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.