This conviction rises to the dignity and universaUty
of an article of faith. But what is it based on? Why
should we be so ready to write ourselves down "de-
generate sons of sterner sires"? The moment we apply
the acid test of actual investigation of records, statis-
tics, measurements, etc., to this pious belief, it shrivels
and goes up in smoke, like most of the legends of the
"happy days of yore." We may be degenerate, but
there is no valid evidence of the fact. In fact, all such
data and records as we have point in exactly the oppo-
site direction. The human race is still moving steadily
upward, as it has always done from the days of the
jelly-fish and the sea-squirt.
We have been particularly sure of our American de-
generacy because we were the newest among the na-
tions, the latest experiment, as it were. We do things
so differently from the way they were done before,
and are making such a strange success at it along
special lines, such wonderful progress in mere com-
merical and financial issues, — in dollar-hunting, in a
word, — that we must be paying the penalty for this
one-sided success in some form of shipwreckedness,
either physical or moral.
