660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



These peripatetic assemblages moved in a direct line, and could only 

 be stopped by putting obstructions in their way which were too high 

 to be leaped over. From the violence of their' exercise some were per- 

 manently injured, though many of them had been strong, athletic me- 

 chanics and peasants who had left their workshops and fields ; while 

 others continued with them for a short period, and then returned to 

 their usual occupations as if nothing special had happened. 



In Italy the dancing mania originated in the spasmodic action of a 

 person who believed himself to have been bitten by a tarantula, or 

 venomous spider, and his singular dancing movements being seen and 

 extensively reported, every one who found a little speck or injury upon 

 his body began to imagine that he also had been bitten, and conse- 

 quently to imitate the actions of the original nervous victim. The 

 army of imitators daily increased, and their apparent malady could 

 only be relieved by music, mostly of a lively kind, which aided them 

 to " dance out the attack " ; it was for this purpose that the gay music 

 now known as the Tarentella was invented, which has finally become a 

 form of national music in Italy. Toward the waning of this mania, 

 many of the poorer class, especially women, would seize upon the op- 

 portunity, whenever this music was heard in the streets, of joining 

 the throng of dancers, so that the season for the appearance of the 

 players early summer came at last to be called the " Women's Little 

 Carnival." 



A still more curious and offensive form of imitative mania, com- 

 bined with imposture, was that of the various armies of Flagellants 

 who marched through Germany and other parts of Europe ; in this 

 case the singular movement was led by designing persons who desired 

 to undermine the power of the priesthood and to turn their dethrone- 

 ment to their own profit ; but the mass of followers had no idea of the 

 aim and object of the movement, viewing it, so far as they had any 

 reason, as an act of acceptable penance : the great majority, as usual, 

 uniting with the body simply through the irrepressible instinct of imi- 

 tation to do as others were doing, just as we have seen young people 

 following one another up to the altar to be prayed for during a so- 

 called revival of religion not one in a score of whom would have ven- 

 tured to be the first. Even the recent mania of suddenly " lifting " 

 church debts by the high-pressure method of inciting the instinct of 

 imitation and emulation in the mode of subscribing, was very saga- 

 ciously based upon this well-recognized principle that the foolish many 

 will always try to do what the leaders of society initiate, often with as 

 little reason as a herd of quadrupeds. The " walking " mania is a still 

 later example of the irresistible fascination of doing what others are 

 doing. 



But it is not always in masses that the powerful instinct of imita- 

 tion shows itself. In nothing is it more common than in the form 

 which suicides adopt and suicide is naturally enacted d la solitaire. 



