Morals and the Evolution of Man — Text and Context

The Pike and the Pane: Morality as Learned Inhibition

Nordau's opening analogy is not a mere rhetorical flourish; it structures his entire approach to morality. The pike's behavior—ceasing to attack after repeated punishment—mirrors what he calls 'the phenomenon of Morality' in humans: doing what we desire to leave undone, and refraining from what instinct urges. The glass partition represents an invisible barrier, originally physical but later internalized as a moral rule. Nordau extends this to argue that moral feelings are not innate but acquired through experience, a view that aligns with the catalog subject 'Ethics, Evolutionary.'

The experiment, attributed to Möbius, serves as a concrete anchor for an otherwise abstract concept. Nordau does not merely describe the experiment; he interprets it as a 'generalization upon a huge scale' of human moral behavior. This biological framing distinguishes his work from purely philosophical ethics, grounding moral development in observable, even animal, learning processes.

Two Moral Codes: Private Conscience and Public Policy

A central tension in the excerpts is the claim that political leaders operate under a different moral standard than private individuals. Nordau cites Napoleon's remark that 'the actions of a ruler who labours for the community must be distinguished from those of a private individual,' and recounts how Professor Nisard was driven from his lecture hall after advocating a 'dual Morality'—one public, one private. Nordau presents this as a 'shameless contention' that treats politics as exempt from ethics.

He traces this idea back to Machiavelli, whose The Prince he condemns not only for its doctrines but for its tone: 'Never does he let slip a word of excitement.' Nordau is particularly struck by Machiavelli's equanimity, treating political immorality as a mere description of facts rather than a subject for moral judgment. The excerpts suggest that Nordau sees this detachment as more dangerous than the doctrines themselves.

Evidence and Inference: What the Excerpts Reveal and Conceal

The excerpts provide a clear view of Nordau's method: he moves from biological experiment to historical example, building an argument that morality is an evolved inhibition. However, the excerpts are incomplete. They show the opening chapter's central analogy and later sections on political morality, but omit the intervening chapters on 'The Immanence of the Concept of Morality,' 'The Biological Aspect,' and 'Morality and Law.' The table of contents indicates a systematic structure, but the excerpts do not reveal how Nordau connects the pike experiment to, say, legal sanctions or progress.

Notably, the catalog subject 'Ethics, Evolutionary' is well supported by the excerpts, but the work's subtitle—'A Translation of Biologie der Ethik'—suggests a biological framework that the excerpts only partially illustrate. Readers should expect a blend of empirical science and political history, but the full argument's coherence cannot be judged from these passages alone.

Nordau's work resists easy categorization: it is part biology, part political polemic, and part moral philosophy. Readers will benefit from attending to his use of concrete examples—the pike, Machiavelli, Napoleon—as the scaffolding for his broader evolutionary claims. The translation by Marie A. Lewenz, a Fellow of University College London, renders Nordau's German original into a direct, occasionally combative English. Approach the book as a period piece in the history of evolutionary ethics, one that challenges both naive optimism about human nature and cynical justifications of political power.