The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1895-11-24
A TALK WIT NORDAU.
He Is Opposed tn Money and
All Forms of Hero Worship.

- ~ ~ - 80
In a modest apartment on the first floor
OF No. "a Avenue de Villers. the library of
which faces the handsome gothic building
in the Place des Malesherbes, where Gounod,
musician and mystic. lived and died, DR..
Max Nordau, the much-praised and much
blamed author of THE Lies of Civilization"
and Degeneration, quietly passes the even
tenor of existence. For. however tiercely
may wage the war OF po.emics, this truly
learned man does not allow a singularly
peaceful and domestic life 10 be intruded
upon. My call upon him was in response 10
a personal invitation. For quite an hour we
sat in the library chatting away on every
leather armchair. he sitting at his writing
table--the table upon whose broad back sheet
after sheet of Degeneration" was rapidly
DR.. Max Nordau, whatever else he may
be, is neither quack. cheat nor fraud. .Op-
posed or not TO his views, one cannot help
and sincerity, accompanied BY a courage
which Knows no alloy. His learning and
erudition are tremendous. He Is saturated
with Latin; he reads 1t. writes II. speaks
it, and, 1 verify believe. thinks in 1t. He Is
a Duns Scotus, or an Alexander Hales, or
an Albertus Mangus In plain clothes. in dis
course and in disposition, while as a book
worm and a writer he is suggestive OF a
Jerome. az Austin Of Hippo or a Thomas Of
AQuin. The activities of life have their
solatium in the tranquil porting over Of the
pages of church writers, primitive and
medieval. Max Nordau loves the de Civil
tatC ~ ~ ffts1
the pages of the Vulgata-especially The
Sermon on the Mount'-are, as Terentius
has it. his templa serena. Despite all this,
using this term, Nordau means no more
than d~isclaiming membership with any re-
ligious communion. A man with his lofty
ideas and magnificent conceptions OF human
conduct probably has very much more "re-
ligion' than he is aware of. and certainly
as much as a large proportion of his ortho-
dox fellow-creatures.
Two things there are abominable in the
sight Of our amiable philosopher-money
refer to the evil OF bartering intelligence
for mere money, when he quickly swung
round In his chair, seized last months
the pages, said: "You are right. Ny own
view entirely. Listen to what / wrote on
this subject only the other day" Then
slowly. deliberately, and with telling en-
'I nave by no means given up the expec-
tation of reading one OF these days that /
have been confined for so and SO many
perhaps. at this very moment an inmate
or such an institution. A credulous lady
who was actually disturbed by the numer-
GUS hints OF this kind wrote me a letter. I'm
her whether 1t was really true that there
had been lunatics among my ancestors:
and she expressed TO me her. sincere re-
lief when ] assured her ttat the only. evil
which had ever been observed In the MEM
bers of my family Was a strange indiffer-
ence to money For several generations
have accordingly been poor. They did not
understand how to make money. They did
not concern themselves about it. They pre-
ferred TO occupy themselves with abstruse
Of jewish congregations. As fheif heir. I
them Win thsif Sek & worldly sense: but