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Immeshed in the same inextricable web of custom and law, they degenerated into mere puppets, hardly stirring from their palaces and occupied in a perpetual round of empty ceremonies, while the real business of government was managed by the council of state. In Tonquin the monarchy ran a similar course.
The first relates to ancient tradition, to the idea of one supreme God, to the patriarchal institutions, which were the foundation of the social organization of the Empire, and to the primitive customs and moral doctrines. It appears that this religion at length degenerated into that mingled idolatry and indifference which still characterizes the people of China.
In Ferdinand the instinct of liberal culture degenerated into vulgar magnificence; courtesy and confidence gave place to cold suspicion and brutal cruelty. His ferocity bordered upon madness. He used to keep the victims of his hatred in cages, where their misery afforded him the same delight as some men derived from watching the antics of monkeys.
These doctrines, the sameness of human nature and the omnipotent lawgiver, left no room for anything resembling a theory of Progress. Machiavelli's sameness of human nature meant that man would always have the same passions and desires, weaknesses and vices. This assumption was compatible with the widely prevailing view that man had degenerated in the course of the last fifteen hundred years.
He has gone wrong on earth, no doubt, has failed and degenerated, but what was it sent him wrong? Was his failure inherent, or did some net of cross purposes tangle about his feet? Suppose he is not a failure in Utopia!... I wonder that this has never entered the botanist's head. He, with his vaguer mind, can overlook spite of my ruthless reminders all that would mar his vague anticipations.
And when they degenerated, the gods implanted in men the desire of union with them, creating in man one animate substance and in woman another in the following manner: The outlet for liquids they connected with the living principle of the spinal marrow, which the man has the desire to emit into the fruitful womb of the woman; this is like a fertile field in which the seed is quickened and matured, and at last brought to light.
Uncle Jo degenerated, by almost imperceptible degrees, from the position of honoured guest, who is served with white meat, to that of one who is content with a leg and one of those obscure and bony sections which, after much turning with a bewildered and investigating knife and fork, leave one baffled and unsatisfied. Eva and Stell got together and decided that Jo ought to marry.
Duhring or indeed any of the others whom he barely knew by sight. And so Flynn came. Radford and I were mere onlookers. Flynn was acutely miserable. Had it not been for Jack Ballard I fear the conversation would have degenerated into a discussion of the merits and possibilities of Jerry's many "companies."
The literary evenings degenerated into Ray's thorough scanning of the evening paper, followed by Cora's skimming of the crumpled sheets that carried the department store ads, the society column, and the theatrical news. Raymond began to use the sixth room the unused bedroom as a workshop. He had perfected the spectacle contrivance and had made the mistake of selling his rights to it.
Hence, before Abraham's visit to Egypt the religion of that land had degenerated into a gross and complicated polytheism, which it was apparently for the interest of the priesthood to perpetuate.
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