THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CRAZES. 287 



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 re- 

 venge. 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 cen- 

 turies 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 accompani- 

 ment of the excessive emotion which attends all mental epidemics. In 

 such a condition of the nervous system, thought, reasoning, memory and 



