284 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
number of stimuli that start tides of social emotion. In these days there come to our knowledge many exciting in cidents and situations of which men living in the compar atively isolated communities of earlier times would never have heard. For instance, the celebrated Dreyfus case pro foundly moved men in all parts of the world ; but only a century previous the detailed knowledge of it and the attend ant excitement would have been limited to France, and prob ably to a section of the French people. In 1904-5 the whole civilized world was electrified by the Russo-Japanese war. A tide of sympathy with and admiration for the Japanese swept the people of England and America, A hundred years ago we should have had meagre reports of it after all its stirring incidents had become cold history ; and it would not have started a single thrill. In fact, a hundred years ago Russia and Japan had no communication with one another, hostile or friendly, and our knowledge of them was too misty to engage our interest in either. A century ago even the great war in Europe, if it had been possible then on so co lossal a scale, would have been too far away to involve our country and our reports of it too meager to stir us as under the conditions of today. But the frequency of mental epi demics is due not only to the wonderful extension of inter communication. The greater density of population and the increasing tension of life probably tend in the same direc tion. Life is more urgent and dynamic. Men venture farther and dare more, plan and achieve or fail on a larger scale ; and in such circumstances we should naturally expect a more frequent occurrence of events that startle or shock the public mind and generate waves of common emotion.
In the second place, a reasonable inference would be that the epidemic would be more diffusive, i.e., would radiate in all directions more readily than in the middle stage of social development. For while class distinctions remain and oc cupational groups have become more numerous and more highly specialized, the dividing lines are crossed by many more threads of relationship. So to speak, the walls sep-
�� �
