especially dangerous? The whole American atmosphere is filled with
erotic thought to a degree which has been unknown throughout the
history of the republic. The newspapers are filled with intra- and
extra-matrimonial scandals, the playhouses commercialize the sexual
instinct in lurid melodramas, sex problems are the centre of public
discussion, all the old barriers which the traditional policy of
silence had erected are being broken down, the whole nation is
gossiping about erotics. In such inflammable surroundings where the
sparks of the dance are recklessly kindled, the danger is imminent. If
a nation focuses its attention on sensuality, its virile energy must
naturally suffer. There is a well-known antagonism between sex and
sport. Perhaps the very best which may be said about sport is that it
keeps boyhood away from the swamps of sexuality. The dance keeps
boyhood away from the martial field of athletics.

The dance has still another psychological effect which must not be
disregarded from a social point of view. It awakes to an unusual
degree the impulse to imitation. The seeing of rhythmic movements
starts similar motor impulses in the mind of the onlooker. It is well
known that from the eleventh to the sixteenth century Europe suffered
from dancing epidemics. They started from pathological cases of St.
Vitus' dance and released in the excitable crowds cramplike impulses
to imitative movements. But we hear the same story of instinctive
imitations on occasions of less tragic character. It is reported that
in the eighteenth century papal Rome was indignant over the passionate
Spanish fandango. It was decided solemnly to put this wild dance under
the ban. The lights of the church were assembled for the formal
judgment, when it was proposed to call a pair of Spanish dancers in
order that every one of the priests might form his own idea of the
unholy dance. But history tells that the effect was an unexpected one.
After a short time of fandango demonstration the high clerics began
involuntarily to imitate the movements, and the more passionately the
Spaniards indulged in their native whirl, the more the whole court was
transformed into one great dancing party. Even the Italian tarantella
probably began as a disease with nervous dancing movements, and then
spread over the land through mere imitation which led to an ecstatic
turning around and around. Whoever studies the adventures of American
dancing during the last seas