294 



FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



cause of more drunkenness, of further decay of will. It 

 is the symptom of the decay of will. It is the effect of 

 it. In like manner the love of mysticism grows with 

 its license ; the love of filth with what it feeds upon. 

 Egomania increases with self-admiration, sexual mad- 

 ness with its own indulgences. The fantasies of those 

 who " have only to hear of Buddhism to become converts 

 to it" furnish their own arguments and their own justifi- 

 cation. Hysteria, catalepsy, and echolalia have many 

 times taken unto themselves the name of religion, and 

 proved the truth of this religion by their own excesses. 



Much of the " decadent literature " of the day is not 

 the product of the decadence of man. It is not the ef- 

 fect of the " nerve strain of overwrought 

 Decadence for generations born too late in the dusk of 



mercantile ., >> t.. • • i u i 



the ages. It is simply an unwholesome 

 purposes. ° . . 



fashion. Most of it is the work of sane 

 men of mediocre abilities, who throw themselves into 

 grotesque postures in the hope that they may thereby 

 arrest the fickle attention of the public. It is the effort 

 of mountebanks to catch the people's eye. When the 

 public becomes accustomed to froth and symbolism, it is 

 equally surprised and delighted with sweetness and 

 sanity. Neurotic freaks and egomaniacs have been 

 found in all ages. The memory of those of earlier ages 

 has passed away, as those of to-day will be soon forgot- 

 ten. The end of the nineteenth century has no new 

 form of " the higher foolishness " which the preceding 

 centuries did not know. It can only offer better facili- 

 ties for publicity than could be had in earlier times. 

 There is money now in the production of literature of 

 decay. In so far as folly and nervous disorder are in- 

 nate and hereditary, not individual, we have no reason 

 to suppose that they are in any sense a product of the 

 rush of modern civilization. 



