While the influence of the Parnassians and Decadents in France was only small, in England the circumstances which produced them have been in existence among us and have produced effects to some extent similar. The struggle between science and religion, the distrust of both, the failure of social panaceas, and the irresistible pushing of the working class against old social barriers have produced in a great number of educated men a peculiar state of mind which we wish that Nordau had noticed. Whether he would have placed those thus affected among his degenerates as egomaniacs it is impossible for us to decide, but there can be little doubt that egoism is the chief characteristic of a new religion or a new mental disease, which has made large inroads among educated men. It becomes manifest in their pessimism and in their indifferentism. They believe that everything is bad, that the classes are bad, that the masses are bad, that the country is in a bad state, and that everything will finish badly. At the same time they do not care. They will do nothing to avert the coming evils. They hope that none will think them foolish enough to make themselves martyrs. They wish it to be clearly understood that they care only for themselves and that they take no heed of what happens to others. They loathe the working class, and affect a desire to crush them out of existence at one blow. They belong to the few Englishmen who suspect women of vile things, except of course their mothers, sisters, _fiancées_, and wives. They think life hardly worth living, and certainly not worth any special exertions, but their main preoccupation is the state of their health. They study nothing save their own inclinations and cravings and certain excrescences of the most modern literature. Their capacity for hatred is stupendous in its scope but meek in its expression. They claim to enjoy all the benefits of social life without considering themselves obliged to perform any of its duties. They manage to be spendthrifts without being generous, and to be mean without being economical. But we are strongly averse to classing these social phenomena among the hopeless egomaniacs. They exaggerate their egotism to such an extent as to suggest that they are rather following a foolish fashion than undergoing moral decay, and that the existence of pinchbeck patriots, political charlatans, sham enthusiasts, and professional philanthropists has frightened them from showing their best side and using their best abilities, and causes them to flout their pessimism and selfishness in every one’s face lest they should be taken for one of these. In spite of their infatuated posing as degenerate egomaniacs, we believe that many of them may be counted upon as part of those elements from which the future regeneration may spring, when the cloud of scepticism has cleared away, and a goal worthy to strive for is discernible. CHAPTER X _AN ETHICAL INQUISITION_