DEGENERATION

[ii]

By the same Author.

Uniform with this Volume.

London: William Heinemann.

[iii]

DEGENERATION

BY
MAX NORDAU
AUTHOR OF
‘CONVENTIONAL LIES OF OUR CIVILIZATION,’ ‘PARADOXES,’ ETC.

Translated from the Second Edition
of the German Work

Popular Edition

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1898
[All rights reserved]

[iv]

[v]

Dedicated

TO

CÆSAR LOMBROSO,

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY AND FORENSIC MEDICINE AT
THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY OF TURIN,

BY

THE AUTHOR.

TO

PROFESSOR CÆSAR LOMBROSO,

TURIN.

Dear and honoured Master,

I dedicate this book to you, in open and joyful recognitionof the fact that without your labours it could never have beenwritten.

The notion of degeneracy, first introduced into science by Morel,and developed with so much genius by yourself, has in your handsalready shown itself extremely fertile in the most diverse directions.On numerous obscure points of psychiatry, criminal law,politics, and sociology, you have poured a veritable flood of light,which those alone have not perceived who obdurately close their eyes,or who are too short-sighted to derive benefit from any enlightenmentwhatsoever.

But there is a vast and important domain into which neither younor your disciples have hitherto borne the torch of your method—thedomain of art and literature.

Degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, andpronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists. These,however, manifest the same mental characteristics, and for the mostpart the same somatic features, as the members of the above-mentionedanthropological family, who satisfy their unhealthy impulses withthe knife of the assassin or the bomb of the dynamiter, instead ofwith pen and pencil.

Some among these degenerates in literature, music, and