The theory of degeneration finds a thorough scientific refutation also in the admirable work by Dr. William Hirsch, “Genius and Degeneration: a Psychological Study” (Berlin and Leipzig, 1904). At the end of the book (p. 340) the writer says:
“In view of the investigations I have made, we are necessarily led to the conclusion that the authors mentioned have by no means adduced proof of a general degeneration of the civilized nations. Humanity need not be alarmed with regard to the alleged ‘black plague of degeneration,’ and the world need be as little concerned by these fables of the ‘twilight of the nations’ as by Herr Falb’s prophecies of the approaching destruction of our planet.”
It cannot be denied that the wide diffusion of the deleterious means of sensual gratification (alcohol, tobacco, etc.), the increase in the number of large towns, and the rapid growth in their population, by means of which prostitution and the spread of venereal diseases are especially favoured, constitute important etiological factors for the degeneration of the race. Still, the wide diffusion of public hygiene, which is more and more brought under the notice of the individual, affords here an effective counterpoise. “Enfranchisement” in Hirth’s sense is here clearly manifested.
After we have seen that the “degeneration” of our time, to the medical idea of which we shall return to speak more exactly in the next chapter, is not greater now than it was in earlier epochs, and that sexual anomalies have always existed, let us return to consider this point, to the anthropological view of psychopathia sexualis.
In my “Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis” I have collected the general human phenomena of the sexual impulse in primitive and civilized states—that is, the everywhere recurring fundamental lineaments and phenomena of the vita sexualis peculiar to the genus homo as such.
As the principal result of this inquiry, the following propositions appear to me to be established:
Degeneration cannot be employed, as von Krafft-Ebing has employed it in his “Psychopathia Sexualis,” as a heuristic principle in the investigation, recognition, and judgment of sexual aberrations and perversions.
At the most, degeneration is no more than a favouring factor of the diffusion of sexual abnormalities, an influence which increases the frequency of their appearance.
On the contrary, the ultimate cause of all sexual perversions, aberrations, abnormalities, and irrationalities, is the need for variety in sexual relationships peculiar to the genus homo, which is to be regarded as a physiological phenomenon, and the increase of which to the degree of a sexual irritable hunger is competent to produce the most severe sexual perversions.
In contrast with this, “degeneration” or diseases play only a subordinate part, and can be invoked for the explanation of only a small number of sexual aberrations—at most for those which come to the notice of physicians on account of pathological conditions or in foro. In fact, the majority of cases of sexual perversions which come the way of the physicians in clinical or forensic relationships are pathological, but these constitute only a minority of all cases. The large majority of cases do not come within the scope of degeneration.[470]