DEGENERATION

I WRITE this paper as a solemn, an earnest warning, an appeal to the

unsuspecting and serene general public not to read Dr. Max Nordau’s

book “Degeneration.” I give this word of admonition with much the same

spirit of despairing yet powerless misery as might animate the warning

of any slave to a despised habit, a hashish-eater, an opium smoker, an

alcoholic inebriate. I have read this book of Dr. Nordau’s, and through

it I am become the unwilling victim of a most deplorable, most odious,

most blighting habit,—that of searching for degenerates. I do not want

or like to do this, but I do it instinctively, mechanically. The habit

has poisoned all the social relations of my life, has entered into

my views of the general public; it has sapped my delight in novelty,

choked my admiration of genius, deadened my enthusiasm, silenced my

opinions; and it has brought these wretched conditions not only into my

regard of matters and persons of the present times, but retrospectively

it has tainted the glories of history. All this is exceeded by the

introspective blight of the book through exacting a miserable and

mortifying self-examination, which leads to the despairing, the

unyielding conclusion that I am myself a degenerate.

The book is, unfortunately, so explicit in explanation as to lure

every reader to amateur investigation. Indeed, such a vast array of

mental and physical traits are enumerated as stigmata—the marks of the

beast—as to paralyze the thoughtless, and to make the judicious grieve.

Our mental traits we can ofttimes conceal from public view, our moral

traits we always conceal, but many of our physical characteristics

cannot, alas, be wholly hidden. Dr. Nordau enumerates many physical

stigmata, all interesting, but perhaps the most prominent, most visible

one, is the degenerate malformation of the ear.

I was present recently, at an interesting function whereat the subject

of the evening was discussion of this book “Degeneration.” In the

course of a brilliant and convincing address one of the lecturers

chanced to name that most hateful and evident stigma, the ear-mark,

so to speak, of the accursed. Though simple were his words, as subtle

as sewer-gas was his poison; as all-pervading and penetrating as the

sandstorm in the desert, it entered every brain in the room. I speedily

and furtively glanced from side to side at my neighbors’ ears, only to

find them regarding mine with expressions varying from inquisitiveness

through surprise and apprehension, to something closely approaching

disgust. After the discussion was ended, friends advanced to speak with

me; they shook hands, not looking with pleasant greeting into my eyes,

but openly staring at my ears.

Now, that would be necessarily most abhorrent to every one,—to quote

Spenser:—

“For fear lest we like rogues should be reputed

And for eare-marked beastes abroad be bruited.”

And it is specially offensive to me—it would be anyway, for my ears are

not handsome; but worse still must be admitted, they are not normal.

They answer every purpose of hearing and of restraining my hat from

slipping down over my eyes and on my neck, which is all I have demanded

of them hitherto. But now I know that as emblems of my mental and moral

characteristics they are wholly remiss, even degraded. They are .079

larger than normality; they stand out from my head at an angle which

exhibits 2° too much obtusity; the lobule displays .17 too little

pendulosity; and, worst of all, the fossa scaphoida of my pinna is

basely unconvoluted. I am sore ashamed of all this. I think of having

the twin base betrayers of my degenerate nature shaved off in spots,

and already I tie them close to my head at night in a feeble attempt

at improvement. But I am not in my callow youth; I fear they have not

been bent in the way they should be inclined, that their degeneracy is

irremediable.

It is not through physical stigmata alone that I find myself branded.

I find that I am impulsive, I have a predilection for inane reverie,

and for search for the bases of phenomena—all sad traits. Worst of

all, I have “the irresistible desire of the degenerate to accumulate

useless trifles.” Nordau says, “It is a stigmata of degeneration,

and has had invented for it the name oniomania or buying craze. The

oniomaniac is simply unable to pass by any lumber without feeling an

impulse to acquire.” When I read that sentence I glanced guiltily at

my cabinets of old china—well, I could use it on the table and thus

make it unstigmatic; at my Dutch silver—I might melt it up and sell

it; my books, my autographs, my photographs, all may find some excuse;

but how can I palliate my book-plates, or ever live down having gone

for a year through every village, city, and town where I chanced or

sought to wander, asking at every jeweller’s, silversmith’s, and

watch-repairer’s, “Have you any bridges of old verge watches?” I fear

those watch-bridges stamp me an oniomaniac. And am I wholly free from

Lombroso’s graphomania? Have I not an insane desire to write? I conceal

my obsession, but it ever influences me. I may confess also (since

I confess at all) that I have rupophobia (fear of dirt), iophobia

(fear of poison), nosophobia (fear of sickness), belenophobia (fear

of needles—especially on the floor), and one or two other wretched

obsessions, particularly an inordinate love for animals, upon which I

had hitherto rather bridled as the mark of a tender nature.

But let me dwell no more on my own peculiar stigmata, but show how—to

paraphrase Prior:

“All earth is by the ears together

Since first that horrid book come hither.”

I haunt photograph shops, look over the frontispieces of illustrated

magazines, and various collections of likenesses, until I am wearied

to the core of looking at the ears of prominent persons, and it brings

forth a sense of profound, of heartfelt gratitude that Daguerre was not

born till this century, almost till our own day, and that thus the ears

of centuries of countless geniuses are disguised in their counterfeit

presentments by the meaningless conventionalities of the artist’s

brush, which represent in peaceful and happy monotony and perfection

that unfortunate, that abhorred member. I plainly see, too, what the

result of all this will be. I picture to myself the poet of the future,

hooded, veiled, to conceal his features; robed in flowing drapery

to cover his feet; with his hands in a muff; living alone to hide

his personal habits; studiously avoiding the subject of his health;

painstaking in showing no decided preferences; void of passion lest he

be deemed erotic; void of epigram or humor lest his wit be taken as

earnest; until I sigh mournfully for the time spoken of in Genesis,

when “there was no more earing.”

I will not sign my name to this heartfelt communication, since it

would have no weight as the cognomen of either a genius or a mattoid,

and perhaps the cry of warning will be more heeded from a suffering

incognito. Besides, I do not wish to be shunned by my fellow-creatures

as one who is determined to know their innermost worst, with as cruel

a mental insistence, and with a method genetic to that employed by the

Inquisition in penetrating the brain of its victims by pouring boiling

oil in the ears. Nor am I willing to have such an odious position in

society that none of my friends will visit me, or come in my presence

unless fortified with ear-muffs against my insinuating gaze.