Social degeneration was a widely influential concept at the interface of the social and biological sciences in the 18th and 19th centuries.
During the 18th century, scientific thinkers including
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste.
His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent Fr ...
,
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He is considered to be a main founder of zoology and anthropology as comparative, scientific disciplines. He wa ...
, and
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
argued that humans shared a common origin but had degenerated over time due to differences in climate.
This theory provided an explanation of where humans came from and why some people appeared differently from others. In contrast, degenerationists in the 19th century feared that civilization might be in decline and that the causes of decline lay in biological change. These ideas derived from pre-scientific concepts of
heredity
Heredity, also called inheritance or biological inheritance, is the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring; either through asexual reproduction or sexual reproduction, the offspring cells or organisms acquire the genetic inform ...
("hereditary taint") with
Lamarckian
Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...
emphasis on biological development through purpose and habit. Degeneration concepts were often associated with authoritarian political attitudes, including
militarism
Militarism is the belief or the desire of a government or a people that a state should maintain a strong military capability and to use it aggressively to expand national interests and/or values. It may also imply the glorification of the mili ...
and
scientific racism
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority.. "Few tragedies ...
, and a preoccupation with
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
. The theory originated in racial concepts of
ethnicity
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
, recorded in the writings of such medical scientists as
Johann Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He is considered to be a main founder of zoology and anthropology as comparative, scientific disciplines. He wa ...
and
Robert Knox
Robert Knox (4 September 1791 – 20 December 1862) was a Scottish anatomist and ethnologist best known for his involvement in the Burke and Hare murders. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Knox eventually partnered with anatomist and former teache ...
. From the 1850s, it became influential in
psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry.
Initial psych ...
through the writings of
Bénédict Morel
Bénédict Augustin Morel (22 November 1809 – 30 March 1873) was a French psychiatrist born in Vienna, Austria. He was an influential figure in the field of degeneration theory during the mid-19th century.
Biography
Morel was born in Vienna, A ...
, and in
criminology
Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and so ...
with
Cesare Lombroso
Cesare Lombroso (, also ; ; born Ezechia Marco Lombroso; 6 November 1835 – 19 October 1909) was an Italian criminologist, phrenologist, physician, and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the establis ...
.
By the 1890s, in the work of
Max Nordau
Max Simon Nordau (born ''Simon Maximilian Südfeld''; 29 July 1849 – 23 January 1923) was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic.
He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice ...
and others, degeneration became a more general concept in
social criticism
Social criticism is a form of academic or journalistic criticism focusing on social issues in contemporary society, in particular with respect to perceived injustices and power relations in general.
Social criticism of the Enlightenment
The orig ...
. It also fed into the ideology of
ethnic nationalism
Ethnic nationalism, also known as ethnonationalism, is a form of nationalism wherein the nation and nationality are defined in terms of ethnicity, with emphasis on an ethnocentric (and in some cases an ethnocratic) approach to various politi ...
, attracting, among others,
Maurice Barrès
Auguste-Maurice Barrès (; 19 August 1862 – 4 December 1923) was a French novelist, journalist and politician. Spending some time in Italy, he became a figure in French literature with the release of his work ''The Cult of the Self'' in 1888. ...
,
Charles Maurras
Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras (; ; 20 April 1868 – 16 November 1952) was a French author, politician, poet, and critic. He was an organizer and principal philosopher of ''Action Française'', a political movement that is monarchist, anti-parl ...
and the .
Alexis Carrel
Alexis Carrel (; 28 June 1873 – 5 November 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charle ...
, a French Nobel Laureate in Medicine, cited national degeneration as a rationale for a eugenics programme in collaborationist
Vichy France
Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its ter ...
.
The meaning of ''degeneration'' was poorly defined, but can be described as an organism's change from a more complex to a simpler, less differentiated form, and is associated with 19th-century conceptions of
biological devolution
Devolution, de-evolution, or backward evolution (not to be confused with dysgenics) is the notion that species can revert to supposedly more primitive forms over time. The concept relates to the idea that evolution has a purpose (teleology) and ...
. In scientific usage, the term was reserved for changes occurring at a histological level – i.e. in body tissues. Although rejected by
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
, the theory's application to the social sciences was supported by some evolutionary biologists, most notably
Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new sp ...
and
Ray Lankester
Sir Edwin Ray Lankester (15 May 1847 – 13 August 1929) was a British zoologist.New International Encyclopaedia.
An invertebrate zoologist and evolutionary biologist, he held chairs at University College London and Oxford University. He was th ...
. As the 19th century wore on, the increasing emphasis on degeneration reflected an anxious
pessimism
Pessimism is a negative mental attitude in which an undesirable outcome is anticipated from a given situation. Pessimists tend to focus on the negatives of life in general. A common question asked to test for pessimism is "Is the glass half empt ...
about the
resilience of European civilization and its possible decline and collapse.
Theories of degeneration in the 18th century
In the second half of the eighteenth century, degeneration theory gained prominence as an explanation of the nature and origin of human difference. Among the most notable proponents of this theory was
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste.
His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent Fr ...
. A gifted mathematician and eager naturalist, Buffon served as the curator of the Parisian
Cabinet du Roi The Menus-Plaisirs du Roi () was, in the organisation of the French royal household under the Ancien Régime, the department of the Maison du Roi responsible for the "lesser pleasures of the King", which meant in practice that it was in charge of ...
.
The collections of the Cabinet du Roi served as the inspiration for Buffon's encyclopedic , of which he published thirty-six volumes between 1749 and his death in 1788.
In the , Buffon asserted that differences in climate created variety within species.
He believed that these changes occurred gradually and initially affected only a few individuals before becoming widespread.
Buffon relied on an argument from analogy to contend that this process of degeneration occurred among humans.
He claimed to have observed the transformation of certain animals by their climate and concluded that such changes must have also shaped humankind.
Buffon maintained that degeneration had particularly adverse consequences in the New World. He believed America to be both colder and wetter than Europe.
This climate limited the number of species in the New World and prompted a decline in size and vigor among the animals which did survive.
Buffon also applied these principles to the people of the New World. He wrote in the ''Histoire Naturelle'' that the indigenous people lacked the ability to feel strong emotion for others.
For Buffon, these individuals were incapable of love as well as desire.
Buffon's theory of degeneration attracted the ire of many early American elites who feared that Buffon's depiction of the New World would negatively influence European perceptions of their nation.
In particular,
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
mounted a vigorous defense of the American natural world. He attacked the premises of Buffon's argument in his 1785 ''
Notes on the State of Virginia
''Notes on the State of Virginia'' (1785) is a book written by the American statesman, philosopher, and planter Thomas Jefferson. He completed the first version in 1781 and updated and enlarged the book in 1782 and 1783. It originated in Jeffers ...
'', writing that the animals of the New World felt the same sun and walked upon the same soil as their European counterparts.
Jefferson believed that he could permanently alter Buffon's views of the New World by showing him firsthand the majesty of American wildlife.
While serving as minister to France, Jefferson wrote repeatedly to his compatriots in the United States, pleading them to send a stuffed moose to Paris.
After months of effort,
General John Sullivan responded to Jefferson's request and shipped a moose to France.
Buffon died only three months after the moose's arrival, and his theory of New World degeneration remained forever preserved in the pages of the .
In the years following Buffon's death, the theory of degeneration gained a number of new followers, many of whom were concentrated in German-speaking lands. The anatomist and naturalist
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He is considered to be a main founder of zoology and anthropology as comparative, scientific disciplines. He wa ...
praised Buffon in his lectures at the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...
.
He adopted Buffon's theory of degeneration in his dissertation ''De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa''. The central premise of this work was that all of mankind belonged to the same species.
Blumenbach believed that a multitude of factors, including climate, air, and the strength of the sun, promoted degeneration and resulted in external differences between human beings.
However, he also asserted that these changes could easily be undone and, thus, did not constitute the basis for speciation.
In the essay “Über Menschen-Rassen und Schweine-Rassen,” Blumenbach clarified his understanding of the relationship between different human races by calling upon the example of the pig.
He contended that, if the domestic pig and the wild boar were seen as belonging to the same species, then different humans, regardless of skin color or height, must too belong to the same species.
For Blumenbach, all people of the world existed as different gradations on a spectrum.
Nevertheless, the third edition of ''De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa'', published in 1795, is famed among scholars for its introduction of a system of racial classification which divided humans into members of the Caucasian, Ethiopian, Mongolian, Malayan, or American races.
Blumenbach's views on degeneration emerged in dialogue with the works of other thinkers concerned with race and origin in the late eighteenth century. In particular, Blumenbach participated in fruitful intellectual exchange with another prominent German scholar of his age,
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
. Kant, a philosopher and professor at the
University of Königsberg
The University of Königsberg (german: Albertus-Universität Königsberg) was the university of Königsberg in East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 as the world's second Protestant academy (after the University of Marburg) by Duke Albert of Prussi ...
, taught a course on physical geography for some forty years, fostering an interest in biology and taxonomy.
Like Blumenbach, Kant engaged closely with the writings of Buffon while developing his position on these subjects.
In his 1777 essay “Von der verschiedenen Racen der Menschen,” Kant expressed the belief that all humans shared a common origin. He called upon the ability of humans to interbreed as evidence for this assertion.
Additionally, Kant introduced the term “degeneration,” which he defined as hereditary differences between groups with a shared root.
Kant also arrived at a meaning of “race” from this definition of degeneration.
He claimed that races developed when degenerations were preserved over a long period of time.
A group could only constitute a race if breeding with a different degeneration resulted in “intermediate offspring."
Although Kant advocated for a theory of shared human origin, he also contended that there was an innate hierarchy between existing races. In 1788, Kant wrote “Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien.”
He maintained in this work that a human's place in nature was determined by the amount of sweat the individual produced, which revealed an innate ability to survive.
Sweat emerged from the skin. Therefore, skin color indicated important distinctions between humans.
History
The concept of degeneration arose during the European
enlightenment and the
industrial revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
– a period of profound
social change
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations.
Definition
Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or sociocult ...
and a rapidly shifting sense of
personal identity
Personal identity is the unique numerical identity of a person over time. Discussions regarding personal identity typically aim to determine the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can ...
. Several influences were involved.
The first related to the extreme demographic upheavals, including
urbanization
Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly t ...
, in the early years of the 19th century. The disturbing experience of
social change
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations.
Definition
Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or sociocult ...
and urban
crowds
Generally speaking, a crowd is defined as a group of people that have gathered for a common purpose or intent such as at a demonstration, a sports event, or during looting (this is known as an acting crowd), or may simply be made up of many ...
, largely unknown in the agrarian 18th century, was recorded in the journalism of
William Cobbett
William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician, and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey. He was one of an agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restrain foreign ...
, the novels of
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
and in the paintings of
J M W Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 177519 December 1851), known in his time as William Turner, was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbule ...
. These changes were also explored by early writers on social psychology, including
Gustav Le Bon
Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon (; 7 May 1841 – 13 December 1931) was a leading French people, French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. He is best known for his 1895 wo ...
and
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel (; ; 1 March 1858 – 26 September 1918) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.
Simmel was influential in the field of sociology. Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach l ...
. The psychological impact of industrialisation is comprehensively described in
Humphrey Jennings
Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings (19 August 1907 – 24 September 1950) was an English documentary filmmaker and one of the founders of the Mass Observation organisation. Jennings was described by film critic and director Lindsay Anderson in 195 ...
' masterly anthology
''Pandaemonium 1660 - 1886''. Victorian social reformers including
Edwin Chadwick
Sir Edwin Chadwick KCB (24 January 18006 July 1890) was an English social reformer who is noted for his leadership in reforming the Poor Laws in England and instituting major reforms in urban sanitation and public health. A disciple of Uti ...
,
Henry Mayhew
Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine ''Punch'' in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in ...
and
Charles Booth voiced concerns about the "
decline
Decline may refer to:
*Decadence, involves a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, or skill over time
* "Decline" (song), 2017 song by Raye and Mr Eazi
* ''The Decline'' (EP), an EP by NOFX
*The Decline (band), Australian ...
" of
public health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...
in the urban life of the British
working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...
, arguing for improved housing and sanitation, access to parks and recreational facilities, an improved diet and a reduction in alcohol intake. These contributions from the public health perspective were discussed by the Scottish physician Sir
James Cantlie
Sir James Cantlie (17 January 1851 – 28 May 1926) was a British physician. He was a pioneer of first aid, which in 1875 was unknown: even the police had no knowledge of basic techniques such as how to stop serious bleeding and applying splin ...
in his influential 1885 lecture ''Degeneration Amongst Londoners''. The novel experience of everyday contact with the urban working classes gave rise to a kind of horrified fascination with their perceived reproductive energies which appeared to threaten
middle-class
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Comm ...
culture.
Secondly, the
proto-evolutionary biology and transformatist speculations of
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biologi ...
and other natural historians—taken together with the
Baron von Cuvier's theory of extinctions—played an important part in establishing a sense of the unsettled aspects of the natural world. The
polygenic
A polygene is a member of a group of non-epistatic genes that interact additively to influence a phenotypic trait, thus contributing to multiple-gene inheritance (polygenic inheritance, multigenic inheritance, quantitative inheritance), a type of ...
theories of multiple human origins, supported by
Robert Knox
Robert Knox (4 September 1791 – 20 December 1862) was a Scottish anatomist and ethnologist best known for his involvement in the Burke and Hare murders. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Knox eventually partnered with anatomist and former teache ...
in his book ''The Races of Men'', were firmly rejected by
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
who, following
James Cowles Prichard
James Cowles Prichard, FRS (11 February 1786 – 23 December 1848) was a British physician and ethnologist with broad interests in physical anthropology and psychiatry. His influential ''Researches into the Physical History of Mankind'' touched ...
, generally agreed on a single African origin for the entire human species.
Thirdly, the development of world trade and
colonialism
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their relig ...
, the early European experience of
globalization
Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...
, resulted in an awareness of the varieties of cultural expression and the vulnerabilities of Western civilization.
Finally, the growth of historical scholarship in the 18th century, exemplified by
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English historian, writer, and member of parliament. His most important work, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, is k ...
's ''
The History of the Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire
''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to th ...
'' (1776–1789), excited a renewed interest in the narratives of historical decline. This resonated uncomfortably with the difficulties of French political life in the post-revolutionary nineteenth century.
Degeneration theory achieved a detailed articulation in
Bénédict Morel
Bénédict Augustin Morel (22 November 1809 – 30 March 1873) was a French psychiatrist born in Vienna, Austria. He was an influential figure in the field of degeneration theory during the mid-19th century.
Biography
Morel was born in Vienna, A ...
's ''Treatise on Degeneration of the Human Species'' (1857), a complicated work of clinical commentary from an asylum in Normandy (Saint Yon in
Rouen
Rouen (, ; or ) is a city on the River Seine in northern France. It is the prefecture of the Regions of France, region of Normandy (administrative region), Normandy and the Departments of France, department of Seine-Maritime. Formerly one of ...
) which, in the popular imagination at least, coalesced with de
Gobineau
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (; 14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping to legitimise racism by the use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Ary ...
's ''Essay on The Inequality of the Human Races'' (1855). Morel's concept of ''mental degeneration'' – in which he believed that intoxication and addiction in one generation of a family would lead to hysteria, epilepsy, sexual perversions, insanity, learning disability and sterility in subsequent generations – is an example of Lamarckian biological thinking, and Morel's medical discussions are reminiscent of the clinical literature surrounding
syphilitic infection (''syphilography''). Morel's psychiatric theories were taken up and advocated by his friend
Philippe Buchez
Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin Buchez (1796–1865), more commonly called Philippe Buchez, was a French historian, sociologist, and politician. He was the founder of the newspaper ''L'Atelier'', and he served briefly, in 1848, as the president of the C ...
, and through his political influence became an official doctrine in French legal and administrative medicine.
Arthur de Gobineau
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (; 14 July 1816 – 13 October 1882) was a French aristocrat who is best known for helping to legitimise racism by the use of scientific racist theory and "racial demography", and for developing the theory of the Aryan ...
came from an impoverished family (with a domineering and adulterous mother) which claimed an aristocratic ancestry; he was a failed author of historical romances, and his wife was widely rumored to be a Créole from
Martinique
Martinique ( , ; gcf, label=Martinican Creole, Matinik or ; Kalinago: or ) is an island and an overseas department/region and single territorial collectivity of France. An integral part of the French Republic, Martinique is located in th ...
. De Gobineau nevertheless argued that the course of history and civilization was largely determined by ethnic factors, and that
interracial marriage
Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities.
In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In 19 ...
("
miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
") resulted in social chaos. De Gobineau built a successful career in the French diplomatic service, living for extended periods in Iran and Brazil, and spent his later years travelling through Europe, lamenting his mistreatment at the hands of his wife and daughters. He died of a heart attack in 1882 while boarding a train in Turin. His work was well received in German translation—not least by the composer
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
—and the leading German psychiatrist
Emil Kraepelin
Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin (; ; 15 February 1856 – 7 October 1926) was a German psychiatrist.
H. J. Eysenck's ''Encyclopedia of Psychology'' identifies him as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychi ...
later wrote extensively on the dangers posed by degeneration to the German people. De Gobineau's writings exerted an enormous influence on the thinkers antecedent to the
Third Reich
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
– although they are curiously free of anti-Semitic prejudice. Quite different historical factors inspired the Italian
Cesare Lombroso
Cesare Lombroso (, also ; ; born Ezechia Marco Lombroso; 6 November 1835 – 19 October 1909) was an Italian criminologist, phrenologist, physician, and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the establis ...
in his work on criminal anthropology with the notion of ''atavistic retrogression'', probably shaped by his experiences as a young army doctor in
Calabria
, population_note =
, population_blank1_title =
, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 =
, demographics1_footnotes =
, demographics1_title1 =
, demographics1_info1 =
, demographics1_title2 ...
during the ''risorgimento''.
In Britain, degeneration received a scientific formulation from
Ray Lankester
Sir Edwin Ray Lankester (15 May 1847 – 13 August 1929) was a British zoologist.New International Encyclopaedia.
An invertebrate zoologist and evolutionary biologist, he held chairs at University College London and Oxford University. He was th ...
whose detailed discussions of the biology of
parasitism
Parasitism is a Symbiosis, close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the Host (biology), host, causing it some harm, and is Adaptation, adapted structurally to this way of lif ...
were hugely influential; the poor physical condition of many
British Army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
recruits for the
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sout ...
(1899–1902) led to alarm in government circles. Psychiatrist
Henry Maudsley
Henry Maudsley FRCP (5 February 183523 January 1918) was a pioneering English psychiatrist, commemorated in the Maudsley Hospital in London and in the annual Maudsley Lecture of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Life and career
Maudsley w ...
initially argued that degenerate family lines would die out with little social consequence, but later became more pessimistic about the effects of degeneration on the general population;
Maudsley also warned against the use of the term "degeneration" in a vague and indiscriminate way. Anxieties in Britain about the perils of degeneration found legislative expression in the
Mental Deficiency Act 1913
The Mental Deficiency Act 1913 was an act of Parliament of the United Kingdom creating provisions for the institutional treatment of people deemed to be "feeble-minded" and "moral defectives". "It proposed an institutional separation so that menta ...
which gained strong support from
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
, then a senior member of the Liberal government.
In the ''
fin-de-siècle'' period,
Max Nordau
Max Simon Nordau (born ''Simon Maximilian Südfeld''; 29 July 1849 – 23 January 1923) was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic.
He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice ...
scored an unexpected success with his bestselling ''
Degeneration'' (1892).
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
met Nordau in 1885 while he was studying in Paris and was notably unimpressed by him and hostile to the degeneration concept. Degeneration fell from popular and fashionable favor around the time of the First World War, although some of its preoccupations persisted in the writings of the
eugenicists
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
and
social Darwinists
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
(for example,
R. Austin Freeman;
Anthony Ludovici
Anthony Mario Ludovici MBE (8 January 1882 – 3 April 1971) was a British philosopher, sociologist, social critic and polyglot. He is known as a proponent of aristocracy and anti-egalitarianism, and in the early 20th century was a leading ...
;
Rolf Gardiner
Henry Rolf Gardiner (5 November 1902 – 26 November 1971) was an English rural revivalist, helping to bring back folk dance styles including Morris dancing and sword dancing. He founded groups significant in the British history of organic far ...
; and see also
Dennis Wheatley
Dennis Yeats Wheatley (8 January 1897 – 10 November 1977) was a British writer whose prolific output of thrillers and occult novels made him one of the world's best-selling authors from the 1930s through the 1960s. His Gregory Sallust series ...
's ''Letter to posterity'').
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (; 29 May 1880 – 8 May 1936) was a German historian and philosopher of history whose interests included mathematics, science, and art, as well as their relation to his organic theory of history. He is best known ...
's ''
The Decline of the West
''The Decline of the West'' (german: Der Untergang des Abendlandes; more literally, ''The Downfall of the Occident''), is a two-volume work by Oswald Spengler. The first volume, subtitled ''Form and Actuality'', was published in the summer of 19 ...
'' (1919) captured something of the degenerationist spirit in the aftermath of the war.
Psychology and Emil Kraepelin
Degeneration theory is, at its heart, a way of thinking, and something that is taught, not innate. A major influence on the theory was Emil Kraepelin, lining up degeneration theory with his psychiatry practice. The central idea of this concept was that in “degenerative” illness, there is a steady decline in mental functioning and social adaptation from one generation to the other. For example, there might be an intergenerational development from nervous character to major depressive disorder, to overt psychotic illness and, finally, to severe and chronic cognitive impairment, something akin to dementia.
This theory was advanced decades before the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics and their application to medicine in general and to psychiatry in particular. Kraepelin and his colleagues mostly derived from degeneration theory broadly. He rarely made a specific references to the theory of degeneration, and his attitude towards degeneration theory was not straightforward. Positive, but more ambivalent. The concept of disease, especially chronic mental disease fit very well into this framework insofar these phenomena were regarded as signs of an evolution in the wrong direction, as a degenerative process which diverts from the usual path of nature.
However, he remained skeptical of over-simplistic versions of this concept: While commenting approvingly on the basic ideas of Cesare Lombroso's "criminal anthropology", he did not accept the popular idea of overt "stigmata of degeneration", by which individual persons could be identified as being "degenerated" simply by their physical appearance. While Kraepelin and his colleagues may not have focused on this, it did not stop others from advancing the converse idea.
An early application of this theory was the Mental Deficiency Act supported by Winston Churchill in 1913.
This entailed placing those deemed “idiots” into separate colonies, and included those who showed sign of a “degeneration”. While this did apply to those with mental disorders of a psychiatric nature, the execution was not always in the same vein, as some of the language was used to the those “morally weak”, or deemed “idiots”. The belief in the existence of degeneration helped foster a sense that a sense of negative energy was inexplicable and was there to find sources of “rot” in society.
This forwarded the notion the idea that society was structured in a way that produced regression, an outcome of the “darker side of progress”.
Those who had developed the label of "degenerate" as a means of qualifying difference in a negative manner could use the idea that this “darker side of progress” was inevitable by having the idea society could “rot". Considerations to the pervasiveness an allegedly superior condition were, during the nineteenth century, frighteningly reinforced the language and habits of destructive thinking.
The "dark side" of progress
The idea of progress was at once a social, political and scientific theory. The theory of evolution, as described in Darwin's ''The Origin of Species'', provided for many social theorists the necessary scientific foundation for the idea of social and political progress. The terms ''evolution'' and ''progress'' were in fact often used interchangeably in the 19th century.
The rapid industrial, political and economic progress in 19th-century Europe and North America was, however, paralleled by a sustained discussion about increasing rates of crime, insanity, vagrancy, prostitution, and so forth. Confronted with this apparent paradox, evolutionary scientists, criminal anthropologists and psychiatrists postulated that civilization and scientific progress could be a cause of physical and social pathology as much as a defense against it.
This led to the emergence of a general theory of degeneration, never reduced to a concrete, simple theory or axiom. Instead, the concept of degeneration was produced and refined within and between several discourses, including the human sciences, the natural sciences, fictional narratives and socio-political commentaries.
A broad outline of the theory, however, can be formulated, and it runs as follows.
According to the theory of degeneration, a host of individual and social pathologies in a finite network of diseases, disorders and moral habits could be explained by a biologically based affliction. The primary symptoms of the affliction were thought to be a weakening of the vital forces and will power of its victim. In this way, a wide range of social and medical deviations, including crime, violence, alcoholism, prostitution, gambling, and pornography, could be explained by reference to a biological defect within the individual. The theory of degeneration was therefore predicated on evolutionary theory. The forces of degeneration opposed those of evolution, and those afflicted with degeneration were thought to represent a return to an earlier evolutionary stage. This can be seen socially when mixed race marriages started becoming more frequent as the 19th century progressed. Such mixed marriages, all but unthinkable in 1848 but now on the rise among Indo-European and even full-blood European women with native men, were attributed to the increasing impoverishment and declining welfare of these women on the one hand an "intellectual and social development" among certain classes of native the other. The issue, however, was rarely addressed since the gender hierarchy of the argument was contingent on assuming those who made such conjugal choices were neither well-bred nor deserved European standing.
As more people began to mix with a race or people that was seen as lesser, degeneration theory became intertwined with development in a racial and colonial sense and more of these examples became common.
The poetics of degeneration was a poetics of social crisis.
In the last decades of the century; Victorian social planners drew deeply on social Darwinism and the idea of degeneration to figure the social crises erupting relentlessly in the cities and colonies. Heightened debates converged with domestic and colonial social reform, cementing an offensive of a somewhat different order. It targeted the "dangerous" in paupered residuum and the growing population impoverished Indo-Europeans, the majority of whom were of mixed but legally classified as European.
The world, being more globalized than ever before, continued to have more “crises” similar to these had by the leading classes, deterring the other as the enemy or downfall of society.
By the end of the 1870s, Britain was foundering in severe depression, and throughout the 1880s class tensions, the
suffragette
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members ...
movement, a socialist revival, swelling poverty and the dearth of housing and jobs fed deepening middle class fears.
Selected quotes
Development of the degeneration concept
The earliest uses of the term ''degeneration'' can be found in the writings of
Blumenbach
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He is considered to be a main founder of zoology and anthropology as comparative, scientific disciplines. He wa ...
and
Buffon at the end of the 18th century, when these early writers on natural history considered scientific approaches to the human species. With the taxonomic mind-set of natural historians, they drew attention to the different ethnic groupings of mankind, and raised general enquiries about their relationships, with the idea that racial groupings could be explained by environmental effects on a common ancestral stock. This pre-Darwinian belief in the heritability of acquired characteristics does not accord with modern genetics. An alternative view of the multiple origins of different racial groups, called "polygenic theories", was also rejected by
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
, who favored explanations in terms of differential geographic migrations from a single, probably African, population.
The theory of degeneration found its first detailed presentation in the writings of
Bénédict Morel
Bénédict Augustin Morel (22 November 1809 – 30 March 1873) was a French psychiatrist born in Vienna, Austria. He was an influential figure in the field of degeneration theory during the mid-19th century.
Biography
Morel was born in Vienna, A ...
(1809–1873), especially in his (''Treatise on Degeneration of the Human Species'') (1857). This book was published two years ''before'' Darwin's ''Origin of Species''. Morel was a highly regarded psychiatrist, the very successful superintendent of the Rouen asylum for almost twenty years and a fastidious recorder of the family histories of his variously disabled patients. Through the details of these family histories, Morel discerned an hereditary line of defective parents infected by pollutants and stimulants; a second generation liable to epilepsy, neurasthenia, sexual deviations and hysteria; a third generation prone to insanity; and a final generation doomed to congenital idiocy and sterility. In 1857, Morel proposed a theory of ''hereditary degeneracy'', bringing together environmental and hereditary elements in an uncompromisingly pre-Darwinian mix. Morel's contribution was further developed by
Valentin Magnan
Valentin Magnan (16 March 1835 – 27 September 1916) was a French psychiatrist active in the 19th-century.
Biography
Valentin Magnan was a native of Perpignan. He studied medicine in Lyon and Paris, where he was a student of Jules Baillar ...
(1835–1916), who stressed the role of alcohol—particularly ''
absinthe
Absinthe (, ) is an anise-flavoured spirit derived from several plants, including the flowers and leaves of ''Artemisia absinthium'' ("grand wormwood"), together with green anise, sweet fennel, and other medicinal and culinary herbs. Historical ...
''—in the generation of psychiatric disorders.
Morel's ideas were greatly extended by the Italian medical scientist
Cesare Lombroso
Cesare Lombroso (, also ; ; born Ezechia Marco Lombroso; 6 November 1835 – 19 October 1909) was an Italian criminologist, phrenologist, physician, and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the establis ...
(1835–1909) whose work was defended and translated into English by
Havelock Ellis
Henry Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939) was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in ...
. In his ''L'uomo delinquente'' (1876), Lombroso outlined a comprehensive natural history of the socially deviant person and detailed the ''stigmata'' of the person who was born to be ''criminally insane''. These included a low, sloping forehead, hard and shifty eyes, large, handle-shaped ears, a flattened or upturned nose, a forward projection of the jaw, irregular teeth, prehensile toes and feet, long simian arms and a scanty beard and baldness. Lombroso also listed the features of the degenerate mentality, supposedly released by the disinhibition of the primitive neurological centres. These included apathy, the loss of moral sense, a tendency to impulsiveness or self-doubt, an unevenness of mental qualities such as unusual memory or aesthetic abilities, a tendency to mutism or to verbosity, excessive originality, preoccupation with the self, mystical interpretations placed on simple facts or perceptions, the abuse of symbolic meanings and the magical use of words, or ''mantras''. Lombroso, with his concept of ''atavistic retrogression'', suggested an evolutionary reversion, complementing ''hereditary degeneracy'', and his work in the medical examination of criminals in Turin resulted in his theory of
criminal anthropology
Anthropological criminology (sometimes referred to as criminal anthropology, literally a combination of the study of the human species and the study of criminals) is a field of offender profiling, based on perceived links between the nature of a ...
—a constitutional notion of abnormal personality that was not actually supported by his own scientific investigations. In his later life, Lombroso developed an obsession with
spiritualism
Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...
, engaging with the spirit of his long dead mother.
In 1892,
Max Nordau
Max Simon Nordau (born ''Simon Maximilian Südfeld''; 29 July 1849 – 23 January 1923) was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic.
He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice ...
, an expatriate Hungarian living in Paris, published his extraordinary bestseller ''Degeneration'', which greatly extended the concepts of Bénédict Morel and Cesare Lombroso (to whom he dedicated the book) to the entire civilization of western Europe, and transformed the medical connotations of degeneration into a generalized ''cultural criticism''. Adopting some of
Charcot's neurological vocabulary, Nordau identified a number of weaknesses in contemporary
Western culture
Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''.
image:Plato Pio-Cle ...
which he characterized in terms of ''ego-mania'', i.e.,
narcissism
Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others.
Narcissism exists on a co ...
and
hysteria
Hysteria is a term used colloquially to mean ungovernable emotional excess and can refer to a temporary state of mind or emotion. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was considered a diagnosable physical illness in women. It is assumed that ...
. He also emphasized the importance of ''fatigue'', ''enervation'' and ''ennui''. Nordau, horrified by the anti-Semitism surrounding the
Dreyfus affair
The Dreyfus affair (french: affaire Dreyfus, ) was a political scandal that divided the French Third Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. "L'Affaire", as it is known in French, has come to symbolise modern injustice in the Francop ...
, devoted his later years to
Zionist politics. Degeneration theory fell from favour around the time of the First World War because of an improved understanding of the mechanisms of genetics as well as the increasing vogue for psychoanalytic thinking. However, some of its preoccupations lived on in the world of
eugenics
Eugenics ( ; ) is a fringe set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or ...
and
social Darwinism
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
. It is notable that the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
attack on western liberal society was largely couched in terms of
degenerate art
Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
with its associations of racial
miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is the interbreeding of people who are considered to be members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms ''miscere'' ("to mix") and ''genus'' ("race") ...
and fantasies of
racial purity
The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal ...
—and included as its target almost all modernist cultural experiment.
The role of women in furthering development of the concept of degeneration was reviewed by Anne McClintock, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, who found that women who were ambiguously placed on the so-called "imperial divide" (nurses, nannies, governesses, prostitutes and servants) happened to serve as boundary markers and mediators.
These women were tasked with the purification and maintenance of boundaries and what was seen as "inferior" places in society they held at the time.
Degenerationist devices
![Félicien Rops - Pornokratès - 1878](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/F%C3%A9licien_Rops_-_Pornokrat%C3%A8s_-_1878.jpg)
Towards the close of the 19th century, in the
fin-de-siècle period, something of an obsession with decline, descent and degeneration invaded the European creative imagination, partly fuelled by widespread misconceptions of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Among the main examples are the symbolist literary work of
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...
, the Rougon-Macquart novels of
Émile Zola
Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (, also , ; 2 April 184029 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of ...
,
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll a ...
's ''
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'' is a 1886 Gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. It follows Gabriel John Utterson, a London-based legal practitioner who investigates a series of strange occurrences between his old ...
''—published in the same year (1886) as
Richard von Krafft-Ebing
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (full name Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing; 14 August 1840 – 22 December 1902) was a German psychiatrist and author of the foundational work ''Psychopathi ...
's ''Psychopathia Sexualis''—and, subsequently,
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
's only novel (containing his aesthetic manifesto) ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'' (1891). In ''Tess of the d'Urbervilles'' (1891),
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...
explores the destructive consequences of a family myth of noble ancestry. Norwegian dramatist
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playw ...
showed a sensitivity to degenerationist thinking in his theatrical presentations of Scandinavian domestic crises.
Arthur Machen
Arthur Machen (; 3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947) was the pen-name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. Hi ...
's ''
The Great God Pan
''The Great God Pan'' is a horror and fantasy novella by Welsh writer Arthur Machen. Machen was inspired to write ''The Great God Pan'' by his experiences at the ruins of a pagan temple in Wales. What would become the first chapter of the n ...
'' (1890/1894), with its emphasis on the horrors of psychosurgery, is frequently cited as an essay on degeneration. A scientific twist was added by
H.G. Wells in ''
The Time Machine
''The Time Machine'' is a science fiction novella by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively for ...
'' (1895) in which Wells prophesied the splitting of the human race into variously degenerate forms, and again in his ''
The Island of Doctor Moreau
''The Island of Doctor Moreau'' is an 1896 science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells (1866–1946). The text of the novel is the narration of Edward Prendick who is a shipwrecked man rescued by a passing boat. He is left on the islan ...
'' (1896) wherein forcibly mutated animal-human hybrids keep reverting to their earlier forms.
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in t ...
alludes to degeneration theory in his treatment of political radicalism in the 1907 novel ''
The Secret Agent
''The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale'' is a novel by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1907.. The story is set in London in 1886 and deals with Mr. Adolf Verloc and his work as a spy for an unnamed country (presumably Russia). ''The Secret Agent' ...
''.
In her influential study ''The Gothic Body'', Kelly Hurley draws attention to the literary device of the ''
abhuman'' as a representation of damaged personal identity, and to lesser-known authors in the field, including
Richard Marsh (1857–1915), author of ''
The Beetle'' (1897), and
William Hope Hodgson
William Hope Hodgson (15 November 1877 – 19 April 1918) was an English author. He produced a large body of work, consisting of essays, short fiction, and novels, spanning several overlapping genres including horror, fantastic fiction, and sci ...
(1877–1918), author of ''
The Boats of the Glen Carrig'', ''
The House on the Borderland
''The House on the Borderland'' (1908) is a supernatural horror novel by British fantasist William Hope Hodgson. The novel is a hallucinatory account of a recluse's stay at a remote house, and his experiences of supernatural creatures and ot ...
'' and ''
The Night Land
''The Night Land'' is a horror/fantasy novel by English writer William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1912. As a work of fantasy it belongs to the Dying Earth subgenre. Hodgson also published a much shorter version of the novel, entitled '' T ...
''.
In 1897,
Bram Stoker
Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel '' Dracula''. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and busine ...
published ''
Dracula
''Dracula'' is a novel by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. As an epistolary novel, the narrative is related through letters, diary entries, and newspaper articles. It has no single protagonist, but opens with solicitor Jonathan Harker taking ...
'', an enormously influential Gothic novel featuring the parasitic vampire Count Dracula in an extended exercise of reversed imperialism. Unusually, Stoker makes explicit reference to the writings of Lombroso and Nordau in the course of the novel.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...
's Sherlock Holmes stories include a host of degenerationist
tropes, perhaps best illustrated (drawing on the ideas of
Serge Voronoff
Serge Abrahamovitch Voronoff (russian: link=no, Сергей Абрамович Воронов; c. July 10, 1866September 3, 1951) was a French surgeon of Russian extraction who gained fame for his technique of grafting monkey testicle tissue on ...
) in ''
The Adventure of the Creeping Man''.
See also
*
Behavioral sink
"Behavioral sink" is a term invented by ethologist John B. Calhoun to describe a collapse in behavior which can result from overcrowding. The term and concept derive from a series of over-population experiments Calhoun conducted on Norway rats be ...
*
Decadence
The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of ...
*
Declinism
Declinism is the belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition, caused by cognitive biases such as rosy retrospection, to view the past more favourably and the future more negatively. "The ...
*
Degenerate art
Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
*
Devolution
Devolution is the statutory delegation of powers from the central government of a sovereign state to govern at a subnational level, such as a regional or local level. It is a form of administrative decentralization. Devolved territories h ...
*
Dysgenics
Dysgenics (also known as cacogenics) is the decrease in prevalence of traits deemed to be either socially desirable or well adapted to their environment due to selective pressure disfavoring the reproduction of those traits.
The adjective "dysgeni ...
*
Human extinction
Human extinction, also known as omnicide, is the hypothetical end of the human species due to either natural causes such as population decline from sub-replacement fertility, an asteroid impact, or large-scale volcanism, or to anthropogenic ...
* ''
Idiocracy
''Idiocracy'' is a 2006 American science fiction comedy film directed by Mike Judge and co-written by Judge and Etan Cohen. Starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, and Terry Crews, the film tells the story of Corporal Joe Bauers (Wi ...
''
*
Last man
* "
The Marching Morons
"The Marching Morons" is a science fiction story by American writer Cyril M. Kornbluth, originally published in '' Galaxy'' in April 1951. It was included in ''The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume Two'' after being voted one of the best nov ...
"
*
Societal collapse
Societal collapse (also known as civilizational collapse) is the fall of a complex human society characterized by the loss of cultural identity and of socioeconomic complexity, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence. Possible causes ...
References
Further reading
*
{{Authority control
Bioethics
History of psychiatry
History of psychology
History of mental health
Lamarckism
History of eugenics
Pseudo-scholarship