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Yet it was Barnum himself who said that the public delights in being humbugged, and strange it is that we will not allow ourselves to be thimblerigged without paying for the privilege. Nordau's success hinged on his audacious assumption that the public knew nothing of the Law of Antithesis.
Readers of books seldom realise that by their written or spoken criticisms they are displaying themselves in all their weaknesses, all their vanities, all their strength for their hearers to make use of as they will." "I shouldn't think anything ever would disturb you," said Jimmie, regarding Doctor Nordau's gigantic strength admiringly. Doctor Nordau laughed.
And so it happened that Neal Dow Ward made his first call on Jeanette Barclay with his sister, and they all sat on the porch together that fine spring evening, with the perfume of the lilacs in the air; and it happened naturally enough that the curious human law of attraction which unites youth should draw the chairs of the two young people together as they talked of the things that interest youth the parties and the ball-games and the fraternities and sororities, and the freshman picnic and the senior grind; while the chairs of the two others drew together as they talked of the things which interest women in middle life the affairs of the town, the troubles of Watts McHurdie, the bereavement of the Culpeppers, the scarcity of good help in the kitchen, the popularity of Max Nordau's "Social Evolution," and the fun in "David Harum."
Has any one been taking seriously Nordau's cry for the extinction of the Degenerates? The dead have their day in France, but it was not le jour des morts when I bethought myself of visiting the grave of Maupassant. I do not care for these crowded "at homes," I prefer to pay my respects in solitude.
But no doubt if this growth goes on, we shall find grave moral and intellectual deficiencies. One might almost prophesy that from Max Nordau's law. A most gifted and celebrated philosopher, Lady Wondershoot. He discovered that the abnormal is abnormal, a most valuable discovery, and well worth bearing in mind. I find it of the utmost help in practice.
Max Nordau is one of his idols, Nordau's horrible power of invective fully meeting Jimmie's ideas of the way crimes of the bestial sort should be treated. Jimmie is often a surprise to me in his beliefs and ideals, but when Doctor Nordau entered the room I forgot Jimmie and everything else in the world except this one man.
"I think 'Degeneration' is the most wonderful book ever written," Jimmie broke in at this point as if unable to keep silent any longer. Then he looked deeply embarrassed at Doctor Nordau's hearty laughter. "Thank you a thousand times," he said; "such a decided opinion I seldom hear. Your great country was the first to appreciate and read it.
Also sprach Tolstoy in that madman's book called What is Art? a work wherein he tried to outvie Nordau's abuse of beautiful art. The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, Hamlet, Macbeth, Dante, and Goethe, are all consigned to the limbo of bad art; bad because not "understanded of the people."
The first Zionist party in the Congress was the Democratic faction led by Leo Motzkin, but soon there were added the Mizrachi party and the beginnings of a labor party. Not only Dr. Nordau's stirring addresses, but many controversies "made" Congresses. The cultural issue was a Congress perennial.
Only once had an attempt ever been made to apply to questions of art the methods of science in Nordau's "Degeneration". But then Nordau's had been pseudo-science three-quarters impertinence and conceit. The world still waited to understand its art-products in the light of scientific Socialism. Such was the task which Thyrsis was planning.
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