We understand that Max Nordau for a considerable time was the Paris correspondent of German papers, and we may take for granted that he would not have been able to please his German readers had he not been strongly biassed in favour of Germany against France—a fact to which his work bears ample witness. Such is, then, the man who, in his undaunted faith in his science and in himself, in the name of truth and the welfare of humanity, and undeterred by the penalties of the Great Council and Hell Fire, has said to his brethren,—to the one, “You are Raca!” and to the other, “Thou fool!” CHAPTER II _DUSK OR DAWN!_ Nordau’s theory is that the educated classes of the world are degenerating; that the peculiarities in passions, tastes, pastimes, and moods, bear witness to such degeneration; that the cause must be found in the physical condition of the brains of such authors and artists as for the time being have the ear and the eye of the public; that the remedy against degeneration may be found in a moral quasi-compulsory supervision on the part of the non-degenerate over degenerate authors and artists. If we are not entirely exact in this summary of his postulates and conclusions, it is to a great extent Nordau’s fault, because nowhere does he give any decided statement of the scope of his book. In his first chapter he goes out of his way in order to protest against the misconception which represents him as having insinuated that the whole of humanity exhibited signs of decay, and he declares that his remarks apply exclusively to the educated classes. Were this absolutely true, there would have been but small occasion for his remarkable work. But over and over again in the pages of _Degeneration_ he speaks of the masses as partly affected by degeneration, and of the danger of the contamination spreading from the educated classes to the masses. He mentions the extreme Socialists and the Anarchists as the victims of the mental disease he investigates. And yet he flatters himself that the proletariat is not as the upper classes are, and bases his opinion on the fact that they appear satisfied with the old forms of art and poetry, that they prefer George Ohnet’s novels to the works of the symbolists, and Mascagni’s music to that of Wagner. These statements evidently emanate from one who has mingled little with the people. The truth is that the newest books, the newest music, the newest pictures, only slowly reach the working classes, and when such works are the outcome of temporary fashion and mood, they might not reach them at all. But this by no means proves that the working classes do not experience the impulses which prompt the predilections of the upper classes.