as such, we find that he is a perceiving, remembering, associating,
judging, reflecting, reasoning being; that he is subject to certain
feelings, emotions, desires and impulses, prompting him to action;
that his action is more or less deliberative, and, when it finally
occurs, is the result of a set of motives determined by the man’s
character, which in turn is the outcome of his heredity and education
and his general ability to appreciate and reflect the moral ideals
of the social order to which he belongs. If now we study this man
in respect to his mental development, whether from the savage or
the child, we find that the direction of change has been away from
imitative, impulsive action, towards thought, reflection, deliberation.
He continually makes more use of memory and, anticipating the future,
regulates his action in the light of his past experience. This change
from the imitative and impulsive to the reasoning man accompanies the
development of the higher brain centers, particularly of the cerebral
cortex, upon which depend the all-important functions of memory and
association. As an experiment it is quite possible to reduce this
highly developed reasoning being in a single moment to a condition
resembling his primitive state by means of hypnotism. In hypnosis there
is a temporary paralysis or sleep of the higher brain centers, upon
which depends deliberative, rational action, and, the lower (older)
centers alone being active, the subject becomes a mere ideo-motor
machine acting out every suggestion. In various related states of
automatism, where there is any spontaneity at all, the mentality
and morality of the subject are of a lower type and may be called
reversionary in character, owing, no doubt, to the fact that those
brain centers which represent the most recent acquirements of the race
are temporarily out of the circuit.
If again we study the mind of the child, we find that it presents many
points of likeness to the mind of the hypnotic subject and to the mind
of the primitive man. We learn from biology that the child is to some
extent a recapitulation of the life of the race, passing through in his
individual development the stages of race development. Physiologically
speaking, the higher brain centers and the centers for association,
which are late acquirements of the race, are last developed in
the child. We are therefore not surprised to find that the child,
like the savage and the hypnotic subject, is imitative, impulsive,
non-reflective, incapable of much abstract thought, deliberation or
reasoning, and that he acts with a view to immediate rather than remote
ends.
If now we turn to the behavior of the normal adult man in mental
epidemics and crazes of all kinds, from the Crusades to the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew, from the tulip mania in Holland to the Dewey
welcome in New York City, we observe that his behavior is to some
extent similar to that of the hypnotic subject, and the child, and the
primitive man. The general character of mental action in epidemics
is as follows: Men become imitative beings and their actions are
determined by suggestion from the actions of others. Memory and the
association of ideas are inactive, and there is an inability to reason
and an indisposition towards deliberation and calm reflection. Past
experiences are disregarded, remote consequences are not seen and
behavior is impulsive and spasmodic. Feeling is very strong and every
kind of emotion is apt to be exaggerated. Calm observation is also
lacking and mental images may be mistaken for objective reality, as in
the case of the hallucinations that are frequent in these phenomena.
The moral peculiarities of an epidemic are of a similar kind. Under
the influence of a craze, the moral character of a people suffers a
reversion to a primitive type. In times of epidemic waves the moral
standards of the crowd approach those of the savage. We observe
the exhibition of primitive instincts, such as cruelty, revenge
and blood-thirstiness, together with changeableness, fanaticism,
self-sacrifice and enthusiastic devotion to a leader. All these moral
traits were well illustrated in the Revolution crazes in France
and in the persecution of witches in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Even in our own times a striking example of the primitive
character of the morality of a people under the influence of social
excitement was seen in the battle-cry of our American sailors in the
recent Spanish war, ‘Remember the Maine,’ the ethical motive being a
precipitate impulse to seek revenge. An instance like this can not be
explained upon the theory that it represented the actual individual
morality of the sailors participating in the battles, for it was echoed
and apparently endorsed by the press throughout the country and upon
the platform and even in the pulpit. It is hardly conceivable that
an Englishman of noble birth should openly boast of his joy in being
revenged upon an enemy; yet collective England is wild with delight
when ‘Majuba Hill is avenged!’
We are thus led apparently to the theory that, for some reason not
yet evident, under the influence of social excitement, something
takes place in the brain of the individual not unlike the action of
hypnotism, by which the higher centers representing the more recent
moral and mental acquirements of the race are temporarily paralyzed,
reducing the subject in a greater or less degree to the condition of
the child and of the primitive man. The observation of certain physical
phenomena which often accompany mental epidemics tends to confirm
this theory and at the same time to suggest a possible explanation.
Epidemics of the more extreme kind are apt to be accompanied by great
muscular excitability, varying all the way from mere extreme mobility,
such as shouting, jumping and throwing the arms, to convulsions like
those of epilepsy. The dancing manias of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries furnish the best illustrations of this, although these
phenomena did not equal in intensity the frightful physical convulsions
during the religious revivals in Kentucky at the beginning of this
century. The particular character of these muscular movements is
determined by imitation and suggestion. The movements themselves are
no doubt due to congestion and irritation of the motor centers, or
at least to a rapid overflow of nervous discharges at these centers,
an accompaniment of the excessive emotion which attends all mental
epidemics. In such a condition of the nervous system, thought,
reasoning, memory and association can have little place, or, to
express it physiologically, the unusual excitement in the lower
centers of the brain accompanying excessive emotion may not only find
expression in muscular movements, but may also exercise an inhibitory
or paralyzing effect upon the higher centers, resulting in a kind of
hypnotic condition. Neither is it difficult to understand the presence
of this excessive emotion during mental epidemics or during any purely
social movements, when we remember that war itself is the great
original social movement, which even in this age always takes the form
of a mental epidemic called the war spirit. The emotional effect of
the mere physical congregation of a large number of men, the emotion
increasing with the size of the assemblage, is known to all.
As we glance now at a few of the typical mental epidemics of history,
we shall notice the ever-recurring presence of some or all of the
mental and moral traits that I have pointed out. For illustrations
of these phenomena we may turn indifferently to ancient, medieval or
modern history. They abound at every period.
Very good examples may be found in Hecker’s ‘Epidemics of the Middle
Ages.’ In the Crusades, particularly in the Children’s Crusades, we
may observe all the mental, moral and physical peculiarities that
have been mentioned. In the anti-Semitic mania, we see in its history
of criminal horror the dehumanizing effects of the epidemic and the
moral reversion which takes place under the influence of social
excitement. The peculiar physical phenomena which have been referred
to as characterizing epidemic excitement are best illustrated in
the dancing manias of the Middle Ages and in the religious revival.
Although epidemic ‘revivals’ have occurred in all countries, some of
the best illustrations are seen in America in its early history and
to some extent at the present day. At the time of the elder Edwards,
revivals were accompanied by fainting, falling, tremor and numbness.
In the Kentucky revivals the meetings, called camp meetings, were
held in the open air. The interest in them spread in true epidemic
form. At the height of the excitement, as many as 20,000 people, men,
women and children, were gathered in a single camp at one time. Dr.
Davidson, who writes a history of this revival, says that “the laborer
quitted his task, age snatched his crutch, youth forgot his pastime,
the plough was left in the furrow, business of all kinds was suspended,
bold hunters and sober matrons, young men, maidens and little children
flocked to the common center of attraction.” The emotional tension
was very great. A boy perhaps would spring to his feet and begin to
rave, or some over-excited person would utter a piercing shriek, or a
cry of triumph, and this would be the signal for a general hysterical
outbreak, accompanied by many remarkable physical symptoms. Of these
the most common were falling in convulsive spasms, jerking, dancing,
barking like dogs, fainting, crying, singing, praying and cursing.
Sometimes whole companies were seized with uncontrollable laughing
fits, called the holy laugh. At a meeting in East Tennessee, six
hundred began jerking at one time. In many instances sensibility would
be lost and the extremities would be cold, while the face was flushed.
In some places the sufferers were laid out in rows and squares in the
churchyard until they should recover. From a medical point of view we
should call this epidemic chorea, but its more exact physiology I have
already referred to. When closely examined, the phenomena lose a part
at least of their mysterious character. We must remember that religious
emotions are powerful, deep and ancient. The effect, furthermore, is
increased by the general epidemic excitement, by the element of large
and unwonted gatherings of people, by imitation, by the stimulating
music and by the fearfully exciting power of human shrieks and wild
cries and prayers. Such a nervous condition induced in an individual
must have two results: first, the escape of the unusual nervous
excitement in motor channels, giving rise to the choreic movements; and
second, the paralysis of the higher brain centers, resulting in various
hypnotic phenomena and reversionary morality and mentality.
Many of these scenes were repeated in the great revival that swept
New York and the Middle States, beginning in the year 1832. In these
meetings preachers who kept cool and reasoned logically were not
listened to. There was rather a demand for the wild, impetuous,
vociferous, physically impassioned oratory of the rude man. As an
example of reversionary morals in this epidemic, we may notice the fact
mentioned by Albert Rhodes that in response to visions many men put
away their own wives and took others from their neighbors.
From the psychological point of view perhaps the most instructive of
all epidemics is the demonophobia or witchcraft mania which raged from
the end of the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth centuries. The
savage’s fear of demons and of unseen supernatural agencies lurking in
every forest and moor now took hold of the modern world and turned the
people, not into brutes and devils as we figuratively say, but simply
into the original savages from which they came, whose basal instincts
they still carried in their lower nervous centers, to be brought out
under the influence of a social craze. The ecclesiastical authorities,
both Roman and Protestant, led in this homicidal frenzy, while sedate
judges, learned jurors and wise legislators lent their zealous aid. It
spread in true epidemic form all over the Continent and into England
and Scotland, even to America. Distinguished jurists declared that
ordinary methods of trial should not be used for this offence, for so
difficult is it to bring proof of the crime of witchcraft, that out of
a million of witches not one could be convicted if the usual course
of justice were followed. One contemporary of undoubted authority
wrote that he saw a list of three thousand witches that had been
put to death during the time of the Long Parliament alone. In this
reign of demonophobia the psychological phenomena of the craze are
well illustrated. The exciting cause was a widespread contagious and
epidemic fear. The result was a recrudescence of the barbaric instincts
of cruelty, torture and homicide, accompanied by a loss not merely of
reasoning power, but apparently of common sense, so that intelligent
men seemed to believe that old women blasted the crops in the fields
and the offspring of animals, and raised storms and whirlwinds. The
cruelty characteristic of the savage is again noticed in this case.
In the witchcraft persecutions, the victims were commonly weak women,
particularly the more helpless old and young, while the character of
the inflictions was such as is peculiar to primitive people, viz.,
torture and burning alive. The perfidy of the savage is also noticed,
as in innumerable instances the victims were led to believe that they
would be spared if they made a confession, and were then put to death.
To elude a legal requirement that torture should not be repeated, the
most horrible tortures were ‘continued’ from day to day.
The psychology of crazes is clearly seen in certain of its aspects
in the homicidal manias that have swept over communities or whole
countries at frequent intervals in the world’s history. The homicidal
impulse itself is one of the most primitive and basal of all impulses.
The reason for this is apparent. The history of man has been a history
of warfare and of struggle for existence. It has been man against man,
tribe against tribe, nation against nation. Habits like these are not
quickly unlearned, and reversion to them in times of social disturbance
is not strange. In the massacre of St. Bartholomew we have a typical
instance of the homicidal mania. The necessary conditions were, first,
great emotional excitement caused by religious fanaticism acting as
an inhibitory agent upon the higher brain centers and allowing the
primitive impulses to act unchecked; second, the removal of external
and customary restraints, effected in this case by the royal decree;
and third, the mental effects of imitation and suggestion. These
conditions being all supplied, the French people resolved themselves
speedily into assassins and cut-throats, and enjoyed a homicidal
debauch. Begun in Paris, the massacre spread in true epidemic form
throughout France, until fifteen or twenty thousand people had perished.
These homicidal manias have, of course, been very frequent in history.
The decivilizing influence of the craze is, however, most perfectly
illustrated in the various scenes of the French Revolution. Here the
overturning of the social and religious order itself acted in part
as the unsettling and emotionally exciting cause. The usual results
followed. The effect of social excitement in paralyzing the intellect
was shown in this case in the wholesale and useless destruction of
women and children. Furthermore, this reversion to the manners of the
savage carries with it its appropriate mood. The slaughterers are not
like demons, as we imagine demons to be, but rather like thoughtless
children. There is merriment and much gayety, and there is dancing and
singing around the corpses, and seats are arranged for the ladies, who
are eager to enjoy the spectacle; and finally the victims are made to
pass through a double row of executioners, who carve them into pieces
gradually, so that all can saturate themselves with the sight of the
bloodshed.
Although in some cases wars may be coolly planned by the people’s
leaders for personal or political reasons or for purposes of national
conquest, still they all depend for their successful issue upon the
homicidal impulse in the masses of people. This is called the war
spirit and is always of an epidemic character. It may have any degree
of ferocity or mildness. It has a tendency to be periodic, so that
if it has slumbered for a considerable period a very slight cause is
sufficient to awaken it. A mere boundary line in Venezuela, in which
this country had but a remote interest, was sufficient a few years ago
to excite this war spirit in a milder form, when a curious craze for a
war with Great Britain flowed like a wave across this country.
Any war will furnish instructive material to the student of social
psychology. In the late Spanish-American war, for instance, we all
felt the war spirit which flowed in epidemic form across the country
and engulfed it. The first motive of the war, the altruistic desire
to free an oppressed people, was of the ideal glittering kind, well
fitted to excite the emotions of the masses. A dramatic event further
fans this emotional flame, and at once the aggregate personality of
the nation is in a condition of automatism, where primitive instincts,
such as revenge and lust for the paraphernalia of war, are no longer
checked by the more lately acquired moral principles. Congressmen,
editors, members of peace societies, ministers of the gospel, forget
their long and patient efforts to establish means for settling national
differences by arbitration and join lustily in the war cry, and the
psychologically curious spectacle is presented of a great nation,
priding itself as a leader in the world’s morals, giving to the appeal
of a weaker nation for the arbitration of a dispute the answer of
shot and shell. Although the motive of blood for blood is a moral
motive belonging to a bygone age and in individual ethics has long
been outgrown, yet collectively, under the influence of the war craze,
we revert to it, and it is shamelessly proclaimed from platform and
editorial room and vigorously applauded by the people. We have seen
that cruelty and the persecution of the weak by the strong were among
the reversionary symptoms of the social epidemic in many instances.
We may notice curiously enough a trace of these qualities here, where
the fact that our enemy was a greatly inferior power does not detract
in our eyes from the brilliancy of our victories, though in the ethics
of the individual such a circumstance would put us to shame. In all
this we proceed strictly in accordance with international law, but
international law itself is only international custom and is the
mere expression of the wonted behavior of the aggregate personality,
particularly in times of war. As such it does not represent the highest
ethical development of man, but that lower stage of development to
which he reverts in times of social excitement. From this point of view
it is possible to understand why international ethics is so far behind
individual ethics. Personal disputes were once settled by brute force
as international disputes are now settled. There is no reason to doubt
that the latter will, somewhat later in the history of civilization, be
settled by courts of arbitration and enforced by a system of police as
the former now are.
The considerations now before us show the futility of peace congresses
in that part of their work which contemplates the enforced substitution
of arbitration for war. Peace congresses are not social movements. They
spring from the efforts of individual men, leaders in social reform.
They belong to the upward ethical movements led by individuals, the
slow, painful climbing towards higher moral and intellectual standards.
These congresses may meet and discuss arbitration and perfect an
international program, but they labor in vain, for they forget that
social man has a double personality and that the personality that meets
and deliberates in the peace congress is not the personality that,
under the influence of the war craze, thrills with emotion and acts
from ancient and deep rooted impulses and motives. When the war spirit
sweeps over a country the social personality passes into a condition
not unlike that of hypnosis and is ruled by a different set of moral
principles. It should not be understood from this that peace congresses
are useless. They are a part of an educative system whose influence
in the end will be strong enough to react upon the secondary social
personality and determine its behavior.
Among crazes of a different kind, we may notice financial crazes as
an interesting type, falling under the same laws as those mentioned.
Both in panics and in speculative manias we observe again a species
of hypnotization. In the case of the latter the ordinary business
shrewdness which characterizes the dealings of the individual in a
normal state and which depends upon the activity of late developed
association tracts in the brain, is to a large extent lost. The memory
is impaired and what in general we may call prudence is lacking.
The psychology of the speculative mania is very simple. There is first,
greed, furnishing the necessary emotional excitement; then imitation;
then precipitate, unreasoning action. In the panic, the psychological
sequence is the same, except that fear takes the place of greed. The
stampede among animals may be taken as the type of all panics. It is a
reflex phenomenon consisting merely of contagious fear and precipitate,
unintelligent flight. Fear and flight constitute a most primitive form
of mental action, equalled in primitive character only by that other
form whose survival we have seen illustrated in wars and homicidal
manias, viz., anger and combat. Although the individual has long
outgrown these simple reflexes, yet in social excitement he reverts to
them. The recrudescence of the first of these two forms is seen in the
case of panics in theatres and burning buildings, where social fear is
followed by unintelligent flight, there being a temporary paralysis
of reason, prudence, the power of choosing means to ends, respect for
women and consideration for the weak and feeble.
The limits of this paper permit me only to refer to other forms of the
craze illustrating the same laws. In fads and fashions of all kinds,
the behavior of the social personality is different only in degree
from that already described in the more serious epidemics. The law
of imitation is the same, but there is less excitement and emotional
disturbance and consequently a lesser paralysis of the higher mental
faculties and a lesser return to barbaric impulses. Whereas the others
may be called forms of social paranoia, these may be called forms of
social monomania. A single idea fills the public mind, and as a result
this idea is unduly exalted as to its importance and worth. The higher
mental powers are paralyzed only so far as that there is a perverted
judgment as to the relative importance of things and consequently
a more or less distorted view of the world and its values. Perhaps
the simplest form of this craze is seen in the epidemic character of
children’s games. At different times of the season different games
completely fill the social consciousness of the child-world, so
that for the moment there is no interest in any other game. New and
interesting sports, such, for instance, as golf, often fill the social
adult consciousness in the same way. Then there are social and literary
fads, crazes in musical airs, fashions in dress, furniture, houses and
carriages, without number. Crazes of all kinds have found a prolific
soil in America. The American mind is highly suggestible. One fad after
another rages over the country and in some cases reduces the aggregate
mind to a condition of idiocy. The Dewey craze in New York City last
year is an illustration of this. Nothing but a sort of hypnotic
distortion of intellectual vision could cause grown men to stand in
line for an hour in order that they might sit for an instant in the
chair in which the hero sat during the review, or to fight for shreds
of the flags and awnings that decorated the platform.
Sporadic social reform movements take the form of crazes and
illustrate the same laws. One recalls the Woman’s Crusade in 1873,
the result not of a rational plan but of imitation, and the Granger
movement and the Farmers’ Alliance and the greenback craze and the
silver craze and many others.