254 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



be maintained that there are more degenerate persons in the Protestant 

 Churches than in the Catholic Church ? Or that Protestant countries are 

 more subject to degeneracy than Catholic countries ? Or that Eastern 

 Europe, where the rate of suicide is particularly low, is composed of a popu- 

 lation superior to the populations of Western Europe ? Those who insist 

 on the connection between suicide and degeneracy must either deny the 

 figures we have given, and will give further on, or admit that degeneracy is 

 a characteristic of Protestant countries ; and how, then, explain the low 

 suicide-rate in England and Wales, which are essentially Protestant 

 countries ? How comes it, from this point of view, that Protestant popu- 

 lations on the Continent should be degenerate, and that the Protestant 

 population of England and Wales should not be degenerate ? Obviously, 

 another factor must come into play, and the insufficiency of the theory of 

 degeneracy must be recognised. Can it be maintained that bachelors of 

 sixty are more degenerate than bachelors of forty-two ? But degeneracy 

 is not acquired in the latter half of life ; if the organism is not degenerate 

 at forty-two, it is unlikely to become degenerate within the next twenty 

 years. Degeneracy is almost always the result of heredity, and manifests 

 itself with equal force at all ages, but particularly during youth. Are 

 married men without children more degenerate, as a whole, than those with 

 children ? Degeneracy does not engender impotence, except when its 

 extreme stages are reached ; but between idiocy and simple neurasthenia 

 there is a wide gulf : the difference is not merely quantitative, but qualita- 

 tive, and manifests itself anatomically in an alteration of the cerebral struc- 

 ture. Can it be maintained, finaUy, that years of political crisis are less 

 favourable to the development of degeneracy ? There is a priori no reason 

 for this assumption. It if be said that the diminution of the suicide-rate 

 is due to the fact that a number of degenerate persons who would other- 

 wise commit suicide are prevented from so doing by being sent to do battle 

 for their country, and that the rise in the suicide-rate after the war is over 

 is attributable to the fact that these persons, once more liberated, go to 

 swell the number of those who would, in any case, make up the social rate 

 of suicide ; we may reply that this argument is susceptible of more refuta- 

 tions than one. Firstly, it would apply only to years of actual war. But 

 how explain the slight fall in the suicide-rate in France in 1867, or the much 

 greater fall in 1869 ? These were not years of war; consequently, the de- 

 generate persons who would otherwise have killed themselves were not 

 prevented from doing so by war. And here we come back to the question. 

 What prevented them from following the impulse of their degenerate 

 temperament ? How explain the rise in the suicide-rate in England and 

 Wales in 1868 and the years following ? There had been no war previously ; 

 consequently no war could have engendered a crop of " reservists " to swell 

 the usual number of suicides. Secondly, how does this view concur with 

 the facts ? Supposing that those who commit suicide are degenerates, 

 how comes it that they are recruited in considerable numbers ? We may 

 take it that degeneracy eliminates from active service those who suffer from 

 it ; and that, even in times of war, the number of degenerate persons who 

 remain behind, and who are consequently at liberty to kill themselves, is 

 practically the same as in times of peace. 



