236 MOKAL CAUSES OF 



Nicaragua, ' in their confusion would bound right into the 

 midst of the main body of ants ' (Belt). 



Fear is extremely liable to become epidemic in the form 

 of panic, as is illustrated by the stampedes of horses, cattle, 

 sheep, buffaloes, and other animals. And here once more we 

 have a vivid or morbid imagination at work, either exag- 

 gerating actual danger, or creating ideas of danger where no 

 real risk exists. In such cases the dread is suddenly deve- 

 loped simultaneously perhaps in a large number of indi- 

 viduals massed together ; or it arises in one individual, and 

 is rapidly communicated to others by sympathy and imitation. 

 In different individuals of the same species, under even the 

 same circumstances and still more in different species and 

 genera the resultant phenomena include 



1. Equal paralysis of thought and action. 



2. Utter indifference to, or forgetfulness of, consequences. 



3. An absence of the usual precautions against danger ; 

 or 



4. Loss of all power of co-operation with man in his 

 efforts for their safety. 



In addition to the conjunct operation of fear, sympathy, 

 and imitation, we have in panics the influence, to a certain 

 extent, of mental shock, of sudden fright, an influence which 

 will be considered in a separate section of the present chap- 

 ter. This fright is probably the original or exciting cause in 

 the first animal affected. But the terror produced in it so 

 rapidly communicates itself to other members of a flock or 

 herd to the number sometimes of hundreds of individuals 

 that it appears to bystanders as if the whole body of animals 

 were simultaneously affected. 1 



Morbid fears, as well as dislikes, accompany various bodily 

 diseases (Pierquin) ; and these unnatural fears always tend, 

 where they are of long continuance, to pass into what in 

 man are called delusions of fear or suspicion. 



The influence of fright is so powerful and so well known, 

 that veterinarians have proposed it as a mode of artificially 

 and experimentally treating epilepsy in the sheep (Youatt). 



1 Compare what I have said on 'Mental Epidemics among the Lower 

 Animals ' in the Jownal of Mental Science (1872). 



