The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1895-04-27
TYPES OF DEGENERATION.
Some Plain Observations Concerning q
Worry Corrupt Creature, and Also Con.
corning Degeneration in General. t'-

corning degeneration in General. '-
From the New York Sum-
The complete exposure and the
prompt apprehension of Oscar Wilde
will have the valuable result Of re-
moving an odious creature from the
view and the thought of the public.
After 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
MIN Is a lunatic asylum, to which he
should be confined permanently: for the
manifestations 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 de-
fined in medical literature, and the
symptoms Of 1t as displayed in his
case do not vary from those by which
1t Is usually recognized by alienists. He
ought to be sequestrated from society
like an incurable leper.
Undoubtedly he is man of some lit
erary cleverness and artistic percep-
tlon, and 1t has been only by means Of
SUCH abilities that he has made him
self tolerated by the public. The plays
which he has been writing of late years
nave proved that b. possesses these
Qualities to degree unsuspected when
ne first courted public attention in the
guise of silly coxcomb posing as a
languishing aesthete in whom every at
tribute Of normal manliness was lack
Ing They show that he has facility
enough In dramatic construction and in
the art Of producing q 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 be-
coming successful in English and
American theaters of the best class.
The subtle moral poison he seeks to
inject into them, with the crafty per-
sistence Of mind so perverted, is
wholly innocuous so far as concerns
normal beings. They listen to his Sc
riously intended provocations to vice as
merely the absurdities of fantastic bur-
lesque. Only those already corrupted
are capable of understanding or of even
suspecting their destructive purpose.
unless they be special students of the
protean forms in which mental and
moral degeneration exhibits itself.
Other Types of Deterioration.
This deterioration Is not inconsistent
with the possession of a high degree of
intellectual brilliancy. of the SUPER
ficial sort more especially, and 1t fire.
quently accompanies the refinement car
ried to an extreme, Of which we have so
many examples at the present time.
People who imagine themselves superior
to their fellows in sensitive perception
and requirement, SO that they turn
away from them revolted by healthy
expressions 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 quail
ity of mind and emotion by which they
fiatter themselves they are distin-
guished. Very much of the impulse
which nowadays Is looked upon as re-
formation comes from that morbid and
degenerated source. 1t has its origin in
a diseased discomfort with conditions
and passions and ambitions which are
inseparable from social health and in
dicative of normal human nature. The
natural instincts and the rugged virtues
OF the people; the invigorating spirit
and the hearty sentiment necessary for
the preservation Of strength of the race
are treated as the evidences of an in
feriority Of development. Patriotism is
derided as unreasonable affection and
impulse. Partisanship. or the senti-
ment which binds together kinship and
friendship, and brings men into loyal,
religious and political association in
great masses, is denounced as a vicious
instinct to be eradicated. The flag of
the country and the symbols Of party
union are hated and ridiculed.
All this Is a symptom of degeneration
In minds deluded with a notion that
they are of an exalted superiority be-
fore which the rest of mankind should
bow 1t is indicative of moral and in
tellectual deformity; of variation from
the rule upon which depends the per-
petuation Of the race In sanity and
vigor. Oscar Wilde is an extreme and
abominable example of the perverting
possibilities Of type Of degeneration
which must be resisted by all the un-
contaminated moral and normal infiu-
ences Of society. i ..-i.i.--....,-.,.l4r-