146-7.

[163] _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals._

CHAPTER EIGHT

RELIGIOUS EPIDEMICS

Under pressure of scientific analysis the old distinction between the
individual and society bids fair to break down, or to maintain itself as
no more than a convenience of classification. It is now being recognised
that a society is something more than a mere aggregate of self-contained
units, and that the individual is quite inexplicable apart from the
social group. It is the latter which gives the former his individuality.
His earliest impressions are derived from the life of the group, and as
he grows so he comes more and more under the influence of social forces.
The consequence is that the key to a very large part of the phenomena of
human nature is to be found in a study of group life. We may abstract
the individual for purposes of examination, much as a physiologist may
study the heart or the liver apart from the body from which it has been
taken. But ultimately it is in relation to the whole that the true
significance and value of the part is to be discerned.

In this corporate life imitation and suggestion play a powerful part.
With children, by far the larger part of their education consists of
sheer imitation, nor do adults ever develop beyond its influence.
Suggestion is a factor that is more operative in youth and maturity than
in early childhood, and is exhibited in a thousand and one subtle and
unexpected ways. Both these forces are essential to an orderly, and to a
progressive, social life; but they may just as easily become the cause
of movements that are retrogressive, and even anti-social in character.
An epidemic of suicide or of murder is as easily initiated as an
epidemic of philanthropy. Let a person commit suicide in a striking and
unusual manner, and there will soon be others following his example.
Given a favourable environment, there is no idea, however unreal, that
will not find advocates; no example, however strange or disgusting, that
will not find imitators. The more uniform the society, the more powerful
the suggestion, the easier the imitation. That is why a crowd, acting as
a crowd, is nearly always made up of people drawn from the same social
stratum, each unit already familiar with certain ideals and belief.
Under such conditions a crowd will assume all the characteristics of a
psychological entity. As Gustave Le Bon has pointed out, a crowd will do
collectively what none of its