290 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 illus- 

 trated. 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 disturb- 

 ance 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 allow- 

 ing 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 them- 

 selves 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 per- 

 fectly 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 fol- 



