The causes of degeneracy may seem obscure. But if we turn to our gardens, how easily is the process understood! Leave a cultivated plant to look after itself; neither watered, nor manured, nor weeded; and how long will it be before the plant resembles its wild ancestors? The flower will be less fine, the leaves more weedy; the whole aspect of the plant is changed. The causes: insufficient food and water, and the struggle for root space, standing-room, and light, with the weeds around it. Just in like manner the human being, when unfed, unwashed, and untaught, begins to degenerate. The want of fresh air and light associated with slum life, and even in the country, associated with the homes of the poor, are factors in the case that are not to be forgotten. Add to these drink, and the other sins of the fathers which are visited on the children. All these are among the causes of degeneracy. Nay more, the very virtues of the parents, as we account them, may lead to the degeneracy of the offspring. Overwork, either physical or mental, causes the deterioration of the family, and in our days nearly every man successful in any career, either commercial or intellectual, is guilty of overwork. The "haste to be rich," equally with the haste to be famous, tells on the next generation. Those who are fond of moralising at the expense of their neighbours, enjoy pointing out the unsatisfactory careers of the sons of men who have become rich. Almost invariably such a one is idle, we are told, and fond of pleasure. Good cause has he to be so. He comes into the world with weakened constitution, owing to his father's strenuous career; and if he were to work as hard as his father, he would probably soon be dead; or at least his children, in their turn, would be miserable and diseased. Nature guides his inclinations, and whispers "Do not work too hard," "Do not deny yourself too much"; and thus, so long as his father's money maintains him, his life is preserved. What is the kind of degeneracy that overtakes the family of the brain-worker? The modern world is full of it. We owe to the unamiable genius of Max Nordau a criticism of the intellectual world of the present day, which attributes well-nigh all the follies of intellectual cliques to degeneracy. Poetry, which is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," rich in rhyme and alliteration, but wanting in sense; art which seeks effect by loud and inharmonious colours; music which rejects "mere melody": in these the critic sees the taste of the savage, fond of a jingle of words, fond of bright colours, and ignorant of middle tints; and fond of noise without a tune.