Nordau would object to this expression—the gratification of his senses prompted by atheism—and would tell us that atheism ought to have implanted into Verlaine the religion of humanity, and that he should have sacrificed all his inclinations for the future happiness of his race. But, surely, it would require a good dose of hypocrisy for a man, sincerely convinced that death puts him personally beyond any consequences of his life, to persuade himself that he is practising a life-long abnegation for the good of posterity. Is it not much more likely that in so frank a nature as Verlaine’s the disbelief in personal responsibility would turn him into a devil-may-care vagabond until he learned in the school of experience the dangerous mistakes of materialism? Does Nordau not recognise the logic and the frankness in a young man who, in the exuberance of his animal life, when convinced of personal irresponsibility, lives up to the motto of a “short life and a merry one”? The need of love and affection—a need generally so strongly felt by all poets—Nordau is pleased to call eroticism, and when the poet finds that he has profaned love, implanted in his soul by God, Nordau fancies he has discovered in Verlaine that blending of religious fervour and morbid eroticism which, when irrational, is a sign of lunacy. When Paul Verlaine invokes the Virgin Mary, a form of religious expression which millions of sane people indulge in daily, Nordau at once imagines he has discovered another trace of insanity. In order to show that we are not unfair to our alienist, we will quote one of the poems of Verlaine he refers to, and the conclusions he draws from it,— Et comme j’étais faible, et bien méchant encore, Aux mains lâches, les yeux éblouis des chemins, Elle baissa mes yeux, et me joignis les mains, Et m’enseigna les mots par lesquels on adore. “The accents here quoted,” says Nordau, “are well known to the clinics of psychiatry. We may compare them to the picture which Legrain gives of some of his patients. ‘His speech continually reverts to God and the Virgin Mary, his cousin.’ [The case in question is that of a degenerate subject who was a tramway conductor.] ‘Mystical ideas complete the picture. He talks of God, of heaven, crosses himself, kneels down, and says that he is following the commandments of Christ.’ [The subject under observation is a day-labourer.] ‘The devil will tempt me, but I see God who guards me. I have asked of God that all people might be beautiful,’ etc.” So far Nordau. Because a mad tramway conductor thinks he is cousin of the Virgin Mary, Verlaine, who symbolizes in the Virgin Mary the power that draws him towards the good, is on the road to madness! From this it follows that, if a mad tramway conductor were to believe himself the cousin of Professor Lombroso, Nordau’s quasi-worship of that authority would indicate degeneracy in Nordau’s mind.