_Degenerates are not always criminals, prostitutes, anarchists, and
pronounced lunatics; they are often authors and artists. These,
however, manifest the same mental characteristics, and for the most
part the same somatic features, as the members of the above-mentioned
anthropological family, who satisfy their unhealthy impulses with the
knife of the assassin or the bomb of the dynamiter, instead of with pen
and pencil.Some among these degenerates in literature, music, and painting have
in recent years come into extraordinary prominence, and are revered by
numerous admirers as creators.
This phenomenon is not to be disregarded. Books and works of art
exercise a powerful suggestion on the masses. It is from these
productions that an age derives its ideals of morality and beauty. If
they are absurd and anti-social, they exert a disturbing and corrupting
influence on the views of a whole generation. Hence the latter,
especially the impressionable youth, easily excited to enthusiasm for
all that is strange and seemingly new, must be warned and enlightened
as to the real nature of the creations so blindly admired.
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