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 MENTAL EPIDEMICS 277

the sway of a counter suggestion and become the foolish destroyer of its own deliverers. Thus Jesus suffered, and many another who has followed him in devotion to the in terests of the people.

The truth is that a great enthusiasm of any kind, whatever its ethical import, spreads along the line of least resistance, and the line of least resistance runs through the highly sug gestible minds of the populace. Along the high road of pop ular suggestibility have travelled all the moralizing and all the demoralizing enthusiasms that have blessed or blasted humanity.

4. The prevalence among a population of a certain con stitutional disposition may have much to do with their sug gestibility. In general the races bred in northern latitudes will be less volatile, more inhibitive and therefore less sug gestible than races bred in southern climes. The severity of the climate drove the former into the seclusion of the home, compelled them to practise a more careful foresight and a firmer self-control. This cause operating through many generations tended to fix these traits as racial characteris tics. These temperamental differences do not imply that the people of northern races have less feeling, in the sense of less conscious realization of the meaning of their experi ences, but they manifest their feelings less quickly and readily in outward action; their inhibitive powers are more highly developed. Of course, such a statement does not by any means hold good of all the individuals of the races compared ; but means simply that a larger proportion of individuals of a certain temperament are found in a race developed in one environment than in that developed in an other; that the conditions of life are more favourable to the &quot;survival&quot; of a given temperamental type, which thus be comes dominant through the process of natural selection, and influences the whole population by the law of imitation. Contrast, for instance, the English and the Latin types, the German and the Celtic. Or set the present social develop ment of Russia over against the history of France in the

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