Page:Psychology and preaching.djvu/303

 MENTAL EPIDEMICS 285

arating these various groups are more numerous, but they are not so high nor so thick, and they are pierced by many more gates through which ideas and emotions may be more readily communicated than through the less numerous but thicker, higher and more unbroken walls that separated the larger divisions of a caste system. In a rigidly stratified, static, traditional, custom-ruled society the common emotion spread only within the limits of the caste, and assumed a greater intensity because within those impassable bounds there was so little mental differentiation. The mental epi demic could propagate itself in but one direction, but in that one direction gathered greater force. But the substitution of &quot; open classes &quot; for the caste system has profoundly changed the situation and, therefore, collective emotions dif fuse themselves more readily.

In the third place, we should expect these epidemics to be much reduced in intensity in the modern world. The chasms between classes are not so broad as they once were and emotions spread across them more easily ; but they nev ertheless constitute serious obstructions to the spread of social emotion. The lines of mental cleavage between occu pations by no means form impassable barriers, but they are of sufficient importance to check the communication of mental states and prevent in some measure like responses to the same stimuli. For instance, the same situation is likely to call forth a different reaction in the minds of lawyers, merchants, labourers and preachers, unless it be so powerful an appeal to the fundamental instincts as to upset in large measure the intellectual processes. The higher individual- ization of men is not conducive to the unhindered sweep of a common feeling.

Still another condition tends to lower the intensity of mental epidemics. The average man today has many inter ests, corresponding to the many relations in which he stands to his fellow men ; and every one of these interests and rela tions claims a part of his attention, time and energy. In this respect his situation is in contrast with that of the aver-

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