The idea of a universal sickening of the people, of a progressive
“degeneration” of the civilized nations, has not merely a few
defenders, such as those mentioned in this work. This departure of
modern science has found a multitude of adherents, and the advocates
of this doctrine have made the concept of degeneration a subject
of general popular interest. Beginning with this departure of
psychopathology, the doctrine of a gradual retrogression of mankind,
a deterioration, generation by generation, of the highly civilized
peoples, has extended more and more. Not only in certain professional
circles, but even in the educated lay world, we hear of a universal
derangement of the nervous system, of a widespread nervous prostration,
of mental and bodily deterioration of the present generation as
compared with our ancestors.
Art and literature, which have ever expressed the metaphysics of the
period, and which consequently now correspond in form and meaning to
modern positivism, show of late a decided leaning toward the depicting
of degenerative defects of humanity, especially of insanity, as if they
were a characteristic of modern society. Although, from the time of
Homer to our own, insanity has never dropped from the list of subjects
for artistic and poetical treatment, yet each age has had its own
reasons for doing so, which have always been closely connected with
contemporary metaphysics. In the hallucinatory melancholia of Orestes,
Æschylus painted the rage of the Furies following and tormenting their
victim: “Behold them, like Gorgons clothed in black, surrounded by the
coils of many serpents.”[216] In Ajax Fureus, who, suddenly seized
with a somnambulic delirium, falls upon the herds of the Achæans and
strangles them with their herdsmen, believing that he is killing the
princes of the host, Sophocles exhibits the chastening hand of Athene,
against whom this bold mortal had once risen in audacious defiance. The
ancient poets thus painted mental derangements which obviously they had
observed, and painted them in the colouring of mythology, which was the
popular metaphysics of that age, as a dispensation of a higher power, a
punishment of the angry divinity.
The multitudinous artistic representations of demoniac possession in
the Middle Ages, in myriads of paintings, frescoes, reliefs, carvings
in stone, wood, and ivory, bronzes, ironwork, goldsmith’s-work, etc.,
the manifold scenes of conjurations and diabolic incitements, afford
a clear picture of the insanity of those times. According to Charcot
and Richer,[217] whom we have to thank for their thorough researches
in this field, the dislocations and distortions of those possessed are
quite typical of cases of disease that may be observed to-day.
The first poet who recognised insanity as a disease and painted it as
such is Shakespeare, whose fine power of observation far outstripped
his age. He who could paint the world in all its truth and reality,
who was able to reproduce the most diverse characters, unfalsified and
true to Nature, succeeded also in painting in a masterly way mental
derangements in all their typical phenomena, just as we observe them
to-day, and this at a time at which science was far from a correct
recognition of psychical disorders. In Shakespeare, the derangements
of King Lear, Hamlet, and Lady Macbeth are photographic reproductions
of pure objective experience. They fill out certainly the world of the
poet who painted all human passions with minute fidelity in his plays,
and therefore undertook also to paint according to his observation the
human mind under morbid obscuration. In these characters, therefore,
we have neither the embodiment of any particular conception of the
universe nor an artistic dressing up of any moral or doctrine.
It is very different with the portraiture of insanity in our modern
literature. The doctrine of psychiatry has in the interval grown into
a distinct branch of science, and the observation of the insane is
carried on in an exceedingly thorough and careful manner. In order
to paint a case of insanity according to Nature, an artist no longer
needs, like Shakespeare, to be leagues in advance of his age. He
only need copy a well-reported history of a case, and his purpose is
attained. Consequently the simple description of psychical disease no
longer comes within the domain of the poet; and if we leave out of view
those _littérateurs_ who have in the practice of their art followed
the desire for originality and sensational effects, we do not find in
modern literature insanity exhibited for the direct interest of it, but
only in so far as it affects individual social relations and society
collectively.
The idea of a universal psychical degeneration, as it is put forth by
many psychiatrists, likewise has its literary defenders. I have already
called Zola a “Nordau in the shape of a novelist”; and this is also
true of other writers of similar theories. Frau Alving, in Ibsen’s
Ghosts, says: “We are all ghosts.... I can not take up a newspaper
without seeming to see the ghosts slinking between the lines. Ghosts
must live throughout the land. It seems to me they must be as the
sands of the sea.” We seem to be hearing Herr Nordau pronouncing
upon the immanent _Völkerdämmerung_, upon the gradual coming and
increasing of universal degeneration among mankind. Nordau considers
that those writers who share his own opinions show, precisely by that,
an infallible mark of their being fools and degenerates. His master,
Lombroso, on the other hand, acknowledges that Zola and Ibsen “teach
the same thing” that he himself teaches.[218]
It is not Ibsen’s purpose to paint mental sickenings just as they
really are. They are the mere vehicles of his ideas, especially of
the law of heredity, of the influence of a licentious and dissolute
course of life upon the development of the next generation. Neither
the painting of the maladies nor the selection of those which are
represented as transmitted in procreation correspond to the real facts.
But the writer did not mind that. While Nordau makes this a grave
matter for reproach and even a ground for psychiatric inferences,
Lombroso expressly declares that it is not right to insist upon
scientific accuracy from a poet in his painting of insanity, but that
it is proper for him to proceed _cum grano salis_, so as to give
his idea an artistic embodiment. At any rate, the exhibition of the
clinical picture, as such, is in Ibsen altogether a secondary matter,
the purpose of the poetic use of nervous disorders being the moral.
Oswald, in Ghosts, is the victim of the dissipations of his father. Dr.
Rank, in Nora, says: “My poor innocent spine has to expiate the joyous
lieutenant’s life of my father.” He strongly accentuates the moral:
“And so such an inexorable retribution governs in one way or another
every family.” We thus meet in the poet the same idea that Nordau
proclaims--that of a widespread hereditary sickening--a universal
degeneration.
The circumstance that Ibsen makes a quite arbitrary choice of diseases
to exhibit his concept of heredity and degeneration is not surprising,
and as poet he can the less be reproached for it that he follows
in that respect the doctrines of one school of scientific men. We
may smile at Ibsen’s representing, in Ghosts, general paresis as an
hereditary infliction; in Nora, a disease of the spine, _tabes_; in
The Wild Duck, a disease of the eyes; but, after all, this entirely
agrees with a certain departure which has lately found place in
psychopathology.
The widespread idea of a universal “degeneration” is in great part due
to the belief that every mental disease and most nervous sufferings
are phenomena of “degeneration”--a belief which is not only general
among the laity, but to which many psychiatrists incline. At any
rate, they place psychoses in that category which do not belong there
at all. It would result from this opinion that any decided increase
in the frequency of insanity, disproportionate to the growth of the
population, must be a “degeneration,” since, according to them, almost
all mental diseases are consequences of the process by which a state of
“degeneration” is brought about.
The concept of “degeneration” is, as I have already explained, that
of a morbid condition resulting from perturbations of growth of the
psychical organ. Degenerates are at a low stage of development; the
organic vehicles of their mental action are either merely at that
low stage of growth or are deformed and misshapen. The degeneration
of a whole people would therefore be due to a universal mental
deterioration, an arrest of the psychical organ, and at last,
since the completely degenerate, the extreme idiots, are incapable
of procreation, if the process which gave rise to the state of
degeneration progressed still further, the race would die out. But
the history of insanity shows that the increase of it depends in part
upon the progress of higher civilization. A heightened mental action,
a refinement and elaboration of the psychical organism, has for a
consequence a greater disposition to mental derangements. But to
infer from this heightened mental action, or, what comes to the same
thing, from the increased number of cases of derangement which results
from it, that there has been a universal retrogression of mental
development, resulting in a “degeneration” of the masses, is just as
erroneous as to identify the highest refinement and elaboration of the
psychical organism, or genius, with insanity.
The question of a state of universal degeneration, resulting from a
process of mental decay, must therefore be treated quite independently
from the question of an increase of cases of insanity. Maladies
contracted late in life can not be ascribed to disturbances of growth,
and have nothing to do with degeneration. When Nordau avers that the
diagnosis of degeneration in Baudelaire was “fortified against all
attack” by the fact that he “died of general paresis,”[219] he simply
shows that he does not know what the word degeneration means. Paresis
is a disease occurring most frequently in fully developed men, seldom
in degenerates, and never in idiots. Von Krafft-Ebing[220] says of
its procatarctic cause, “It is seldom congenital, hereditary; mostly
acquired.” If, therefore, we limit the concept of degeneration to
such morbid states as can undoubtedly be referred to perturbations of
growth, an increase of mental diseases does not indicate a progressive
degeneration.
The universal opinion that the sudden revolution in all modes of
life, owing to the great inventions of this century--the railway,
the telephone, etc.--have had a bad influence on the nervous system,
has a certain amount of justification. A number of cases of nervous
exhaustion have arisen owing to this unwonted and overstrained bustle
of modern life. But the importance attributed to these outward causes
is too great by far; and there is especially too much inclination
to exaggerate the sudden change of our modes of life, great as it
undeniably is. From some descriptions of it, one might think that
we had suddenly been carried from the merest sluggard’s life to the
supreme development of higher civilization. When Nordau says that
“the humblest village inhabitant has to-day a wider geographical
horizon, more numerous and complex intellectual interests, than the
prime minister of a petty or even a second-rate state a century
ago,” and that to-day “a cook receives and sends more letters than
a university professor did formerly,”[221] he simply indulges in
ridiculous exaggeration. I know not what intricate mental interests
Herr Nordau has discovered in the “humblest village inhabitant.” When
he tries to prove this by saying that the villager “interests himself
simultaneously in the issue of a revolution in Chili, in a bush war in
east Africa, a massacre in north China, a famine in Russia, a street
row in Spain, and an international exhibition in North America,”[222]
he perhaps overestimates somewhat the mental interests of the “humblest
village inhabitant.” I fancy that the mental interests of the peasantry
to-day, as centuries ago, turn much more on the thriving of their pigs
and calves than on revolutionists in Chili or bushwhackers in east
Africa. At any rate, we may safely assert that the German peasants
are in no present danger of overtaxing their nervous systems by their
“numerous and complex intellectual interests.”
We must confess that life to-day makes higher demands upon the
individual than in the last century; but it is an exaggeration
for Nordau to maintain that every single man does from five to
five-and-twenty times as much work as he would have done half a century
ago. On the whole, more is accomplished now than used to be done,
because, thanks to the great inventions, a workman can now do more in
one hour than ten workmen could do in a whole day a century ago. But
the expenditure of strength of any one man is not very much greater.
The mental work of the “upper ten thousand,” who are now supposed to
be in a state of degeneration, has certainly not been so monstrously
increased as many are disposed to think. Besides, mere work does not
wear out the nervous system nearly so much as the agitations of the
emotions connected with the intensification of the battle of life.
These things have, as I have elsewhere shown, an important influence
upon the bodily functions, especially those of the vascular system,
and thus upon the entire work of nutrition. Wundt[223] says: “Care and
sorrow influence nutrition by enduring limitation of the entrance of
air and blood.” Quiet intellectual work, even if conjoined with great
effort, does far less harm to the nervous system than do such emotions
as affliction and anxiety.
Had we, therefore, any reason to presume a universal degeneration of
the highly civilized nations, the causes of it should be sought, above
all, in the intensification of the daily battle of life, with its train
of depressing emotions and anxieties. The increased impressions of the
senses, and the heightened demands upon the resistance of the nervous
system, occasioned by the sudden revolution--when they do not bring
about serious emotional disturbances, vexations, etc.--may cause some
fatigue, but are matters to which the human organism quickly becomes
habituated by the law of adaptation.
Our social relations undoubtedly draw more upon the powers of the
individual than did those of a century ago. Yet that generation
likewise thought its tasks more difficult than those of its
forefathers. We can not conceive that our grade of civilization
determines the limits of human capacity. The demands which will be put
upon the life of coming generations will probably be far greater yet;
but the human system will contrive to adapt itself to those demands.
The weak will go to the wall; the strong will mount to higher grades of
development. This law of adaptation and of further development always
has operated in Nature, and will still continue to do so.
The arguments of which the sectaries of universal degeneration avail
themselves are, as we have seen in the course of our investigations,
by no means demonstrative. They rest partly upon erroneous doctrines
and partly upon a quite amateurish apprehension of psychological and
psychiatrical concepts. Philosophy, art, and literature, in which
Nordau thinks he sees signs of universal degeneration, are merely the
expression of the modern metaphysics, of religious scepticism, and of
philosophical positivism.
Moreover, by a very remarkable contradiction, Nordau himself destroys
his whole theory. After having characterized modern art as the
principal evidence of universal degeneration, he declares, at the
conclusion of his work, that it constitutes a forward step in human
development. He says: “The fable and the fairy tale were once the
highest productions of the human mind.... To-day they represent a
species of literature only cultivated for the nursery. The verse--which
by rhythm, figurative expression, and rhyme, trebly betrays its origin
in the stimulation of rhythmically functioning subordinate organs, in
associations of ideas working according to external similitudes, and in
that working according to consonance--was originally the only form of
literature. To-day it is only employed for purely emotional portrayal;
for all other purposes it has been conquered by prose, and indeed has
almost passed into the condition of an atavistic language. Under our
very eyes the novel is being increasingly degraded, serious and highly
cultivated men scarcely deeming it worthy of attention, and it appeals
more and more exclusively to the young and to women.”[224] According to
this, we must presume that our art, which has already “conquered” its
earlier form, stands upon a higher grade of development, so that there
can be no question of degeneration in it. But the idea that the poetry
of a Homer, a Dante, a Goethe, has proceeded “from the stimulation of
rhythmically functioning, subordinate organs,” and that it ought to-day
to be considered as in “the condition of an atavistic language,” is as
ridiculous as the contrary thesis of the degeneration of modern art.
No subordinate organs, but the idealistic universe-conception of the
times, dictated the form of art in each period of the world’s history.
When Nordau asserts that--in case his “therapy” is considered and
humanity is thus protected from further arrest and degeneration--“after
some centuries art and poetry will have become pure atavisms, and
will no longer be cultivated except by the most emotional portion of
humanity--by women, by the young, perhaps even by children,”[225]
his assertion rests upon ignorance of the psychical constitution of
those heroes of the mind whom we call geniuses. Whoever does not
persist in the attitude of Moreau and with him stigmatizes genius as a
morbid condition, will see that, with the further mental development
of humanity, creative genius will continue to produce, as it always
has been producing. In discussing the psychology of genius we have
seen that “the artist of genius does not create because he would, but
because he must.” Hence art will continue to subsist as long as there
are men upon the earth.
As to the form which the art of future centuries is to assume,
all possibility of divining it fails us. We know that it is always
dependent upon the contemporary conception of the universe. But how
this will shape itself in the distant future we can not know. It were
therefore a vain proceeding to discuss the subject, or to express any
decided opinion about the matter.
According to our investigations, we must necessarily come to the
conclusion that the authors mentioned have adduced no proof of the
alleged universal degeneration in the highly civilized nations. Mankind
is not in a “black plague of degeneration”; and the world has as
little need to be scared by stories of the _Völkerdämmerung_ as by the
prophecy of Herr Falb about the immanent destruction of our planet.
On the other hand, the further development of mankind will be greatly
benefited if the teachings of science are attended to and the various
baneful influences that act upon the nervous system are combated.
In that way increase of insanity may be prevented, and a sane and
well-developed posterity insured.