Social degeneration was a widely influential concept at the interface of the social and biological sciences in the 18th and 19th centuries.[1][2][3][4] During the 18th century, scientific thinkers includingGeorges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon,Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, andImmanuel Kant argued that humans shared a common origin but had degenerated over time due to differences in climate.[5][6][7] 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 thatcivilization might bein decline and that the causes of decline lay in biological change. These ideas derived from pre-scientific concepts ofheredity ("hereditary taint") withLamarckian emphasis on biological development through purpose and habit. Degeneration concepts were often associated withauthoritarian political attitudes, includingmilitarism andscientific racism, and a preoccupation witheugenics. The theory originated in racial concepts ofethnicity, recorded in the writings of such medical scientists asJohann Blumenbach andRobert Knox. From the 1850s, it became influential inpsychiatry through the writings ofBénédict Morel, and incriminology withCesare Lombroso.[8] By the 1890s, in the work ofMax Nordau and others, degeneration became a more general concept insocial criticism. It also fed into the ideology ofethnic nationalism, attracting, among others,Maurice Barrès,Charles Maurras and theAction Française.Alexis Carrel, a French Nobel Laureate in Medicine, cited national degeneration as a rationale for a eugenics programme in collaborationistVichy France.
The meaning ofdegeneration 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 ofbiological devolution. In scientific usage, the term was reserved for changes occurring at a histological level – i.e. in body tissues. Although rejected byCharles Darwin, the theory's application to the social sciences was supported by some evolutionary biologists, most notablyErnst Haeckel andRay Lankester. As the 19th century wore on, the increasing emphasis on degeneration reflected an anxiouspessimism about theresilience of European civilization and its possible decline and collapse.[9]
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 wasGeorges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. A gifted mathematician and eager naturalist, Buffon served as the curator of the ParisianCabinet du Roi.[10] The collections of the Cabinet du Roi served as the inspiration for Buffon's encyclopedicHistoire Naturelle, of which he published thirty-six volumes between 1749 and his death in 1788.[10] In theHistoire Naturelle, Buffon asserted that differences in climate created variety within species.[6] He believed that these changes occurred gradually and initially affected only a few individuals before becoming widespread.[6] Buffon relied on an argument from analogy to contend that this process of degeneration occurred among humans.[6] He claimed to have observed the transformation of certain animals by their climate and concluded that such changes must have also shaped humankind.[6]
Buffon maintained that degeneration had particularly adverse consequences in the New World. He believed America to be both colder and wetter than Europe.[6] 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.[6] Buffon also applied these principles to the people of the New World. He wrote in theHistoire Naturelle that the indigenous people lacked the ability to feel strong emotions for others.[6] For Buffon, these individuals were incapable of love as well as desire.[6]
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.[10] In particular,Thomas Jefferson mounted a vigorous defense of the American natural world. He attacked the premises of Buffon's argument in his 1785Notes on the State of Virginia, writing that the animals of the New World felt the same sun and walked upon the same soil as their European counterparts.[11] Jefferson believed that he could permanently alter Buffon's views of the New World by showing him firsthand the majesty of American wildlife.[10] While serving as minister to France, Jefferson wrote repeatedly to his compatriots in the United States, pleading with them to send a stuffed moose to Paris.[10] After months of effort,General John Sullivan responded to Jefferson's request and shipped a moose to France.[10] Buffon died only three months after the moose's arrival, and his theory of New World degeneration remained forever preserved in the pages of theHistoire Naturelle.[10]
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 naturalistJohann Friedrich Blumenbach praised Buffon in his lectures at theUniversity of Göttingen.[5] He adopted Buffon's theory of degeneration in his dissertationDe Generis Humani Varietate Nativa. The central premise of this work was that all of mankind belonged to the same species.[7] 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.[7] However, he also asserted that these changes could easily be undone and, thus, did not constitute the basis for speciation.[7] 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.[12] 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.[12] For Blumenbach, all people of the world existed as different gradations on a spectrum.[7] Nevertheless, the third edition ofDe 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.[13]
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. Kant, a philosopher and professor at theUniversity of Königsberg, taught a course on physical geography for some forty years, fostering an interest in biology and taxonomy.[14] Like Blumenbach, Kant engaged closely with the writings of Buffon while developing his position on these subjects.[14]
In his 1777 essayVon 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.[14] Additionally, Kant introduced the term "degeneration", which he defined as hereditary differences between groups with a shared root.[14] Kant also arrived at a meaning of "race" from this definition of degeneration.[14] He claimed that races developed when degenerations were preserved over a long period of time.[14] A group could only constitute a race if breeding with a different degeneration resulted in "intermediate offspring."[14] 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".[5] 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.[5] Sweat emerged from the skin. Therefore, skin color indicated important distinctions between humans.[5]
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The concept of degeneration arose during the Europeanenlightenment and theindustrial revolution – a period of profoundsocial change and a rapidly shifting sense ofpersonal identity. Several influences were involved.
The first related to the extreme demographic upheavals, includingurbanization, in the early years of the 19th century. The disturbing experience ofsocial change and urbancrowds, largely unknown in the agrarian 18th century, was recorded in the journalism ofWilliam Cobbett, the novels ofCharles Dickens and in the paintings ofJ. M. W. Turner. These changes were also explored by early writers on social psychology, includingGustav Le Bon andGeorg Simmel. The psychological impact of industrialisation is comprehensively described inHumphrey Jennings' masterly anthologyPandaemonium 1660 – 1886. Victorian social reformers includingEdwin Chadwick,Henry Mayhew andCharles Booth voiced concerns about the "decline" ofpublic health in the urban life of the Britishworking class, 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 SirJames Cantlie in his influential 1885 lectureDegeneration 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 threatenmiddle-class culture.[citation needed]
Secondly, theproto-evolutionary biology and transformatist speculations ofJean-Baptiste Lamarck and other natural historians—taken together with theBaron von Cuvier's theory of extinctions—played an important part in establishing a sense of the unsettled aspects of the natural world. Thepolygenic theories of multiple human origins, supported byRobert Knox in his bookThe Races of Men, were firmly rejected byCharles Darwin who, followingJames Cowles Prichard, generally agreed on a single African origin for the entire human species.[citation needed]
Thirdly, the development of world trade andcolonialism, the early European experience ofglobalization, resulted in an awareness of the varieties of cultural expression and the vulnerabilities of Western civilization.[citation needed]
Fourthly, medical doctors of the time could diagnosefetal alcohol syndrome andcongenital syphilis, and not absurdly come to the conclusion that behavioral problems can be inherited by offspring.[citation needed]
Finally, the growth of historical scholarship in the 18th century, exemplified byEdward Gibbon'sThe History of the Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire (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.[citation needed]
Degeneration theory achieved a detailed articulation inBénédict Morel'sTreatise on Degeneration of the Human Species (1857), a complicated work of clinical commentary from an asylum in Normandy (Saint Yon inRouen) which, in the popular imagination at least, coalesced with deGobineau'sEssay on The Inequality of the Human Races (1855). Morel's concept ofmental 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 surroundingsyphilitic infection (syphilography). Morel's psychiatric theories were taken up and advocated by his friendPhilippe Buchez, and through his political influence became an official doctrine in French legal and administrative medicine.[citation needed]
Arthur de Gobineau 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 fromMartinique. De Gobineau nevertheless argued that the course of history and civilization was largely determined by ethnic factors, and thatinterracial marriage ("miscegenation") 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 composerRichard Wagner—and the leading German psychiatristEmil Kraepelin 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 theThird Reich – although they are curiously free of anti-Semitic prejudice. Quite different historical factors inspired the ItalianCesare Lombroso in his work on criminal anthropology with the notion ofatavistic retrogression, probably shaped by his experiences as a young army doctor inCalabria during therisorgimento.[citation needed]
In Britain, degeneration received a scientific formulation fromRay Lankester whose detailed discussions of the biology ofparasitism were hugely influential; the poor physical condition of manyBritish Army recruits for theSecond Boer War (1899–1902) led to alarm in government circles. PsychiatristHenry Maudsley 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;[15] 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 theMental Deficiency Act 1913 which gained strong support fromWinston Churchill, then a senior member of the Liberal government.[citation needed]
In thefin-de-siècle period,Max Nordau scored an unexpected success with his bestsellingDegeneration (1892).Sigmund Freud 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 theeugenicists andsocial Darwinists (for example,R. Austin Freeman;Anthony Ludovici;Rolf Gardiner; and see alsoDennis Wheatley'sLetter to posterity).Oswald Spengler'sThe Decline of the West (1919) captured something of the degenerationist spirit in the aftermath of the war.[citation needed]
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.[16] 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",[16] 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.[17][not specific enough to verify] 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 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.[18] 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 of an allegedly superior condition were, during the nineteenth century, frighteningly reinforced in the language and habits of this destructive thinking.[18]
The idea of progress was at once a social, political and scientific theory. The theory of evolution, as described in Darwin'sThe Origin of Species, provided for many social theorists the necessary scientific foundation for the idea of social and political progress. The termsevolution andprogress were often used interchangeably in the 19th century.[20]
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 willpower 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.
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The earliest uses of the termdegeneration can be found in the writings ofBlumenbach andBuffon 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 byCharles Darwin, 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 ofBénédict Morel (1809–1873), especially in hisTraité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine (Treatise on Degeneration of the Human Species) (1857). This book was published two yearsbefore Darwin'sOrigin 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 ofhereditary degeneracy, bringing together environmental and hereditary elements in an uncompromisingly pre-Darwinian mix. Morel's contribution was further developed byValentin Magnan (1835–1916), who also stressed the role of alcohol—particularlyabsinthe—in the generation of psychiatric disorders.
Morel's ideas were greatly extended by the Italian medical scientistCesare Lombroso (1835–1909) whose work was defended and translated into English byHavelock Ellis. In hisL'uomo delinquente (1876), Lombroso outlined a comprehensive natural history of the socially deviant person and detailed thestigmata of the person who was born to becriminally 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, ormantras. Lombroso, with his concept ofatavistic retrogression, suggested an evolutionary reversion, complementinghereditary degeneracy, and his work in the medical examination of criminals in Turin resulted in his theory ofcriminal anthropology—a constitutional notion of abnormal personality that was not actually supported by his own scientific investigations. In his later life, Lombroso developed an obsession withspiritualism, engaging with the spirit of his long dead mother.
In 1892,Max Nordau, an expatriate Hungarian living in Paris, published his extraordinary bestsellerDegeneration, 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 generalizedcultural criticism. Adopting some ofCharcot's neurological vocabulary, Nordau identified a number of weaknesses in contemporaryWestern culture which he characterized in terms ofego-mania, i.e.,narcissism andhysteria. He also emphasized the importance offatigue,enervation andennui. Nordau, horrified by the anti-Semitism surrounding theDreyfus affair, devoted his later years toZionist 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 ofeugenics andsocial Darwinism. It is notable that theNazi attack on western liberal society was largely couched in terms ofdegenerate art with its associations of racialmiscegenation and fantasies ofracial purity—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.[21][page needed] 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.
Towards the close of the 19th century, in thefin-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 ofCharles Baudelaire, the Rougon-Macquart novels ofÉmile Zola,Robert Louis Stevenson'sStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde—published in the same year (1886) asRichard von Krafft-Ebing'sPsychopathia Sexualis—and, subsequently,Oscar Wilde's only novel (containing his aesthetic manifesto)The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). InTess of the d'Urbervilles (1891),Thomas Hardy explores the destructive consequences of a family myth of noble ancestry. Norwegian dramatistHenrik Ibsen showed a sensitivity to degenerationist thinking in his theatrical presentations of Scandinavian domestic crises.Arthur Machen'sThe Great God Pan (1890/1894), with its emphasis on the horrors of psychosurgery, is frequently cited as an essay on degeneration. A scientific twist was added byH. G. Wells inThe Time Machine (1895) in which Wells prophesied the splitting of the human race into variously degenerate forms, and again in hisThe Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) wherein forcibly mutated animal-human hybrids keep reverting to their earlier forms.Joseph Conrad alludes to degeneration theory in his treatment of political radicalism in the 1907 novelThe Secret Agent.
In her influential studyThe Gothic Body, Kelly Hurley draws attention to the literary device of theabhuman as a representation of damaged personal identity, and to lesser-known authors in the field, includingRichard Marsh (1857–1915), author ofThe Beetle (1897), andWilliam Hope Hodgson (1877–1918), author ofThe Boats of the Glen Carrig,The House on the Borderland andThe Night Land.[22] In 1897,Bram Stoker publishedDracula, 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.[23]Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories include a host of degenerationisttropes, perhaps best illustrated (drawing on the ideas ofSerge Voronoff) inThe Adventure of the Creeping Man.
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