Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Degeneration / by Max Nordau. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![and need only to acquire a knowledge of Buddhism to become converts to it. With the incapacity for action there is connected the pre- dilection for inane reverie. The degenerate is not in a con- dition to fix his attention long, or indeed at all, on any subject, and is equally incapable of correctly grasping, ordering, or elaborating into ideas and judgments the impressions of the external world conveyed to his distracted consciousness by his defectively operating senses. It is easier and more convenient for him to allow his brain-centres to produce semi-lucid, nebulously blurred ideas and inchoate embryonic thoughts, and to surrender himself to the perpetual obfuscation of a boundless, aimless, and shoreless stream of fugitive ideas; and he rarely rouses himself to the painful attempt to check or counteract the capricious, and, as a rule, purely mechanical associations of ideas and succession of images, and bring under discipline the disorderly tumult of his fluid presentations. On the contrary, he rejoices in his faculty of imagination, which he contrasts with the insipidity of the Philistine, and devotes him- self with predilection to all sorts of unlicensed pursuits per- mitted by the unshackled vagabondage of his mind ; while he cannot endure well-ordered civil occupations, requiring atten- tion and constant heed to reality. He calls this ' having an idealist temperament,' ascribes to himself irresistible sesthetic propinquities, and proudly styles himself an artist.* We will briefly mention some peculiarities frequently mani- fested by a degenerate. He is tormented by doubts, seeks for the basis of all phenomena, especially those whose first causes are completely inaccessible to us, and is unhappy when his inquiries and ruminations lead, as is natural, to no result.t He is ever supplying new recruits to the army of system- inventing metaphysicians, profound expositors of the riddle of the universe, seekers for the phflosopher's stone, the squaring of the circle and perpetual motion.| These last three sub- jects have such a special attraction for him, that the Patent Office at Washington is forced to keep on hand printed replies to the numberless memorials in which patents are constantly * Charcot, ' Legons du Mardi k la Salpetrifere,' Policlinique^ Paris, 1890, 2^ partie, p. 392 : ' This person [the invalid mentioned] is a performer at fairs ; he calls himself artist. The truth is that his art consists in personating a wild man in fair-booths.' t Legrain, op. cit, p. 73 : ' The patients are perpetually tormented by a muhituae of questions which invade their minds, and to which they can give no answer ; inexpressible moral sufferings result from this incapacity. Doubt envelops every possible subject :—metaphysics, theology, etc' X Magnan, ' Considdrations sur la Folie des H(^rddiiaires ou Ddgdnerds,' Progrks medical, 1886, p. mo (in the report of a medical case) : ' He also thought of seeking for the philosopher's stone, and of making gold.'](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21070684_0043.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
