Boris Sidis

“ Men, women, children fell fits of hysterics. Business men left their occupations, workmen their trades, and devoted themselves to prayer and penitence. The synagogues resounded with sighs, cries, and sobs for days and nights together. The religious mania became so furious that all the rabbis who opposed it had to save their lives by flight. Among the Persian Jews the excitement ran so high that all the Jewish husbandmen refused to labor in the fields. Even Christians regarded Sabbathai with awe, for this event took place in the apocalyptic year. ”

“ Now, this susceptibility is nothing but what we, in relation to man, call suggestibility, which consists in the impressing on the mind of an idea, image, movement, which the person reproduces voluntarily or involuntarily. Suggestibility, then, is natural to man as a social animal. Under certain conditions this suggestibility, which is always present in man, may increase to an extraordinary degree, and the result is a stampede, a mob, an epidemic. ”

“ Men went mad in packs, by the thousands. An obscure individual in some remote country place had fits of hysterics, and soon all Europe was wriggling and struggling in convulsions of hysterical insanity. The dark ages were strange, peculiar―so, at least, do they appear to us, who consider ourselves vastly superior to the poor ignorant medieval peasant, burgher, knight, with their superstitious, religious fervor, and recurrent epidemic insanities. I am afraid, however, that a similar fate may overtake us. May not a future historian look to our own times with dismay, and perhaps with horror? ”

“ Susceptibility to the movements of his companions by passing through the same processes is the only way by which the social brute tan become aware of the emotions that agitate his comrades. Susceptibility is the cement of the herd, the very soul of the primitive social group. ”

“ Man carries with him the germ of the possible mob, of the epidemic. As a social being he is naturally suggestible; but when this susceptibility to suggestion becomes under certain conditions abnormally intense, we may say that he is thrown into a hypnotic state. We know that a limitation of voluntary movement induces light hypnosis, which is characterized by inhibition of the will; the memory is unaffected; self-consciousness remains intact, and the subject is perfectly aware of all that goes on: a loss of voluntary movements is one of its chief phenomena. ”

“ Turning now to the American, who somewhat resembles the Hebrew both in business ability and religiousness, we find social suggestion working in him on a larger and grander scale. The American is highly suggestible, and the short history of his national existence is full of instructive cases of mental epidemics. A few instances will, perhaps, suffice for our purpose. At the beginning of the present century a mania of religious revival swept over the continent of northern America, and reached its acme in the camp meetings of the "Kentucky revivals." ”

“ A herd of sheep stand packed close together, looking stupidly into space; frighten them, and if one begins to run, frantic with terror, the rest are sure to follow, and a stampede ensues, each sheep scrupulously reproducing the identical movements of the one in front of it. ”

“ Leaving the fields and towns, agricultural serfs and petty traders displayed intense eagerness to reach the Holy City. If a rational individual interfered with a word of warning, their only answer was the suggestion of the pope: "He that does not follow me is unworthy of me." Heinrich von Sybel, in speaking of the first crusade, tells us that "we can hardly understand such a state of mind. It was much as if a large army were now to embark in balloons in order to conquer an island between the earth and the moon, which was also expected tic contain the paradise. ”

“ The medieval man was in a state of light hypnosis. This was induced in him by the great limitation of his voluntary movements, by the inhibition of his will, by the social pressure that was exerted on him by the great weight of authority to which his life was subjected. The life of the medieval man was regulated down to its least detail. The order, the guild, the commune, the church, had minute regulations for all exigencies of life. Nothing was left to individual enterprise. Even love had its rules: there were laws governing love-making, anti the treatment by a man of the lady of his heart. ”

“ The fear of Christ fell on people noble and ignoble, old and young; and even children of five marched through the streets with no covering but a scarf around the waist. All carried a scourge of leathern thongs, which they applied to their bodies, amid sighs and tears, with such violence that blood flowed from the wounds. ”

“ The flagellant epidemic spread into Germany, and penetrated even into Poland. As it was slowly dying out, there arose another terrible epidemic, the "black death" with its horrible persecutions of the Jews. No sooner was the black death over than another epidemic, the dancing-mania began to spread. In the year 1374, at Aix-la-Chapelle, men and women began suddenly to dance in public, on the streets and in the churches. In wild delirium, and for hours together, they continued dancing, until they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. ”

“ At that moment some one fell to the ground in convulsions, and soon the whole mob was struggling, wriggling, writhing, and "jerking." In some camp-meetings the religious mob took to dancing, and at last to barking like dogs. Men, women, and children assumed the posture of dogs, moving on all fours, growling, snapping the teeth, and barking. ”

“ Swarms of men of different races, with their wives and daughters, with infants taken from the cradle, and grandsires on the verge of the grave, and many sick and dying, came from every direction, all of them ready led to the conquest of the Holy Land. Peter the Hermit, Walter the Penniless, and Gottschalk, became the heroes, the ringleaders of the mobs, which were cut to pieces before they reached Palestine. Then followed an army led by pilgrim princes, who succeeded in conquering the Holy Land, and founded there a Christian kingdom ”

“ Many sold out their houses and all they possessed, and set out for Palestine. So great number of pilgrims that the price of passage was considerably raised. Traffic in the greatest commercial centers came to a complete standstill; most of the Jewish merchants and bankers liquidated their affairs. The belief in the divine mission of Sabbathai was made into a religious dogma of equal rank with that of the unity of God. Even when Sabbathai was compelled by the Sultan to accept Mohammedanism, the mystico-Messianic epidemic continued to rage with unabated fury. ”

“ One thing stands out clear and distinct before the student of Social Psychology, and that is the extreme suggestibility of gregarious man. Man is a suggestible animal par excellence.
Boris Sidis ↑ In my experiments in suggestion made in the psychological laboratory of Harvard College, I found that when the attention, in perfectly normal people, was concentrated on one point for some time, say twenty seconds, commands suddenly given at the end of that time were very often immediately carried out by the subject. Concentration of attention on one point is highly favorable to suggestibility. ”

“ It would take volumes to recount all the mental epidemics religious manias, political plagues, speculative insanities, financial crazes and economical panics from which society in general and democracy in particular continually suffer. ”

“ The sentinel posted by wasps becomes agitated at the sight of danger, and flies into the interior of the nest, buzzing violently; other wasps raise a buzzing, and are thus put into the same state of emotion which the sentinel experiences: they become uneasy, angry, aggressive. ”

“ In looking hack to the medieval ages, we find them to be times in which abnormal social phenomena were displayed on a grand scale―times teeming with mobs, riots, revolts; with blind movements of vast human masses ”