degeneracy

How often I have I known him affect an open brow and a jovial manner, joining in the games of the gentry, and even in the sports of the common people, in order to invest himself with a temporary degree of popularity; while, in fact, his heart was bursting to witness what he called the degeneracy of the times, the decay of activity among the aged, and the want of zeal in the rising generation.

Redgauntlet 2008

_seemed_, because what we call degeneracy is often but the unveiling of what was there all the time; and the evil we could become, we are.

The Elect Lady George MacDonald 1864

How often I have I known him affect an open brow and a jovial manner, joining in the games of the gentry, and even in the sports of the common people, in order to invest himself with a temporary degree of popularity; while, in fact, his heart was bursting to witness what he called the degeneracy of the times, the decay of activity among the aged, and the want of zeal in the rising generation.

Redgauntlet Walter Scott 1801

-- But for this precious seed, the chosen people would have resembled the cities of the plain, both in degeneracy of character and in merited doom.

Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible 1871

This is called degeneracy, and in D-Wave's system there is quite a bit of degeneracy.

Ars Technica Chris Lee 2011

Let them call upon me to repeat any part they think good ground of prosecution: I will repeat it; for I can support, by historical facts, the opinion that I give; and if the country is so lost in degeneracy that

The Tribune, a Periodical Publication, consisting Chiefly of the Political Lectures of J. Thelwall. 1795

A strong shade of degeneracy is visible between John Vataces and his son Theodore; between the founder who sustained the weight, and the heir who enjoyed the splendor, of the Imperial crown.

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 1206

As men come to believe that the "long ago" was better than the "now," and the dead were better than the living, then philosophy must necessarily include a theory of degeneracy, which is a part of ancientism.

Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-80, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 17-56 John Wesley Powell 1868

In such cases, the traditions of earlier ages, or of some higher and more educated caste which has been destroyed, may give rise to the notion of degeneracy from a primaeval state of superior intelligence, or of science supernaturally communicated.

The Antiquity of Man Charles Lyell 1836

What a degeneracy was there in the Jewish nation, when there were found there so many that had such a character, and could be drawn into such an attempt upon the public peace!

Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume VI (Acts to Revelation) 1721