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Social degeneration was a widely influential concept at the interface of the social and biological sciences in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 18th century, thinkers including George Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and Immanuel Kant posited that humans shared a common origin but had degenerated over time due to differences in climate. This theory provided an explanation of where humans came from and why some people appeared different from others. In contrast, degenerationists in the 19th century feared that civilization might be in decline and that the causes of decline lay in biological change. Degeneration concepts in this period were often associated with authoritarian political attitudes, including militarism and scientific racism, and a preoccupation with eugenics. From the 1850s, the theory became influential in psychiatry through the writings of Bénédict Morel, and in criminology with Cesare Lombroso. By the 1890s, in the work of Max Nordau and others, degeneration became a more general concept in social criticism. It also fed into the ideology of Ethnic nationalism, attracting, among others, Maurice Barrès, Charles Maurras and the Action Française. Alexis Carrel, a French Nobel Laureate in Medicine, cited national degeneration as a rationale for a eugenics programme in collaborationist Vichy France.

Theories of Degeneration in the 18th Century
In the second half of the eighteenth century, degeneration theory gained prominence as an explanation of the nature and origin of human difference. Among the most notable proponents of this theory was George Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon. A gifted mathematician and eager naturalist, Buffon served as the curator of the Parisian Cabinet du Roi. The collections of the Cabinet du Roi served as the inspiration for Buffon’s encyclopedic Histoire Naturelle, of which he published thirty-six volumes between 1749 and his death in 1788. In the Histoire Naturelle, Buffon asserted that differences in climate created variety within species. He believed that these changes occurred gradually and initially affected only a few individuals before becoming widespread. Buffon relied on an argument from analogy to contend that this process of degeneration occurred among humans. He claimed to have observed the transformation of certain animals by their climate and concluded that such changes must have also shaped humankind.

Buffon maintained that degeneration had particularly adverse consequences in the New World. He believed America to be both colder and wetter than Europe. This climate limited the number of species in the New World and prompted a decline in size and vigor among the animals which did survive. Buffon also applied these principles to the people of the New World. He wrote in the Histoire Naturelle that the indigenous people lacked the ability to feel strong emotion for others. For Buffon, these individuals were incapable of love as well as desire.

Buffon’s theory of degeneration attracted the ire of many early American elites who feared that Buffon’s depiction of the New World would negatively influence European perceptions of their nation. In particular, Thomas Jefferson mounted a vigorous defense of the American natural world. He attacked the premises of Buffon’s argument in his 1785 Notes on the State of Virginia, writing that the animals of the New World felt the same sun and walked upon the same soil as their European counterparts. Jefferson believed that he could permanently alter Buffon’s views of the New World by showing him firsthand the majesty of American wildlife. While serving as minister to France, Jefferson wrote repeatedly to his compatriots in the United States, pleading them to send a stuffed moose to Paris. After months of effort, General John Sullivan responded to Jefferson’s request and shipped a moose to France. Buffon died only three months after the moose’s arrival, and his theory of New World degeneration remained forever preserved in the pages of the Histoire Naturelle.

In the years following Buffon’s death, the theory of degeneration gained a number of new followers, many of whom were concentrated in German-speaking lands. The anatomist and naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach praised Buffon in his lectures at the University of Göttingen. He adopted Buffon’s theory of degeneration in his dissertation De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa. The central premise of this work was that all of mankind belonged to the same species. Blumenbach believed that a multitude of factors, including climate, air, and the strength of the sun, promoted degeneration and resulted in external differences between human beings. However, he also asserted that these changes could easily be undone and, thus, did not constitute the basis for speciation. In the essay “Über Menschen-Rassen und Schweine-Rassen,” Blumenbach clarified his understanding of the relationship between different human races by calling upon the example of the pig. He contended that, if the domestic pig and the wild boar were seen as belonging to the same species, then different humans, regardless of skin color or height, must too belong to the same species. For Blumenbach, all people of the world existed as different gradations on a spectrum. Nevertheless, the third edition of De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa, published in 1795, is famed among scholars for its introduction of a system of racial classification which divided humans into members of the Caucasian, Ethiopian, Mongolian, Malayan, or American races.

Blumenbach’s views on degeneration emerged in dialogue with the works of other thinkers concerned with race and origin in the late eighteenth century. In particular, Blumenbach participated in fruitful intellectual exchange with another prominent German scholar of his age, Immanuel Kant. Kant, a philosopher and professor at the University of Königsberg, taught a course on physical geography for some forty years, fostering an interest in biology and taxonomy. Like Blumenbach, Kant engaged closely with the writings of Buffon while developing his position on these subjects.

In his 1777 essay “Von der verschiedenen Racen der Menschen,” Kant expressed the belief that all humans shared a common origin. He called upon the ability of humans to interbreed as evidence for this assertion. Additionally, Kant introduced the term “degeneration,” which he defined as hereditary differences between groups with a shared root. Kant also arrived at a meaning of “race” from this definition of degeneration. He claimed that races developed when degenerations were preserved over a long period of time. A group could only constitute a race if breeding with a different degeneration resulted in “intermediate offspring." Although Kant advocated for a theory of shared human origin, he also contended that there was an innate hierarchy between existing races. In 1788, Kant wrote “Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien.” He maintained in this work that a human’s place in nature was determined by the amount of sweat the individual produced, which revealed an innate ability to survive. Sweat emerged from the skin. Therefore, skin color indicated important distinctions between humans.