DEGENERATION. 207 
The genuine man, the man who is doing something, who 
faces “ the world as it is,” in absolute veracity of thought 
and action, is never decadent. Society 
lives through the effort of those who 
have power to act beyond what is needed 
in the common struggle for life. Strength begets 
strength and wisdom leads to wisdom. “There is al- 
ways room for the man of force, and he makes room 
for many.” It is the strong, wise, and good of the past 
who have made civilization possible. It 
is the great human men, the “men in 
the natural order,” that now and for 
all time determine the current of life. ‘“ The earth,” 
Emerson tells us, “is upheld by the veracity of good 
men. They keep the world wholesome.” 
From all institutions a certain form of degeneration 
must arise, because all institutions tend in some degree 
to do away with individual effort. A 
The man of 
force. 
The wholesome 
world. 
ie alae common creed for men weakens the 
under a ate x % 
‘gamer force of individual belief. Common 
institutions. 
ceremonies destroy the spontaneity and 
‘personality of the feelings they represent. Right action 
by statute and convention is in some degree opposed 
to virtue by personal initiative. Between unregulated 
individualism or anarchy and all-controlling institutions 
not yet thorough science, yet is not wholly ignorant. It has 
caught up notions e# current literature which makes it think it- 
self on the same level ef those who have laboriously studied the 
sciences. I see no other means of checking the mischief, except 
that the schools should reform their method and restore thorough 
teaching instead of that teaching of many things which has 
usurped its place.” Thoreau speaks of the derivation of ‘‘ vile” 
and ‘‘ villain” from via, way, and vil/a, village. ‘‘ This suggests,” 
he says, ‘‘that kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They 
are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them without travel- 
ling themselves.” 
