MENTAL EPIDEMICS 2/9
Let us for convenience divide the development of society into three general stages.
First, the primitive stage. In this stage the social life is simple and undifferentiated ; at least the differentiation is at a minimum. This state of things is favourable to the sweep of such an excitement over a whole population with un- diminished power. The population is not split up into sharply defined classes, except along the lines of sex and age. These being the only groupings which are clearly dis tinct from one another in interest, experience and mental or ganization, they indicate the only cleavages which offer any obstruction to the sweep of contagious emotion over the en tire population ; and it is obvious that, apart from these lim itations, an emotional excitement will spread with equal facility and with full power, in every direction, somewhat like a flood of water over a level plain.
Second, there is what I shall call the middle stage. In this stage the society is sharply divided into quite distinct classes. The caste system prevails. Between the classes almost impassable chasms run. Each class has its own standards, its own point of view, its own interests. Its sympathies are largely shut up within its own membership; what takes place in the social strata below or above it excites but a languid, or at most a curious, interest in the hearts of those who move within its circle. Intercourse with the members of other classes is reduced by the spirit of ex- clusiveness to the minimum absolutely necessary for carry ing on the functions of life : and the inevitable contacts are made quite perfunctory, emptied as far as possible of all per sonal content. The upper classes scorn to imitate the lower ones ; and where the demarcation is so broad and fixed the people of the lower classes can ape the upper only in the most superficial way, if at all, and view from afar, most often without appreciative insight, the emotions which agi tate their superiors. The water of sympathy does not flow down from above to the lower social levels unless there be a veritable flood because it is too carefully held back by
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