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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE,
C. F. CLAY, Manager.
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
Glasgow: 50, WELLINGTON STREET.
Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS.
New York: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS.
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.
[All Rights reserved]
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DECADENCE
HENRY SIDGWICK MEMORIAL
LECTURE
by
The Right Hon.
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR, M.P.
[DELIVERED AT NEWNHAM COLLEGE,
JANUARY 25, 1908]
Cambridge
at the University Press
1908
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Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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I must begin what I have to say with awarning and an apology. I must warn youthat the present essay makes no pretence tobe an adequate treatment of some compactand limited theme; but rather resembles thosewandering trains of thought, where we allowourselves the luxury of putting wide-rangingquestions, to which our ignorance forbids anyconfident reply. I apologise for adopting acourse which thus departs in some measurefrom familiar precedent. I admit its perils.But it is just possible that when a subject, orgroup of subjects, is of great inherent interest,even a tentative, and interrogative, treatmentof it may be worth attempting.
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My subject, or at least my point of departure,is Decadence. I do not mean thesort of decadence often attributed to certainphases of artistic or literary development, inwhich an overwrought technique, straining toexpress sentiments too subtle or too morbid,is deemed to have supplanted the direct inspirationof an earlier and a simpler age.Whether these autumnal glories, these splendourstouched with death, are recurring phenomenain the literary cycle: whether, if theybe, they are connected with other formsof decadence, may be questions well worthasking and answering. But they are not thequestions with which I am at present concerned.The decadence respecting which I wish toput questions is not literary or artistic, it ispolitical and national. It is the decadencewhich attacks, or is alleged to attack, greatcommunities and historic civilisations: which[Pg 7]is to societies of men what senility is to man,and is often, like senility, the precursor andthe cause of final dissolution.
It is curious how deeply imbedded inordinary discourse are traces of the convictionthat childhood, maturity, and old age,are stages in the corporate, as they are inthe individual, life. “A young and vigorousnation,” “a decrepit and moribund civilisation”—phraseslike these, and scores of otherscontaining the same implication, come as trippinglyfrom the tongue as if they suggestedno difficulty and called for no explanat