When we come to examine the history of the world we find evidence that certain nations have, at times, reached a high state of prosperity, and have then degenerated to such a degree that they have either passed entirely out of existence, or have lapsed into a state of semi-barbarity. This has generally been brought about by conquest, but the races conquered had first become enfeebled by their habitudes of thought and manner of living. It is a well-established fact that luxury brings debauchery, and that debauchery occasions degeneration. All nations that have, heretofore, reached the zenith of their prosperity, have been engulfed, at some time or other, in the maelstrom of luxurious habits, and have fallen under the lethal influence of a degeneration occasioned solely by debauchery; for the luxury and debauchery of one class brought increased poverty on, as well as excess in, other classes, and poverty and excess are prominent factors in the production of degeneration, as we shall see further on in this paper. Says the brilliant author of “Psychopathia Sexualis,” Krafft-Ebing: “Periods of moral decadence in the life of a people are always contemporaneous with times of effeminacy, sensuality, and luxury. These conditions can only be conceived as occurring with increased demands upon the nervous system, which must meet these requirements. As a result of increase of nervousness, there is increase of sensuality, and, since this leads to excesses among the masses, it undermines the foundations of society the morality and purity of family life. When this is destroyed by excesses, unfaithfulness, and luxury, then the destruction of the state is inevitably compassed in material, moral, and political ruin.”

Such was the condition of the Latin race when the fierce and hardy Vandals overran the Roman peninsula; such was the condition of the Assyrians when Babylon fell beneath the onslaughts of the great Macedonian; such was the condition of the Egyptians when the northern myriads swept down upon the fertile valley of the Nile, and destroyed forever the once powerful and all-conquering kingdom of the Pharaohs; and such, too, was the condition of the French nation in 1794, when Anarchy unfurled its red banner at the head of the most gigantic social revolution the world has ever known.

At the present time, community of interests, as well as higher civilization, would utterly forbid the total subjugation of one civilized nation by another, such as occurred in the olden times; hence no nation need fear annihilation from such a source. The danger comes from another point, and consists in the almost certain uprising, at some time in the future, of degenerate individuals in open warfare and rebellion against society.

The question whether the world is growing better or worse is often debated, and can be answered affirmatively on both sides. Better, because superstition, bigotry, and dogmatism have given way, to a great extent, to the tolerance and freedom of higher civilization and purer ethics in normal, healthy man; worse, because crime (and I mean by crime all anti-social acts) has greatly increased on account of the pernicious influence of degeneration.

That superstition, bigotry, and dogmatism are on the wane, and that they will, sooner or later, be entombed in that depository of obsolete savage mental habitudes absolute and utter oblivion a glance at the success that science has achieved in the warfare waged against it by the Church, will at once declare. (Throughout this article I use the word Church to express priests of any and every denomination, whether Jew, Gentile, or Pagan, Protestant or Catholic.) A short incursion into this subject, i. e., the Church’s warfare on science, is absolutely necessary. For the triumph of science over its enemies superstition, bigotry, and dogmatism, coincidently, ignorance and illiterateness shows that the civilized world, at the present time, is markedly different in some respects from the world of ancient, medieval, and even comparatively recent times; and, in summing up, this changed condition will be a weighty factor in making up an answer to the question which heads this paper.

When Olympus first faded away from the enlightened eyesight of the Greeks, and changed into space besprinkled with stars; when Zeus no longer held his divine court on its mystic summit; when oracles became mute and the fabled wonders of the “Odyssey” either vanished, or resolved themselves into prosaic commonplaces under the investigations of the skeptic or the accidental discoverer, the Church made a most strenuous protest against the destruction of its traditions.

Many of these early seekers after truth were even killed and their goods confiscated. The Church issued its edict against heresy (and any doctrine that taught a belief antagonistic to the accepted tenets of pagan mythology and theogony was heresy), and hurled its anathemas against the heretic. Olympus, in the eyes of the Church, still existed, and Zeus, the man-god, still quaffed the sacred ambrosia in its shady groves. The Sirens still sang their entrancing songs, while Scylla and Charybdis were ever stretching out eager arms toward unwary mariners. Gigantic one-eyed Cyclops, with Polyphemus as their leader, still patrolled the shores of Sicily, and kept their “ever-watchful eyes” turned toward the open sea.

The hardy Greek sailor landed on the Cyclopean island, and discovered that Polyphemus, and Arges, and Brontes, and Steropes, and all the other one-eyed monsters were nothing but sea-wrack, bowlders, and weeds. He sailed farther, past Scylla and Charybdis, and discovered no greater dangers than sharp rocks and whirlpools. Yet farther he sailed out into the unknown sea, and the only Siren’s song he heard was the whistling of the wind through the cordage of his vessel.

In vain the Church thundered against the daring investigator. Neither fire, nor sword, nor imprisonment, nor death itself could check the march of truth. Mythology and pagan theogony had received their death-blows; superstition, bigotry, and dogmatism were elbowed aside and gave place to dawning science. The Church held that that which had been believed by pious men for untold ages must necessarily be true. Science, in the garb of philosophy, with cold, dispassionate criticism, proved that these hitherto accepted truths were arrant fallacies. The poets and writers then took up the subject, and finally the people fell into line, so superstitious, bigoted, dogmatic mythology died, intellectuality took its place, and higher civilization took a step forward.

Thomas H. Huxley writes, in his preface to “Science and Christian Tradition,” as follows: “I have never ‘gone out of my way’ to attack the Bible or anything else; it was the dominant, ecclesiasticism of my early days, which, as I believe, without any warrant from the Bible itself, thrust the book in my way.

“I had set out on a journey, with no other purpose than that of exploring a certain province of natural knowledge; I strayed no hair’s breadth from the course which it was my right and my duty to pursue; and yet I found that, whatever route I took, before long I came to a tall and formidable looking fence. Confident as I might be in the existence of an ancient and indefeasible right of way, before me stood the thorny barrier with its comminatory notice-board ’NO THOROUGHFARE. By order. MOSES.’ There seemed no way over; nor did the prospect of creeping round, as I saw some do attract me.... The only alternatives were either to give up my journey which I was not minded to do or to break the fence down and go through it.”

Huxley found that this Mosaic fence, as erected by dogmatic theologians and scholasticists, was but a flimsy structure at best, and one that was easily overthrown and destroyed.

Dogmatic theology teaches that man was created from the dust of the earth, and that he at once fell heir to an estate of physical and psychical habitudes which were God-like in character; scientific investigation, on the contrary, demonstrated the fact that man’s inception begins in bathybian protoplasm and culminates, as far as his general physical organism is concerned, in the last link of an evolutionary chain that reaches back and back, through countless eons of ages, to the very beginnings of life.

The History of Life written upon the rocky frame-work of this gray and hoary old world, declares that man’s physical being is but the result of the laws of evolution. He did not spring into being, like the sea-born Venus, a creature of physical grace, and strength, and beauty; nor did the sacred flame of an inborn intelligence at once illumine his countenance. For thousands of years, the forbears of the present civilized homo sapiens were but slightly above the Alalus (ape-like man) of Haeckel in point of personal pulchritude; and for thousands of years, the ancestors of the civilized man of to-day were savages, with all the psychical traits of primitive peoples.

Social ethics are as much the result of evolutionary growth as is man himself. Civilization, which is but another name for ethical culture, is the outcome of the inherited experiences of thousands of years. These experiences were the results of law, and that law can be embraced in one comprehensive word evolution.

Now, one of the most noticeable facts in biological history is the tendency that animal structures or organisms, under certain circumstances, have toward atavism or reversion to ancestral types. Not only is this to be observed in the physical organisms of animals, but also in their psychical beings as well.

Atavism is invariably the result of degeneration, as I will endeavor to demonstrate later on in this paper.

I believe that we are rapidly hurrying toward a social cataclysm, beside which the downfall of the Roman Empire, the destruction of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations, and the bloody days of the French Revolution will sink into utter insignificance. I believe, also, and think that I can demonstrate the truthfulness of my belief, that the inciting cause of this social revolution will not be found in those citizens of the United States of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic parentage, but that it will be observed among our Slavonic, Teutonic, and Latinic citizens. But, in order to furnish a parallel (from which you may draw your own conclusions), before I enter fully into the discussion of this part of my subject, I wish to review, very briefly, certain historical epochs.

When the first conquerors of Egypt, about whom history can tell us so little, first occupied the fertile valley of the Nile, the country, in all probability, was inhabited by negroes. The conquering race drove out or enslaved the native population and founded the ancient kingdom of Egypt. This kingdom waxed strong and mighty until, at the time of Rameses the Great, more than three thousand two hundred years ago, it was the most powerful monarchy in the whole world. The mighty son of Ra, Meiamoun Ra, or Rameses, as he is most generally styled, was a warrior and a statesman. He led his victorious troops north, east, and west, conquering nations as he went, until he dominated and brought into a state of vassalage over two-thirds of the then known world.

Wealth flowed into his kingdom from all the surrounding countries, consequently, luxury, with its never-failing associate, debauchery, made its appearance, and the decadence of this mighty kingdom set in.

It is true that many Pharaohs reigned after Rameses, and that the monarchy maintained its greatness for a long period of time, but luxury had taken hold on the Egyptians at the time of their greatest prosperity and had sown the seeds of degeneration, which flourished and grew apace, until the emasculated and effeminate people yielded up their independence to the conquerors, and passed out of existence as a nation forever.

The Roman people, under the leadership of their ancient heroes, was a nation of hardy warriors and husbandmen. That preeminent military genius, Julius Cæsar, had carefully fostered this warlike spirit in the bosoms of his compatriots, and, by a series of brilliant campaigns, had made the Roman nation the most powerful on the face of the globe. The Roman legions were not only victorious on land, extending their conquests into Iberia, farther Gaul, and still farther Britain, but the Roman trirèmes also swept the Mediterranean, from the Pillars of Hercules to the shores of Syria and Egypt. Wealth poured into the country from all sides, and the people reveled in a boundless prosperity.

Luxury had already begun to enervate the hardy soldiery at the time of Caesar’s assassination, yet not enough to show the full effects of degeneration and demoralization. The empire under the first emperors steadily grew richer and more powerful, and the luxury of the rich more unlimited and licentious. At length a change can be noticed. The Roman legions, hitherto victorious over every foe, are now frequently vanquished; conquered tribes uprear the standard of revolt and refuse to pay tribute; the territorial boundaries of the empire materially shrink, and its once conquered provinces pass out of its dominion forever.

The gradual degeneration of this nation is faithfully mirrored in the character of the emperors who governed it. Nero, Caligula, Tiberius, Caracalla, and Messalina, the depraved wife of Claudius and the daughter of Domitia Lepida, herself a licentious and libidinous woman, were but accentuated types of the luxurious and debauched nobility. Not only did the nobility become victims of degeneration, but the poorer classes also lost their virility, until at last we find the stability of the nation preserved through the instrumentality of foreign mercenaries. The greatness of this once widespread empire dwindled away (the freedom of its institutions contracting along with its shrinking boundaries), until we find it lapsed into a state of barbarian despotism under the son of Aurelius; and, had it not been for outside influences, it would have eventually fallen into a state of utter and complete savagery.

Now let us turn to a recent civilization. At the time of Louis XVI., the French nation was thoroughly under the influence of degeneration consequent to a luxury and licentiousness that had had a cumulative action for several hundred years. The peasantry and the inhabitants of the faubourgs, owing to their extreme poverty, itself a powerful factor in the production of degeneration, had lapsed into a state closely akin to that of their savage ancestors. The nobility were weak and effeminate, the majority of them either sexual perverts or monsters of sensuality and lechery.

The middle class, as ever the true conservators of society, seeing this miserable state of affairs, attempted to remedy it. Not fully understanding the danger of such a procedure, they allowed the degenerate element to share in their deliberations. Their moderate and sensible counsels were quickly overruled by their savage associates, who brought about a Reign of Terror (with such psychical atavists as Marat, Danton, and Robespierre at its head), the like of which the world had never seen before, nor has ever experienced since.

I have demonstrated, in the three instances of history just cited, that degeneration has invariably followed luxury, and that a social and political cataclysm has been, invariably, the result of this degeneration. That certain classes of the Old World, and of the New World, also, are living in inordinate luxury; and that certain other classes are, even now, struggling in the very depths of poverty, is a well-known fact. That this state of affairs is rapidly increasing the percentage of degenerates, such as sexual perverts, insane individuals, and congenital criminals, is not generally known; yet it is a woeful truth.

The factors in the production of degeneration are as multitudinous as they are varied, and I can find space for only a few of them. The artificiality of many peoples’ lives, wherein night is turned into day, is a prominent factor in the production of degeneration. Now, the long continued influence of artificial light exerts a very deleterious effect on the nervous system; hence it is not to be wondered at that so many men and women of society are neurasthenic. Not only are those individuals who, voluntarily and preferably, spend the greater portions of their lives in artificial light, rendered nervously irritable, but those, also, who are driven by force of circumstances to turn night into day are likewise afflicted. Several years ago, I met a distinguished editor at Waukesha, who was suffering greatly from nervous exhaustion. He told me that he was so situated that he did all of his work at night, often writing until three o’clock in the morning. I advised him to quit this and to do his editorial work during daylight. Not long after, he wrote me that he had followed my advice, and that he was a new man in point of health.

The loss of nervous vitality makes itself evident by a feeling either of exhaustion or irritability. The fashionable devotee, in order to counteract this, either stimulates the system with alcohol, or exorcises the “fidgets” by the use of sedatives, such as chloral or morphia. The baneful effects of such medication are not at once appreciable, but, if continued for any length of time, they will eventually result in a total demoralization of the nervous system. Time and again have I seen fashionable men and women, at the close of the season, veritable nervous wrecks.

What necessarily would be the effect of physical and psychical lesions like these on a child begotten by such parents? The inevitable result would be degeneration in some form or other.

Again, many men and women stand the drain of a fashionable season on their nervous systems without attempting to recoup through the agency of drugs, and at the end find themselves physically and psychically exhausted. They go to the seaside or some other resort, and, in a measure, recover their nervous vitality, only to lose it again during the next season. This continues for season after season, the nervous system all the time becoming weaker, until some day there is a collapse, ending in hysteria, paresis, or some other of the hundred forms of neurotic disorder. What will be the effect on the progeny resulting from the union of such individuals? Again the answer must necessarily be degeneration.

The long and continued intercourse of the sexes in the ball-room, where the women are dressed so decollete that they excite sensuality in the men, very frequently without the men being conscious of the fact, must necessarily exert a deleterious effect on the nervous system.

Contact of the sexes in the dance is only pleasurable because of that contact. I am fully aware of the fact that this idea is scouted and denied by those who indulge in the waltz and kindred dances. They claim that no thought of carnality ever enters into their feelings. I know from personal experiences that they are honest in this declaration, yet, from a psychical standpoint, they are woefully in error. Aestheticism and carnality are by no means as dissociate as the aesthete would have us believe. All pleasurable emotions that have their inception in the senses are, fundamentally, of carnal origin. The waltz is aesthetic, yet all of its pleasure is based on an emotion closely akin to sensuality. Men derive no pleasure from waltzing with one another, nor do women under like circumstances.

Nature demands in the interest of health a certain amount of exercise. The luxurious society man or woman utterly disregards this demand of nature, consequently indigestion, with all of its associated ills, steps in, and becomes an additional factor in the production of nervous exhaustion. To tempt the appetite, highly seasoned foods, many of which are deleterious and injurious, are prepared and taken into the torpid and crippled stomach. Finally nature rebels and the unfortunate dyspeptic is forced to go through life on a diet of oatmeal, or, weakened by lack of healthy sustenance, the brain gives way, and the victim passes the remainder of his or her life in a lunatic asylum. Children begotten by miserable invalids like these, beyond a peradventure, must necessarily be degenerate.

Indigestion is not the only ill that nature inflicts for any disregard of her laws. She is a rough nurse but a safe one, consequently she forbids the rearing of her hardiest creation, man, in hot houses, as though he were a tender exotic. The luxurious individual pampers his body, following the dictates of his own selfish desires and utterly disregarding the laws of nature, and before he reaches middle age, discovers that he has become an old, old man, weak in body, but still weaker in mind.

The children resulting from the union of the various neurasthenics described above are necessarily degenerate. As they grow up, they show this degeneration by engaging in all kinds of licentious debauchery, and unnatural and perverted indulgences of appetite. In nine cases out of ten, they will spend the fortunes inherited from their parents in riotous debauchery, and will eventually sink, if death does not overtake them, to the level of their fellow degenerates those who have been brought into existence by poverty and debauchery, and who await them at the foot of the social ladder. Among such degenerate beings, the doctrines of socialism, of communism, of nihilism, and of anarchy have their origin.

Now let us turn our attention to the evidences of luxury and debauchery, and the consequent evidences of degeneration, which obtrude themselves on all sides. The reckless extravagance of the nobility of the Old World is well known. Vice and licentiousness even penetrate to royal households, and princes of the blood pose as roues and debauchees. As I have demonstrated elsewhere, degeneration in the wealthy classes of society generally makes itself evident by the appearance of psycho-sexual disorders. The horrible abominations of the English nobility, as portrayed in the revelations of Mr. Stead, are well known. Charcot, Ségalas, Fere, and Bouvier give clear and succinct accounts of the vast amount of sexual perversion existing among the French, while Krafft-Ebing informs us that the German empire is cursed by the presence of thousands of these unfortunates. When we come to examine this phase of degeneration in our own country, we find that it is very prevalent. This is especially noticeable in the larger cities, though we find examples of it scattered broadcast throughout the land.

The editor of one of our leading magazines, in a remarkable series of letters, has shown that the wealthy New Yorkers revel in a luxuriousness that is absolutely startling in its license. Thousands are expended on a single banquet, while the flower bills for a single year of some of these modern Luculli would support a family of five people for three or four years! Bacchanalian orgies that dim even those of the depraved, corrupt, and degenerate Nero are of nightly occurrence.[AI] Drunkenness, lechery, and gambling are the sports and pastimes of these ultra rich men, and it is even whispered that milady is not much behind milord in the pursuit of forbidden pleasures.

[AI] I know from personal observation that “Seeley Dinners” are of
frequent occurrence in New York, as well as in other large cities.
J. W., Jr.

Psycho-sexual disorders are not the only evidences of degeneration in the wealthy, by any means. Many a congenital criminal is born in the purple, who shows his moral imbecility in many ways. Sometimes he sinks at once to the level of a common thief, but generally his education keeps him within the pale of the law. Always, however, his sensuality is unbounded, and he will hesitate at nothing in order to gratify his desires. This unbridled license has already had its effect elsewhere. We see that it has even corrupted the guardians and conservators of the public peace. The recent investigation of the police board of New York shows a degree of corruption that is simply overwhelming, and that the same state of affairs exists in Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, and other large cities, I have every reason to believe.

There are yet other evidences of degeneration; witness the eroticism that is to be found in our literature. Unless a book appeals to the degenerate tastes of its readers it might just as well never have been published. This is not cynicism; it is plain, unvarnished truth. Again, turn to the stage, and we find the same thing. The tragedies and comedies of Shakespeare are shelved, while immoral “society plays” and “living pictures” and “problem plays” hold the boards. Salacity, with only sufficient and that is, degeneration. That which happened centuries ago will happen again, for covering to hide downright lewdness, is everywhere apparent. Now what is the result of this? There can be but one answer, man is governed by the same laws of nature now as he was then.

Statistics show that insanity is markedly on the increase. This is not to be wondered at when we take into consideration the fact that debauchery is the rule, and not the exception, among certain classes of people. Syphilis, one of the most productive causes of degeneration, is exceedingly active throughout the whole civilized world. Blashko states that one out of every ten men in the city of Berlin is tainted with this terrible malady. This is wholly attributable to the unbounded sensuality of the people. Crime of every description is rearing its hydra-head, and clasping in its destroying embrace an alarming proportion of human beings.

I have shown elsewhere, that the congenital criminal is the result of degeneration, and that he comes from all classes of society. He is, however, most frequently the product of the lower classes, and lives and dies among his congeners. I have shown, also, that the anarchist, the nihilist, and the socialist belong to the same category of degenerate beings. Poverty, brought on by high taxation, by war, and by overcrowding, has been, during the last millenary period, very fertile in the production of degenerates in the Old World. Lack of food and sanitation, the usual adjuncts of poverty, are powerful factors in the production of degenerate individuals. The Old World has gotten rid of these people as rapidly as possible by unloading them on our shores. Year after year, practically without restriction, thousands of these anti-social men and women have swarmed into our country, until we, comparatively speaking, a nation just born, contain as many of these undesirable citizens as any of the older nations. They still continue to enter our gates, and we ourselves are adding to their number, as I have shown, by our own production.

Some day and I greatly fear that day is not very far distant some professional anarchist (for there are professional anarchists as well as professional thieves) will consider the time ripe for rebellion, and, raising the fraudulent cry of “Labor against Capital!” instead of his legitimate cry of “Rapine! Murder! Booty!” will lead this army of degenerates, composed of anarchists, nihilists, sexual perverts, and congenital criminals, against society. And who will bear the brunt of this savage irruption? The ultra-rich? By no means! The great “middle class” the true conservators of society and civilization will fight this battle. It will be a fight between civilization and degeneration, and civilization will carry the day. There would have been no French revolution had the middle class been as wise then as it is to-day. It was taken by surprise at that savage, bloody time, but as soon as it recovered, how quickly it brought order out of chaos!

Education is the bulwark of civilization, and the great middle class, freed of dogmatism, bigotry, and superstition, is welcoming education with outstretched hands. It is gaining recruits, and is strengthening its defenses, so that when the time comes its enemies may find it fully prepared.

From the signs of the times and the evidence before me, I have no hesitation in declaring that I believe that the beginning of the end is at hand! This social cataclysm may not occur for many years, yet the agencies through which it will finally be evolved are even now at work, and are bringing the culmination of their labors ever nearer and nearer as time passes!