Luxury had already begun to enervate the hardy soldiery at the time of Cæsar’s assassination, yet not enough to show the full effects of degeneration and demoralization. The empire under the first emperors steadily grew richer and more powerful, and the luxury of the rich more unlimited and licentious. At length a change can be noticed. The Roman legions, hitherto victorious over every foe, are now frequently vanquished; conquered tribes uprear the standard of revolt and refuse to pay tribute; the territorial boundaries of the empire materially shrink, and its once conquered provinces pass out of its dominion forever.
The gradual degeneration of this nation is faithfully mirrored in the character of the emperors who governed it. Nero, Caligula, Tiberius, Caracalla, and Messalina, the depraved wife of Claudius and the daughter of Domitia Lepida, herself a licentious and libidinous woman, were but accentuated types of the luxurious and debauched nobility. Not only did the nobility become victims of degeneration, but the poorer classes also lost their virility, until at last we find the stability of the nation preserved through the instrumentality of foreign mercenaries. The greatness of this once widespread empire dwindled away (the freedom of its institutions contracting along with its shrinking boundaries), until we find it lapsed into a state of barbarian despotism under the son of Aurelius; and, had it not been for outside influences, it would have eventually fallen into a state of utter and complete savagery.
Now let us turn to a recent civilization. At the time of Louis XVI., the French nation was thoroughly under the influence of degeneration consequent to a luxury and licentiousness that had had a cumulative action for several hundred years. The peasantry and the inhabitants of the faubourgs, owing to their extreme poverty, itself a powerful factor in the production of degeneration, had lapsed into a state closely akin to that of their savage ancestors. The nobility were weak and effeminate, the majority of them either sexual perverts or monsters of sensuality and lechery.
The middle class, as ever the true conservators of society, seeing this miserable state of affairs, attempted to remedy it. Not fully understanding the danger of such a procedure, they allowed the degenerate element to share in their deliberations. Their moderate and sensible counsels were quickly overruled by their savage associates, who brought about a Reign of Terror (with such psychical atavists as Marat, Danton, and Robespierre at its head), the like of which the world had never seen before, nor has ever experienced since.
I have demonstrated, in the three instances of history just cited, that degeneration has invariably followed luxury, and that a social and political cataclysm has been, invariably, the result of this degeneration. That certain classes of the Old World, and of the New World, also, are living in inordinate luxury; and that certain other classes are, even now, struggling in the very depths of poverty, is a well-known fact. That this state of affairs is rapidly increasing the percentage of degenerates, such as sexual perverts, insane individuals, and congenital criminals, is not generally known; yet it is a woeful truth.
The factors in the production of degeneration are as multitudinous as they are varied, and I can find space for only a few of them. The artificiality of many peoples’ lives, wherein night is turned into day, is a prominent factor in the production of degeneration. Now, the long continued influence of artificial light exerts a very deleterious effect on the nervous system; hence it is not to be wondered at that so many men and women of society are neurasthenic. Not only are those individuals who, voluntarily and preferably, spend the greater portions of their lives in artificial light, rendered nervously irritable, but those, also, who are driven by force of circumstances to turn night into day are likewise afflicted. Several years ago, I met a distinguished editor at Waukesha, who was suffering greatly from nervous exhaustion. He told me that he was so situated that he did all of his work at night, often writing until three o’clock in the morning. I advised him to quit this and to do his editorial work during daylight. Not long after, he wrote me that he had followed my advice, and that he was a new man in point of health.
The loss of nervous vitality makes itself evident by a feeling either of exhaustion or irritability. The fashionable devotee, in order to counteract this, either stimulates the system with alcohol, or exorcises the “fidgets” by the use of sedatives, such as chloral or morphia. The baneful effects of such medication are not at once appreciable, but, if continued for any length of time, they will eventually result in a total demoralization of the nervous system. Time and again have I seen fashionable men and women, at the close of the season, veritable nervous wrecks.
What necessarily would be the effect of physical and psychical lesions like these on a child begotten by such parents? The inevitable result would be degeneration in some form or other.
Again, many men and women stand the drain of a fashionable season on their nervous systems without attempting to recoup through the agency of drugs, and at the end find themselves physically and psychically exhausted. They go to the seaside or some other resort, and, in a measure, recover their nervous vitality, only to lose it again during the next season. This continues for season after season, the nervous system all the time becoming weaker, until some day there is a collapse, ending in hysteria, paresis, or some other of the hundred forms of neurotic disorder. What will be the effect on the progeny resulting from the union of such individuals? Again the answer must necessarily be—degeneration.
The long and continued intercourse of the sexes in the ball-room, where the women are dressed so décolleté that they excite sensuality in the men, very frequently without the men being conscious of the fact, must necessarily exert a deleterious effect on the nervous system.