South Canterbury Times - Saturday, April 13, 1895

South Canterbury Times.

SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1895.

OSCAR WILDE, from being a lion of London Society, has suddenly been degraded to infamy. It is a curious coincicence that only a few months before the downfall of this apostle of Æstheticism a work was published in London which painted Oscar Wilde in his true colours, the author knowing nothing of him except from his published writings. This work is a translation from the German of Max Nordau, who is described by a reviewer as a man of great intellectual power and immense range of knowledge. The book is described as "a powerful, trenchant, savage attack on all the leading literary and artistic idols of the time." Nordau is a student of mental disease, a disciple of Lombroso, who finds in many kinds of mental and moral "twist," discoverable amongst our fellow men, proofs of degeneracy. Lombroso declares that many poets, musicians, and artists are such, and genuises in their way, because they are insane, mentally unbalanced. Max Nordau in his work classifies the lunatics who are not only not shut up in asylums, but are lionised and thought to be pioneers of new "movements," social, religious, artistic, or other. Oscar Wilde is taken as the type of one class,the Æsthetes, who are a sub-class of the Ego-maniacs. The egomaniac in general is described as one who neither knows nor cares for the phenomena of the universe. "The effect of this is a want of interest and sympathy, frequently accompanied by a perversion of the instincts and impulses, which make the ego-maniac an antisocial being. He is a moral lunatic, a criminal, a pessimist, an anarchist, either in thought and feeling, or also in action." So much for the ego-maniac in general. Of Oscar Wilde as the type of one of the sub-classes, Nordau says his published poems and dramas are of dreary inanity. "His prose writings indicate his idea of life, which is inactivity; his admiration of immorality, sin, and crime; and his doctrines about Art." These doctrines are criticised and found to be void of any meaning whatever. The case of Oscar Wilde would not be worth referring to, were there not a lesson to be learned from it. There must be such a lesson, but one needs some such guidance as Max Nordan has given to help one to extract it. The lesson is that we must be on our guard against any moral lunatics there may be amongst us, as they are capable of doing very great harm to society, much more than an intellectual lunatic, if they posses intellect and opportunity of using it. The ego-maniac, says Nordau, should be expelled from society, and "toleration, and above all admiration, of any of them, is proof that the kidneys of the social organism do not accomplish their task; is proof that Society suffers from Bright's disease." We shut up our mentally deranged as fast as they are discovered. The more mischievous morally deranged are sometimes found in places of honour, because their power for evil is not recognised.