In the light of these facts there remain few educated persons among the upper classes of this country about whose intellectual soundness Nordau’s work might not raise doubts. This all the more so as his few reservations with regard to people who have demonstrated their sanity by practical ability to conduct their own affairs, sink into insignificance among his voluminous and wholesale accusations, especially as such reservations are forgotten almost as soon as they are made. This wholesale issue of certificates of madness would not have mattered so much if his work did not carry with it a certain power of conviction which tells especially with the weak, uninstructed mind, and with people who have not read his work with special attention. In fact, we know cases of people of sensitive mind who imagine that, thanks to Nordau’s book, their friends will look upon them as on the road to lunacy. There can be little doubt that the strong impression the book has made, sometimes in one way and sometimes in another, is largely due to the style adopted by its author. The secret of this style is revealed in the chapter “Prognosis,” where he describes with somewhat elephantine humour the effects in the twentieth century of the present progressing degeneration. He says, among other things, that companies of men will be formed who “by vigorous affirmations are charged to tranquillize persons afflicted with the mania of doubt, when taken by a fit of nervousness.” Such a piece of prophecy could only enter the head of a man who has had practical experience of the great effect produced on nervous people by vigorous affirmations, and, having had this experience, Nordau fills his volume with such “vigorous affirmations.” His method has succeeded all the better as he evidently belongs to that class of powerful and strong-willed men who, when once they have formed an opinion, hold to it tenaciously, and count as nothing any conviction against their will. Having followed Nordau through his vigorous crusade against that score of people whom he regards as dangerous enemies to humanity, and having pointed out a host of his logical errors, erroneous perceptions, unsound postulates, and exaggerated representations, we propose before closing this volume to examine some of the reasoning methods which give him his apparent strength.