6i 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ON MOKAL CONTAGION". 



By De. DESPINE. 



IN his short pamphlet of twenty-four pages, the writer treats of a 

 matter observed by all who read the newspapers we mean the 

 fact that crimes, particularly those of a graver description, generally 

 occur in epidemics. To prove this point, Dr. Despine, in the first di- 

 vision of his paper, records a large number of murders, suicides, rob- 

 beries, etc. ; on these it is not necessary to dwell, but we shall pass on 

 to his second division the law which regulates Moral Contagion. The 

 following is what is said on this matter : 



Moral contagion, being a natural phenomenon, is consequently one 

 of the laws to which God has subjected all created things. We suc- 

 ceed in the discovery of this law by analyzing moral facts and by 

 studying the circumstances in which they occur, in the same manner 

 as we succeed in discovering the laws which preside over the phenomena 

 of the physical and organic worlds, by studying perseveringly the facts 

 appertaining thereto as well as the conditions in which they are pro- 

 duced. Now, the conclusion to be drawn from the facts which we 

 have related is forcibly this, which will represent the law that has 

 directed the commission of these acts : Every manifestation of the in- 

 stincts of the mind, of the sentiments and fiassions of every kind, ex- 

 cites similar sentiments and passio7is in individuals who are capable 

 of feeling them in a certain intensity. This law explains how a certain 

 act infects some and not others. One could not better compare man's 

 moral nature than to a sounding-board {table d^harmonie). The sound- 

 ing of one note causes vibrations in the same note in all the boards 

 which, being susceptible of emitting it, are influenced by the sound 

 emitted. In the same way, the manifestation of a sentiment, of a 

 passion, excites the same instinctive element in every individual sus- 

 ceptible, by his moral constitution, of feeling more or less acutely this 

 same instinctive element. 



If this law acts beneficially in affording ns the means of putting 

 into activity, of exciting and strengthening by good example, the 

 higher sentiments of man, it also becomes a source of evil in causing 

 moral perversion by the influence of bad example, by the recounting 

 of criminally immoral acts, which vivify, incite, strengthen the evil 

 instincts, sentiments, passions, of the man whose natural morale is 

 already below par. It is necessary, therefore, to take this law into 

 serious consideration in order that it may operate as much as possible 

 for good, and remove as far as possible those circumstances which tend 

 to make it the source of evil. And these latter circumstances occur 

 too frequently in our day, by the relation of hideous crimes with which 



