_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.