Lately Sikórski, a professor of psychiatry, described in the _Kíev
University Record_ the psychopathic epidemic, as he calls it, of
the Malévannians, as manifested in a few villages of Vasilkóv
County of the Government of Kíev. The essence of this epidemic,
as Mr. Sikórski, the investigator of it, says, consisted in this,
that certain persons of these villages, under the influence of
their leader, by the name of Malévanny, came to imagine that the
end of the world was at hand, and so, changing their whole mode
of life, began to distribute their property, to dress up, and to
eat savoury food, and stopped working. The professor found the
condition of these men to be abnormal. He says: "Their unusual good
nature frequently passed into exaltation, a joyous condition, which
was devoid of external motives. They were sentimentally disposed:
excessively polite, talkative, mobile, with tears of joy appearing
easily and just as easily disappearing. They sold their necessaries,
in order to provide themselves with umbrellas, silk kerchiefs, and
similar objects, and at that the kerchiefs served them only as
ornaments for their toilet. They ate many sweet things. They were
always in a cheerful mood, and they led an idle life,--visited one
another, walked together.... When the obviously absurd character of
their refusal to work was pointed out to them, one every time heard
in reply the stereotyped phrase, 'If I want to, I shall work, and if
I do not want to, why should I compel myself?'"
The learned professor considers the condition of these men a
pronounced case of a psychopathic epidemic, and, advising the
government to take certain measures against its spread, ends his
communication with the words: "Malévannism is the wail of a morbidly
sick population and a supplication to be freed from liquor and to
have education and sanitary conditions improved."
But if Malévannism is the wail of a morbidly sick population and
a supplication to be freed from liquor and from harmful social
conditions, then this new disease, which has appeared in Paris
and has with alarming rapidity embraced a great part of the
city population of France and almost the whole of governmental
and cultured Russia, is just such an alarming wail of a morbid
population and just such a supplication to be freed from liquor and
from false social conditions.
And if we must admit that the psychopathic suffering of Malévannism
is dangerous, and that the government has done well to follow
the professor's advice and remove the leaders of Malévannism by
confining some of them in lunatic asylums and monasteries and by
deporting others to distant places, how much more dangerous must be
considered to be this new epidemic, which appeared in Toulon and
Paris and from there spread over the whole of France and of Russia,
and how much more necessary it is, if not for the government, at
least for society, to take decisive measures against the spread of
such epidemics!
The resemblance between the diseases is complete. There is the same
good nature, passing into causeless and joyful exaltation, the
same sentimentality, excessive politeness, talkativeness, the same
constant tears of meekness of spirit, which come and go without
cause, the same festive mood, the same walking for pleasure and
visiting one another, the same dressing up in the best clothes, the
same proneness for sweet food, the same senseless talks, the same
idleness, the same singing and music, the same leadership of the
women, and the same clownish phase of _attitudes passionelles_,
which Mr. Sikórski has noticed in the case of the Malévannians;
that is, as I understand this word, those different, unnatural
poses, which men assume during solemn meetings, receptions, and
after-dinner speeches.
The resemblance is complete. The only difference is this,--and the
difference is very great for the society in which these phenomena
are taking place,--that there it is the aberration of a few dozen
peaceful, poor village people, who live on their small means and,
therefore, cannot exert any violence on their neighbours, and who
infect others only by the personal and oral transmission of their
mood, while here it is the aberration of millions of people, who
possess enormous sums of money and means for exerting violence
against other people,--guns, bayonets, fortresses, ironclads,
melinite, dynamite, and who, besides, have at their command the
most energetic means for the dissemination of their madness, the
post, the telegraph, an enormous number of newspapers, and all kinds
of publications, which are printed without cessation and carry
the infection to all the corners of the globe. There is also this
difference, that the first not only do not get themselves drunk,
but even do not use any intoxicating liquor, while the second are
constantly in a state of semi-intoxication, which they never stop
maintaining in themselves. And so for a society in which these
phenomena are taking place, there is the same difference between
the Kíev epidemic, during which, according to Mr. Sikórski's
information, it does not appear that they commit any violence or
murders, and the one which made its appearance in Paris, where in
one procession twenty women were crushed to death, as there is
between a piece of coal, which has leaped out of the stove and
is glowing on the floor without igniting it, and a fire which is
already enveloping the door and walls of the house. In the worst
case the consequences of the Kíev epidemic will consist in this,
that the peasants of one millionth part of Russia will spend what
they have earned by hard labour, and will be unable to pay the
Crown taxes; but the consequences from the Toulon-Paris epidemic,
which is embracing men who are in possession of a terrible power,
of vast sums of money, and of implements of violence and of the
dissemination of their madness, can and must be terrible.