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 —_ senerations born too late in the dusk of 
mercantile ee ee 
purntiaes. the ages. It is simply an unwholesome 
: 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. 
