Page:Symonds - A Problem in Modern Ethics.djvu/43

Rh these words of Dr. Descuret, Moreau leaves Greece alone, and goes on to Rome. The state of morals in Rome under the empire he describes as "une dépravation maladive, devenue par la force des choses héréditaire, endémique, épidémique." Then follows a short account of the emperors and their female relatives. "Cet éréthisme génésique qui, pendant près de deux siècles, régna a l'état épidémique dans Rome" he ascribes mainly to heredity. Of Julia, the daughter of Augustus, he says, "Peut-on lutter contre un état morbide héréditaire?" The union of unrestrained debauchery and ferocity with great mental gifts strikes him as a note of disease; and he winds up with this sentence: "Parmi les causes les plus fréquentes des aberrations du sens génital, l'hérédité tient la première place."

Then he passes to the middle ages, and dwells upon the popular belief in incubi and succubi. It is curious to find him placing Leo X., François I., Henri IV., Louis XIV., among the neuropathics. When it comes to this, everybody with strong sexual instincts, and the opportunity of indulging them, is a nervous invalid. Modern times are illustrated by the debaucheries of the Regency, the reign of Louis XV., Russian ladies, the Marquis de Sade. The House of Orleans seems in truth to have been tainted with hereditary impudicity of a morbid kind. But if it was so at the end of the last century, it has since the Revolution remarkably recovered health—by what miracle?

Moreau now formulates the thesis he wishes to prove: "L'aberration pathologique des sentiments génésiques doit être assimilée complètement à une névrose, et,