Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/143

 INFLUENCE OF THE FORM OF SOCIAL CHANGE 1 29

inadequate and impossible on the lower plane. With the Malays it was entirely different. In their case the emotional conscious- ness that was developed had no ultimate significance. By being unable to make readjustments, they developed a useless emotion- alism. The Malays stand for a type of emotionalism in which there is permanent failure to effect readjustments, and conse- quently to turn the attention again into overt channels.

There are periods, however, to be found in which such an emotionalism gradually passes away and the normal mental balance is restored. There are many mental characteristics of the centuries immediately preceding and following the beginning of the Christian era that become most intelligible when we con- sider them in the light of the social changes that were then going on. There is certainly abundant proof that these times had many emotional tendencies. Sports of the most exciting charac- ter flourished as never before nor since. A peculiar religious enthusiasm prevailed, involving the formation of many new sects, the origin and spread through the Mediterranean countries of a great religion, and the development of a type of mind that found expression in trances, asceticism, visions, etc., all essentially the phenomena of emotionalism. The question is whether these phenomena can be interpreted in the light of any strong sub- jective tendencies of the people of those times.

The hosts of vagarious religious sects that sprang up at the time of the Roman empire are evidence of such subjectivity. "Almost every variety of charlatanism and of belief displayed itself unchecked and boasted its train of proselytes." x The attitude of mind underlying these phenomena had begun to develop sev- eral centuries before. The first evidence of it had been in the rise of the mysteries and similar sects in Greece and other of the eastern countries. Such organizations marked a certain disinte- gration in the power of the primitive religions. They seemed to be attempts to realize values to which the old religions had failed to give the key. They were reconstructions of certain elements in the previous experience of the adherents to effect ends that they realized the more vividly because of the failure 1 LECKY, History of European Morals, Vol. I, p. 235.