_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.