Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt:... CHAPTER VIII THE LAWS OF CONVENTIONALITY IMITATION The primary generalization it is safe to make regarding conventionality imitation is: -- Mental states differ in ease of propagation. Motor impulses appear to diffuse themselves with great Bodily facility. Instance the Flagellants who, in 1260, appeared TMTMTMents in Italy and thence spread over Europe. Processions of readily penitents stripped to the waist and scourging themselves with leather thongs appeared in the streets of cities. Their The example worked so contagiously upon the minds of curious Fla8ellants spectators that great numbers joined the brotherhood of the Flagellants and swelled the processions. Women and children, always the most suggestible elements, formed groups of their own for public self-flagellation. In Spires two hundred boys under twelve united for this purpose. When at last the Pope prohibited such exhibitions and ordered penitents to scourge themselves only in private, the practice, no longer supported by the reciprocal suggestion of example, died away in less than six months. About the year 1370 the dancing mania spread through The dancing European cities, and here again the example of the dancers mania worked suggestively until the bystanders, no longer able to resist the infection, threw aside their garments and joined the wild revel. About 1740 in Welsh revivals religious frenzy in some The persons happened to assume the form of jumping. Their JuTMPers example infected onlookers, and finally jumping became in that district the characteristic expression of religious ecstasy.1 Similarly the hysterical laughter of penitents in the great Kentucky revival of 17 99-1800 gave to religious emotion a specific vent that worked contagiously until the "Holy...