mThe Interpretation of History, Dr. Max Nordau, American Examiner 30 April 1911, Mag.-2
Do We Really Remember Paradise?
Dr. Max Nordau's Very Interesting Newest Theory That Legends and Dreams Recall the Age When We Lived Without Toil
THE celebrated and learned Dr. Max Nordau, the most startling and original philosopher of our time, has now upset the generally accepted ideas of human history.
Dr. Nordau's earlier discoveries were that the modern world was degenerating horribly and that all men of genius were insane. People have hardly recovered from the shock and discomfort which these theories caused, when the doctor advances another theory that is equally startling.
This new theory is that all human civilisation is merely the result of man's efforts to escape from the discomforts and short rations produced by the last ice age. Man is not progressing toward a glorious final ideal. He is merely trying to reproduce the Paradise in which he lived before the ice age came down on him. His only ideal Is to live in comfort without labor. If the happy conditions of pre-glacial times were to return, man would throw all his civilization to the scrap heap and never bother about it again.
and citations. Perhaps the most interesting and striking statement that Dr. Nordau makes is that Paradise existed on earth within human memory. The literature of the most ancient civilized races contains many references to it. It is the Garden of Eden of the Bible. It is the place where the human race lived without labor. In the ancient Oriental writings the earthly Paradise and the super-earthly Heaven are constantly confused. In the Zend Avesta and the Vedantas of the Hindus the period when man lived in Paradise is distinctly recalled. Deep within man's consciousness there lurks a shadowy perception of his unnatural relation to his present environment. Is not "the Land of Cockayne" that vague Paradise to which mediaeval ro-mancers looked back, simply a picture of the existence once natural to man?
When man really wishes to rise to great heights of fancy, he pictures a land of milk and honey. He longs for an existence without labor—the exact opposite of what he knows and
sees in every human life.
Labor, his daily habit, his constant experience, and the command laid upon him from the cradle to the grave, never appears In his dreams. It is banished from the vision inspired by his thirst for bliss.
Although in this dream of happiness he sees himself surrounded, not only by the delights that nature can offer, but by all the products of labor—palaces, gor-geous raiment. rich vessels, spicy fishes and fine women beautifully attired—it does not occur to him that since these creations must be some one's work, his land of joy cannot he open to all. His happiness is based upon the effort and
abstinence of others and therefore involves exploitation and cruelty. This is natural enough, since his imagination is using his material of experience.
If man dwelt under the conditions common to all other organ-isms on earth, his desire would be to prolong his habits and experi-ences there, not to reverse them and fly to something else. We should imagine a lion's paradise. if we could imagine one, to be more successful hunting; a mole's paradise better meadow land for bur-rowing in; a stork's paradise to stand in the swamp and catch in-exhaustible frogs. But man does not dream of more labor in Paradise. Man alone conceives of Paradise as a spot in which he may escape from his usual activities. He alone pictures a golden age where Adam Smith's theory of labor as the source of wealth would be false. The Hebrew Bible, one of the earliest products of the creative spirit, ex-
pressly designates labors foreign to man's original nature, a visitation and punishment for his sins.
Dr. Nordau's views make all history as it has been written worthless. History should cease to attend to vain and trivial details, such as the Napoleonic wars and the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and attend to the study of man's life on this planet.
Man came into existence between two ice ages, according to Dr. Nordau. He came suddenly. not as the result of a process of slow evolution. He was intelligent from the first. The races like the Aryan, that are intelligent today, were intelligent then, and the races like the Bushmen that are stupid today were stupid then.
Thar period was Paradise, when man lived on the fruits of a kindly earth in a genial climate and toiled
not. Had those conditions remained unchanged, man would never have risen above the stage of the larger apes in spite of the possibilities within.
But with the coming of the second ice age, nature became his most deadly enemy. That was the true expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It affected the other animals that had shared with him the warmth of perpetual Summer.
These animals either succumbed or adapted their bodies by growing coats of fur or different sets of teeth suited to new conditions. The earth is strewn with the bones of gigantic animals of that period that succumbed in the new struggle for existence. The gigantic diprotodon, whose jaws were many times larger than man, perished because be could not find vegetation enough to sustain him. The sabre-toothed tiger perished because he could not find enough large, fleshy animals to supply him with food. The fiery snorting dragons, with terrible teeth and horns, which occur no frequently in
ancient legends, and also in our dreams, recall the time when man lived on earth with now extinct monsters.
Man alone met the ice age by trying to adapt external conditions to himself instead of adapting his body to them. He built houses and fires and covered himself with furs. That was the beginning of civilization. "That," says Dr. Nordau, "is the sole distinct meaning which the impartial observer can discern in the course or history.
In his struggle to adapt his surroundings to himself man began to live on his fellow animals. He learned to make arrows and hatchets and to slay the hairy mammoth, which afforded food for a great family of human beings.
Next man learned that the easiest way to live was to live on the
Max Nordau, The Interpretation of History, 1910
James L'Angelle University of Nevada, Reno Summer 2023
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