146 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tion of government, too many officials and too little opportunity in the 

 provincial centers, rather than to any fault in the nature of the indi- 

 vidual man. Nationalization of effort, whether through socialism or 

 through " efficient organization," must contribute to the spread of " im- 

 piegomania." 



If the strictures of Demolins be true in any degree, this may be the 

 interpretation. Inferior standards are the work of inferior men. 

 Great men there are in France, and these have persistently turned the 

 nation's face toward the light since Demolins's book was written. 

 War's effect has been to rob France of her due proportion of leaders, 

 but not to dilute or to weaken the message of those who survive. The 

 evolution of a race is always selective, never collective. Collective evolu- 

 tion among men or beasts, the movement upward or downward of the 

 whole as a whole, irrespective of training or selection, is never a fact. 

 As La Pouge has said : 



It exists in rhetoric, not in truth nor in history. 



Another line of criticism of France finds its ablest exponent in Dr. 

 Max Nordau, whose book on "Degeneration" aroused the attention 

 of the world some twenty years ago. Nordau finds abundant evidences 

 of degeneration in the art and literature of every land, all forms of 

 eccentricity, pessimism and perversity being regarded as such. In 

 France, such evidences he finds peculiarly conspicuous. The cause of 

 this condition he ascribes to the inherited strain of an overwrought 

 civilization. " Fin de siecle," " end of the century " is the catch- 

 phrase expressing the weariness, mental, physical and spiritual of a 

 race "tired before it was born." To Nordau, this theory adequately 

 explains all eccentricities of French literature, art, politics or juris- 

 prudence. 



But in fact we have no knowledge of the existence of nerve-stress 

 inheritance. In any event, the peasantry of France have not been sub- 

 jected to it. Their life is hard, but not stressful ; and they suffer more 

 from monotony than from any form of enforced nerve-activity. The 

 kind of degeneration Nordau pictures is not a matter of heredity. 

 When not simply personal eccentricity, it is a phase of personal decay. 

 It finds its causes in bad habits, bad training, bad morals, or in the de- 

 sire to catch public attention for personal advantage. It has no per- 

 manence in the blood of the race. The presence on the Paris boule- 

 vards of eccentric painters, maudlin musicians, absinthine poets and 

 sensation-mongers, proves nothing as to race degeneracy. When the 

 fashion changes, they will change also. The "end of the century" is 

 past and already the fad of "strenuous life" is blowing them away. 

 Any man of any race withers in an atmosphere of vice, absinthe and 

 opium. The presence of such an atmosphere may be a disheartening 

 symptom, but it is not a proof of national decline. The ghastliest and 



