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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



epidemic in many instances. We may notice curiously enough a trace 

 of these qualities here, where the fact that our enemy was a greatly 

 inferior power does not detract in our eyes from the brilliancy of our 

 victories, though in the ethics of the individual such a circumstance 

 would put us to shame. In all this we proceed strictly in accordance 

 with international law, but international law itself is only international 

 custom and is the mere expression of the wonted behavior of the aggre- 

 gate personality, particularly in times of war. As such it does not 

 represent the highest ethical development of man, but that lower stage 

 of development to which he reverts in times of social excitement. From 

 this point of view it is possible to understand why international ethics 

 is so far behind individual ethics. Personal disputes were once settled 

 by brute force as international disputes are now settled. There is no 

 reason to doubt that the latter will, somewhat later in the history of 

 civilization, be settled by courts of arbitration and enforced by a 

 system of police as the former now are. 



The considerations now before us show the futility of peace con- 

 gresses in that part of their work which contemplates the enforced 

 substitution of arbitration for war. Peace congresses are not social 

 movements. They spring from the efforts of individual men, leaders 

 in social reform. They belong to the upward ethical movements led 

 by individuals, the slow, painful climbing towards higher moral and 

 intellectual standards. These congresses may meet and discuss arbi- 

 tration and perfect an international program, but they labor in vain, for 

 they forget that social man has a double personality and that the per- 

 sonality that meets and deliberates in the peace congress is not the 

 personality that, under the influence of the war craze, thrills with 

 emotion and acts from ancient and deep rooted impulses and motives. 

 When the war spirit sweeps over a country the social personality passes 

 into a condition not unlike that of hypnosis and is ruled by a different 

 set of moral principles. It should not be understood from this that 

 peace congresses are useless. They are a part of an educative system 

 whose influence in the end will be strong enough to react upon the 

 secondary social personality and determine its behavior. 



Among crazes of a different kind, we may notice financial crazes 

 as an interesting type, falling under the same laws as those mentioned. 

 Both in panics and in speculative manias we observe again a species of 

 hypnotization. In the case of the latter the ordinary business shrewdness 

 which characterizes the dealings of the individual in a normal state 

 and which depends upon the activity of late developed association tracts 

 in the brain, is to a large extent lost. The memory is impaired and 

 what in general we may call prudence is lacking. 



The psychology of the speculative mania is very simple. There is 

 first, greed, furnishing the necessary emotional excitement; then imita- 



