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Updated: June 28, 2025
While Jimmie was making a note of this, Doctor Nordau looked quizzically at me and said: "Do American publishers rob all foreign authors as I have been robbed, or am I mistaken in thinking that large numbers of 'Degeneration' have been sold in America?" Alas, wherever I go in Europe, I am obliged to hear this denunciation of our publishers! I cannot get beyond the sound of it.
Tolstoy considers the Bible the most dramatic work ever written, and turns this knowledge of the world's demand for religion to theatrical account. Tolstoy is outwardly a Christian, Nordau outwardly a pagan. Tolstoy openly acknowledges God, but exemplifies the ideas of man, while Max Nordau's private life embodies the noble teachings of the Christ whom he denies.
As regards this later period, Max Nordau is undoubtedly right in speaking of Ruskin's mind as ``turbid and fallacious''; but the time of which I speak was his best, and his influence upon me was good. I remember especially that his ``Lamp of Power'' made a very deep impression upon me. Carlyle, too, was at his best.
He is a practising physician. "'What's the matter with Bryce?" he repeated. Jimmie blushed. "Haven't you read 'Bryce's Commonwealth?" I broke in, to give Jimmie time to get on his legs again. "Is there a book on American government by an American that I never heard of?" asked Nordau of Jimmie.
"Well, Bryce is an Englishman, but he knows more about America than any American I know," answered Jimmie. "I'll send you the book if you would like to read it." Doctor Nordau thanked him and said he would be delighted to have it.
"He doesn't need me at all," she whispered. "I'd go anyway if I had the money." As I said before, Russia and America are very much alike. As we left the house my mind recurred to Max Nordau, whose personality and methods I have so imperfectly presented. The contrast to Tolstoy would intrude itself.
Nordau is not exaggerating when he says: "When we have studied the sacrificial rites, the incantations, prayers, hymns, and ceremonies of religion, we have as complete a picture of the relations between our ancestors and their chiefs as if we had seen them with our own eyes." Our anthropomorphism, however, reaches its most dangerous form in our inward imaginations of God's character.
A few men, however, standing on the mountain ranges of human observation, saw the future more clearly than did the mass. Emerson, Carlyle, Ruskin, Samuel Butler, and Max Nordau, in the nineteenth century, and, in our time, Ferrero, all pointed out the inevitable dangers of the excessive mechanization of human society. The prophecies were unhappily as little heeded as those of Cassandra.
I read it over every once in awhile, but failed to screw my courage to the sticking point, until one day I mentioned that I had this letter, and Jimmie to my surprise threw up both hands, exclaiming: "A letter to Max Nordau! Why, it is like owning a gold mine! Present it by all means, and then tell us what he is like."
There are fat women who rock and rock on piazzas by the sea, and they speak of country people as the 'lower classes. How happy this big family is in not knowing it is the lower classes!" "We haven't read Nordau down here," said John. "Old Tom Martin's favorite work is 'The Descent of Man. Miss Tibbs admires Tupper, and 'Beulah, and some of us possess the works of E. P. Roe and why not?"
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