Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading ... - BGSU Blogs

identity construct #4: nation 139
answer; “nations die when they are composed of elements that have degenerated.”
The answer was excellent, etymologically and otherwise. It only
remained to defi ne the meaning of “nation that has degenerated.” This was
the rock on which they foundered; a degenerate people meant, they said,
“A people which through bad government, misuse of wealth, fanaticism, or
irreligion, had lost the characteristic virtues of its ancestors.” What a fall
is there! Thus a people dies of its endemic diseases because it is degenerate,
and is degenerate because it dies. This circular argument merely proves
that the science of social anatomy is in its infancy. I quite agree that societies
perish because they are degenerate, and for no other reason. This is
the evil condition that makes them wholly unable to withstand the shock
of the disasters that close in upon them; and when they can no longer endure
the blows of adverse fortune, and have no power to raise their heads when
the scourge has passed, then we have the sublime spectacle of a nation in
agony. If it perish, it is because it has no longer the same vigor as it had of
old in battling with the dangers of life; in a word, because it is degenerate. I
repeat, the term is excellent; but we must explain it a little better, and give
it a defi nite meaning. How and why is a nation’s vigor lost? How does it
degenerate? These are the questions which we must try to answer. Up to the
present, men have been content with fi nding the word, without unveiling
the reality that lies behind. This further step I shall now attempt to take.
The word degenerate, when applied to a people, means (as it ought to
mean) that the people has no longer the same intrinsic value as it had before,
because it has no longer the same blood in its veins, continual adulterations
having gradually affected the quality of that blood. In other words, though
the nation bears the name given by its founders, the name no longer connotes
the same race; in fact, the man of a decadent time, the degenerate man
properly so called, is a different being, from the racial point of view, from the
heroes of the great ages. I agree that he still keeps something of their essence;
but the more he degenerates the more attenuated does this “something” become.
The heterogeneous elements that henceforth prevail in him give him
quite a different nationality—a very original one, no doubt, but such originality
is not to be envied. He is only a very distant kinsman of those he still
calls his ancestors. He, and his civilization with him, will certainly die on
the day when the primordial race-unit is so broken up and swamped by the
infl ux of foreign elements, that its effective qualities have no longer a suffi
cient freedom of action. It will not, of course, absolutely disappear, but it
will in practice be so beaten down and enfeebled, that its power will be felt
less and less as time goes on. It is at this point that all the results of degeneration
will appear, and the process may be considered complete.