There are many passages in his book that strongly suggest that he is not completely sincere in his one-sided view. The savage blows he sometimes deals at the Anarchists bear witness that this form of—as he would call it—degeneration among the masses caused him a considerable amount of uneasiness. Judging by the similarity of his language and that of the Emperor of Germany, he might well be commissioned to brand both Socialists and Anarchists as wild beasts. Be this as it may, his few allusions to the corruption of the masses serve to enhance the untrustworthiness of the signs of degeneration which he points out in the upper classes. Among these figure prominently—who would believe it?—modern female toilets. And why? Not because they are indecent, as they have often been in other periods, but because they are eccentric. Is there then a normal dress for ladies? Or what code is there in existence to which Nordau can appeal? Is it a sign of degeneration to hold that one of the chief objects of toilets is to be beautiful and to enhance the beauty of the wearer? And ought a lady who dresses according to this principle to be put down as a dweller on the border-land of madness? If women love to dress well, and men love to behold them well-dressed, would it not be madness to adopt ugly and monotonous toilets? It is, of course, not difficult to see that the author’s standard of female toilet is the plain and ugly dress of the German housewife, and that he has never realized the delight which an Englishman takes in seeing his wife richly dressed, and in a way that suits her face and form. If Nordau’s standard of female dress is the severe draperies of the antique, he does not say so. But, if it be, we must remind him that the beauty of the classic draperies was borrowed from the beauty of the forms they revealed or partly displayed. With the best will, we could not in northern Europe emulate the Greeks in dress. There are two objections: the climate, which demands warm covering; the sense of may-be false modesty, inherited from the early Christian ages, which prevents the display of human forms. The time will no doubt come when humanity is sufficiently pure-minded—sufficiently degenerated, as Nordau would probably say—to dress in clinging draperies, to expose the form more freely indoors and in warm weather; and who would say that morality would not be the gainer? A movement in this direction is already apparent. The skirt-dance represents one stage. The appearance of an actress without shoes or stockings might well herald a return to sandals, and the abandonment of the barbarous fashion of cramping children’s feet in pointed shoes. But to call the women of European society degenerate because, under the present circumstances, they do not go about in light tunics, displaying their feet, their arms, and one leg, is hardly fair.