MENTAL EPIDEMICS 275
learned by sad experience that they had little to expect from their government but oppression and exploitation. Other predisposing conditions were doubtless also present ; but the state of mind resulting from the well-known selfishness and brutality of the ruling classes was certainly a chief factor in the situation.
Indeed, collective moods, if the expression may be al lowed, are very important predisposing conditions. Often they are manifestly the result of the experience, especially the cumulative result of repeated experiences, of a people who have suffered under special conditions. A succession of experiences of the same general tendency is likely to pro duce a state of abnormal mental irritability, an attitude of mind expectant of similar experiences, a disposition to inter pret in that sense any occurrence which by any possibility can be so construed. A man whom a series of misfortunes has befallen is predisposed to accept the slightest intimation that further adversities are impending ; and the man who has had a run of good fortune is equally easy to be convinced that the fickle goddess will continue to smile upon him ; and this is as true of a whole population as it is of an individual. In this way may be developed what I have called a collective mood, or a general trend of expectancy, which renders the people so affected highly suggestible along that line.
The predisposing conditions may be due to profound and extensive social changes. In such times the institutions of society which once satisfied the needs of the people cease to do so ; but they persist and become formalized, fossilized. Men feel that in and through these institutions they are no longer satisfactorily adjusted to one another. The masses, and also many of the higher and finer spirits, become restless and discontented, but few even of the latter clearly perceive where the trouble lies and still less clearly the proper course to take for its correction. No longer attached in their hearts to the existing forms and institutions ; feeling deeply the need of new principles and adjustments, and being unable of themselves to discover the principles and bring
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