Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/287

 MENTAL EPIDEMICS 269

group may be an important part of the process ; and personal contacts in the ordinary affairs of life are also included in it. Travellers moving from place to place are important chan nels through which ideas and emotions are spread abroad. In present-day society, books, magazines and especially news papers play a very great part in generalizing ideas and bring ing all the minds in a group to a common state of feeling.

While these two processes are both always present and effective in bringing about mental unity in a group, it is not easy in many cases to determine their relative importance ; though sometimes it is possible to say with certainty that the one or the. other is the predominant factor. For instance, in the common terror inspired by an earthquake shock we are sure that the chief cause is the like response to the same stimulus, though communication of feeling from one to an other is by no means an inconsiderable factor. On the other hand, enthusiasm for a political candidate is likely to be mainly a matter of communication, and yet if the candidate is a well-known man of striking personality the other factor may be the chief one. In the spread of an emotion by read ing the same books and periodicals it might at first appear that a like response to the same stimulus is the sole explana tion, but a closer consideration will show that the other process is going on here also. The emotions of the one who is setting forth the ideas or relating the events are in tensified by the mental image, however vague it may be, of the multitudes whom he is addressing in this indirect way. In fact the multitudes are, in image, present to his con sciousness. Likewise the reader s emotions are intensified by the more or less vague consciousness of the multitudes of other readers whose feelings are also being stirred. Com munication of emotion takes place here, too. It is an ideal communication but is none the less real. In studying the mental epidemic, it is well to bear in mind that each process plays a more or less important part in it, and their rela tive importance may have considerable significance in its proper interpretation.

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