Degeneracy

“ It must, however, be remarked that the doctrine of degeneracy has lost both in force and in usefulness, by the treatment it has received at the hands of those who have constituted themselves its popular exponents. Some of these writers have made it but too evident that their criticisms are often captious, and that their definition of degeneracy includes all human failings—except their own. ”

“ Degeneracy betrays itself among men in certain physical [17] characteristics, which are denominated ‘stigmata,’ or brand-marks—an unfortunate term derived from a false idea, as if degeneracy were necessarily the consequence of a fault, and the indication of it a punishment. ”

“ Under the burden of sin, men accustomed themselves to the consciousness of degeneracy; each generation confessed that they were unworthy children of their parents, and awaited with impatience the approaching end. ”

“ With the close of the year 1883 the degeneracy doctrine may be regarded as having practically been accepted in biology, in anthropology, in sociology, in criminology, in psychiatry, and general pathology. ”

“ The universal degeneracy of mankind to the level of the "man of the future"—as idealised by the socialistic [Pg 193] fools and shallow-pates—this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society") , this brutalising of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly possible! ”

“ What is ugly, morbid, dull, rotten, cynical, pessimistic, is degenerate. To dwell upon disease in creative work is degeneracy. To seek out, analyse, celebrate, perpetuate ugliness, deformity, decay, is degeneracy. ”

“ Since then there has sprung into existence in both Europe and the English-speaking countries the world over, a habit which, while much over-estimated, is undoubtedly growing, and aggravating as well as producing degeneracy. ”

“ But as their rise was sudden and brilliant, so their fall was the more crushing and disastrous. The truism that progressive degeneracy is the inevitable fate of every people who have reached the highest point of intellectual culture and material progress was once more to be demonstrated. ”

“ It was necessary to treat in detail the two forms of degeneracy in literature and art hitherto examined, i.e., mysticism and ego-mania, inasmuch as their career of development seems to be still in the ascendant, and they are actively at work in making themselves masters of the æsthetic conscience of our times. ”

“ There is one disease that without other causes—either inherited degeneracy or vices resulting from a bad education and environment—is capable of transforming a healthy individual into a vicious, hopelessly evil being. ”

“ Degeneracy was as marked and rapid in the former, notwithstanding all the civilizing influences of letters, jurisprudence, arts, and utilitarian science, as in the latter nations,--a most significant and impressive commentary on the uniform destinies of nations, when those virtues on which the strength of man is based have passed away. ”

“ One of the saddest symptoms of degeneracy in a people is evinced by a desperate levity—a scoffing spirit such as that which inspired the French people when they denied even God, and substituted a prostitute to be their "Goddess of Reason." ”

“ As a mental trait, marking a person off as, in some sense, worse than others in the same social group, degeneracy appears to consist in some lack in the higher organization of thought. It is not that one has the normal mental outfit plus something additional, called wrong, crime, sin, madness, or the like, but that he is in some way deficient in the mental activity by which sympathy is created and by which all impulses are unified with reference to a general life. ”

“ The older idea of a law of degeneracy, of a “fatal drift towards the worse,” is as obsolete as astrology or the belief in witchcraft. The human race has become hopeful, sanguine.—Seeley, Rede Lecture, 1887. ”

“ The moral possibility is wanting, and the generous occasion finds an unsusceptible rule.
Man paints himself in his actions, and what is the form depicted in the drama of the present time? On the one hand, he is seen running wild, on the other, in a state of lethargy; the two extremest stages of human degeneracy, and both seen in one and the same period. ”

“ Science, however, has found, together with these physical stigmata, others of a mental order, which betoken degeneracy quite as clearly as the former; and they allow of an easy demonstration from all the vital manifestations, and, in particular, from all the works of degenerates, so that it is not necessary to measure the cranium of an author, or to see the lobe of a painter’s ear, in order to recognise the fact that he belongs to the class of degenerates. ”

“ Added to the various physical causes are such psychical influences as contact with degraded minds or with base literature or art, loss of religious faith, and loss of self-confidence as to one's ability to succeed.
Personal degeneracy tends to perpetuate itself in the family. ”

“ It comes to pass that our generation is corrupt, we have many weak persons both in body and mind, many feral diseases raging among us, crazed families; our fathers bad, and we are like to be worse.”
This conception gradually developed into the widespread myth of a primevally perfect man [Pg 5] through the natural operation of that psychological law whereby, as Macaulay remarks, society, constantly moving forward with eager speed, is as constantly looking backward with tender regret. ”

“ The first type is impurely represented by the idiots, imbeciles, lunatics, paupers by deprivation, blind, crippled, senile, insane, and deaf mutes. Society, either indirectly or directly, has been the source of the parasitic state of many of these, and hence, as also in the case of law-made criminals, such parasitism really takes nothing from society. The second class is represented by prostitutes, sexual degenerates, paupers, and inebriates. ”

“ We probably cannot have the one without having something, at least, of the other, though I believe that the variations of personality are capable, to a great degree, of being brought under rational control.
This truth that all forms of deficient humanity have a common philosophical aspect is one reason for giving them some common name, like degeneracy. Another is that the detailed study of fact more and more forces the conclusion that such things as crime, pauperism, idiocy, insanity, and drunkenness have, in great measure, a common causation, and so form, practically, parts of a whole. ”

“ The tendency to introspection, to morbid fear, to gloom, to hallucinations, to alternations of depression and exaltation, may occur in a degenerate child in whom has been otherwise preserved that secondary ego which is the latest and greatest acquirement of the race. ”

“ The greatest crimes are regarded as mere transgressions of some arbitrary order. If such persons come in conflict with individuals, then, hatred, envy, and revenge take the place of coldness and negation, and their brutality and indifference to others know no bounds. ”

“ As the moral element—the emotions and propensities—is the base of determination, it follows that these brilliant faculties are at the service of a bad cause, of the instincts and appetites which, thanks to the defects of the will, lead to very extravagant or very dangerous acts. ”

“ Between the feeble-minded and the normal individual occurs a group whose general characteristics is, as was pointed out by Magnan, a disharmony and lack of equilibrium, not only between the intellectual operations, properly so-called on the one hand, and the emotions and propensities on the other, but even between the intellectual faculties themselves. A degenerate may be a scientist, an able lawyer, a great artist, a poet, a mathematician, a politician, a skilled administrator, and present from a moral standpoint profound defects, strange peculiarities and surprising lapses of conduct. ”

“ If this inhibition become weakened or disordered, predominance of the natural instincts or impulses occurs, and when it is totally lost the individual is in the position of a criminal who opposes the ethical order of society—a parasite, and one of the worst kind who not only lives upon his host but destroys him in doing so. ”

“ Living under similar customs, habits and surroundings, labouring at the same occupation, indulging in the same dissipation, tend to engender like diseases and degenerations, irrespective of any blood relationship. ”

“ With many of them concentrated, sustained effort, and attempts to keep them to it are impossible. Their common-sense perception of the relations of life, executive or business faculty and judgment are seldom well developed. ”

“ Then, we may ask, what is degeneration? It is departing from the good old way, imbibing evil, becoming impregnated with falsehood and all other evils that are calculated to produce a deterioration in both the body and spirit of man. ”

“ Now let us turn our attention to the evidences of luxury and debauchery, and the consequent evidences of degeneration, which obtrude themselves on all sides. The reckless extravagance of the nobility of the Old World is well known. Vice and licentiousness even penetrate to royal households, and princes of the blood pose as roués and debauchees. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, degeneration in the wealthy classes of society generally makes itself evident by the appearance of psycho-sexual disorders. ”

“ As they grow up, they show this degeneration by engaging in all kinds of licentious debauchery, and unnatural and perverted indulgences of appetite. In nine cases out of ten, they will spend the fortunes inherited from their parents in riotous debauchery, and [222] will eventually sink, if death does not overtake them, to the level of their fellow degenerates—those who have been brought into existence by poverty and debauchery, and who await them at the foot of the social ladder. ”

“ The disease inherent in her being, that deadly outcome of social tyranny which perverts the generous elements of youth into mere seeds of destruction, developed day by day, blighting her heart, corrupting her moral sense, even setting marks of evil upon the beauty of her countenance. ”

“ I have shown elsewhere, that the congenital criminal is the result of degeneration, and that he comes from all classes of society. He is, however, most frequently the product of the lower classes, and lives [227] and dies among his congeners. I have shown, also, that the anarchist, the nihilist, and the socialist belong to the same category of degenerate beings. Poverty, brought on by high taxation, by war, and by overcrowding, has been, during the last millenary period, very fertile in the production of degenerates in the Old World. ”

“ From my earliest youth I revolted against the gross licentiousness and debauchery, not only of the masses, but of those in highest places, whose criminally bestial orgies were beyond description, vile and demoralizing. My parents, too, shrank in horror and disgust from a condition of society which words cannot express. ”

“ We ask ourselves, then, with painful curiosity, what chain of fatal causes could thus debase these unhappy creatures, who have known shame and chastity? There are so many declivities, alas, which verge to that fall! It is rarely the passion of the depraved for depravity; but dissipation, bad example, perverse education, and, above all, want, which lead so many unfortunates to infamy; and it is the poor classes alone who pay to civilisation this impost on soul and body. ”

“ In every case the sane person can conquer and break the habit, no matter how much of a hold it may have obtained.
We have heard much of the born criminal and of the degenerate and his inevitable tendencies, but most of the theories founded on this phase of criminal anthropology have gradually been given up as a consequence of more careful and, above all, more detailed observation. Many criminals bear the stigmata of so-called degeneration. ”

“ But such deterioration or degradation is not an isolated evil, or the mere negation of a better state; for it acts as a positive energy in developing moral evil, and brings in its train perverseness, destructiveness, loss of natural decency in habits, conversation and conduct, and many other ills which render their subjects painfully humiliating as human beings, and a source of trouble, annoyance, and expense to all those concerned with them. ”

“ In such a life pleasure consequently prevails decidedly over pain, and he looks upon existence, not as an evil, but as a great good. In the organism deranged by disease degenerate appetites exist which cannot be satisfied, or of which the gratification injures or destroys the individual, or the degenerate organism is too weak or too inapt to gratify the legitimate impulses. In his life pain necessarily predominates, and he looks upon existence as an evil. ”

“ I have enumerated the most important features characterizing the mental condition of the degenerate. The reader can now judge for himself whether or not the diagnosis ‘degeneration’ is applicable to the originators of the new æsthetic tendencies. It must not for that matter be supposed that degeneration is synonymous with absence of talent. Nearly all the inquirers who have had degenerates under their observation expressly establish the contrary. ‘The degenerate,’ says Legrain, [22] ‘may be a genius. ”

“ Alas, yes! for when beauty, youth, and health are joined to an evil spirit of revolt and perversity—to a character which certainly has not its equal upon earth—it would be far better to be deprived of those dangerous advantages, which only become so many causes of perdition. ”