reat epidemics of disease, whole peoples have been dominated by fear
or frenzied by superstitious dread, so that whole villages and cities
became literally "mad-houses," and were often depopulated.

Read the story of "Peter, the Hermit," and "The Crusades," the "Black
Death," the "Great Plague" that swept over Europe in the Thirteenth
century; or that of the "Flagellants," and the "Dancing Mania," where
whole villages became "Dancing Dervishes," samples of which may
occasionally be found to-day in the cities of America, the "Yogis" that
are "Buddhas" or "Christs" in New York, and the Dowies that were "Elijahs"
in Chicago, the Genius of Point Loma, Obispo, Santa Rosa, "Oahspe,"
"Solar-Biology," and again, _et hoc genus omne_! Verily! "there is nothing
new under the sun."

Contrast these individuals with an individual of sound mind, good
judgment, and a well-ordered life, and see how and where and why the wreck
inevitably follows.

The pressure outside changes continually, and these things spread and grow
like all contagions. Nature at times seems wrathful and destructive, and
there are, no doubt, deep-seated conditions and changes in the magnetism
of the earth and air, not yet comprehended by modern science.

In stamping out contagious and epidemic disease, simple cleanliness has
been like a revelation from the gods, and modern surgery has only stopped
short of the miraculous.

Society is but the aggregation of individuals, and on the one principle of
_Self-Control_ every individual is related to the negative or the positive
side of psychical and physical epidemics.

There is scarcely an avenue along these lines that has not been more or
less explored by modern science.

That knowledge is still incomplete; that mistakes have been made; that
matters have been contemptuously set aside, belittled, or declared to be
not worth investigation, was to have been expected. But the progress has
been immense, and the light shines on many obscure and difficult problems,
where before was the utter darkness of superstition and fear, dirt,
degradation, and death.

These phenomena manifest on the physical plane, disturb the social state,
and the relations of individuals to each other. They concern the
environment of man in a world of matter, sense, and time.

But the Individual Intelligence, which is Man, lives also in another
world, related to, but within, around, and beyond the physical.

Man senses or feels it as anterior t