Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/34

 The resemblance is complete. The only difference—and it is a vast difference for the society in which these phenomena take place—is that in the one case it is the aberration of a few dozens of poor peaceful villagers, who live on their own small means, and so can exercise no force upon their neighbours, and can infect others only by means of personal communication of their mental state by word of mouth; while in the other, it is the madness of millions of men, possessing vast sums of money and means for exercising force on others—guns, bayonets, fortresses, ironclads, melinite, dynamite—and having, moreover, at their disposition, the most powerful means for the diffusion of their madness—the post, the telegraph, an immense number of newspapers and publications of all sorts, incessantly printing and spreading abroad the infection to every end of the earth. Another difference is that those affected by the one craze, far from drinking to excess, touch no intoxicating beverages at all, while those affected by the second are continually in a state of semi-intoxication. And therefore for the society in which these phenomena take place, the difference between the Kiev epidemic, during which, according to Professor Sikorsky's statement, there was no instance of any act of violence or murder, and that which prevailed in Paris, in which during one procession twenty women were