2 68 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fewer listeners, while the most in- 

 tellectual ecclesiastics, feeling the 

 same influence, have shrunk from 

 the dogmatic and mystical extrava- 

 gances of their predecessors. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Degeneration. By Max Nordatj. D. Ap- 

 pleton & Co. 1895. Price, $3.50. 



Severe diseases require severe remedies, 

 and the rapidly increasing tolerance of liter- 

 ary, artistic, dramatic, and musical works 

 that have a tendency to apotheosize various 

 vices and defects of the higher mental facul- 

 ties, demands the trenchant criticism that 

 this volume affords. Years ago, in the comic 

 opera of Patience, Mr. Gilbert satirized the 

 impression created by the aesthetic vagaries 

 of certain contemporaries in the lines 



" If this young man understands these things that 

 are certainly too deep for me, 

 Why, what an exceedingly deep young man this 

 deep young man must hel " 



And too often the self-proclaimed prophet 

 of some new dispensation in art or letters is 

 taken seriously by a number of persons ; and 

 worse, in consequence of causes familiar to 

 those experienced in the treatment of nerv- 

 ous diseases, finds a number of imitators. 



Dr. Nordau, who is a pupil of Lombroso, 

 has in this volume applied to certain writers 

 and artists the same rigid rules of psychical 

 investigation that were used by the Italian 

 savant in his investigations into the factors 

 and features of the degeneration of the 

 criminal classes. Pronounced as the antith- 

 esis may be in a comparison of two such 

 groups, there are yet fundamental points of 

 resemblance that are depicted in this vol- 

 ume. 



With tremendous diligence the author has 

 perused the works of Rosetti, Swinburne, 

 Verlaine, Maeterlinck, Tolstoi, Wagner, 

 Peladan, Rollinet, Baudelaire, Friedrich 

 Nietzsche, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, 

 Ibsen, Zola, and many other more or less 

 known authors and artists, and he furnishes 

 numerous quotations from their works to 

 support his estimate of their mental condi- 

 tion. The characteristics of degeneration 

 and hysteria manifest themselves " in mys- 

 ticism, which is an expression of the inapti- 



tude for attention, for clear thought and 

 control of the emotions, and has for its 

 cause the weakness of the higher cerebral 

 centers ; in egomania, which is an effect of 

 the faulty transmission by the sensory nerves, 

 of obtuseness in the centers of perception, of 

 aberration of instincts from a craving for 

 sufficiently strong impressions, and of the 

 great predominance of organic sensations 

 over representative consciousness ; and in 

 false realism, which proceeds from confused 

 aesthetic theories, and characterizes itself by 

 pessimism and the irresistible tendency to 

 licentious ideas, and the most vulgar and 

 unclean modes of expression." 



In the last analysis there is in the degen- 

 erate a brain incapable of normal working, 

 and its aberrant functions are manifested 

 in feebleness of will, inattention, a predomi- 

 nance of emotion, a lack of knowledge, an 

 absence of sympathy or interest in the w r orld 

 and humanity, and decay of the notion of 

 duty and morality. 



The author is not a pessimist ; he does 

 not believe that the degenerates will have 

 more than an ephemeral existence and a 

 limited following; that, like the dancing 

 mania of the middle ages, a number of per- 

 sons may be participants, but the majority 

 of the people will be unaffected ; and that 

 true art and literature will still live and have 

 their being when the whim and caprice of the 

 moment have, like the iridescent soap bub- 

 ble, broken, leaving nothing but some soapy 

 moisture. 



The volume is very interesting, and, while 

 the author often writes with a vehemence 

 that seems too prejudiced to be the expres- 

 sion of sober judgment, his arraignment of 

 the accused and his evidences of their cul- 

 pability justify his stern indictment. 



The book is a strong one, and it is likely 

 to prove suggestive and helpful to many 

 who may think that the so-called art and 

 literature of the future, as expressed by cer- 

 tain mentally defective individuals of to-day, 

 are w r orthy of their careful study and imita- 

 tion. 



The Making of the Body. By Mrs. S. A. 

 Barnett. London and New York : Long- 

 mans, Green & Co. Pp. 288. 



The method of this manual is entirely 

 novel. It is the outcome of practical expe- 



