The sun., 1895-04-08
4 Type OF Degeneration.

The complete exposure and the prompt APP
prehenson OF OSCAR WILDE will have the
valuable result of removing an odous
creature from the view and the thought of
the public. After a little he will disappear
and be forgotten, and with him will go the
particular school of moral perversion OF
which he posed as the vain and shameless
leader. The proper place for him is a
lunatic asylum, to which he should be
confined permanently; for the manifesto
tions of intellectual and moral disease and
abnormality In him have been constant and
unmistakable ever since he began to glory
in their public exhibition, twenty years ago.
The type of his malady is accurately defined
in medical literature, and the symptoms of
it as displayed in his case do not vary from
those by which 1t is usually recognized by
alenists. He ought to be sequestrated from
society like an incurable lcper.
Undoubtedly, he is man of some literary
cleverness and artistic perception, and it has
been only by means of such abilities that he
has made himself tolerable by the public.
The plays which he has been writing of late
years have proved that he possesses these
qualities to degree unsuspected when he
first courted public attention in the guise
of a silly coXcomb posing as q languishing
aesthetic in whom every attribute of
normal nanliness was lacking. They show
that he has facility enough in dramatic
construction and in the art of producing n
fairly dramatic situation to turn out plays
that even the tawdriness and viciousness of
the sentiments with which his impertinence
charges them do not prevent from becom-
ing successful in English and American
theatres of the best class. The subtle moral
poison he seeks to injec into them, with the
crafty persistence Of mind SO perverted, is
| wholly innocuous so far as concerns normal
beings. They listen to his seriously intended
provocations to vice as merely the absurdi-
ties of fantastic burlesque. Only those al
ready corrupted are capable of understand
ing or of even suspecting their destructive
purpose, unless they he special students of
the protean forms in which mental and
moral degeneration exhibits itself.
This deterioration is not inconsistent with
the possession of high degree of intellectual
brillinncy, Of the superficial sort more es-
| pecally, and it frequently accompanies the
refinement carried to an extreme, of which
we have so many examples at the present
| time. People who imagine themselves
| superior to their fellows in sensitive per-
ception and requirement, so that they turn
| away from them revolted by healthy ex-
| pressions Of human nature, are really the
victims of this decay. They are morbid and
| hysterical, and not of the finer and deeper
and more exalted quality of mind and emo
tion by which they fatter themselves they
are distinguished. Very much of the i'm
pulse which nowadays is looked upon as
reformation comes from that morbid and
degenerated source. 1t has its origin in a
diseased discomfort with conditions and
passions and ambitions which are insepara-
BILE from social health and indicative of nor
NAL human nature The natural instincts
and the rugged virtues of the people; the
invigorating spirit and the hearty SEN
| timent necessary for the preservation of
the strength of the race, are treated
| as the evidences Of an inferiority of develop
ment. Patriotism is derided as an unreason-
able affection and impulse. Partsanship,
or the sentiment which binds together kin
ship and friendship, and brings men into
loyal, religious, and political association in
great masses, is denounced rs vicious
instinct to be eradcated. The flag of tho
country and the symbols of party union are
hated and ridiculed.
All this is symptom Of degeneration in
minds deluded with the notion that they are
of an exalted superiority before which the
rest of mankind should bow. 1t is indica-
tive of moral and intellectual deformity; Of
variation from the rule upon which depends
the perpetuation Of the race in sanity and
vigor. OSCAR WILDE is an extreme and
abominable example of the perverting pos
sibilties Of type of degeneration which
must be resisted by all the uncontaminated
moral and normal influences of society,"