Nordau, with his German-Philistine ideas, with his head crammed full of authoritative teaching, and biassed by the clap-trap of the commonest Collectivism, has utterly misunderstood the phenomena which he has only partially observed. He does not allow for the mistakes, the exaggerations, and the eccentricities committed by men who try to give expression to their feelings, their yearnings, their aspirations, unhampered by traditional bonds. He is bewildered because a movement springing entirely from feeling and instinct does not follow a fixed programme, or some dry philosophical system. He under-estimates the value of an ethical revolution, because so far it has not reached its constructive stage; and because the new apostles of liberty, intoxicated by their self-liberation, run amuck indiscriminately against all old things, be they good or bad; because the movement is in the hands of extremists, enthusiasts, and sentimentalists, and still awaits the guiding hand of the unbiassed logician, the cool-headed sociologist and economist, capable of harmonizing it with practical life and moral order. Nordau, by his book, has forfeited his claim to be one of these. CHAPTER III _MYSTICISM AND THE UNKNOWABLE_ Of the good things contained in Nordau’s book which should secure for it a place in the study of every educated man, his fourth chapter entitled “Etiology” figures conspicuously. He deals here with the causes—not the primary economic and sociological causes, but the immediate causes—of the increasing bodily debilities and mental derangements characteristic of our epoch. Such facts, or generally assumed facts, as that the average term of human life is extending; that the average stature of man has increased since the middle ages, rendering the armour of mighty men of those days too small for middle-sized men of our generation; that the average chest-measure in the German army is expanding; that personal beauty of children, women, and men is in the ascendant; that many men attain to a great age without the slightest sign of diminished mental power;—all these facts might appear so many contradictions to Nordau’s assertions in the chapter alluded to. But, though the consideration of them might induce him to modify some of the minor points, they are not completely inconsistent with his general reasoning. He warns us that the excessive consumption of spirits and tobacco, the use of opiates and poisons in general, produce debility and premature death. Bad food, bad air, bad dwellings, and a great number of other disadvantages which town dwellers, especially the poor, must endure, are no doubt at least as harmful to body and mind as he proves. He rightly attributes a great number of nerve diseases to the prostration and fatigue consequent upon over-exertion and over-excitement, which seems inevitable in an epoch of railways, telegraphs, and machinery.