several places in his work Nordau insists upon considering the
+anarchist tendencies of our age as among the stigmata of degeneration.
+If he were right, we should be face to face with a calamity likely to
+end in the brutalization or the annihilation of our race. For Anarchism
+in some form of other is certainly spreading rapidly. That there is
+Anarchism and Anarchism seems of little importance to our alienist
+in his eagerness to draw his preconceived conclusions. He reasons
+as usual. Starting from the hypothesis that some of the criminal
+Anarchists were, to some extent, mentally deranged and morally weak,
+he arrives at the conclusion that Wagner was a degenerate, because he
+shared to some extent with the Anarchists the hatred of our present
+social system and of the injurious effects it produces on the masses of
+the people.
+
+Though Nordau dwells far more lengthily on poetry, and art, and cognate
+subjects than on the graver question of Anarchism, there is no point on
+which it behoves us better to set him and his readers right than that
+of the relation between Anarchism and degeneration.
+
+The Anarchist is not a cause. He is an effect. There is a feeling in
+the consciousness of almost every human being, be he a believer in a
+divine religion or in Nordau’s religion of humanity, that our race is
+destined to a high degree of development, and to a far larger sphere
+of happiness than now falls to the lot of most of us. This yearning
+for happiness, for elevation, is not only a feeling but a conviction
+consequent upon our knowledge of the past stages of the development of
+man.
+
+There was a time when fervent religious beliefs induced patience and
+resignation under suffering, and when our future destiny was left in
+the hands of Providence. But the French encyclopædists, and after them
+the modern scientists, have done their best to undermine this belief
+and to show us that the destiny of future generations will largely
+depend upon us and themselves, that science is placing in our hands an
+ever-growing control over the forces of nature, and that if humanity
+suffers it is because the present generation has not the moral courage
+to throw off religious scruples and boldly shape their own destiny.
+
+These doctrines, in unison with the general progressive spirit of
+the age, led to revolutions and political reforms. In the absence
+of a providence the nations shifted their faith to constitutional
+governments. But the new faith did not last long. The more democratic
+the governments were the more they applied the principles of
+Collectivism—they yielded to those instincts which Nordau calls the
+social instincts. Under the pretext of exercising paternal kindness
+towards the people, the governments demanded paternal rights.
+Communistic and socialistic ideas spread among the masses, who, well
+aware that a providence without power would be no providence at all,
+wanted to render the State omnipotent. When however socialistic
+features were introduced into the constitutions, matters did not mend,
+but the freedom of the individual was more and more infringed.
+
+When detailed schemes of further socialistic development were made
+public, a great many freedom-loving men and women beheld with terror
+that the chief cause of the favour with which the progressing socialism
+was regarded was to be found in the plan of complete subjection of the
+individual under government.
+
+This discovery naturally caused a reaction in favour of liberty. Those
+who became Anarchists felt keenly the claws of the State upon them, and
+they foresaw that more socialism would aggravate their grievances. They
+took for granted that humanity had now tried all forms of government
+and that they had all failed, and that the salvation of the race could
+only be found in absolute personal freedom.
+
+The first extreme Russian Nihilists paved the way for the Anarchist
+movement in Europe. They, like their first followers in France, had
+only one idea, that of destroying at all costs the present order of
+things, and thus clearing the ground for a new system to grow up
+free from the tyranny of governments, aristocracies, militarism,
+landlordism, and capitalism.
+
+They saw that an immense mass of poor, hard-working, honest people
+with but a small chance of happiness for themselves, but imbued with a
+strong desire to see the whole of humanity happy, were oppressed by a
+small number of selfish people who arrogated to themselves the lion’s
+share of the good things of life. They found that this band of selfish
+people attained to their immense power by a social system of slow and
+gradual growth. Tracing all the troubles to the few egotists whom they
+regarded as criminals, they imagined that by destroying them and the
+system, the unselfish and humanitarian aspirations of the masses would
+blossom forth free and unvitiated.
+
+The Anarchists were thus the backbone of the religion of humanity, only
+their faith was stronger than that of Nordau, for they were willing to
+sacrifice all, including life, for the good of the race.
+
+If these people were, and are, degenerate, then every mistake in
+reasoning is a sign of degeneration, and faith in humanity and its
+destiny is the beginning of madness.
+
+When Nordau designates Wagner as an Anarchist, he evidently ignores
+the fact that there are two kinds of Anarchists, the violent ones just
+described, and the moderate or constitutional ones. The latter call
+themselves simply Anarchists. Their numbers are growing rapidly in
+France, as well as in England, and in both these countries Nordau would
+be surprised at their moderation and common sense. The movement they
+represent is a reaction against the socialistic tendencies, and their
+programme is not violence and destruction, but the gradual abolition of
+all harmful and useless legislation. It is true that so far they have
+no precise policy. But such special measures as are advocated—partly
+in France, partly in England, and partly in the United States—seem to
+be founded on clear and thorough reasoning, and when their leading
+principle is compared with the shallow chatter of Socialists and
+Communists of every school it appears as wisdom itself.
+
+What all these people believe, what they long for, and what they hope
+for, is exactly what Wagner believed, longed for, and hoped for. He
+saw in Philistinism, in official tyranny, in police government, and in
+legal trammels standing in the way of trades, industries, and arts,
+so many impediments to the realization of the best instincts and the
+highest aspirations of humanity. Whatever opinions he held, they can
+only be judged by the few exasperated exclamations he gave vent to with
+regard to the corruption of modern society. It is not likely that he,
+with such immense works on hand, should have given sufficient attention
+to social questions to allow him to express himself in learned terms.
+But what he said and wrote on the subject shows clearly that the
+foundation of his social views was trust in humanity, in the sanctity
+of nature, and in the ennobling power of liberty. Can any one with a
+true love of art imagine an artist without such a creed?
+
+What was more natural than that, fêted and praised as he was, he should
+have a good opinion of his own talent and consider himself a great man?
+If for this he deserved to be suspected of megalomania, what are we to
+say about other celebrities, mediocrities, and nonentities, who imagine
+themselves demi-gods because they happen to be the sons of their
+fathers, to be born in purple, or to have a title attached to their
+name?
+
+Nordau is extremely hard on those who have sung the praises of Wagner,
+and insinuates that they have been actuated by base motives when they
+have not been absolutely degenerated. According to him, admiration
+for Wagner’s works is a sure sign of mental unsoundness. And yet this
+same Nordau finds reasons for praising Wagner’s genius which a host of
+his panegyrists have overlooked. He says: “Wagner, as a dramatist is
+really an historical painter of the highest rank.... This [a fresco
+painter] he is in a degree never yet attained by any other dramatic
+author in the whole world of literature. Every action embodies itself
+for him in a series of most imposing pictures, which, when they are
+composed as Wagner has seen them with his inner eye, must overwhelm
+and enrapture the beholder. The reception of the guests in the hall of
+Wartburg; the arrival and departure of Lohengrin in the boat drawn by
+the swan; the gambols of the Rhine maidens in the river; the defiling
+of the gods over the rainbow-bridge towards the castle of Asgard;
+the bursting of the moonlight into Hunding’s hut; the ride of the
+Walküre over the battle-field; Brunhilde in the circle of fire; the
+final scene in ‘Götterdämmerung,’ where Brunhilde flings herself on to
+her horse and leaps into the midst of the funeral pyre, while Hagan
+throws himself into the surging Rhine, and the heavens are aflame with
+the glow from the burning palace of the gods; the love-feast of the
+knights in the castle of the Grail; the obsequies of Titurel and the
+healing of Amfortas—these are pictures to which nothing in art hitherto
+approaches.”
+
+It is strange that Nordau in his love for authorities should quote
+Nietzsche—a German author whom, in another part of his book, he makes
+out to be a hopeless degenerate and charlatan—in support of his views
+of Wagner! But Nietzsche has written a book called _Der Fall Wagner_,
+and that suffices. This Nietzsche calls Wagner a comedian, but Nordau
+insists upon his being a painter, and that “if he had been a healthy
+genius, endowed with intellectual equilibrium, that is what he would
+undoubtedly have become. His inner vision would have forced the brush
+into his hand, and would have constrained him to use it on canvas by
+means of colour.”
+
+When Nordau says a painter, he evidently restricts the meaning of the
+word to its narrowest sense, and makes it difficult to at all class a
+man who, like Wagner, evolved and produced pictures of such grandeur
+and such beauty as those our alienist so well describes. The fact that
+the artist uses actual perspective, real draperies, living people,
+actual fire, that he selects his own light, and personally arranges
+this mass of objects so as to exactly reproduce the daring conception
+of his mind—all this should surely not be cited as so many proofs
+of the unhealthiness of his genius. Would he have been a greater, a
+sounder genius, had his ability been restricted to sketching and
+colouring his conceptions on cardboard or canvas? Should then a
+painter’s genius be confined to the production of pictures suitable
+only to decorate Philistine houses and official galleries? Because
+Nordau’s pedantic tendencies have formed such a Philistine idea about
+the art of painting, is it right to deny true genius to a man who has
+produced unapproachable pictures on a colossal scale, not by the means
+of brushes and pigments, but by materials infinitely more difficult to
+handle?
+
+But these masterpieces of painting do not alone bear witness to
+Wagner’s powers. His paintings are not fixed; they are movable. They
+represent actually an enchanting succession of pictures. The true
+genius _à la_ Nordau gives us the pictures of figures in motion that
+never move, and tires us with a Quintus Curtius suspended in mid-air
+half way down a chasm, until we wish him at the bottom of it. Such a
+moving picture of Wagner’s is not thrust upon us suddenly in the manner
+of gallery pictures, but is presented to us as the fit illustration
+of a beautiful poem, and often as the climax of a series of other
+pictures which explain it, relieve it, and work up our emotions for its
+reception.
+
+To this must be added that the same painter-genius, the same dramatist,
+the same poet, has created the wondrous and enchanting music which
+accompanies the poem and the pictures. And because he has done all
+this, because he has not followed the routine of other German painters,
+because he has dared to and succeeded in transporting his audiences
+into the highest possible region of imagination, and given them a
+glimpse of real creative powers, he is to be classed as a degenerate;
+to rank among those of whom humanity is ashamed, and whose degraded
+state is to warn us of the coming decay of our race.
+
+Can any one with a grain of humour read Nordau’s attacks on Wagner
+without imagining an irascible toy-terrier barking at the moon?
+
+Nordau probably feels that Wagner’s anti-semitism, his Anarchism,
+and his ability to create transcendentally beautiful pictures are
+stigmata which hardly any of his readers would accept as such, and
+consequently feels impelled to make much of what it pleases him to
+call Wagner’s eroticism. Here, as everywhere in his book, in order
+to impress his readers he counts on the mystical effect which the
+use of a high-sounding scientific word generally produces upon
+unscientific readers. A favourite expression of his, when speaking of
+some psychological phenomenon, is that science knows all about it,
+and he calls it megalomania, graphomania, echolalia, or some such
+name. With people who have only a superficial knowledge of science,
+and who stand in awe of its achievements, such nouns stand for a
+special definite thing, thoroughly investigated and explained. They
+do not know that these scientific names have been invented, not in
+order to designate something real and palpable, but simply for the
+purpose of bringing order into an arbitrary classification, invented
+so that the exchange of ideas may be facilitated on the subject thus
+treated. Such scientific terms might even be classed among mystical
+symbols, in so far as they often stand for something of which hardly
+anything is known, but at the same time serve the same useful end
+as algebraical figures. Psychologists are prone to speak of a man’s
+consciousness, though scarcely two scientific men would agree as to
+what it is. But this does not prevent them from dividing consciousness
+up into divisions and sub-divisions, all with their special names, in
+order to be able to express their ideas in words. The unscientific
+reader should bear in mind that consciousness has never been under
+the microscope, or in the crucible, and that the classification of
+the scientists has no counterpart in consciousness itself, and that
+this remains the impalpable and indivisible _Ego_, with its infinite
+number of attributes inseparably commingled. All the different states,
+conditions, faculties, perfections, and defects of the _Ego_ are
+of course known only by the results they produce in the physical
+world, and it is by these results that they have been classified.
+It is evident that such methods of classification should leave an
+immense margin for those who wish, or feel impelled by their own
+idiosyncrasies, to misuse scientific terms designating psychological
+phenomena.
+
+Nordau indulges in this misuse of scientific terms to the fullest
+extent, in a way not to be easily discovered by the non-scientific
+reader. The word “eroticism” used by him so frequently, with all the
+pomposity of a scientific term, is coined from the word “erotic,” a
+literary term which again is derived, as we all know, from Eros, the
+Greek god of love. It is an adjective which means pertaining to or
+expressive of love-passion. Such an adjective necessarily finds an
+enormously wide application, considering that love in one sense is the
+leading principle in organic creation, and, in a more psychological
+sense, the motive power in the human drama. We may say that we
+ourselves, the outcome of love, regulate our whole life, and sometimes
+base our hopes of a future state on love. Consequently there is hardly
+anything in our lives that is not covered by the adjective “erotic.”
+
+The alienists having adopted the word “eroticism” in order to designate
+a state of mind which certain actions reveal to them, and which state
+of mind, when its existence is corroborated by other facts, may be
+considered as a disease, it is evident that, while they may apply the
+word “eroticism” to almost anything in the organic world and in human
+society, it is better for their purpose to apply it only to a certain
+form of a diseased mind. While a strictly logical and careful alienist
+might deem it irrational and confusing to use the term “eroticism,” or
+even the adjective “erotic,” outside a clearly defined case of mental
+disease, it cannot be considered absolutely wrong to apply such terms
+whenever the love-passion is in question, even a love-passion of a most
+legitimate kind.
+
+We shall now show how Nordau manages to slip over the border
+within which scientific terms should be used, and applies them
+indiscriminately to everything; and how he, in this manner, tries to
+establish that Wagner suffers from erotic madness, because he looks
+upon love as one of the chief motors in the human drama and the tree of
+knowledge for good or evil.
+
+Nordau, in a flippant criticism, which he endeavours to render funny,
+of the behaviour of Wagner’s characters on the stage, forgets his
+self-criticism to such an extent as to liken them to mad tom-cats—a
+simile which probably no sane man would accept as true. Having once
+conceived the idea of mad tom-cats, it at once becomes an obsession
+in his mind, and suggests presentations of real cases of erotic fury.
+He consequently, according to his habit, takes for granted that the
+actors on the stage must necessarily represent the exact state of mind
+of the author, and cries out that this state of the author’s mind
+(which he has persuaded himself is that of a mad tom-cat) is well known
+to science, and is called sadism. Then, with a regret at having to
+touch upon subjects in order to make his readers understand Wagner’s
+real mental condition, he gives a disgusting example of a maniac whose
+erotic madness has brought him below the level of the brute.
+
+This is a fair sample of Nordau’s logic. For the sake of clearness,
+we recapitulate the logical _tour de force_ he has been compelled
+to exercise in order to arrive at such an absurdity: Wagner, like
+all poets and dramatists before him, creates a love scene. Love is
+an erotic emotion. Eroticism is a disease of the mind. Tom-cats are
+erotically influenced. The characters on the stage remind Nordau of
+tom-cats. The obsession of a “tom-cat in convulsions over a root of
+valerian” suggests a raving madman. Consequently Wagner is mad.
+
+Such is the use a scientist is tempted to make of his science when he
+throws self-criticism overboard.
+
+When Nordau says of Wagner that he has been all his life an erotic, he
+is fair enough to add in parentheses, “in a psychiatric sense.” But
+this is not enough. The word “psychiatric” is a strictly scientific
+word, not to be found in any ordinary English dictionary; and the
+ordinary reader might easily conclude that, instead of removing
+Wagner’s eroticism into the deep recesses of his soul, it might have
+been used by the author, as so many scientific words have been used, in
+order to aggravate his charge.
+
+In order to justify his opinion with regard to Wagner’s erotic madness,
+he says: “The most ordinary incitements, even those farthest removed
+from the province of sexual instincts, never fail to awaken in his
+consciousness voluptuous images of an erotic character.” Why “sexual
+instincts”? Why not love-instincts, an expression which had so much
+better fitted in with the scenes Wagner represents? But, as it suits
+Nordau’s purpose to keep his reader’s mind upon love in its lowest,
+most animal form, we shall let it pass. We must however express our
+astonishment at the example he gives in order to show how incitements,
+“far removed from the province of sexual instincts,” caused Wagner’s
+mind to revert to voluptuous images. The “farthest removed incitements”
+which Nordau quotes is the description by Wagner of a ballet—a _pas de
+trois_—evidently intended to represent the blending of the beautiful
+with love, to give Wagner’s own words, “love and life, the joy and
+wooing of art.” What on earth, then, would more arouse such eroticism
+that might be found in a man than a ballet representing love and
+life? And this especially when we consider the modern freedom with
+regard to the costume of ballet girls. In order to show what Nordau
+considers to be the outcome of erotic madness in Wagner’s choregraphic
+representation of love, life, and art, we give _in extenso_ the passage
+from _Art-Work of the Future_, to which he refers:
+
+“In the contemplation of this ravishing dance of the most genuine
+and noblest muses of the artistic man, we now see the three arm in
+arm lovingly entwined up to their necks, then this, then that one,
+detaching herself from the entwinement, as if to display to the others
+her beautiful form in complete separation, touching the hands of the
+others only with the extreme tips of her fingers; now the one, entwined
+by a backward glance at the twin forms of her closely entwined sisters,
+bending towards them; then two, carried away by the allurements of the
+one, greeting her in homage; finally all, in close embrace, breast to
+breast, limb to limb, in an ardent kiss of love, coalescing in one
+blissfully living shape. This is the love and life, the joy and wooing
+of art,” etc.
+
+When Nordau wishes to traduce the love scenes in Wagner’s operas into
+arguments of the musician’s erotic madness, he forgets many things. He
+forgets what he himself has given as a test of a sound mind, namely,
+the ability to look after one’s own business. Even if Wagner had
+produced scenes on his stage of an utterly corrupt character in order
+to gain money and popularity, he having succeeded completely in such
+objects could not possibly be called mad by a critic who has made
+material success in life a test for sound-mindedness, and who declares
+the belief in personal responsibility reaching beyond the grave to
+be a sign of madness. But he also forgets, what is more important,
+that there is no line of demarcation drawn to indicate how far the
+representation of human passions may be carried on the stage.
+
+Even Nordau does not seem to have discovered an authority on this
+subject. He himself will not serve as an authority, because he has
+shown himself too apt to fall into the error of newspaper critics,
+that of judging a work or a piece, not according to its merits, but
+according to the author who has produced it. He would praise in Goethe
+what he would condemn in Wagner. If we were to indiscriminately ask
+people how far we may go in representing human passion on the stage,
+we should get a mass of replies all differing according to the bias of
+the respondents. The Ultramontane abbé, the zealous Methodist, would
+differ enormously from the Bohemian artist; the prudish old maid would
+differ from the poet. Nay, even two artists, both painters of the nude,
+or two ballet girls appearing in the same costume, might hold almost
+opposite opinions on this subject. How then shall we judge? By leaving
+out of court all the extremists—those who object to theatres, ballets,
+and nature in art—as well as those who would clamour for indecent
+and obscene representations, we might considerably narrow the ground
+for inquiry, and elicit certain rules likely to meet the suffrage of
+the majority within these limits. It might be argued that emotions,
+playing by far the most important _rôle_ in the human drama, and lying
+as they do at the root of all our actions, educational agencies,
+and amusements, ought to be appealed to by the arts. Also that art,
+in affording us opportunities of giving expression to our emotions,
+elevates and ennobles our lives: consequently, that the passive,
+objective contemplation of human emotions which the stage affords us
+helps us to study our own emotions and to bring them into harmony with
+our noblest aspirations, our future happiness, our judgment, and our
+will. In order to accomplish their mission, such representations should
+be as true to life as possible, whether they be beautiful or not. On
+this plea, it would be legitimate to represent on the stage erotic
+emotions in the full strength in which we meet with them in reality
+among sound-minded people. A good deal of exaggeration may be permitted
+to the actor as he is under the difficulty of having to convey by
+actions, gestures, or facial expression a distinct representation of
+emotions which may rage in the consciousness of a human being without
+betraying themselves in physical signs.
+
+From this it must be concluded that the purity of the stage depends
+more on what is acted than how it is acted. The author who does not
+wish to desecrate the drama is therefore bound to represent emotions
+which are the outcome of natural life, and acted upon by incidents such
+as we see around us and to avoid the representation of, even if he
+cannot avoid the reference to, emotions which spring from a diseased
+mind or a morbid moral state.
+
+Love, being an emotion to which every sound-minded being may be
+subject, there would be no objection to represent it in the most
+intense manner on the stage so long as we understand under the name
+of love that strong degree of affection which sometimes people of the
+opposite sex may conceive for each other apart from sexual emotions.
+What makes Nordau’s reasoning plausible is that he does not admit that
+this kind of love exists. He distinguishes only two degrees, or two
+categories, of love, comradeship or friendship on the one hand, and
+the animal instinct on the other. But no one who has gone through life
+with open eyes can possibly deny the reality of what we here, for want
+of a better expression, would call pure love. Everywhere we meet with
+manifestations of it. Even young children, who might have no idea of
+sexual emotion, often love each other with a genuine passion which
+sometimes lasts through life. Adults may be so absorbed in love for
+each other as to prefer death to separation, and yet never experience
+any sexual emotion in each other’s company. Men and women lovers who
+have been separated have wasted away from sheer love of each other,
+and yet been remarkably chaste in character. In the English-speaking
+countries, where the relations between the sexes are free and natural,
+we find any number of proofs of the reality of pure love. Those cases
+alone which have ended tragically, and therefore come before the
+public, more than suffice to prove it. Even in countries like France,
+for example, where the sexual instincts are apt to become morbid from
+the one-sided education of the young, it is not difficult to find
+examples of pure love. It is even to be found where least expected, as,
+for instance, between a licentious man and a fallen woman. It is true
+that when pure love runs its usual course it gets, so to say, inflamed
+by animal passion, but this is generally the case only as a result of
+the demonstrations by which pure love tries to manifest itself. It may
+also be true that there exists a mysterious, that is to say a so far
+unexplained, connection between the purest love and sexual instinct
+even in loving couples to whom sexuality may be an abomination. But
+all this does not disprove that, speaking from a practical and ethical
+point of view, there is such an emotion as pure love, and that this
+emotion is a powerful motor in the human drama.
+
+If it then be a fact that this yearning to love and to be loved with
+a pure love exists, and ought to exist, in rational human beings,
+and that in running its natural course it will manifest itself
+in demonstrations extremely likely to rouse animal passions, the
+question arises how far a love scene on the stage may display those
+demonstrations which, while they are the only possible means of
+expressing pure love, at the same time suggest sexual emotions.
+
+Here then is the point where the difference will arise, and where we
+may well be careful whose decision we accept. Can we do better than
+Wagner did—leave the audience to decide?
+
+Wagner’s German audiences, described by Nordau as including wives and
+daughters, have, to his great bewilderment, given the verdict in favour
+of Wagner’s most passionate scenes. “How unperverted,” Nordau cries
+out, “must wives and maidens be, when they are in a state of mind to
+witness these pieces without blushing crimson, and sinking to the earth
+for shame!” No. They have not blushed in following calmly and serenely
+the objective representations of passions which by nature have been
+implanted in every breast. The very vehemence, the very naturalness of
+the scenes inspire that awe and reverence which great natural forces
+always do, and the young girl in the audience does not for a moment
+revert to any impure representations or animal promptings which might
+have come within her experience, because she is æsthetically and not
+sexually excited. But if Nordau could watch her when she reads the
+above quoted passage in his book, he would see her blush deeply, not at
+the memory of Wagner’s scenes, but at the feeling of having the first
+seed of degeneration sown in her heart.
+
+Among the phrases used by Nordau in order to inculcate his readers with
+the idea that Wagner, instead of being the very essence of an artist,
+one of the greatest practically creative geniuses of the world, is a
+mere erotic maniac, is this one—“all his ideas revolve about woman.”
+While this phrase may lead the unwary reader astray, it throws a vivid
+light on the extent to which Nordau’s opinion with regard to the
+relation of the sexes has been influenced by his continental bias. This
+ought to be made clear to his readers. Such expressions, if of any use
+at all in Nordau’s reasoning, pre-suppose that it is quite an unusual
+thing for the ideas of poets, dramatists, and writers of fiction to
+revolve about woman. For our alienist does not refer to Wagner’s
+private life. He is speaking only of Wagner the author. The actual
+fact, of course, is that love and women have from times immemorial been
+the subject of legends, fairy tales, troubadour songs, poems, romances,
+novels, and dramas. Thus, according to the gospel of our alienist, all
+the past and present poetical authors of the world must have been, and
+are, “subject to erotic madness,” like Wagner.
+
+There are, of course, men who, like Faust, devote their lives to
+intellectual pursuits and expend all their energy in forcing nature to
+yield up her secrets. But such men are not only exceptions—they may be
+looked upon as degenerates. This is what Faust at last discovered. He
+recognised that life was essentially emotional, and that by having
+crushed out his emotional nature he had failed to live his life.
+Whether Goethe intended to impart the lesson his _Faust_ teaches us may
+be doubtful, but we can thus read it: we may suppress our emotional
+nature for a long time, but it will one day claim its rights, and,
+in its explosive escape from unnatural bondage, avenge itself on the
+suppressor, and hurl him to perdition. The emotions, Faust regrets, are
+all those inspired by women.
+
+But the great majority of men do not suppress the emotions inspired by
+women, but, on the contrary, allow their whole lives to be influenced
+by them. To find confirmation of this fact in countries like France
+and Germany might not be so easy as in the English-speaking countries.
+Wherever the sexes are separated in youth, and where conventional
+marriages are the rule, the erotic impulses become over-stimulated and
+lead to the excitement of animal passion. The love of the beautiful,
+all the æsthetic aspirations, the yearning for the society of women,
+the love of excitement, the chivalrous leanings, and the craving for
+pure love—all these are thrown as so much fuel into the furnace of
+sexual love. It is then that the struggle arises between the terrible
+demoniac love and pure love—a struggle so frequently depicted in
+Wagner’s operas and which determines the lives of so many men on the
+continent.
+
+Part of the struggle of the continental man is to avoid the influence
+of women altogether, or else to look upon them after the manner of the
+Mahommedans. In countries therefore where pure love is left but little
+or no scope, the influence of women is not very marked, and certainly
+not acknowledged, because for a man to acknowledge it would be to avow
+himself an “erotic madman.”
+
+To understand the immense influence which a woman exercises over man’s
+destiny and how closely men’s minds “revolve about women,” we must
+study the English-speaking countries where pure love has, if not free
+scope, freer scope than anywhere else, and where few healthy-minded men
+are ashamed to avow the value they place upon woman, her love, and her
+influence.
+
+Despite the fact that Englishmen do not display towards women of
+all classes that engaging politeness which favourably distinguishes
+Frenchmen, a stranger who visits England cannot fail soon to perceive
+in what high estimation woman is held. Her name is seldom taken in
+vain. There is no trace of that gross satire upon women which so
+often disfigures continental prints; she may be represented as sharp,
+worldly, extravagant, but rarely as immoral, unfaithful, or ugly. Some
+of the lower-class papers are strongly influenced by French views, but
+they never indulge in adaptations without some modification, and such
+papers as have been started in order to emulate the fast journals of
+Paris have always been extremely short-lived.
+
+The same respect for women is manifest in fiction as well as on the
+stage. Here again in consequence of French influence we meet with
+women who have sinned, and women with a past, but they never play such
+degraded parts as they often do in French novels and plays. Ladies
+are allowed an extensive liberty, and they are rarely insulted; and
+obtain, even under trying circumstances, a respectful treatment at the
+hands of the lowest class of labourers. We have unfortunately amongst
+us ruffians who beat their wives, but in ninety-nine cases out of a
+hundred these are drunken and debauched human failures. The average
+working man treats his wife and his daughter with as much consideration
+as a nobleman could his, and their home is kept morally pure and as
+comfortable for the women as his resources allow. He is not ashamed to
+carry parcels, burdens, the children, or to perambulate the baby in
+public places in order to spare his wife the trouble.
+
+The men most reluctantly suspect a woman of immorality, and generally
+not until there seems a strong case against her. Indecent words and
+allusions are entirely excluded in the presence of ladies, and if a
+woman in her innocence inadvertently makes a risky remark, it passes
+unheeded and without producing a smile.
+
+The average Englishman’s life brings him into constant contact with
+women, and he is perfectly aware that he owes to them much that is
+bright and happy in his existence. Already as a child he is the trusted
+protector of his sisters, and often the cavalier of their friends.
+Early in life he loves some young woman, and his long courtship is to
+him a happy time. When he works hard, when he risks his life on the sea
+or in dangerous climes, it is generally with a view to marrying the
+girl he loves. When he is married, he wishes to succeed that he may
+gain his wife’s approval, beautify her home, and make her life happy;
+while at the same time he never remains insensible to the admiration
+of other women. While his wife is yet young, his daughters grow up and
+become important features in his life and his happiness.
+
+It may therefore be said of the men of the English-speaking countries
+that their “ideas revolve about women,” and it will be difficult to
+persuade us Englishmen that respect, admiration, and love for women
+are the signs of a degenerate mind. Coleridge well expresses the
+English feeling—a feeling which, under circumstances similar to those
+prevailing in England, would be universal:
+
+    “All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
+      Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
+    All are but ministers of Love,
+      And feed his sacred flame.”
+
+Wagner’s music, which may be said to have been the delight of millions
+of people, is not approved of by Nordau. He condemns it on the usual
+ground that it is novel, and that it differs from the standards
+accepted before Wagner. According to him, it is the music of an unsound
+mind, because it contains no distinct ideas in the shape of melodies.
+He objects to the _Leit-motiv_ and to the unending melody, but it is
+difficult to harmonize what he says against the one with what he says
+against the other. Speaking of the _Leit-motiv_, he says: “To express
+ideas is not the function of music. Language provides for that as
+completely as could be desired. When the word is accompanied by song
+or orchestra, it is not to make it more definite, but to reinforce it
+by the intervention of emotion. Music is a kind of sounding-board in
+which the word has to awake something like an echo from the infinite.”
+Later on he says about melody: “It is a regular grouping of notes in a
+highly expressive series of tones. Melody in music corresponds to what
+in language is a logically constructed sentence distinctly presenting
+an idea, and having a clearly marked beginning and ending.”
+
+Music being an art which exclusively appeals to emotion, it is not
+surprising that any attempt to measure its value by a reasoning process
+should result in utter failure. But this is no excuse for an author to
+contradict himself so flatly as Nordau does in the above passages. To
+say on one page that “_to express ideas is not the function of music_,”
+and on another page to say that melody is indispensable to music,
+because it “corresponds to a logically constructed sentence _distinctly
+presenting an idea_.” Again he says: “Melody may be said to be an
+effort to say something definite,” and how can this harmonize with
+the other mission of music: “to awake something like an echo from the
+infinite.” The latter expression is not only a true definition of the
+mission of music, but also an exact description of the aim of Wagner’s
+music.
+
+Nordau feels that his scientific reasoning about music will affect no
+one who has heard the music of Wagner, and that those who admire it
+will be slow to believe that an unsound mind could have accomplished
+such complicated, intricate, and complete work. To prepare his reader’s
+mind for his rash conclusion, he once more goes to the lunatic asylum
+for his arguments, in order to show that a man may be a lunatic and yet
+be a good musician. But here again he is strangely blind to the fact
+that such arguments tell directly against his theory. He cites cases of
+lunatics who “improvised on the piano,” who “sang very beautiful airs
+and at the same time improvised two different themes on the piano...
+who composed very beautiful, new, and melodious tunes.”
+
+The remarkable thing about the music of his maniacs is that it is tuny
+and melodious, and consequently the only rational music, according to
+Nordau, while Wagner’s music is condemned by him, and Wagner himself is
+held up as a lunatic because his music is not like that of acknowledged
+lunatics! It stands to reason that a weak mind could follow and repeat
+a style of music which it has heard for years, but that it requires a
+strong and sound mind to break a new road in the domain of music with
+the full approval of millions of musical people.
+
+Nordau also feels the necessity of backing up his opinion by
+authorities. He sees a conclusive proof of Wagner’s inferiority in
+the criticism of professional musicians and composers. He might as
+well form his opinion of an actress on the criticism of her by her
+most dangerous rival. It seems that Hiller and Schumann would not
+acknowledge Wagner’s musical endowment, but attributed his success to
+the _libretti_ written by himself. Regarding this Nordau exclaims:
+“The same old story: musicians regard him as a poet, and poets as a
+musician.” This means that our alienist is, or pretends to be, so
+utterly innocent of humour and satire as to accept this very common way
+of minimizing the talent of a rival as a trustworthy judgment. It is
+the commonest thing in the world for a man to deny his rival’s talent
+in his own specialty, and then, in order to strengthen the effect of
+his opinion and to give it the colour of impartiality, to acknowledge
+in him talents outside that specialty. Practical men, when they hear
+one musician run down another musician, generally conclude that the
+latter has a dangerous talent. Voltaire, in speaking of a writer none
+of whose works were in existence, said that he must have been a man of
+genius judging from the savage attacks made upon him by another writer.
+
+Hiller and Schumann are the only authorities whom Nordau can point to
+in support of his views, and he himself raises some doubts whether
+their dislike of Wagner’s music was not due to the difficulty of
+immediately appreciating a tendency so novel as Wagner’s. Our alienist
+is only able to add that Rubinstein can only make some important
+reservations, and that it was some time before Hanslick struck his
+colours. In view, then, of the enormous literature that has grown
+up around Wagner and Wagnerism, Nordau’s habit of referring to
+authorities in this instance simply has the effect of showing that he
+stands unsupported in his opinion by all musical authorities. It is
+irresistibly comic to notice how Nordau regrets that the brochure—_Der
+Fall Wagner_—in which Nietzsche attacks Wagner, is quite as “insanely
+delirious” as another brochure written by the same writer twelve years
+before in deification of Wagner. Had it not been for this awkward
+circumstance, Nordau, it seems, would have been only too glad to exalt
+Nietzsche—the man whom in another part of his work he strenuously
+endeavours to prove an imbecile—to the rank of an authority. His
+amazing lack of logic prevents him from seeing that a certificate of
+lunacy issued by a lunatic is really a certificate of sanity, in virtue
+of the logical axiom that two negatives are equal to one affirmative.
+
+Such faults and defects as may be found in Wagner’s prose writings have
+little importance in relation—and are almost irrelevant—to the question
+of his supposed degeneracy. He had to deal with subjects which,
+though intensely real to our emotional nature, can only be treated
+inadequately in words. Whatever we may think of Wagner’s style, there
+can be little doubt that he has succeeded in making himself understood
+by a great number of people whose emotional nature sympathizes with
+that of Wagner, and whom even Nordau would not undertake to prove to
+be mentally deranged or morally degenerate. Wagner’s writings have the
+defect, very general among German writers, and conspicuous in Nordau,
+of being verbose. They all make us crave for “Der langen Rede, kurzen
+Sinn.”
+
+The fundamental idea in Wagner’s great work—_The Art-Work of the
+Future_—is that the arts should co-operate, and that each individual
+art should attain to its perfection in conjunction with other arts.
+Nordau in no way disproves the soundness of this view by saying that
+“Goethe’s lyric poetry and the _Divina Commedia_” need no landscape
+painting, that “Michael Angelo’s ‘Moses’ would hardly produce a deeper
+impression surrounded by dancers and singers,” and that “the ‘Pastoral
+Symphony’ does not require a complement of words in order to exercise
+its full charm.”
+
+With that logic peculiar to Nordau, he quotes a passage from
+Schopenhauer in which this thinker mildly deprecates such co-ordination
+of the arts as was to be found in the operas of his time, and our
+alienist wishes us to accept this as a proof of insanity in Wagner’s
+admiration for the opera. He forgets the important fact that
+Wagner’s greatness is proved by the way in which he has succeeded in
+obliterating at least the worst defects of the opera as it existed
+before him, and that he has rendered it a complete and harmonious
+expression of combined and elevated arts. The quoted passage from
+Schopenhauer could be no condemnation of Wagner’s operas as it was
+written before they saw the light. In the operas, as they used to be,
+there was much that tended to disturb the imagination and even to
+arouse laughter. The most exasperating incongruities were indulged
+in. An exciting hunting chorus would be played and sung while two
+rows of lady supers would walk in from each side of the wings in
+Indian file, each bearing as a hunting implement a yard-long piece
+of wood surmounted by a piece of tin. The impossible dresses, the
+demure demeanour, the solemn faces, the absurd lances—carried like
+candles in a nuns’ procession—all this clashed so terribly with the
+music and the theme as to suggest a burlesque. A band of conspirators
+afraid of being detected, yet shouting at the top of their voices some
+compromising chorus; a man with a deadly wound rising to his feet and
+singing a lively and complicated aria; a messenger in the hottest haste
+delivering a message in a slow and long-drawn recitative; an intensely
+modern consumptive lady dying amid ancient surroundings, trilling in
+her last gasps musical complexities, during a quarter of an hour,
+with a marvellously strong and healthy voice—such, and many other
+absurdities, disfigured the opera before Wagner and Gounod, and well
+deserved the condemnation of Schopenhauer.
+
+Wagner’s assertion that the natural evolution of each art leads to
+the surrender of its independence and to its fusion with other arts
+is looked upon by Nordau as delirious. To prove this he falls back on
+biology, and points out that nature develops from the simple to the
+complex, that originally similar parts develop into separate organs
+of different structure and independent functions. Why on earth should
+there necessarily be an analogy between the growth of plants and
+animals, and between the development of the arts? Any other writer who
+had been unfortunate enough to indulge in such profound mysticism would
+certainly have been condemned by Nordau to the lunatic asylum. Even
+if we admit the analogy as permissible, he gains very little by it:
+for when he speaks of nature as always proceeding from the simple to
+the complex he describes exactly the development of the arts into the
+opera—music, poetry, and dancing representing each the simple, and the
+opera representing the complex. What would Nordau think of a mad doctor
+who based his verdict of insanity on such reasoning?
+
+The attentive student of Nordau’s impeachment of Wagner cannot fail
+to see that, despite all his efforts to brand him as a degenerate, he
+has only succeeded in throwing the grand power of that genius into
+bolder relief. Instead of inducing us to look upon Wagner as a sign
+of degeneration, he has impressed us with the fact that Wagner’s work
+constitutes an awakening from the slumber in which Philistinism and
+conventionalism have so long enwrapped humanity, and opened a new vista
+for the ennobling mission of the arts.
+
+While we must reject Nordau’s clinging to that pedantry and
+conventionalism which limit the mission of the arts to the production
+of isolated pictures for public galleries and the salons of
+modern Mæcenases, statues for public places, and compositions of
+_Kammer-musik_ for drawing-rooms, we at the same time do not believe
+that the opera, even as regenerated by the genius of a Wagner, is
+the highest expression of the arts. There will come a day when the
+illusions of the stage will be realities, when we shall dispense with
+the dusty sceneries, the garish footlights, the painted faces, the
+prudish trappings, which go to make up the mirage which heralds an
+ideal future. The arts, instead of being relegated to the nursery in
+order to make room for science, as Nordau prophesies, will become
+its aim. When science has given us health, strength, and beauty, an
+extended power over nature’s forces, when it has solved the terrible
+social problem on the basis of liberty and progress, then will science
+be the handmaiden of the arts. Then will the answer be granted to the
+poet’s prayer:
+
+    “Oh! for a muse of fire that shall ascend
+    The highest heaven of invention;
+    A kingdom for a stage; princes to act;
+    And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”
+
+The arts, after having demonstrated in the opera their solidarity and
+their independence, will leave that artificial shelter and take up
+their abode in our homes and in our civic buildings, in our streets,
+and in our public places, in our arenas and in our temples.
+
+A new renaissance lies ahead of us, and we are all struggling to reach
+it. The man who thinks and writes, the artist who paints or composes,
+the peasant at the plough, the miner in the bowels of the earth, all
+are contributing to further the advent of a new era when the life,
+the work, the pleasure, and the worship of a regenerate race shall be
+exalted by the arts, and present a realization of what Wagner dreamed
+while he created.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+_THE RELIGION OF SELF_
+
+
+The term egomania is a welcome present from the scientists, which
+enriches our language with a verbal representation of a psychological
+condition which is certainly characteristic of our time. We trust that
+Nordau’s diagnosis of the disease will be carefully studied by its
+victims, especially by those who are in the stage where it appears as
+egoism, self-sufficiency, indifference to others, to society, to the
+State, and as that fashionable and superior pessimism which despairs
+of self as an excuse for despairing of others. For, though Nordau
+goes very minutely into the psychological aspect of egomania without
+indicating its origin or the remedies against it, he evidently does
+not reject the theory, which seems constantly to be confirmed by
+actualities, that mental diseases may be fostered and aggravated both
+by those who suffer from them, as well as by surrounding circumstances.
+
+Putting his opinion as a psychologist together with that of others,
+we seem authorized to hope that when our egotistical pessimists have
+learned that the aristocratic characteristic on which they pride
+themselves is the beginning of a mental disease, they will fly to such
+remedies as may be found in the study of useful science and healthy
+work.
+
+Such authors as Théophile Gautier, Baudelaire, Rollinat, and others
+attract especially Nordau’s attention; but he deals with them in order
+to show that they individually had degenerated into egomaniacs, and
+he does not once try to realize the relation between their so-called
+degeneracy and the general tendencies of our time. Had he done so, he
+might have felt inclined to be less hard on these exponents of _fin de
+siècle_ corruption. Speaking of the hints which this school of poets
+and writers sometimes throws out that they are not quite serious,
+Nordau comes very near to discovering their significance when he says
+about Baudelaire that perhaps “he sought to make himself believe that,
+with his Satanism, he was laughing at the Philistines.” But Nordau does
+not follow up the cue he has thus accidentally dropped upon, but adds a
+sentence revealing the one-sidedness of his inquiry, when he says: “but
+such a tardy palliation does not deceive the psychologist, and it is of
+no importance for his judgment.”
+
+That may be so. But it is of the utmost importance to humanity. That
+the yielding to the promptings of “unconsciousness,” to the dictates of
+instincts bad or good, was on the part of the so-called Parnassians
+an experimental plunge in the dark—a challenge to those who pretended
+to know better to show them that they were wrong—cannot be denied by
+any one who has read their writings with some knowledge of the French
+character.
+
+These men took up literature at a time when the world began to perceive
+that science could not satisfy its emotional aspirations, that it could
+not explain the mysteries of the Universe, or bring about that balance
+between our emotional and intellectual natures on which a healthy
+life depends. But this was not the only disillusion which humanity
+experienced at that time. All the hopes which the altruistic feeling
+had prompted us to base on democratic governments and scientific
+political economy had vanished. When the Utopias of the economists
+turned out to be a _fata morgana_, instead of the solid ladder leading
+up to the material heaven promised by the religion of humanity of the
+scientists, a Babylonian confusion arose among the people who had first
+been told to worship at the shrine of religion, then at the shrine
+of science, and now stood without any shrine whatsoever. In France,
+more than in any other country, we meet with people whose minds are
+too subtle and whose emotions are too genuine to permit them to dwell
+contented in that Philistinism which leans on the one side towards
+the scientific creed or absence of creed, in order to appear modern,
+and, on the other side, on religion, in order to be safe, but whose
+real shrine is the money-safe. These French people, mostly authors and
+artists, had studied both the religious and the scientific theories,
+and had found the causes of their miscarriage.
+
+The Church had said: “Nature is vile, man is naturally bad, instincts
+are prompted by the devil, and knowledge is one of the snares of hell.”
+But the Roman Church had not only failed in its mission to keep up the
+faith and render humanity virtuous and happy, but was responsible for
+great social troubles, superstitions, and obstacles to progress. It
+had good intentions, but the way in which it tried to carry them out
+rendered them valueless. It required power first, much power, complete
+power over everything, and the acquisition of power did more harm than
+the Church could do good when ever so powerful. The Protestant Churches
+in France were gloomy, prudish, anti-artistic, and appealed with
+difficulty to any French character. Their dogmas seemed incompatible
+with scientific truth, and their mission appeared to be rather to
+persuade their members that they were perfect than to render them
+perfect. Besides, a great many minds throughout the world, accredited
+with scientific accomplishments, had mercilessly opposed dogmatic
+religion.
+
+Science, in its turn, when asked, Where is truth? Where is the ideal?
+could only point to a pile of facts laboriously built up like a brick
+wall, and had to confess that what it wished to give instead of
+religion was mere speculations. The ultimate conclusion it pointed
+to was selfishness, personal irresponsibility, and a mere animal
+existence. It failed entirely to satisfy the great moving power in
+the scheme of humanity—emotions—and could not therefore satisfy human
+yearnings and aspirations.
+
+The postulates of religion—the wickedness of nature and of man—were
+rejected as groundless, and the guidance of intellect and science was
+spurned because they were powerless to influence the emotions.
+
+Finding themselves in the plight of a ship driving about in the ocean
+without compass or rudder, the Parnassians, the Decadents, and many
+others thought it was time to try a desperate course. Perhaps, after
+all, they thought, nature is good, perhaps human instincts may be
+trusted; let us be natural and follow our instincts. There was much to
+encourage the new departure. It had often been found that the purest
+joys were the most lasting, that the good was the most beautiful, that
+lives and actions prompted by the altruistic feelings best satisfied
+selfish yearnings, that vice was disappointing, unhealthy, degrading,
+and joy-killing; that virtue improved life, increased the capacity for
+enjoyment, and beautified mind and body. These observations encouraged
+the belief in the religion of self. The _Ego_ was not bad; but it
+required freedom to develop itself.
+
+Like all founders of systems and philosophies, the Parnassians and
+Decadents sought for confirmation of their theories in the possibility
+of a Utopia. In imagining a state of things under which the self should
+have unlimited latitude for self-realization, where man could satisfy
+his highest aspirations and enjoy the greatest possible happiness under
+the guidance of his altruistic promptings, where his instincts should
+be so sharpened and developed as to unfailingly select the greatest and
+the most lasting, and therefore the noblest, pleasures—in imagining
+such a state of things these experimentalists perceived that society,
+such as it was around them, offered thousands of obstacles to every
+attempt at practical realization of their theories. They thus came to
+look upon themselves as at war with society, its old standards, its
+prejudices, its religions, and its morals.
+
+Their writings were at once weapons, challenges, rallying-cries. They
+were intended to deride, to shock, and to draw attention to the new
+philosophy. The distinction between good and bad was obliterated. The
+artist and the poet should henceforth express their true feelings and
+nought else. Instinct should take the place of principles. The devil
+might be worshipped as well as God. Art should have no other object
+than art. Nature might be abhorred as well as loved. And so on.
+
+From this moral chaos the self was to rise in all its glory. For the
+present it was distorted by surrounding circumstances. The ugliness and
+morbidness of the subjects they wrote about and the distortion of their
+own feelings were the proofs of the decayed state upon which humanity
+had entered. Characters such as Huysman’s Duc des Esseintes were
+intended to illustrate what the present state of society was, and what
+its present tenets would lead to. He is intended to represent the final
+result of our civilization, and to show that disgust of our race may be
+so great as to inspire a man with the belief that by fostering evil and
+creating criminals he does a good action in so far as he accelerates
+the destruction of society.
+
+The Parnassians and the Decadents have no proclaimed creed or any
+programme, and their own opinion of their philosophy is of the haziest
+kind. We are therefore far from asserting that we have here interpreted
+them as they would interpret themselves. Whatever may be said of their
+style and their writings, they have, at least, the merit of being
+frank and unsophisticated, and we think it must be recognised that,
+whether they know it or not, they hold themselves up as the “frightful
+examples” of the chaotic state into which creeds, principles, morals,
+are falling at the end of this century. To us the moral, both of their
+existence and of their writing, is that the world, and especially
+France, stands in sore need of better churches, of a better system of
+philosophy, and better principles of government. These authors have
+rendered a great service in tearing away the hypocritical mask which
+society is so anxious to maintain, and thus demonstrating the great
+need of regenerating agencies.
+
+Of late, England has been considerably influenced by France, and the
+æsthetic revolt just referred to naturally affected the English, but
+merely as a faint echo.
+
+When Nordau, who correctly points out the connection between the
+Decadents in France and the extreme æsthetes in England, insinuates
+that the whole of English society is affected by it, he labours under a
+wrong impression. We have had here—and we speak purposely in the past
+tense—a knot of people who have believed, as Nordau states, that a work
+of art is its own aim, that it may be immoral. But, as he himself has
+stated, the æsthetic awakening in England has forced art almost in the
+opposite direction. We have had poets who have imitated Baudelaire and
+other writers of the same class, but these imitators have, by imitating
+many others, displayed a weakness which debars them from any great
+influence. There was a time with us when a thoroughly immoral decadence
+had a spell of influence and created a sickly literature. But the
+influence of this sham æstheticism is fast vanishing, since its essence
+has been mercilessly exposed.
+
+While the influence of the Parnassians and Decadents in France was only
+small, in England the circumstances which produced them have been in
+existence among us and have produced effects to some extent similar.
+The struggle between science and religion, the distrust of both, the
+failure of social panaceas, and the irresistible pushing of the working
+class against old social barriers have produced in a great number of
+educated men a peculiar state of mind which we wish that Nordau had
+noticed. Whether he would have placed those thus affected among his
+degenerates as egomaniacs it is impossible for us to decide, but there
+can be little doubt that egoism is the chief characteristic of a new
+religion or a new mental disease, which has made large inroads among
+educated men. It becomes manifest in their pessimism and in their
+indifferentism. They believe that everything is bad, that the classes
+are bad, that the masses are bad, that the country is in a bad state,
+and that everything will finish badly. At the same time they do not
+care. They will do nothing to avert the coming evils. They hope that
+none will think them foolish enough to make themselves martyrs. They
+wish it to be clearly understood that they care only for themselves
+and that they take no heed of what happens to others. They loathe
+the working class, and affect a desire to crush them out of existence
+at one blow. They belong to the few Englishmen who suspect women of
+vile things, except of course their mothers, sisters, _fiancées_, and
+wives. They think life hardly worth living, and certainly not worth any
+special exertions, but their main preoccupation is the state of their
+health. They study nothing save their own inclinations and cravings
+and certain excrescences of the most modern literature. Their capacity
+for hatred is stupendous in its scope but meek in its expression. They
+claim to enjoy all the benefits of social life without considering
+themselves obliged to perform any of its duties. They manage to be
+spendthrifts without being generous, and to be mean without being
+economical.
+
+But we are strongly averse to classing these social phenomena among
+the hopeless egomaniacs. They exaggerate their egotism to such an
+extent as to suggest that they are rather following a foolish fashion
+than undergoing moral decay, and that the existence of pinchbeck
+patriots, political charlatans, sham enthusiasts, and professional
+philanthropists has frightened them from showing their best side and
+using their best abilities, and causes them to flout their pessimism
+and selfishness in every one’s face lest they should be taken for one
+of these.
+
+In spite of their infatuated posing as degenerate egomaniacs, we
+believe that many of them may be counted upon as part of those
+elements from which the future regeneration may spring, when the cloud
+of scepticism has cleared away, and a goal worthy to strive for is
+discernible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+_AN ETHICAL INQUISITION_
+
+
+A very large part of the sum-total of the work accomplished by
+Nordau in _Degeneration_ consists in describing scientifically the
+psychological phenomena which underlie the idiosyncrasies of certain
+authors and artists: in giving scientific names to their weaknesses,
+and in setting forth the relations in which such weaknesses stand to
+madness. These idiosyncrasies, these weaknesses, and their relations to
+madness were well known to observant people long before Nordau’s book
+was written, and to these his work is simply the technical explanation
+of familiar phenomena. In another chapter we shall dwell at greater
+length on the difference of views which Nordau tends to bring about.
+Here we wish to point out that, in spite of the mass of scientific
+phraseology employed by Nordau, and in spite of the difference of
+views he endeavours to bring about, in what seems to be his main
+object, he is entirely in accord with millions of sound-minded people
+in this country. We English deplore, as deeply as any one can, the
+existence of artists and works of so-called art which appeal rather
+to the morbid than to the healthy mind; of poetry, novels, and dramas
+calculated to flatter the corrupt, instead of stimulating in all a
+desire for elevation. We especially deplore the diabolical work done by
+pornographic artists and authors.
+
+Owing to this accord in aims with Nordau, his work has been read, and
+is being read, by thousands in this country, in the hope that his
+vaunted science and his strong mind would show us the right remedies.
+But in this respect we have been sorely disappointed; for instead
+of meeting with that complete grasp of the subject to which English
+scientists have accustomed us, we meet in his proposal of remedies with
+that dazed and superficial logic which throughout his work clashes so
+strangely with his power of perceiving and of marshalling his facts.
+
+The way he proposes to treat the “mystics, but especially egomaniacs
+and filthy pseudo-realists,” forcibly reminds us of the solemn
+resolution of the rats to bell the cat. He says:
+
+“Society must unconditionally defend itself against them. Whoever
+believes with me that society is the natural organic form of humanity,
+in which alone it can exist, prosper, and continue to develop itself
+to higher destinies; whoever looks upon civilization as a good, having
+value and deserving to be defended, must mercilessly crush under
+his thumb the anti-social vermin. To him who, with Nietzsche, is
+enthusiastic over the ‘freely-roving, lusting beast of prey,’ we cry:
+‘Get you gone from civilization! Rove far from us! Be a lusting beast
+of prey in the desert! Satisfy yourself! Level your roads, build your
+huts, clothe and feed yourself as you can! Our streets and our houses
+are not built for you; our looms have no stuffs for you; our fields are
+not tilled for you. All our labour is performed by men who esteem each
+other, have consideration for each other, mutually aid each other, and
+who have to curb their selfishness for the general good. There is no
+place among us for the lusting beast of prey; and if you dare to return
+to us, we will pitilessly beat you to death with clubs.’”
+
+All this sounds very well; but if Nordau believes that in this passage
+he has given us the true method of how to defend society against its
+literary and artistic enemies, he labours under a delusion with regard
+to his own achievements that savours somewhat of megalomania. His big
+words, his righteous indignation, and his manifold signs of exclamation
+are not a magic wand, are not a Saint Patrick’s mitre, with power to
+banish toads and serpents from the country.
+
+When he says that society should be defended, we can understand him.
+But when he says that society must defend itself, he drops into
+the mist of commonplace and meaningless generalities. The word
+“society” stands for one of those things which will serve very well
+as the object of an activity, but not as a subject because, while
+its smallest component part may be affected, action is only possible
+through an organized co-operation of all its parts. To a German who
+has never witnessed the attempt of a free democratic community to
+launch out into collective activity, this difference in the active
+and passive positions of society may never have occurred. To him
+the activity of society seems an easy matter, because in his mind
+society is represented by a concentrated, powerful, and pragmatical
+administration. If Nordau had said “government should defend,” instead
+of “society should defend,” he would at least have been logical; but
+this he could not do, because, though an enemy to personal liberty, he
+has seen enough of German forms of government to reject the postulate
+of the Socialists regarding the infallibility of the central power;
+while at the same time he has a healthy contempt for the judgment of
+the continental police. He therefore says that society must defend
+itself, and thus gives us a gratuitous piece of advice which is
+thousands of years old.
+
+He calls upon all those who share his views to tell the enemies of
+their race to be gone from civilization. But will they go? Why should
+they be more obedient than the spirits from the vasty deep? The
+administration of society would have to be completely centralized,
+and the central Government would have to be absolutely despotic, in
+order to compel such an exodus. Even with such a Government it might
+be extremely difficult to accomplish. The most despotic Government in
+the world—the Russian Government—have encountered enormous difficulties
+in trying to expel the Jews, and this despite the fact that in this
+endeavour they had the sympathies of the majority of the Russian
+people, and could easily ascertain who were Jews and who were not.
+
+A Government, in England for example, that would attempt to expel
+pernicious authors and artists would have none of these facilities.
+They would first have to pass an Act of Parliament—the Graphomaniac,
+Egomaniac, Pornographomaniac Authors and Symbolist Artists Expulsion
+Act—and at least twenty Governments would be turned out before it could
+get passed. But let us suppose that Parliament had decided on such an
+expulsion of these offenders, then the real difficulties would begin,
+namely, to decide who should be expelled and who should not. As to
+killing the returning ones with clubs, this mode of execution being
+abolished among us, hanging would have to be resorted to—an extremely
+difficult operation in our days, when the abolition of capital
+punishment is more and more being considered as one of the first steps
+towards better ethics.
+
+Nordau admits that judges and the police cannot help us. The reason
+which he gives with regard to Germany—the public contempt in which
+the judges and police there stand—does not apply in England, where our
+judges are beyond reproach, and the police is a highly respected body,
+in consequence of being less pragmatical than any police force in the
+world. Experience in England has given us far stronger reasons for not
+using the law and the police force against authors and artists. Each
+time it has been done, the very works intended to be suppressed have
+gained a popularity and a circulation a thousand-fold greater than if
+they had been left alone.
+
+Instead of tribunals and police, Nordau suggests a body similar to an
+association in Germany bearing the name “Association of Men for the
+Suppression of Immorality.” As he often deals with his authorities, so
+he here deals with his model tribunal. He turns round and shows that
+they are no good. “This association, it seems, pursues disbelief more
+than immorality,” he says. Alas! such is the way with associations
+of frail men. They are apt to leave undone those things which they
+ought to have done, and to do those things which they ought not to
+have done. Nordau here ranges himself with the crowd of sentimental
+Socialists who are so angry with the world because it cannot see
+how easily the regeneration of humanity would become by means of an
+infallible and almighty Government. He and they cannot see that this
+infallible and almighty Government is the very thing beyond our reach.
+If he had inquired logically into the causes of the disappointing
+results produced by the “Association of Men,” he could not have
+failed to notice that the latter were more logical than himself. This
+“Association of Men,” wanting to suppress vice by forcible action,
+exactly as Nordau would, were sensible enough to strike at the
+causes and not at the effects. They had found that atheism, and even
+free-thinking, generally coincided with immorality; and that on the
+other hand religious men were generally moral. Consequently, atheism
+was found to produce immorality, and religion morality. In upholding
+religion, therefore, they were upholding morality in a most effective
+way, because morality without religion, or at least without expressed
+religion, is found only in men of great intellectual powers and
+scientific attainments; and to educate the mass of the people to that
+point is, and will for a long time be, out of the question. Religion,
+therefore, was the only choice of Nordau’s “Association of Men”; and,
+if it was right to coerce people into morality, it was surely right to
+coerce them into religion. From this it should be clear that the fault
+does not lie in the reasoning of this “Association of Men,” but in the
+postulate which Nordau has approved—namely, the coercion of anybody by
+an “Association of Men.”
+
+He expects the new “Society for Ethical Culture” in Berlin to do
+better, and wishes it to constitute itself as the voluntary guardian
+of the people’s morality. What an extraordinary idea! One set of
+men guarding the morality of another set of men—a small minority,
+unauthorised, unrecognised, and devoid of all physical power, to guard
+the morality of the great majority! The London authorities could tell
+Nordau a great deal about the effects of such attempts, even when the
+guardians of morality have the law and police at their back. But he
+need not come to London to learn what guarded morality is worth, and
+what the results of such guardianship are. The history of every country
+teems with illustrations of the fact that every attempt to coerce
+the people, morally or physically, into a moral life has invariably
+brought about more hypocrisy, more secret corruption, and a tone of
+greater immorality. If he distrusts universal experience, then he ought
+to know, as a psychologist, that, so long as the human mind and the
+human emotions are what they are, repression, supervision, and outside
+interference with personal liberty must demoralize.
+
+The composition of his society would be no guarantee whatever
+against deplorable effects. He proposes that it should consist of
+instructors, professors, authors, members of Parliament, judges, and
+high functionaries. To begin with, authors could not be included,
+because they could not judge and be judged at the same time; and if the
+qualification of authors were sufficient, what would prevent authors
+of the Zola type from predominating in the association? Here, as with
+regard to original causes, Nordau fancies that he has struck solid
+ground when he has removed the difficulty a stage farther back. The
+association is simply an instrument. All depends upon who forges it. Of
+this he says not a word. He evidently expects it to arise as a miracle,
+like the infallible Government of the Socialists. Were the German
+Emperor to select the members of the association—which in Germany he
+would have to do directly or indirectly—he would take upon himself an
+enormous responsibility, for the fulfilment of which he would have to
+acquire the necessary information and the necessary means. He would
+simply be to ethics what the Pope is to the Catholic religion.
+
+Nordau boldly asserts that such an association would have “the power
+to exercise an irresistible ‘boycot.’” Why? He evidently thinks so
+because his association would be an influential one. He clearly does
+not know what ought to be an axiom to any one who meddles with social
+questions—namely, that the circulation of a condemned book increases
+in an inverse ratio to the respect which the condemning authorities
+enjoy. Thus, if his association were to consist of nobodies and were to
+condemn a book, the condemnation would only increase the circulation
+a little; but if it were to consist of the leading men of the German
+Empire, the condemned book would be read all over the world. In
+the matter of public censors nothing is of any avail that is not
+absolutely despotic. By allowing Government and police to exercise
+all kinds of violence, isolated newspaper paragraphs and leaders can
+be suppressed before they are published, and the open circulation of
+condemned books may be prevented. But once the public get hold of the
+contents of an article and the name of a book, a secret circulation
+at once sets in. Eyewitnesses who were in France when the French
+Government confiscated and prohibited Edmond About’s _La Question
+Romaine_ can relate the eagerness with which this book was read, and
+tell of the numbers of copies circulated secretly. We cite this example
+from the continent, as it corroborates what always happens in England.
+
+Nordau fondly imagines that the judgment of his association would
+absolutely “annihilate” not only the book, but the author. The
+contrary would happen. As long as there is a grain of love of liberty
+in humanity, the condemnation by an authority of a man’s book will
+make him the object of public sympathy. When Nordau says that “no
+respectable bookseller would keep the condemned book, no respectable
+paper would mention it,” his meaning entirely depends on his standard
+of respectability—one of those standards he absolutely refuses to
+give us. Every one knows that there are respectable booksellers and
+papers, and that there are non-respectable booksellers and papers.
+But who could undertake to draw the line of demarcation between the
+two categories? In a small German town where there are only one or
+two booksellers this line is easily drawn. But how about places like
+Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Vienna, and London? Besides, a bookseller and
+a newspaper might be highly respectable, but differ diametrically from
+an association which would have Nordau’s approval. Surely he would not
+push his mania so far as to deny a respectable character to all the
+booksellers and newspapers who, for instance, refuse to boycot Ibsen?
+
+Nordau also thinks that the specialists in insanity should come out of
+their shells and publicly denounce the degenerate authors and artists.
+In England, for example, he thinks that Maudsley could exercise a
+healthy influence. But he would be surprised at the small number of
+people in England, outside the profession, who read works on mental
+disease. _Degeneration_ has been widely read; but this is because it
+levels startling accusations against well-known authors and artists,
+and because it purports to give a novel scientific interpretation of
+familiar phenomena, with the purpose of turning our opinions with
+regard to some branches of art and literature topsy-turvy. It is
+not to science alone that it owes its wide circulation, but to the
+clever—conscious or unconscious—sophistries it contains. English
+psychologists and specialists in insanity could not afford to launch
+out after the manner of Nordau. They might secure a certain number
+of readers; but they would lose their patients. A specialist who came
+before the public with Nordau’s artless and ill-considered scheme
+for the defence of society against its enemies, could not hope to be
+taken seriously by an English public. In England we have had a too
+large experience of books with a tendency, of log-rolling, of veiled
+advertisement, and of sly party thrusts, to be influenced by such a
+suggestion of lunacy against political opponents as is contained in
+the following sentence from Nordau: “A Maudsley in England, a Charcot,
+a Magnan in France, a Lombroso, a Tonnini in Italy, have brought to
+vast circles of people an understanding of the obscure phenomena in
+the life and the mind, and disseminated knowledge which would make it
+impossible in those countries for pronounced lunatics with the mania
+for persecution to gain an influence over hundreds of thousands of
+citizens.”
+
+It is impossible for us to imagine an English specialist in insanity
+attributing the absence of anti-semitism in England to his own
+writings, or those of other psychologists, as Nordau does in this
+sentence. If the German electors can believe such a wild party
+distortion, they are not the men we take them for. We have already
+explained the causes of the existence of anti-semitism in Germany,
+and of its absence in England. We do not expect that Nordau will
+acknowledge our view to be right. For had he not been so entirely the
+creature of prejudice on this, as on many other subjects outside his
+specialty, he would, unassisted, have discovered so obvious a truth.
+
+Englishmen are not less anxious than he to defend society against its
+enemies; but only the most inexperienced and illogical Englishman would
+recommend such remedies as our alienist seems to consider as the height
+of wisdom. Though we have been slow about it, we seem at last to have
+grasped the not very hidden truth that if society—that is to say, the
+people—is moral enough to elect an association capable of acting as
+an ethical censor over art and literature, we believe the people also
+capable of exercising that censorship directly, instead of indirectly
+through an association. This censorship by the people themselves has
+the immense advantage of working unostentatiously and silently, and
+without advertising the very work that should be suppressed.
+
+We think it futile to condemn, or even to suppress, a work; and on
+grounds of expediency only, regardless of principle, to club the
+sinning author. The source from which the condemned work sprang would
+yield more such works, and the circumstances which had produced the
+objectionable author would produce more objectionable authors. These,
+as well as their works, are the symptoms of a social malady, and we
+should treat them as such. We have ceased to apply to society the old
+methods, long since abandoned by the medical profession, of curing an
+evil by means of violent suppression of the symptoms—methods adhered to
+by Nordau with regard to society, but, let us hope, not with regard to
+his patients.
+
+We leave the symptoms alone: for they allow us to diagnose the evil,
+and we go for the causes. In looking for them, we try to keep our
+minds free from such prejudices as influence Nordau’s logic. We
+should not cry out for new ethical standards, for new and impossible
+moral authorities, while we ruthlessly destroy a standard and an
+authority—religion—the practical usefulness of which could not be
+replaced for centuries by any new standard or authority, even if
+invented now.
+
+Recognising the truth in Voltaire’s flippant saying, that if God did
+not exist we should have to invent Him, we do not, as the superstitious
+scientists do, first abolish Him and then re-invent Him in the clumsy
+form of a “mechanical causality.” We let the holders of the ominous
+rings—of which Nathan der Weiser told Saladin—do their utmost to prove
+by virtue and happiness that they hold the magic ring conferring these
+privileges. It matters little to us whether the genuine ring be the
+Christian one, the Jewish one, or the scientists’, so long as the
+belief in the holders of each of the rings stimulates them to prove
+its genuineness. We would not tell the great majority who pin their
+faith to the Christian ring—even if we believe it to be spurious—that
+we can prove it to be worthless, and that the scientists’ ring alone
+will bring salvation: for we know that this ring is beyond the reach of
+most of them, and that, handled in the wrong way, it will work curses
+instead of blessings. We limit ourselves to telling them that the rings
+held by the others must not be despised until the Great Competition is
+adjudicated.
+
+In our quest for the causes of degeneration, we do not begin by trying
+to discover traces of lunacy in a small number of prominent citizens.
+We bear in mind that these are either isolated cases, or types of a
+generally prevailing tendency. In the first case, we leave them alone;
+in the second, we search for the cause of this tendency. If we find
+that the tendency, let us say, toward hysteria, or egomania, in the
+upper classes is being produced by a craving for excitement, unhealthy
+pleasures, or artificial sensations, and by a frivolous and empty life,
+we set about to discover the causes of this craving and this empty life.
+
+If we again discover that the cause is found in the decay of the
+beliefs in personal responsibility, in the importance of philanthropy,
+morality, and patriotism, we try to discover why these beliefs have
+decayed. If it be found that they have decayed simultaneously with
+and in consequence of the decay of the authority of the Church, we
+try either to strengthen the influence of the Church by purifying and
+reforming it, or we replace its dogmas and its doctrines by a healthy
+and moral philosophy.
+
+Should we find, on the other hand, that the deplorable state among the
+poorer classes—their suffering, their degradation, and their joyless
+lives, co-existing with large fortunes, and irremediable under present
+laws and institutions—leads to the conclusion that the altruistic
+feelings of the wealthy are useless, and thus prompt among the upper
+classes selfishness and egomania, and the determination to drown
+their higher emotions in a giddy life, and in the poorer classes to
+foster destructive tendencies and the desire for revenge, we turn our
+attention to social remedies.
+
+No one can turn his attention to the social state of the working class
+in England, and throughout the world, without discovering a host of
+motors active in the production of dire misery, and all the mental
+and moral degradation that follows in its train—a degradation which
+aggravates the misery, and reacts, as we have shown, on the upper
+classes. Nothing will more actively stay the progress of any mental
+degeneration which might be going on than the removal of the causes of
+the awful misery suffered by such an alarming proportion of civilized
+humanity. Nordau’s warning against mental decay and progression towards
+folly will, we hope, quicken, if not the higher emotions, at least the
+sense of self-preservation among the leading classes throughout the
+world. But it must be regretted that he, not only in his suggestion of
+remedies, but in many other parts of his work, displays a lack of logic
+and a want of clear perception as soon as he quits the narrow precincts
+of his special science and the teachings of his manifold authorities,
+and falls back on his own reasoning powers. Had he prevented his
+prejudices from colouring his views, and had he not sacrificed logic
+for brilliancy, his work would have been of no slight assistance to
+those who are helping on humanity in its staggering onward movement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+_VIGOROUS AFFIRMATIONS_
+
+
+It has come to our knowledge that a great number of people in this
+country who have read through the whole of Nordau’s bulky volume have
+carried away an impression far from pleasant. Indeed, there are few
+men or women in a country like England who might not, on some plea or
+another, come under the suspicion of mental degeneration, if all that
+Nordau says were, regardless of his contradictions, accepted as true.
+In this country education and morality are based entirely on religious
+principles, and most of the inhabitants are, either by faith or by
+dint of sincere philosophical inquiry, to some extent religionists.
+All these might think themselves included among those whom Nordau
+stigmatises as degenerates. There are also a great number who admire
+intensely Burne Jones, Rossetti, and many other painters of the same
+school, and all these have been told, with somewhat brutal frankness,
+that they are on the road to lunacy. The pieces of Ibsen have a great
+number of admirers who have welcomed with pleasure the additional
+intelligence and interest which he has infused into the drama, and who
+consequently have been pointed out as degenerate imbeciles.
+
+In the light of these facts there remain few educated persons among
+the upper classes of this country about whose intellectual soundness
+Nordau’s work might not raise doubts. This all the more so as his
+few reservations with regard to people who have demonstrated their
+sanity by practical ability to conduct their own affairs, sink into
+insignificance among his voluminous and wholesale accusations,
+especially as such reservations are forgotten almost as soon as they
+are made.
+
+This wholesale issue of certificates of madness would not have mattered
+so much if his work did not carry with it a certain power of conviction
+which tells especially with the weak, uninstructed mind, and with
+people who have not read his work with special attention. In fact, we
+know cases of people of sensitive mind who imagine that, thanks to
+Nordau’s book, their friends will look upon them as on the road to
+lunacy.
+
+There can be little doubt that the strong impression the book has made,
+sometimes in one way and sometimes in another, is largely due to the
+style adopted by its author. The secret of this style is revealed in
+the chapter “Prognosis,” where he describes with somewhat elephantine
+humour the effects in the twentieth century of the present progressing
+degeneration. He says, among other things, that companies of men will
+be formed who “by vigorous affirmations are charged to tranquillize
+persons afflicted with the mania of doubt, when taken by a fit of
+nervousness.”
+
+Such a piece of prophecy could only enter the head of a man who has had
+practical experience of the great effect produced on nervous people by
+vigorous affirmations, and, having had this experience, Nordau fills
+his volume with such “vigorous affirmations.” His method has succeeded
+all the better as he evidently belongs to that class of powerful and
+strong-willed men who, when once they have formed an opinion, hold to
+it tenaciously, and count as nothing any conviction against their will.
+
+Having followed Nordau through his vigorous crusade against that score
+of people whom he regards as dangerous enemies to humanity, and having
+pointed out a host of his logical errors, erroneous perceptions,
+unsound postulates, and exaggerated representations, we propose before
+closing this volume to examine some of the reasoning methods which give
+him his apparent strength.
+
+It is to him of great moment that his readers shall not believe in the
+existence of the thinking and feeling _Ego_ as a person, apart from
+the organic mechanism which conveys impressions and presentations to
+the _Ego_. He uses all the arguments which that school of thinkers to
+which he belongs has piled up in order to show that mind is a condition
+of matter. He says nothing about the arguments on the other side, but
+treats them as the science of the past. He takes for granted, without
+showing a vestige of doubt, that human beings are nothing but organic
+mechanisms. He does not even refer to, or allow that there is, anything
+beyond the present scientific discoveries, and scornfully ignores the
+existence of what less prejudiced scientists call the Unknowable. He
+thus treats a question which still trembles in the balance as if it
+were already decided in favour of his pet theories.
+
+The attitude which biologists and psychologists take up as such, and
+with the special purpose of proceeding in their investigations with
+perfectly unbiassed minds, Nordau assumes as a philosopher, and tries
+to persuade himself and others that he has taken his stand on absolute
+facts. Science proceeds on the supposition that only that is true
+which has been proved so by demonstrations to our senses, or through
+deductions from such demonstrations. This, of course, is a postulate
+the illogicality of which most scientific men are aware of, and is
+adopted mostly for the purpose, as it were, of clearing the ground. To
+assume, apart from their investigating attitude, that there is nothing
+more to know than what is already known, would be an utterly absurd
+assumption, as it would, if acted upon, preclude further investigation.
+
+Nordau does not, and would not, deny that there is more to learn,
+but he persists in the view that all future knowledge will be on the
+lines of our present knowledge, and never contradictory to the present
+prevailing scientific dogmas. He remains under this impression, because
+he forgets that science has progressed, progresses, and, as far as we
+see now, always will progress through investigations by our senses,
+and that this fact brings two important truths conspicuously into
+relief. The first, that our senses are liable to deceive us, and that
+consequently the difference between primitive views—the result of
+imperfect observation—and the scientific opinions of the day is not one
+of kind, but simply one of degree. In olden times the senses deceived
+us very much, and nowadays they deceive us less. But to what an extent
+they deceive us now the future alone can reveal. The second, that
+science with the present methods cannot investigate anything that does
+not appeal to our senses.
+
+To deny the existence of anything that does not appeal directly to our
+senses is absurd, because we should have to deny all the forces of
+nature. The existence of these can only be detected by their effects.
+The more science teaches us about forces, the more the view gains
+adherence that the forces are not a state of matter, but a thing apart,
+if matter is not a state of force. Even if this view should prove to be
+correct, the error it would dispel, that force is a state of matter,
+would be pardonable, as force only has come within the perception of
+our senses through its effect on matter.
+
+Psychology has to some extent succeeded in tracing and in describing
+certain forces which are at work in our nerves and our brains, such
+as, for example, reveal themselves in the reception and elaboration
+of presentations. But within every human being there are well-known
+phenomena which tell of forces—or of one general force—which so far
+have escaped all investigation. These phenomena are emotion, judgment,
+will.
+
+Attentive readers of Nordau’s books will have noticed that, in
+his scientific dissertations on the actions of the brain, these
+factors—emotion, judgment, will—turn up suddenly without the slightest
+explanation as to whence they come and what they are, though they seem
+to completely determine the action of the whole organism. It is with
+this enormous gap in their chain of reasoning that some scientists,
+with more learning than logic, jump to the conclusion that the thinking
+and feeling _Ego_ is only a state of matter.
+
+Nordau, being anxious, as we have already mentioned, to magnify the
+importance of his psychological theories by undermining his readers’
+belief in the existence of anything unscientifically called “soul” or
+“spirit,” renders his task easier by attacking religion, of which the
+belief in the existence of the spiritual _Ego_ is a vital part. He
+knows that if he can compass the rejection of the idea of religion
+he kills two birds with one stone. He gets rid of the personal _Ego_
+as well as the belief in eternal life, both of which, if admitted to
+be realities, would strongly point to an intelligent Providence the
+existence of which would be a colossal impediment to the glorification
+of science and of scientists.
+
+The way in which he strives to undermine religious belief is ingenious
+and often effective. He trusts chiefly to the historical argument. He
+goes back to primitive man in order to show that he, in his ignorance
+of nature, attributed those natural phenomena which strongly impressed
+him to some man mightier than himself. Nordau tries to show that out
+of this belief arose what he would call superstition, the several
+forms of religion. He here of course appeals to feeling more than to
+reason. People do not like to feel that they have remained in the
+depth of ignorance of the primitive savage, and might feel disposed
+to join the glorious company of the apostles of science. But if we
+use our reasoning powers we cannot fail to perceive that science has
+merely taught us the methods by which, and the laws according to which,
+nature works, and that as to the forces behind the laws of nature the
+scientist is as ignorant as the primitive savage.
+
+Nordau also pursues that diplomatic course—or commits the error—as
+we have already pointed out, of confounding religion with the
+Churches. It is easy to inspire distrust in religion if it be permitted
+to consider Pope Borgia, Ignatius Loyola, and Dr. Stöcker as its
+inevitable results. By analyzing, to some extent distorting the essence
+of ritual, Nordau seeks to point out that Christian worship is not only
+sheer imbecility, but also an insult to the supposed God. He never
+notices such discrepancies between the Churches and religion as are,
+for example, revealed by the anti-semitist movement in Germany, which
+naturally he keenly resents. From the defects, the shortcomings, the
+superstitions, the antiquated dogmas of the Churches, he tries to draw
+the sweeping conclusion that a belief in an intelligent Providence, in
+the existence of a soul, and in a spiritual life independent of the
+body is the outcome of degenerate mental powers.
+
+The views that by such means he endeavours to impose upon his readers
+mean that man, being an organic mechanism, ceases to exist when he
+dies. If this be so, there is no personal responsibility, and only that
+man would be wise, rational, undegenerate, who so arranges his life
+that he may live long, keep in good health, and enjoy all the pleasures
+that he desires, be they noble or ignoble. To test, then, whether a man
+who is, who believes he is, or merely poses as, a disbeliever in future
+responsibility, we ought to examine how he regulates his life. Only in
+this manner can we discover to what an extent he is influenced—to use
+Nordau’s own language—by the inherited tendencies to worship lurking
+somewhere in the innermost recesses of his consciousness, or, to use
+our own language, by the instinctive feeling of personal responsibility
+which has characterized humanity in every stage of barbarism and
+civilization.
+
+The fact that a great many scientists, including Nordau, do not live
+as if they were perfectly convinced of the non-existence of personal
+responsibility beyond the grave, requires quite a different kind of
+explanation than that generally afforded, before we abandon the belief
+that they are self-deceivers. The moral scientists themselves have
+found the necessity of some explanation, and this is what they say,
+though perhaps in other words: “We do not believe in any responsibility
+beyond the grave, but we do what we think our duty to humanity. We
+should be sorry and ashamed to be actuated by a fear of punishment or
+the desire for reward, and not to do what is right and good for the
+sake of the right and the good.”
+
+This sounds very beautiful, but too boastful almost to be accepted
+as the bare truth. Some of them who are aware of this, or who are
+genuinely too modest to thus stand forward as demi-gods, add: “In
+living and acting as we do, and wanting others to live and to act in
+the same way, we are not more unselfish, nor morally better, than
+others. We are only wiser; in fact, more intellectually selfish. And
+all we desire of other people is that they should be intellectually
+selfish. In exercising self-control and devotion to others, we do not
+deprive ourselves of pleasures and enjoyments, because most of these
+come to us from our surroundings and from society at large. For what
+we do for our wives and families, we get love in return; for what we
+do for society and the race, we get two rewards: firstly, esteem and
+reputation, perhaps money; and, secondly, all the social advantages
+which are valuable to us in the same proportion as society is in a
+healthy state.”
+
+This seems highly convincing, but it does not by far cover the whole
+ground. Whoever has studied our times well knows that a man can secure
+for himself, and even for his family and friends, enormous advantages
+by disregarding and violating the interests and moral rights of others,
+and also that, when wholesale rascality succeeds, when it is productive
+of great wealth, great social and political power, it also secures
+esteem and reputation. There are, of course, men in positions, the
+stock-in-trade of which consists in honesty and even philanthropy; but
+there are others, and millions of them, who could, under the present
+social systems of the world, amass fortunes and rise to distinction by
+systematic robbery. Thousands of cases could be stated in proof of the
+fact that, in the absence of the belief in responsibility after death,
+selfishness will prompt men to hurt their fellow-beings and society in
+order to secure money, power, and reputation for themselves. Take the
+case of a poor labourer who, in the usual course, will work and suffer
+during his whole life and die in poverty. To escape such a destiny
+many roads are open to him if he have courage, exceptional ability,
+and no belief in a hereafter. He could commit a variety of crimes in
+order to give him a start in life without the slightest chance of
+being detected, and without experiencing the smallest inconvenience
+during his lifetime. He might even avoid violent and vulgar crimes,
+and operate in a safer manner. He might blackmail a rich man. He
+might in war betray his country. He might sell himself to a corrupt
+political party. He might join the army of some selfish sovereign bent
+on conquest and plunder, and gain a high position. Or he might pursue
+yet safer methods. He might turn first a usurer, then a financier. He
+might keep a degrading public-house, or a gigantic immoral place of
+amusement. He might issue a debasing newspaper, write corrupting books
+and dramatic pieces. Provided he does not expose himself to the hatred,
+contempt, and even the unfavourable criticism of his fellow-beings,
+or injure his health, there is positively nothing to prevent him from
+adopting all these courses to the great detriment of humanity, so long
+as he is perfectly sure that he shall not be called to account after
+death.
+
+What some of our scientists forget is that very few people are in
+the same position as they themselves are, where respectability and
+quasi-philanthropy pay; but, on the contrary, that the great majority
+live under the constant temptation to secure wealth, health, esteem,
+and reputation by means which are injurious to society. To such
+arguments they can only reply that the man, however successful, who
+attains his success by anti-social means runs a risk of ruining the
+happiness of his life by loss of self-respect.
+
+But, if the man has a conscience,—and he could not lose his
+self-respect without one,—it could not trouble him so long as he was
+convinced that he had done the best for himself. By bringing the
+conscience at all into the discussion, the scientists fall back on an
+emotion which has been always intimately associated with the sense of
+personal responsibility, and which they themselves have been compelled,
+in order to protect their theories, to deny absolutely as an instinct
+or to represent as the result of religious education.
+
+For this reason, Nordau would not call that instinct in man which
+prompts him to live and act morally—an instinct which is the original
+motor of all moral progress—conscience. He would probably prefer to
+call it the social instinct. But names matter little. The essential
+point is, that there exists in man’s consciousness a strong instinct
+which cannot be reasoned away. This instinct is intimately connected
+with another, without which it would never have produced the results
+we see around us—namely, the instinct that the _Ego_ is imperishable.
+No one would deny the universal existence of this instinct, but plenty
+of scientists, while acknowledging it as an inherited tendency, would
+deny it any value as an argument in favour of the immortality of the
+_Ego_, on the ground that a hazy, unreasoned, and utterly inexplicable
+yearning need not have a distinct goal.
+
+The instinct of human beings is a subject which has been very much
+neglected by science, and for the good reason that, whatever instincts
+may be natural to man, they have been carefully smothered by teachings,
+examples, and experience, all appealing to his reason from infancy
+upwards. He never uses, never tries, and never suspects the existence
+of his instincts, and when accidentally they lead him right, he
+regards the fact as a delusion, and even avoids mentioning it from
+a fear of being laughed at. This has however not prevented men, and
+often remarkable men, from being guided by their instincts; only it
+is called feeling, taste, luck. There are examples of men who owe the
+greater part of their success to instinctive feeling, and who have
+committed great mistakes by having trusted too much to it. Besides it
+is generally believed that women’s instincts are clear and trustworthy,
+and many men consider themselves to have been largely benefited by
+consulting them.
+
+But, in order to get at a true appreciation of the value and power of
+instincts, we must go to the animals. What else but instinct could we
+call the feeling which allows the carrier-pigeon to find its way from
+London to Paris in an atmosphere of darkness and fog which would render
+it impossible for the most experienced mariner to distinguish between
+north and south. It is a well-known fact that dogs and even cats that
+have been left behind by their owners have followed them at great
+distances, though the owner has gone by rail or water and the animal
+has had to find its way across country. In face of such facts and
+considerations, no man who has not a strong bias would suggest that an
+instinct that is general to humanity need not be heeded.
+
+The instinct of personal responsibility cannot be re-christened
+social instinct and then minimised by the assertion that the social
+instinct is the outcome of reason, the sense of self-preservation, and
+intelligent selfishness: for in that case the poor labourer who wanted
+to become wealthy and famous, as instanced above, could be as evil as
+he liked so long as he was successful, and could not be restrained by
+the social instinct, but only by conscience, or in other words, the
+feeling of unlimited personal responsibility.
+
+Atheistic scientists who lead a moral and useful life cannot hold
+themselves up as a pattern of results produced by social instincts,
+because in the great majority of men, placed differently, these
+instincts would permit them to injure society to an enormous extent.
+Nor does the assertion of these scientists bear the stamp of sincerity
+when they say: “Behold us, we have no belief in personal responsibility
+beyond the grave. And yet we labour and run risks for the good of
+humanity. We sacrifice our time, our money, our health for others,
+and we remain poor while we could be rich. Our life is the outcome of
+intelligent selfishness.”
+
+They would have a better chance of convincing us if they said: “Life
+after death is impossible. We prove by our lives that we believe this.
+Our moral lives and our humanitarianism are sheer hypocrisy which we
+practise in order to get esteem and fame. The books we write are not
+true, but they bring us money, and we do not care how much evil we
+inflict on humanity by ripping away the only foundation on which its
+morality and happiness can be built, while the substitute which we
+supply is worthless. We might have averted an immense amount of vice
+and degradation by leaving old religions alone until the Religion of
+Humanity was perfect enough to replace them. But we attack them now
+because in this way we make money and fame.”
+
+It is not the well-meaning, plodding scientist, striving to arrest
+disease, lessen pain, and dispel superstition, that can bounce us into
+the belief in personal irresponsibility. This could only be done by
+real flesh-and-blood Ducs des Esseintes, men like the hero in Huysman’s
+novel, _A Rebours_. This author, whom Nordau classes among drivelling
+imbeciles, has shown that he has a clearer idea than our clever
+alienist what type of men the certitude of personal irresponsibility
+could produce. We are fully convinced that Nordau is no Duc des
+Esseintes at heart, masquerading as a benefactor of humanity, and,
+if he boasts a little of his good intentions and not at all of his
+wickedness, it is because he believes that what he does is right,
+and does it because he is prompted by that strong sense of personal
+responsibility which his scientific prejudices and his lack of logical
+power cause him to deny.
+
+Having striven by “vigorous affirmations” to implant the belief in
+his readers’ minds that they have no _Ego_ independent of their body,
+and that they consequently are fatally doomed to become what their
+defective brains and nerves are bound to make them, he proceeds with
+another series of “vigorous affirmations,” that degeneration is on the
+increase, that it is characteristic of the end of the century, that
+the men whom we take for geniuses are mattoids, and finally, that the
+whole of our western civilization is degenerate. We have, in preceding
+chapters, tried to show how he has neglected to pay any attention to
+the many signs all over the civilized world indicating an increase in
+mental and moral powers; how he endeavours to overwhelm his readers by
+comparisons between the symptoms in real degenerates, or lunatics, and
+similar symptoms—accompanied however by perfect rationality and great
+intelligence—in authors and artists, and concludes that they are as mad
+as the madman. He tries to force this conclusion on the unwary reader
+by simply ignoring all other grounds for eccentricity that would have
+been taken into account by an unbiassed enquirer.
+
+Let us instance the way in which he judges Zola. He never for an
+instant regards him as a free agent, but speaks of him as a patient
+suffering from erotic madness and other brain and nerve affections,
+which compel the novelist to write, and to write exactly in the vein he
+does.
+
+The very idea that human beings should be thus subjected to all kinds
+of irresistible impulses produces the same gruesome impression as
+the old stories of demoniacal possession. Nordau might as well have
+described Zola as a man hating above all things the writing of novels,
+with a natural repugnance for anything savouring of the obscene,
+compelled by a demon in possession of his body and his soul to write
+the history of the Rougeon-Maquarts and other distasteful works. On
+the careful reader the impression would have been precisely the same.
+But no number of “vigorous affirmations” would have induced even the
+most weak-minded of readers to have accepted the demon, while Zola’s
+eroticism and his mischievous olfactory nerves may have imprinted
+themselves upon the minds of some by dint of scientific dissertation.
+
+While it would seem to most people rational to study Zola’s character
+and the state of his mind, in order to form a correct idea of the
+objects he has in view, Nordau, by his method of supposing that a
+writer is not a free agent, but is compelled to exhibit for the readers
+of his works the innermost recesses of his consciousness, proceeds in
+the opposite manner: he evolves the characters of writers from the
+characters of their books. From what he says about Zola, one feels
+inclined to conclude that this author devotes the large amounts he
+makes by his writings to the gratification of bestial lusts, living in
+a kind of harem of degraded women, rapidly destroying by debauch every
+spark of intelligence left in his tottering brain. We do not know M.
+Zola personally, but from what we hear, he seems to live a quiet and
+laborious life with his wife in a peaceful country house, and far from
+spending his earnings in riotous living, he banks them as a reserve
+for old age, which he seems likely to attain. When however a man’s
+private life and rational attention to his own business seem to clash
+conspicuously with Nordau’s diagnoses, his serenity and self-confidence
+are not in the slightest degree disturbed, because he has given his
+description to the man’s tendency in a “psychiatric sense,” and has
+referred to the man’s actual life. But the discrepancy between the
+author’s actual life and the life he, according to Nordau, ought to
+lead, is not an extenuating circumstance in the eyes of so harsh a
+judge as our alienist. On the contrary, it aggravates the sentence, for
+if the accused author is not in reality the monster he ought to be, it
+is simply because his attenuated physique does not allow of it, and
+drives him through all his debaucheries in his imagination.
+
+We do not admire such literature as Zola has put forth, and do not
+believe that it has accomplished one iota of the good at which
+its author, according to his admirers, aims. But all rational men
+should bear in mind that such books are sure indications that there
+is something rotten in the State. To ascertain to what an extent
+the circumstances surrounding the author are capable of inducing a
+sound-minded man like Zola to write such books, before jumping to the
+conclusion that such authors are lunatics, would be the method adopted
+by sincere searchers after truth.
+
+A rapid survey of the circumstances under which Zola began to write
+will at once show that the inborn eroticism and even coprolalia which
+Nordau tries to foist upon Zola were not the only influences to which
+he was subjected. In Paris, as in all great capitals, there is a
+host of young ambitious _littérateurs_ who compete for the attention
+not only of the public but of the publishers. It is far from certain
+that the books which most please the public would be most acceptable
+to the publishers, and the latter are, therefore, to a great extent
+responsible for the state of literature. Nordau says that M. Alphonse
+Lemerre was able to make Parnassians, as the editor, Cotta, in the
+first half of the century, made German classics; and he is right. A
+Parisian publisher has the power to make pornographic authors just
+as well as Parnassians. He is a business man, and of course wishes
+to obtain a large circulation for his books, and, therefore, is on
+the look-out for authors who are sensational one way or another. At
+the time Zola began to write, the obscene novel was beginning to be
+fashionable. Paul de Kock and his imitators had become old-fashioned,
+and the corruption of the Third Empire, as well as the spread of
+scientific atheism, had created a demand for something racier than the
+peccadilloes of light-hearted _viveurs_. Besides, pessimism was in the
+ascendant, and erotic literature had to be morbid instead of gallant
+and gay.
+
+Several authors of great ability, but strongly influenced by the
+pessimism of the time, and with the field of their ethical studies
+limited to the Parisian boulevards and the Quartier Breda, had paved
+the way for that false realistic literature of which Zola’s writing may
+be called the climax. The publishers, knowing their market, were eager
+to accept books of an obscene character, provided they were serious
+and written in a philosophical spirit. Zola may have seen his way to
+eclipse anything written in that style, and being himself a child of
+his time,—materialist, and nervously inclined to exaggeration,—may have
+seized upon the chance of making money and fame, though he probably
+foresaw that his first novels would expose him to the execration of the
+Philistines and the respectable world. He might also have foreseen that
+one day he would be able to establish a sufficient fame to be received
+by English _littérateurs_ as a genius of his time. If, therefore,
+Zola’s object was to push himself to the front in the manner we here
+suppose him to have done, he has certainly succeeded—a fact which
+could not establish his intellectual degradation. He simply yielded to
+a tremendous temptation, and if he did so under the impression that
+the scientists had completely proved the non-existence of personal
+responsibility, Nordau should be the last to blame him.
+
+But there is not the slightest necessity to assume—nor do we
+assume—that Zola yielded to any temptation at all. On the contrary, it
+is perfectly possible that, in writing the books he has, he sincerely
+believed that he was serving some good purpose. Knowing how many other
+Frenchmen feel in this respect, we might well suppose that he reasoned
+somewhat in the following manner: Religion is wrong, and a fraud
+practised by the clever on the simple-minded. The control which the
+Church has assumed over the relations of the sexes is one of the means
+by which it retains its power, and is fraught with immense unhappiness
+to the people. The separation of the sexes, and the devout decency
+which refrains from openly speaking or writing about sexual subjects,
+distort the people’s ideas, inflame their imagination, and tempt them
+into unhealthy vice. Nature is not sinful. It is either the only
+divinity we have, or it is created by the Almighty, and in this case it
+is holy. To yield rationally to its dictates is therefore no sin. Books
+should therefore be written to prove this point, and at the same time
+accustom the people to look upon nature and its laws without shame,
+without hypocrisy, and without running the risk of being overpowered by
+wild passions. In this way humanity may be elevated, because it will
+be frank and natural, and religion, which science has proved to be
+inimical to humanity, will lose its influence.
+
+We are not saying that Zola’s ideas ran in this groove, only that it is
+possible that they did. If they did, he would have been utterly wrong;
+but he would not have been the first nor the last man whose views have
+been influenced by his interests. No man who knows both France and
+England better than Nordau seems to do could for one moment doubt that
+had Zola been born and educated in England, where the surroundings are
+so vastly different to those of France, he would have written books
+of quite a different character, and probably free from obscenity.
+If this be true, it constitutes another reason why the surrounding
+circumstances of an author should be considered before it is asserted
+that inborn degeneration is alone responsible for the blemishes of his
+work.
+
+Nordau himself points out that the fashion which brought Zola to the
+front is on the decline, and that his influence is on the wane. If so,
+it only proves how limited the influence of such supposed degenerates
+really is, and that—at least with regard to Zola—Nordau’s book is out
+too late, and those who have been deeply impressed by his “vigorous
+affirmations” about the mental decay of the race need not despond.
+
+Over and over again civilization and society have been threatened
+by new and apparently dangerous tendencies, but they have generally
+culminated in absurd exaggerations, and have thus lost their potency.
+Who knows whether Zola, through the wisdom that the years bring, will
+not change his opinions, and with them his vein of writing? We feel
+morally certain that he is now engaged on some novel entirely free from
+those erotic allusions which Nordau says he cannot avoid—a book as
+pure as the first part of _La Joie de Vivre_; and if he does, what will
+become of Nordau’s imperious dogmas?
+
+Another of those features of Nordau’s work which strongly impresses
+his readers is seriousness. He speaks throughout in that grave and
+solemn tone—the So-spake-the-Lord style—which never yet failed to
+impress superficial readers. He is anxious to convey the impression
+that if he has to say unpleasant things it is because his teachings are
+momentous to humanity, and not because he wishes to be sensational. He
+condescends to speak about poetry, drama, and music, but he plainly
+shows it to be his opinion that all these are vanities, and hardly
+worthy to occupy a great man’s thoughts. He aims at crushing with his
+contempt both artists and poets, the whole herd who have neglected
+science, and who try to divert the attention of humanity from this
+all-important subject. He would scare us with the threat that, when
+science has elevated humanity for a little longer, such frivolities as
+poetry, music, and dancing will be relegated to the nursery. Grown-up
+men and women, who now indulge in such pastimes, are made to feel
+that they belong to degenerates, and that they only prove their folly
+if they look upon themselves with any self-respect. He endeavours to
+deprive love between persons of the two sexes of its poetical reality,
+and to wrap it in a gloomy scientific misconception by regarding it as
+a feeling of comradeship grown out of habit, or as the same sexual
+instinct as in animals. The pure and real love which permeates life,
+which gives to man his manhood, and to woman her true womanhood, which
+has created the home and therefore the State—this love he denies, and
+expects serious-minded readers to look upon the world-phenomenon and
+the drama of humanity deprived of their chief elements—light, heat, and
+motion. He speaks of the tendency in men and women to take their own
+life when its burdens out-balance its pleasures as calmly as if suicide
+were the usual exit from our earthly existence.
+
+Nordau thus obtains part of his success by the same methods as those so
+freely adopted by the gloomy, anathematising preachers—rapidly becoming
+types of the past—who, by threats of the devil and hell-fire, aim at
+compelling their hearers to turn their attention from this world in
+order to brood exclusively on dismal dogmas. He would fain banish from
+our minds all that appeals to what is truest within us—our imagination
+and our emotions,—as the kill-joy fanatics in the pulpit have banished
+from our villages the maypole, the dance on the green, and the forfeit
+game.
+
+He is much mistaken if he believes that by such means he can in our
+days produce a lasting impression on the common-sense and intensely
+human English mind. Here and there he may drive some clouded soul into
+neo-Catholicism, and augment the ranks of the Symbolists and the
+Decadents, but he will only make the morbid more morbid, or morbid in
+a different mood. The hard-working and enlightened Englishman does not
+apply himself savagely to his business for business’ sake. Nor does he
+encourage scientific progress for the sake of science.
+
+When he considers himself, and is considered by others, an eminently
+practical man, it is because he knows what he aims at, and uses,
+studies, and encourages the most effective and promptest means to
+attain his ends. But the secret and the essence of this English
+practicality lies in the fact that his aims, so clear and so precise,
+are determined by his imagination, his emotions, and his instincts.
+Unlike the German who despairs of realizing his ideal, the Englishman
+has it in his imagination as clearly before him as the architect has
+the plans, elevations, and sections of the palace he is going to build.
+He does not begin to build until he is convinced that every detail is
+correct. Nothing discourages him more than the spoiling and blurring of
+his ideals; he stops his work, as does the builder when his drawings
+are lost, or found impracticable.
+
+It is vain for Nordau to try to persuade the average Englishman, be
+he educated or not, that the enjoyments which enchant him in his
+youth shall not cast their roseate hue over the rest of his days.
+Poetry, music, the drama, are part and parcel of the pleasures the
+English people look forward to when business has supplied them with
+the means of enjoying them in the expensive form in which, with us,
+unfortunately, they are alone obtainable in perfection.
+
+It is not only such enjoyments as educated people of all ages
+appreciate which for an Englishman retain a life-long charm. Even
+his boyish tastes give zest to his life, so long as he retains his
+faculties. At ten years of age he reads, raves, and dreams about horses
+and dogs; at seventy he rides to hounds, and at a still more advanced
+age he partakes in all the excitements of the racecourse. As a boy he
+reads about travels and adventures; at middle age, or even later, we
+find him travelling all over the world in quest of big and small game.
+Cricket, football, boating, and athletics in general represent the life
+of English boys, and far into old age they can seldom refrain from
+glancing at the sporting columns of their paper, which to a foreigner
+appear as interesting as the dullest of dull market reports; while
+athletic sports are witnessed by ever-growing crowds of people of all
+ages, who watch the proceedings with a zest as intense as that of the
+Spaniard watching a bullfight.
+
+And to people who thus enjoy their lives, Nordau would say: “You are
+degenerates, because you enjoy childish things. Put them behind you,
+and rise to my level. Take a seat at the table of science, where we
+will show you by dissection, and by vivisection, the minutest details
+of the entrails of those creatures which, in the fulness of their life,
+in the beauty of their form, afford you a childish delight.”
+
+If such be the road to regeneration, only the weak-minded among
+the English people will enter upon it. Thousands might momentarily
+experience a depression—a gloom similar to that produced by the
+fulminating and damnation-dealing preacher one meets with in country
+districts. The dismal appearance of the orator, his description of
+hell, of an accursed world, of the narrow way to salvation, as well
+as the scared faces in the dark and dank little church, may evoke
+a gruesome mood while the sermon lasts. But on coming out into the
+summer air, into the midst of the revivifying sunshine, of the rustling
+trees, radiant flowers, singing birds, dancing butterflies, and softly
+humming bees, the healthy-minded of the congregation experience a sense
+of relief and joy; for the uncharitable condemnation of the ascetic
+preacher is powerfully contradicted by the direct and unmistakable
+language in which nature appeals to man’s emotions.
+
+The depressing effect of Nordau’s book is enhanced by his ostentatious
+display of knowledge, and by the absolute faith he himself has in
+it. He follows the methods of wily political speakers. These have a
+way of piling proofs upon proofs in order to demonstrate the truth
+of such points as are almost self-evident; and when they have thus
+established among their audience a confidence in their logic, they
+slur over the weak points, take for granted that everything is proved,
+and draw a plausible conclusion devoid of any direct connection with
+the arguments. A postmaster-general, for example, does not wish to be
+bothered with the reduction of postage, and, in order to resist such
+a proposal, he will deliver a lengthy harangue to show that the work
+of the post-office is useful to the public, that it cannot be well
+administered without sufficient revenue, the necessity of keeping a
+complete staff, the impossibility of reducing wages and salaries, and
+many other points which are perfectly clear without demonstration.
+He will then suddenly conclude that the post-office works at present
+with very small means, and that, if those means are further reduced,
+disorganization and disorder may ensue. To be able to draw this
+conclusion, he has to take for granted that the reduced postage would
+mean reduced income to the post-office, while in reality it may mean
+the very contrary.
+
+In the same way Nordau gives us pages upon pages in order to show us
+such facts as psychological science has established, and then boldly
+elicits supposed facts which science never has and may never be able
+to prove. We have already given plenty of instances of this, and they
+need not be referred to again. His careful minuteness in psychological
+matters often induces the unwary reader to accept his unproved
+statements purporting to represent facts drawn from other branches
+of knowledge. Thus, for example, he speaks of matters pertaining to
+sociology, economy, administration, and politics, as if he were a
+universally acknowledged authority on these subjects. It will suffice,
+however, to read his plan for arresting the spread of degeneration to
+understand at once on what feeble foundations his apparent omniscience
+rests. His idea of an ideal social order is an impossible amalgamation
+of socialistic as well as communistic fallacies. While he retains
+the absurd postulate of the Socialists, that a perfect Government
+could be established, distributing all the wealth of the nation among
+individuals, he indulges heedlessly in the communistic delusion that
+those who accumulate under the present system would continue to
+accumulate wealth at the same rate when the Government confiscates all
+fortunes left by deceased individuals. He does not see that people
+under such a system would take very good care to dispose of their
+property before they die, a course which even the German police could
+not prevent.
+
+He does not insist on these errors, but they come out distinctly
+as indispensable links in the association of ideas, underlying his
+views regarding the anti-semitist movement, the dangers of individual
+liberty, the bestial propensities of the masses, and the necessity
+of a Government composed of strong-minded scientific men. It is
+only too easy to see that in all his suggestions of working out the
+terrestrial paradise of humanity,—which one day, according to him,
+will be the outcome of science,—he is guided entirely by prejudice
+and feeling. In summing up what he has said on this subject, his
+ideal social order presents itself to our minds as unfree, completely
+subjected but well-cared-for masses benevolently governed by senates of
+strong-minded, scientifically educated men—the Jews.
+
+The gloom and unrest called forth by Nordau’s work in nervous minds no
+doubt gain in strength from the apparently powerful personality behind
+it. But it suffices, as we have shown, to divest this imposing giant
+of his assumed power in order to escape from his influence. Nordau,
+had he not done so before, reveals himself unmistakably in the very
+last sentence of his book as one largely beset by human frailties
+when, in self-glorification, he quotes the words of him whose work he
+so strenuously attempts to undermine and oppose. In order to assure
+his readers that his object, as a scientist, is to benefit humanity,
+to lead it farther on the road on which religion, so much contemned
+by him, has already taken it some distance, he quotes Christ’s words:
+“Think not that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets; I have
+not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”
+
+We here refrain from the temptation to write half a dozen pages in
+order to show, in Nordau’s own manner, how, by quoting from the
+Scriptures, by appealing to faith and emotion, by comparing himself
+to Christ, he is symbolic with Paul Verlaine, he is mystical with the
+neo-Catholics, he is emotional with Rossetti, he is an egomaniac with
+the Diabolists, and a megalomaniac with Wagner. But we refrain, and
+only say that he is human.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+_REGENERATION_
+
+
+If the manifold discussions which have raged around the question of
+human progress have failed to establish a consensus of opinion, it
+is largely due to the absence of any exact definition of the term
+progress. There can be no doubt about our advance in science. The trite
+references to the use we make of steam, of which the ancient sages knew
+so little as to call it smoke, establishes this beyond the possibility
+of denial. But, on the other hand, our advance in literature and art
+has been crab-like; for it has been accomplished with our face turned
+towards antiquity. To set up ideals out of the actualities of the past
+involves the recognition that we, as a race, stand lower than we have
+done before, or at least at one time we have slided backwards and not
+yet retrieved the lost ground.
+
+The progress of humanity, with all its deviations and backslidings,
+may appear as one decided march onwards, if we look upon our ideals,
+plucked from the past, as so many pegs thrown out into the distant
+future demarcating the ground to be occupied by the road of
+civilization. The Greeks showed us, as in a flash, and within a limited
+space, ideals of poetry and art, and since the time of the Renaissance
+we have been striving to attain them. Christ has been the moral ideal
+held up to us for well-nigh nineteen hundred years; but this we are so
+far from having realized, as to be filled with doubt whether, in our
+awkward groping, with our faces turned towards Calvary, we move in the
+right direction.
+
+There are many circumstances which render it difficult to decide
+whether we have progressed or not. How are we to determine which
+represents the greater advance, the high degree of æsthetic
+civilization in a small group of the human family, and all the
+rest plunged in barbarian darkness; or a lower degree of æsthetic
+civilization uniformly spread among all the peoples of the world? We
+have, thus, to consider not only the degrees of progress, but the
+nature—whether æsthetic or moral—and its extension, before we can
+decide whether we have progressed or not. But this is not all. We must
+agree, or at least have clearly determined in our minds, towards what
+goal the progression is supposed to move. If it be to bring the whole
+of humanity up to an ideal beauty, perfect health, and a maximum of
+strength and agility, our civilization in our present stage certainly
+tends in the other direction. If, on the other hand, the goal be the
+conquest of Nature’s forces, we are certainly moving rapidly towards it.
+
+In face, then, of the complexity of the question, whether humanity is
+progressing or not, the best method of replying to it rationally is
+to take one feature of human development only, but one in which the
+others are included, or on which they depend. To select for such a
+test-feature the psychological conditions of civilized humanity, at
+a certain period as manifested in literature and art, might at the
+first glance appear as the most rational course, because with strong
+and sound minds, with well-balanced psychological faculties, a nation
+is most likely to shape its destiny in such a fashion as to secure
+excellency in all the domains of its existence.
+
+But there are strong objections to this method of gauging human
+progress. The fashionable writers and artists may not represent the
+mass of their contemporaries, but may be the exponents of a temporary
+mood in a small uninfluential clique. Features of literature and
+art may, as we have already pointed out, convey the impression of
+retrogression simply because they reflect the unrest and confusion
+which prevail in the majority of minds at periods when new ideas and
+new views, healthy in themselves, trample out the old ones. Art and
+literature do not always reflect the ethics of a nation at a given
+period. The nation may be intellectually strong and morally sound, but
+political events, economic troubles, may momentarily goad it into
+abnormal moods and drive it, by sheer necessity, into a course which,
+under normal circumstances, it would shun. A despot with æsthetic
+leanings, and his nobility, might be instrumental in causing art and
+literature to blossom forth most vigorously, while the people at large
+might be sunk in the deepest depths of demoralization and misery in
+order to furnish the means for the maintenance of a brilliant court.
+History and actualities afford ample confirmation of the fact that
+art and literature may flourish while the people degenerate. When
+the culture of Greece was at its zenith, a large proportion of the
+people—the slaves—had fallen so low as actually to afford object
+lessons to the young citizens, in order to deter them from the
+horrors of vice and degradation. During the Renaissance in Italy the
+courts were corrupt, and the Church had sunk to its deepest stage of
+demoralization. While the “Roi Soleil” was developing literature and
+art in the hothouse of his royal patronage, the immorality of the
+nobles and the degradation of the people were unprecedented.
+
+Nor are there wanting examples of how a nation may be in a vigorous
+state of progression without developing any remarkable features in art
+and literature. Switzerland was for a long time the leading nation
+in Europe in the matter of government, legislation, administration,
+civic virtues, and education, but has never distinguished itself
+æsthetically. During the period in which America was most progressive,
+its people were too busy with practical affairs to give much attention
+to the arts. If, therefore, we were to judge the progress of a nation
+by its arts and literature, we might feel disposed to conclude that
+these two blossoms of civilization sprout forth in the same ratio as
+the people degenerate. But this would be absurd, for it would be to
+give the palm of civilization to the Esquimaux, or to the pigmies in
+the dark forests of Africa. The idea, therefore, of judging whether a
+nation, or a race, is rising or degenerating by the state of its arts,
+must be rejected as utterly misleading.
+
+The political and social institutions of a nation are surely the
+features that best lend themselves to the test of the stage it has
+attained in progressive development, or degeneration. If laws and
+institutions are such as to give every inhabitant the best chances
+of attaining to a high degree of civilization, of morality, and of
+happiness, and such laws and institutions emanate from the people
+themselves, and are not imposed by another nation and not by the freak
+of a despot, that nation is in a progressive state. It is difficult
+to imagine a country with good laws and good institutions without
+corresponding healthy conditions in all the other features of its
+existence. History offers no example of a community, or of a people,
+that has given itself laws and institutions equally beneficial to all
+the individuals, and yet exhibiting signs of decay in any domain of
+its culture. It is true that in a free, healthy, progressive State,
+especially a thoroughly democratic one, literature and art may not
+attain that hectic florescence so often co-existent with bad laws and
+bad institutions. But it has never been found that art and literature
+in such healthy nations are in a degenerating state.
+
+It is true that different minds hold different opinions as to the
+attributes of good laws and institutions. A man who believes that human
+beings are essentially wicked and brutal would call a government good
+only when it possessed power enough to keep the people in subjection;
+while he who has discovered that the good qualities in human beings
+spring from a natural instinct, and the bad ones from unfavourable
+conditions and corrupt surroundings, would only call that form of
+government good which afforded to each individual the greatest possible
+liberty consistent with the same degree of liberty in others. But there
+can be no hesitation as to what constitutes good government and good
+institutions, if we appeal to the only authority capable of judging
+with full knowledge of the case, namely, the individuals themselves.
+
+We often meet with people who look with distrust upon institutions
+and systems of government based on liberty, but this does not affect
+our assertion that the great mass of individuals would personally,
+and for themselves, claim as much liberty as they could obtain. Those
+who advocate authoritative administration and the subjection of the
+people to a class, or an elected body, behold in such constitutions the
+means not of reducing their own liberty, but of extending it beyond
+legitimate boundaries, and at the expense of the liberty of others.
+
+It is hardly possible to imagine a nation that has given itself, and
+is living under, a system of personal liberty, and is at the same
+time degenerate. A degenerate man fears liberty, he prefers to lean
+on others; he feels not ashamed to live on charity, and would abuse
+his liberty in order to satisfy his base instincts. A sound-minded
+and morally healthy man needs no compulsion to respect the right and
+liberties of others. He trusts and respects others, because he trusts
+and respects himself. He would assist no man in his attempts and
+intrigues to injure others. He would, therefore, uphold his own, as
+well as the liberty of others.
+
+Such bad results as Nordau fears from institutions based on liberty
+can only arise out of oppression. We have shown how the anti-semitic
+movement, which he erroneously regards as an outcome of too much
+liberty, is the result of oppression exercised by the Jewish
+capitalists and employers in virtue of bad legislation, and no one
+will deny that the anarchistic tendencies spring from the same cause.
+From these reasons we may fairly conclude that, if we wish to form an
+opinion of the intellectual soundness and moral strength of a nation,
+we cannot do better than examine to what an extent it has attained to
+good institutions based on personal liberty.
+
+If civilized mankind is actually degenerating, we must find a tendency
+among the people in the countries under examination to give themselves,
+or to accept under compulsion, laws and institutions which rob them of
+their personal liberty.
+
+In gauging the present epoch by this standard, we might first be
+inclined to side with Nordau. Those great nations which may fairly
+be looked upon as the leaders of civilization present spectacles of
+political corruption and retrogression, which might well suggest
+the idea that, instead of developing into a race intellectually and
+morally strong enough to live free, they show a marked willingness to
+place themselves under control of some kind—to abandon their divine
+attributes and to assume those of domesticated animals. But a correct
+opinion about so important a question cannot be formed on a superficial
+glance. In no branch of knowledge are appearances so deceptive as
+in sociology. Apparently the same effects are often produced by two
+opposite causes, and under slightly different circumstances the same
+cause may produce two opposite effects. Thus, a man may vote for a
+measure because he is corrupt and selfish, and with the object of
+benefiting himself at the expense of his fellow-men; while another
+man may vote for the same measure because he does not happen to be
+in possession of certain special knowledge which would enable him to
+understand the nugatory character of his action.
+
+There are nations in Europe at this moment presenting such a mass
+of anomalies as to render it extremely difficult to decide whether
+they are bent on improving their laws and institutions, or on making
+them worse. Much, for example, that has happened in Germany has been
+pronounced as a decided forward movement. The German army has displayed
+physical and mental qualities which bear witness to healthy development
+rather than degeneration. The unification of the German States into
+one Empire had for some time before the last war been the goal towards
+which the nation aspired. When it was reached, patriotic Germans
+expected it to be made the starting-point of a new departure for
+further progress. But the very accomplishment of national unification
+involved features which clearly pointed to retrogression. The mediæval
+principle of conquest was revised. The future peace and good-will
+among the nations was destroyed by the annexation of the two provinces
+conquered from France. Standing armies for Germany became more than
+ever necessary, and the nation was called upon to make enormous
+sacrifices in order to ward off the consequences of retrogression in
+foreign politics. The heaviest burdens were laid upon the working
+class, and their struggle for existence became desperate. They have
+shown many signs of discontent, and these have led to the consolidation
+of repressive measures. Thus Germany now presents the spectacle of a
+curious amalgam of mediæval and modern features.
+
+At the head of this great empire we find a young Emperor who, though
+not a despot in the widest sense of the word, possesses, as an
+indispensable feature of the system, sufficient power to plunge not
+only the whole of Germany, but all Europe, into unspeakable misery.
+The individuals of the nation sink into insignificance before him.
+They plainly feel that their destiny is in his hands as much as that
+of their ancestors was in the hands of their mediæval emperors. And
+yet the people are highly civilized, well educated, and show, in their
+different walks of life, intelligence, strength of character, moral
+worth.
+
+Here, then, is a people which, judged collectively by our standard,
+would stand at a low point of development, because their laws and
+institutions are not based on personal liberty. If we consider
+the direction in which they are moving, the verdict becomes as
+unfavourable. The country is torn by two divergent tendencies, neither
+of them aiming onwards. The one represented by the Emperor, the
+official bodies, the plutocrats, and men who think as Nordau, who wish
+to keep a keener watch on the destitute classes; the other represented
+by the Socialists, who clamour for the destruction of the present
+system, not for the purpose of securing personal liberty, but of
+wresting what little is left of it from the people, and of establishing
+complete State tyranny.
+
+If the standard we are applying be trustworthy, neither of the two
+currents of development noticeable in Germany run in the direction
+of a high degree of civilization. At the present moment it seems
+difficult to discover whence, within Germany, could come the impulse
+for such general mental and moral progress as would be manifested by
+good and free institutions. If the present conditions could prevail
+indefinitely, and gradually improve so as to safeguard, or at least not
+impede, the development of the individuals, Germany might look forward
+to the future with equanimity.
+
+But, unfortunately, actualities in that country confirm only too
+well the trustworthiness of our standard. The result of the present
+system cannot fail to exercise degenerating effects on the people,
+but whether these effects will influence the present generation
+only, or by heredity be perpetuated in the nervous systems and the
+brains of the race, is a question for psychologists to settle. The
+stupendous standing army, the heavy taxation, and a host of bad
+laws have undermined, and are still undermining, the welfare of the
+people. The immediate results are, among the working classes: extreme
+penury, hopeless lives, low morals, intense hatred of the wealthy
+class, a growing sympathy with the destructive programme of the
+advanced Anarchists, decay of religious belief without any growth of
+the religion of humanity of science. Among the commercial class, the
+results are: intense competition, small profits, nervous application
+to business, a thirst for gold and recklessness with regard to the
+means of satisfying it. Among the bureaucratic classes the dread of
+reduced and retarded advancement has caused discipline and absolute
+submission to take the place of religion and philosophy. The landed
+aristocracy, seeing their incomes threatened by the deplorable state of
+agriculture, plot and plan how to recoup themselves at the expense of
+the people, and have even shown an inclination to resist the Emperor
+himself when their interests require it. This state of affairs is more
+than sufficient to account for such signs of degeneration as Nordau
+has noticed in his own country. What wonder that artists and writers,
+menaced by misery and actuated by the general thirst for gold, should
+consult their market rather than their inspiration, and that they
+should copy successful authors and artists in France and elsewhere,
+rather than take the trouble and the risk to do original work. A
+comparison between German literature of to-day and that of decaying
+Rome could not fail to impart important lessons.
+
+Everything in Germany points to a coming catastrophe. Even if we
+consider only one of the directions from which the first alarm
+may come—that is, the Finance Department—it seems impossible that
+the system can last much longer. The heavy taxation unfortunately
+undermines its own basis, namely, the ability of the people to pay,
+and the much-strained credit of the State is likely to collapse at the
+very moment it will be most needed. It is, therefore, not premature
+to consider what will happen in that country at about the end of this
+century, when the financial resources, the patience of the people, and
+the confidence of the army may be exhausted.
+
+Two alternatives are possible. The crisis which seems bound to come
+may be a violent one, arising from below; or it may be a peaceful
+one, taking its origin from above. In the one case, there will be
+a momentary social chaos; for all the military and bureaucratic
+institutions, all systems, theories, prejudices, will be cast into the
+furnace. At what time and under what conditions Germany will emerge
+from the crisis will depend on the number, and the strength of mind, of
+those Germans who understand that good institutions based on liberty
+are the cardinal attributes of a sound-minded and morally strong nation.
+
+The other case—the crisis coming from above—does not seem possible just
+now, because the Emperor himself would have to take the initiative. It
+is not likely that he would give up his power, his military tastes and
+pastimes, in order to render Germany a free and happy nation, living in
+peace with other free nations. For a sovereign to conceive such an idea
+would be almost supernatural, and to carry it out successfully would
+require the highest degree of human intelligence, because it could not
+be done except in harmony and in co-operation with the other European
+States.
+
+From whatever direction the crisis comes, there is much in the
+Germans to warrant a final successful issue. We cannot believe, with
+Nordau, that such signs as we see of degeneration spring from moral
+and intellectual weakness. In the external circumstances, we find
+sufficient cause for far more demoralization than actually exists;
+and the Germans, taken as individuals, show themselves to possess
+plenty of those mental and moral qualities which are the only possible
+foundations of a healthy State. They bear witness to the fact that,
+despite unfavourable outward circumstances, the race is not decaying;
+and that the present corruption and demoralization may be decay only of
+one stage of human development, from which in obedience to some strong
+impulse a new regenerating era may arise.
+
+In order to elucidate the apparent state of degeneration which
+characterises civilization at the close of this most remarkable
+century, as well as its causes, we have instanced Germany—the
+country where Nordau has studied and written, and where he seems
+to have received his most vivid impressions. The circumstances
+and tendencies of other countries, especially in those governed
+more or less on despotic principles, are akin to those in Germany.
+Everywhere increasing penury, discontent among the destitute classes,
+a rapidly growing power among the plutocrats, national indebtedness,
+financial corruption, the decay of all religious belief, and general
+demoralization. But the similarity does not end here. In every country
+there are numbers of people striving and hoping to bring about a better
+state of things, even at the cost and sacrifice of some of the leading
+features of our civilization. There is a mass of evidence, including
+those peculiar features of modern society on which Nordau has dwelt so
+largely, showing that a deep unrest has taken hold of humanity. The
+feeling is not only that we are in a wrong position, but that we are
+moving in a wrong direction. The general fear is not that degeneration
+has set in, but that, moving on the road that we do, we cannot escape
+it.
+
+The most striking characteristic of our time is that in no nation do
+we find, on either side of the Atlantic, any distinct indication of
+the road which can lead us past the Slough of Despond. The moral state
+of the civilized world is like a nation preparing for revolt against
+a tyrant: gloomy, discontented, and excited men are encouraging one
+another with secret signs and passwords, mustering and drilling in
+secret places, to be ready for action, but without any trustworthy
+leaders, without any plans for the future, without even any tactics
+for the first struggle. In some countries the cry is for leaders; but
+the old faith that the situations will bring out the men seems to have
+been utterly falsified: for everywhere mediocrity, prejudice, and
+corruption hold the helm. The cry in England and other countries is not
+for leaders, but for more light. We want a higher philosophy, nobler
+arts, a loftier literature, sounder principles of legislation, a purer
+religion.
+
+No nation holds a higher responsibility than the English. Its vast
+possessions all over the globe, its financial and commercial supremacy,
+its ethical influence over all the English-speaking countries, mark
+it out as the standard-bearer of civilization. Nothing great can
+happen among us without re-echoing in the remotest corners of the
+earth, and any step onward taken by us will send a thrill throughout
+humanity. Degenerate Englishmen may still wish to meekly follow other
+nations, but our mission is to be the practical, energetic, daring
+pioneers heading the march of progress. By using its great power and
+influence, the British nation can render invaluable service to humanity
+in the present crisis. On England must therefore rest our hopes for
+the practical solution of the grave questions on which progress and
+retrogression depend. From England alone can proceed that electrifying
+impulse of which the bewildered nations stand in need, that they may
+marshal the forces and focus the goal of progress.
+
+In our political circles, in the ranks of literature, and throughout
+all the strata of society there are already unmistakable signs that the
+period of scepticism, selfishness, and rant will end with the century;
+that scientific superstition and sickly Collectivist chimeras are
+doomed; and that the nation is sternly entering upon the mission of
+leading humanity towards good laws and institutions based on liberty,
+and thus inaugurating a universal movement which by its glorious
+results shall demonstrate that the alarming symptoms of degeneration,
+revealed by the psychologists, are the first symptoms of regeneration.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+    About’s (Edmond), _La Question Romaine_, 250
+
+    Anarchism, rapid spread of, 194;
+      causes of, 195-7
+
+    Andersen, Hans, 58
+
+    Andersen’s _Ugly Duckling_, 74
+
+    Angelo, Michael, 224
+
+    Anstey, F., 141
+
+    Anti-semitism in Germany and elsewhere, 185 _ff._
+
+    Armies, English, French, and German, no degeneracy is proved by
+          recent events, 134
+
+    Art, 56 _ff._;
+      does not necessarily reflect the ethics of a nation, 292
+
+    Artists and symbolism, 73 _ff._
+
+    Arts, the, and science, future harmony of, 228, 229
+
+    Association of Men for the Suppression of Immorality, 246 _ff._
+
+    Atheism, effect of, upon morals, 85, 90 _ff._;
+      upon religion, 86 _ff._
+
+    Auricular confession, 162-4
+
+    Austria, causes of anti-semitism in, 187 _ff._
+
+    Avinain, French assassin, 164
+
+
+    Baudelaire, Charles, 231, 237
+
+    Beethoven, Ludwig, 106
+
+    Bismarck, Prince, 137
+
+    Björnsen, Björnstjerne, 170, 177
+
+    Borgia, Pope (Alexander VI), 265
+
+    Bornmüller, Franz, 116;
+      his estimate of Tolstoi, 116
+
+    Brahe, Tycho, 66
+
+    Bremer, Frederika, 142
+
+    Bronté’s _Jane Eyre_, 146
+
+
+    Cavour, di, Count Camillo Benso, 137
+
+    Cervantes, Miguel, 152
+
+    Chitral, British expedition to, 134
+
+    Church and religion, the, distinction between, 77 _ff._
+
+    Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 219
+
+    Columbus, Christopher, 66
+
+    Communism, absurdity and impracticability of, 190
+
+    Confession of wrong-doing, the yearning for, 162-5
+
+    Consciousness of man, 204
+
+    Correggio, Allegri, 127
+
+    Cotta, Johann Friedrich, 277
+
+
+    Dante’s _Divina Commedia_, 224
+
+    Darwinian theory of evolution, 159
+
+    Degeneration, the causes of, 255 _ff._
+
+    Dishonesty as a means of acquiring wealth, 267-9
+
+    Drummond, Henry, 8, 12
+
+    Drunkenness in England, 136, 137
+
+
+    Egoism, 260 _ff._
+
+    Egomania, 230
+
+    England, degeneracy in, 136, 137;
+      estimation of women in, 142, 217-9;
+      æsthetic revolt in, 237;
+      high moral responsibility of, 305, 306
+
+    English army, no degeneracy in, 134
+
+    Ethical Culture, Berlin Society for, 247, 248
+
+    Eroticism, 205 _ff._
+
+
+    Faraday, Michael, 54
+
+    France, marriage in, 90, 91;
+      æsthetic revolt in, 234 _ff._
+
+    Free Labour Association, the, 31
+
+    French army, no degeneracy in, 134
+
+    French hatred of Germany, 24, 25
+
+    French symbolists, the, 76 _ff._, 94
+
+
+    Galileo, 66
+
+    Gautier, Théophile, 231
+
+    Germans, submission of, to discipline, 15 _ff._;
+      their treatment of women, 18-19;
+      ideas concerning marriage, 19;
+      hatred of France, 24, 25
+
+    Germany, marriage in, 18, 19;
+      army system in, 138;
+      position of women in, 142 _ff._;
+      influence of, upon Norway, 173 _ff._;
+      causes of anti-semitism in, 187 _ff._;
+      the development of the empire, 298;
+      burdens upon the working people in, 298, 299;
+      despotic rule of the Emperor, 299;
+      bad effect of present system of government, 300-2;
+      the coming catastrophe, 301-3
+
+    Gladstone, William Ewart, 137
+
+    Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 56, 152, 224
+
+    Goethe’s _Werther’s Leiden_, 104;
+      _Faust_, 157, 216
+
+    Gounod, Charles François, 226
+
+
+    Hanseatic League, the, 173
+
+    Heller, Ferdinand, 222, 223
+
+    Heredity, 159, 160
+
+    Hugo’s _Notre Dame de Paris_, 59
+
+    Human instincts, 270-2
+
+    Humanity, the religion of, 232
+
+    Hunt, Holman, 64, 68
+
+    Huxley, Professor Thomas Henry, 54
+
+    Huysman, Joris Karl, 236
+
+    Huysman’s _A Rebours_, 273
+
+
+    Ibsen, Henrik, 132 _ff._, 140 _ff._, 177, 258;
+      influence of, upon women, 142
+
+    Ibsen’s _Ghosts_, 154, 155, 158;
+      _Pillars of Society_, 155, 156;
+      _The Lady from the Sea_, 157;
+      _The Doll’s House_, 74, 179-81
+
+    Immorality, Association of Men for the Suppression of, 146 _ff._
+
+    Immoral literature, impossibility of prohibiting the circulation of,
+          249-51
+
+    Instinct in human beings, 270-2
+
+    Italian army, no degeneracy in, 134
+
+
+    Jew, the free-thinking, characteristics of, 20, 21
+
+    Jews, the, Wagner’s dislike of, 184;
+      hatred of, in Russia, 185;
+      in Germany and Austria, 187 _ff._;
+      inherent good qualities of, 191, 192
+
+    Jones, Burne, 68, 127, 130, 258
+
+
+    Kant, Immanuel, 3
+
+    Kidd, Benjamin, 8, 12
+
+    Kock, de, Charles Paul, 277
+
+
+    Legrain, 46, 47
+
+    Lemerre, Alphonse, 277
+
+    Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 105
+
+    Lessing’s _Amelia Galotti_, 105
+
+    _Liberty_ (periodical), 32
+
+    Liebknecht, Herr, 16, 139
+
+    Lie, Jonas, 170, 177
+
+    Literature does not necessarily reflect the ethics of a nation, 292
+
+    Lombroso, Dr. Cesare, 21;
+      Nordau’s dedication to, in _Degeneration_, 132
+
+    Love, the purity of, 213, 214
+
+    Loyola, Ignatius, 265
+
+    Lutheran Church and confession, the, 163
+
+
+    Marriage laws, how inaugurated, 150
+
+    Marriage relations in Germany, 18-19;
+      in France, 90, 91
+
+    Mallarmé, Stephane, 104 _ff._
+
+    Martineau, Dr. James, 54
+
+    Maudsley, Dr. Henry, 251
+
+    Millais, John E., 63, 64
+
+    Molière’s _Malade Imaginaire_, 12
+
+    Moltke, Count Helmuth Karl Bernard, 7
+
+    Morel, Dr. B. A., 48
+
+    Morice, Charles, author of _La Littérature de tout à l’heure_, 106
+
+    Music, the influence of, 60, 61, 220 _ff._
+
+    Mysticism, 44 _ff._;
+      definition of, 47
+
+
+    Napoleon III, 138
+
+    Neo-Catholicism and the Church of Rome, 76
+
+    Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 138
+
+    Nietzsche, Friedrich, 201, 223, 243
+
+    Nietzsche’s _Der Fall Wagner_, 223
+
+    Nihilists, Russian, 197
+
+    Nordau, Max, influence of his book _Degeneration_, 9;
+      importance of closely investigating his theories before accepting
+          them, 10;
+      intemperance of his methods, 11;
+      a typical German, 12;
+      his German bias, 17;
+      an enemy to France, 24;
+      his attitude toward art, 56 _ff._;
+      his animosity against the symbolists, 77 _ff._;
+      views upon the poetry of Paul Verlaine, 99 _ff._;
+      denunciation of Tolstoi, 108 _ff._;
+      estimate of Ibsen, 132-82;
+      attack upon Wagner, 183;
+      judgment of Zola, 274 _ff._
+
+    Norway, position of women in, 145 _ff._
+
+    Norwegians, national characteristics of, 171 _ff._
+
+
+    Ohnet’s (George) novels, 28
+
+
+    Poets and symbolism, 73 _ff._
+
+    Pre-Raphaelitism, 55 _ff._
+
+
+    Raphael, Sanzio, 75, 127
+
+    Religion, influence of, upon civilization and progress, 49, 50;
+      and the Church, distinction between, 77 _ff._;
+      relation of, to science, 232 _ff._
+
+    Rollinat, Maurice, 231
+
+    Roman Church and neo-Catholicism, 76
+
+    Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 127, 130, 135, 258
+
+    Rossetti’s masterpiece, “Dante’s Dream,” 69, 70, 75
+
+    Rubinstein, Anton, 223
+
+    Ruskin, John, 58, 59
+
+    Russia, causes of anti-semitism in, 185-7
+
+    Russian, characteristics, 109;
+      government, 110;
+      serfs, 110, 111;
+      nihilists, 197
+
+
+    Scandinavia, position of women in, 145 _ff._
+
+    Science, the unsolved problems of, 22, 23;
+      the bankruptcy of, 73 _ff._;
+      and the arts, future harmony of, 228, 228 [sic];
+      relation of, to religion, 232 _ff._
+
+    Scientific atheism, 90 _ff._
+
+    Scientists, dogmatic attitude of, 65 _ff._;
+      influence of, upon religion, 86 _ff._
+
+    Schopenhauer, Arthur, 225, 226
+
+    Schumann, Robert, 222, 223
+
+    Self, the religion of, 230-40
+
+    Serfs, emancipation of, in Russia, 110, 111
+
+    Shakespeare, William, 56, 152
+
+    Society for Ethical Culture (Berlin), 247, 248
+
+    Sound mind, the test of, 133
+
+    Stage, the, purity of, 211
+
+    Stöcker, Dr., anti-semitic agitator, reception of, in London, 193,
+          194, 265
+
+    Swinburne, Algernon C., 135
+
+    Symbolists, the French, 76 _ff._
+
+
+    Tintoretto, Giacomo, 127
+
+    Tjerulf, Norwegian composer, 177
+
+    Tolstoi, Count Leo, 108 _ff._
+
+    Tolstoi’s _Kreutzer Sonata_, 115, 116;
+      _My Confession_, 117;
+      _My Faith_, 117;
+      _A Short Exposition of the Gospel_, 117, 126;
+      _About my Life_, 117;
+      _From the Diary of Nechljudow_, 125
+
+    Trades unions, 31
+
+
+    United States, the, treatment of women in, 142
+
+
+    Verlaine, Paul, 97 _ff._;
+      his poem addressed to Louis II of Bavaria, 101;
+      his “Chevaux du Bois” and “Chanson d’Automne,” 103, 104
+
+    Victoria, Dowager Empress of Germany, 146
+
+    Voltaire, Arouet, 1, 9, 223, 254
+
+
+    Wagner, Richard, 28, 29, 151, 184 _ff._, 194, 198 _ff._
+
+    Wagner’s _Art Work of the Future_, 209, 224
+
+    Wealth, dishonesty in the acquisition of, 267-9
+
+    William II, Emperor of Germany, 138, 299
+
+    Wolseley, Lord, 7
+
+    Women, position of, in the United States, England, and other
+          countries contrasted, 142 _ff._
+
+
+    Zola, Émile, 29, 130, 274 _ff._
+
+    Zola’s _La Joie de Vivre_, 281
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber's notes:
+
+    This book was published anonymously and is now attributed to
+    Alfred Egmont Hake.
+
+    One "[sic]" has been placed in the index, and a presumed missing comma
+    in the original is indicated with "[,]".
+
+    The book contains a single footnote, which is placed below the relevant
+    paragraph.
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76803 ***