i8 95 . SOME NEW BOOKS. 271 



which the patient cannot suppress, although he recognises that they 

 are in no rational connection with the individual content of his con- 

 sciousness." Tolstoi presents " the mystical intellect, the intellect 

 without attention of the emotif." This diseased mind conveys to his 

 consciousness " isolated impressions, which can be very distinct if 

 they relate to his emotions ; but it is not in the condition to connect 

 these isolated impressions intelligibly just because it is deficient in 

 the attention necessary to this object." His strange religious and 

 sexual views are set down to a " mania of brooding doubt observable 

 in many of the higher degenerates," and to a "pathological alteration 

 in his sexual centres." The description of the state of mind which 

 Gautier and Baudelaire held to require a new language, a language 

 embroidered with wild and bizarre graces, with curious felicities and 

 apparent barbarities culled from every possible source, Nordau 

 declares to be " simply a description of the disposition of the mysti- 

 cally degenerate mind, with its shifting nebulous ideas, its fleeting 

 formless shadowy thought, its perversions and aberrations, its tribu- 

 lations and impulsions." He describes Huysmans' exaggeration of 

 Gautier's idea as a "delirium and debauch in pathological and 

 nauseous ideas of a deranged mind with gustatory perversion." 

 Huysmans himself " is the classical type of the hysterical type 

 without originality, who is the predestined victim of every sugges- 

 tion." 



These few examples will serve to show the general method of 

 this remarkable book. It must be added that practically no well- 

 known writer of the last forty years escapes inclusion in Nordau's 

 gallery of degenerate fools. There is no question whatever that the 

 book is vastly interesting and vastly amusing. The author is learned 

 and witty ; he exposes and lashes many follies and many imbecilities, 

 and probably every reader will agree as cordially with some of the 

 criticisms as he will be annoyed and indignant at others, although no 

 two readers are likely to select the same passages for praise and for 

 reprobation. 



But the general thesis of the whole book is another matter. 

 Even Lombroso, taking purely physical characters, pushed his 

 comparison between genius and insanity to the wrong side of 

 absurdity. Every reader of his book will remember that he chose 

 Darwin as an appropriate instance. Darwin suffered from dyspepsia ; 

 he could not bear heat and cold ; he had curious crotchets, as in the 

 matter of using an old and untrustworthy chemical balance, and in 

 being niggardly with writing paper. He had large ears, a short nose, 

 and a pronounced frontal ridge, while one of his uncles became mad. 

 The extraordinary folly of finding arguments for degeneracy in such 

 foibles or physical peculiarities amounts to an obsession at least as 

 characteristic of the insane as any of the stigmata found by Lombroso 

 and his German follower. It requires the smallest observation to 

 detect that such characters are to be found in all sorts and conditions 

 of men, and that geniuses and the insane enjoy no monopoly of them. 

 But Nordau's argument from mental characters is still more un- 

 satisfactory. At first sight many of his comparisons are interesting 

 and suggestive ; notably his account of poetry actually written by the 

 insane. But the characters of the insane and the degenerate are not 

 sui generis : they are merely abnormal forms of characters found 

 among all persons. Using precisely the same arguments from 

 analogy as Nordau uses, it would be easy to show that every man, 

 woman, or child exhibits some features, some emotional or mental 

 phenomena, displayed by the insane and the degenerate. It is 



