Although the mystic element is always the foundation of beliefs, certain affective and rational elements are quickly added thereto. A belief thus serves to group sentiments and passions and interests which belong to the affective domain. Reason then envelops the whole, seeking to justify events in which, however, it played no part whatever.

At the moment of the Revolution everyone, according to his aspirations, dressed the new belief in a different rational vesture. The peoples saw in it only the suppression of the religious and political despotisms and hierarchies under which they had so often suffered. Writers like Goethe and thinkers like Kant imagined that they saw in it the triumph of reason. Foreigners like Humboldt came to France "to breathe the air of liberty and to assist at the obsequies of despotism." These intellectual illusions did not last long. The evolution of the drama soon revealed the true foundations of the dream.

b. Bolshevism[311]

Great mass movements, whether these be religious or political, are at first always difficult to understand. Invariably they challenge existing moral and intellectual values, the revaluation of which is, for the normal mind, an exceedingly difficult and painful task. Moreover the definition of their aims and policies into exact and comprehensive programs is generally slowly achieved. At their inception and during the early stages of their development there must needs be many crude and tentative statements and many rhetorical exaggerations. It is safe to assert as a rule that at no stage of its history can a great movement of the masses be fully understood and fairly interpreted by a study of its formal statements and authentic expositions only. These must be supplemented by a careful study of the psychology of the men and women whose ideals and yearnings these statements and expositions aim to represent. It is not enough to know and comprehend the creed: it is essential that we also know and comprehend the spiritual factors, the discontent, the hopes, the fears, the inarticulate visionings of the human units in the movement. This is of greater importance in the initial stages than later, when the articulation of the soul of the movement has become more certain and clear.

No one who has attended many bolshevist meetings or is acquainted with many of the individuals to whom bolshevism makes a strong appeal will seriously question the statement that an impressively large number of those who profess to be Bolshevists present a striking likeness to extreme religious zealots, not only in the manner of manifesting their enthusiasm, but also in their methods of exposition and argument. Just as in religious hysteria a single text becomes a whole creed to the exclusion of every other text, and instead of being itself subject to rational tests is made the sole test of the rationality of everything else, so in the case of the average Bolshevist of this type a single phrase received into the mind in a spasm of emotion, never tested by the usual criteria of reason, becomes not only the very essence of truth but also the standard by which the truth or untruth of everything else must be determined. Most of the preachers who become pro-Bolshevists are of this type.

People who possess minds thus affected are generally capable of, and frequently indulge in, the strictest logical deduction and analysis. Sometimes they acquire the reputation of being exceptionally brilliant thinkers because of this power. But the fact is that their initial ideas, upon which everything is pivoted, are derived emotionally and are not the results of a deliberate weighing of available evidence. The initial movement is one of feeling, of emotional impulse. The conviction thereby created is so strong and so dominant that it cannot be affected by any purely rational functional factors.

People of this type jump at decisions and reach very positive convictions upon the most difficult matters with bewildering ease. For them the complexities and intricacies which trouble the normal mind do not exist. Everything is either black or white: there are no perplexing intervening grays. Right is right and wrong is wrong; they do not recognize that there are doubtful twilight zones. Ideas capable of the most elaborate expansion and the most subtle intricacies of interpretation are immaturely grasped and preached with naïve assurance. Statements alleged to be facts, no matter what their source, if they seem to support the convictions thus emotionally derived, are received without any examination and used as conclusive proof, notwithstanding that a brief investigation would prove them to be worthless as evidence.

If we take the group of American intellectuals who at present are ardent champions of bolshevism we shall find that, with exceptions so few as to be almost negligible, they have embraced nearly every "ism" as it arose, seeing in each one the magic solvent of humanity's ills. Those of an older generation thus regarded bimetallism, for instance. What else could be required to make the desert bloom like a garden and to usher in the earthly Paradise? The younger ones, in their turn, took up anarchist-communism, Marxian socialism, industrial unionism, syndicalism, birth control, feminism, and many other movements and propagandas, each of which in its turn induced ecstatic visions of a new heaven and a new earth. The same individuals have grown lyrical in praise of every bizarre and eccentric art fad. In the banal and grotesque travesties of art produced by cubists, futurists, et al., they saw transcendent genius. They are forever seeking new gods and burying old ones.

It would be going too far to say that these individuals are all hystericals in the pathological sense, but it is strictly accurate to say that the class exhibits marked hysterical characteristics and that it closely resembles the large class of over-emotionalized religious enthusiasts which furnish so many true hystericals. It is probable that accidents of environment account for the fact that their emotionalism takes sociological rather than religious forms. If the sociological impetus were absent, most of them would be religiously motived to a state not less abnormal.

To understand the spread of bolshevist agitation and sympathy among a very considerable part of the working class in this country, we must take into account the fact that its logical and natural nucleus is the I.W.W. It is necessary also to emancipate our minds from the obsession that only "ignorant foreigners" are affected. This is not a true estimate of either the I.W.W. or the bolshevist propaganda as a whole. There are indeed many of this class in both, but there are also many native Americans, sturdy, self-reliant, enterprising, and courageous men. The peculiar group psychology which we are compelled to study is less the result of those subtle and complex factors which are comprehended in the vague term "race" than of the political and economic conditions by which the group concerned is environed.

The typical native-born I.W.W. member, the "Wobbly" one frequently encounters in our mid-western and western cities, is very unlike the hideous and repulsive figure conjured up by sensational cartoonists. He is much more likely to be a very attractive sort of man. Here are some characteristics of the type: figure robust, sturdy, and virile; dress rough but not unclean; speech forthright, deliberate, and bold; features intelligent, frank, and free from signs of alcoholic dissipation; movements slow and leisurely as of one averse to over-exertion. There are thousands of "wobblies" to whom the specifications of this description will apply. Conversation with these men reveals that, as a general rule, they are above rather than below the average in sobriety. They are generally free from family ties, being either unmarried or, as often happens, wife-deserters. They are not highly educated, few having attended any school beyond the grammar-school grade. Many of them have, however, read a great deal more than the average man, though their reading has been curiously miscellaneous in selection and nearly always badly balanced. Theology, philosophy, sociology, and economics seem to attract most attention. In discussion—and every "Wobbly" seems to possess a passion for disputation—men of this type will manifest a surprising familiarity with the broad outlines of certain theological problems, as well as with the scriptural texts bearing upon them. It is very likely to be the case, however, that they have only read a few popular classics of what used to be called rationalism—Paine's Age of Reason, Ingersoll's lectures in pamphlet form, and Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe are typical. A surprisingly large number can quote extensively from Buckle's History of Civilization and from the writings of Marx. They quote statistics freely—statistics of wages, poverty, crime, vice, and so on—generally derived from the radical press and implicitly believed because so published, with what they accept as adequate authority.

Their most marked peculiarity is the migratory nature of their lives. Whether this is self-determined, a matter of temperament and habit, or due to uncontrollable factors, it is largely responsible for the contempt in which they are popularly held. It naturally brings upon them the reproach and resentment everywhere visited upon "tramps" and "vagabonds." They rarely remain long enough in any one place to form local attachments and ties or anything like civic pride. They move from job to job, city to city, state to state, sometimes tramping afoot, begging as they go; sometimes stealing rides on railway trains, in freight cars—"side-door Pullmans"—or on the rods underneath the cars. Frequently arrested for begging, trespassing, or stealing rides, they are often victims of injustice at the hands of local judges and justices. The absence of friends, combined with the prejudice against vagrants which everywhere exists, subjects them to arbitrary and high-handed injustice such as no other body of American citizens has to endure. Moreover, through the conditions of their existence they are readily suspected of crimes they do not commit; it is all too easy for the hard-pushed police officer or sheriff to impute a crime to the lone and defenseless "Wobbly," who frequently can produce no testimony to prove his innocence, simply because he has no friends in the neighborhood and has been at pains to conceal his movements. In this manner the "Wobbly" becomes a veritable son of Ishmael, his hand against the hand of nearly every man in conventional society. In particular he becomes a rebel by habit, hating the police and the courts as his constant enemies.

Doubtless the great majority of these men are temperamentally predisposed to the unanchored, adventurous, migratory existence which they lead. Boys so constituted run away to sea, take jobs with traveling circuses, or enlist as soldiers. The type is familiar and not uncommon. Such individuals cannot be content with the prosaic, humdrum, monotonous life of regular employment. As a rule we do not look upon this trait in boy or man as criminal.

Many a hardworking, intelligent American, who from choice or from necessity is a migratory worker, following his job, never has an opportunity to vote for state legislators, for governor, for congressman or president. He is just as effectively excluded from the actual electorate as if he were a Chinese coolie, ignorant of our customs and our speech.

We cannot wonder that such conditions prove prolific breeders of bolshevism and similar "isms." It would be strange indeed if it were otherwise. We have no right to expect that men who are so constantly the victims of arbitrary, unjust, and even brutal treatment at the hands of our police and our courts will manifest any reverence for the law and the judicial system. Respect for majority rule in government cannot fairly be demanded from a disfranchised group. It is not to be wondered at that the old slogan of socialism, "Strike at the ballot-box!"—the call to lift the struggle of the classes to the parliamentary level for peaceful settlement—becomes the desperate, anarchistic I.W.W. slogan, "Strike at the ballot-box with an ax!" Men who can have no family life cannot justly be expected to bother about school administration. Men who can have no home life but only dreary shelter in crowded work-camps or dirty doss-houses are not going to bother themselves with municipal housing reforms.

In short, we must wake up to the fact that, as the very heart of our problem, we have a bolshevist nucleus in America composed of virile, red-blooded Americans, racy of our soil and history, whose conditions of life and labor are such as to develop in them the psychology of reckless, despairing, revengeful bolshevism. They really are little concerned with theories of the state and of social development, which to our intellectuals seem to be the essence of bolshevism. They are vitally concerned only with action. Syndicalism and bolshevism involve speedy and drastic action—hence the force of their appeal.

Finally, if we would understand why millions of people in all lands have turned away from old ideals, old loyalties, and old faiths to bolshevism, with something of the passion and frenzy characteristic of great messianic movements, we must take into account the intense spiritual agony and hunger which the Great War has brought into the lives of civilized men. The old gods are dead and men are everywhere expectantly waiting for the new gods to arise. The aftermath of the war is a spiritual cataclysm such as civilized mankind has never before known. The old religions and moralities are shattered and men are waiting and striving for new ones. It is a time suggestive of the birth of new religions. Man cannot live as yet without faith, without some sort of religion. The heart of the world today is strained with yearning for new and living faiths to replace the old faiths which are dead. Were some persuasive fanatic to arise proclaiming himself to be a new Messiah, and preaching the religion of action, the creation of a new society, he would find an eager, soul-hungry world already predisposed to believe.

4. Mass Movements and Institutions: Methodism[312]

The corruption of manners which has been general since the restoration was combated by societies for "the reformation of manners," which in the last years of the seventeenth century acquired extraordinary dimensions. They began in certain private societies which arose in the reign of James II, chiefly under the auspices of Beveridge and Bishop Horneck. These societies were at first purely devotional, and they appear to have been almost identical in character with those of the early Methodists. They held prayer meetings, weekly communions, and Bible-readings; they sustained charities and distributed religious books, and they cultivated a warmer and more ascetic type of devotion than was common in the Church. Societies of this description sprang up in almost every considerable city in England and even in several of those in Ireland. In the last years of the seventeenth century we find no less than ten of them in Dublin. Without, however, altogether discarding their first character, they assumed, about 1695, new and very important functions. They divided themselves into several distinct groups, undertaking the discovery and suppression of houses of ill fame, and the prosecution of swearers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers. They became a kind of voluntary police, acting largely as spies, and enforcing the laws against religious offenses. The energy with which this scheme was carried out is very remarkable. As many as seventy or eighty persons were often prosecuted in London and Westminster for cursing and swearing, in a single week. Sunday markets, which had hitherto been not uncommon, were effectually suppressed. Hundreds of disorderly houses were closed. Forty or fifty night-walkers were sent every week to Bridewell, and numbers were induced to emigrate to the colonies. A great part of the fines levied for these offenses was bestowed on the poor. In the fortieth annual report of the "Societies for the Reformation of Manners" which appeared in 1735, it was stated that the number of prosecutions for debauchery and profaneness in London and Westminster alone, since the foundation of the societies, had been 99,380.

The term Methodist was a college nickname bestowed upon a small society of students at Oxford, who met together between 1729 and 1735 for the purpose of mutual improvement. They were accustomed to communicate every week, to fast regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays, and on most days during Lent; to read and discuss the Bible in common, to abstain from most forms of amusement and luxury, and to visit sick persons and prisoners in the gaol. John Wesley, the future leader of the religious revival of the eighteenth century, was the master-spirit of this society. The society hardly numbered more than fifteen members, and was the object of much ridicule at the university; but it included some men who afterward played considerable parts in the world. Among them was Charles, the younger brother of John Wesley, whose hymns became the favorite poetry of the sect, and whose gentler, more submissive, and more amiable character, though less fitted than that of his brother for the great conflicts of public life, was very useful in moderating the movement, and in drawing converts to it by personal influence. Charles Wesley appears to have originated the society at Oxford; he brought Whitefield into its pale, and besides being the most popular poet he was one of the most persuasive preachers of the movement.

In the course of 1738 the chief elements of the movement were already formed. Whitefield had returned from Georgia, Charles Wesley had begun to preach the doctrine with extraordinary effect to the criminals in Newgate and from every pulpit into which he was admitted. Methodist societies had already sprung up under Moravian influence. They were in part a continuation of the society at Oxford, in part a revival of those religious societies that have been already noticed as so common after the Revolution. The design of each was to be a church within a church, a seedplot of a more fervent piety, the center of a stricter discipline and a more energetic propagandism than existed in religious communities at large. In these societies the old Christian custom of love-feasts was revived. The members sometimes passed almost the whole night in the most passionate devotions, and voluntarily submitted to a spiritual tyranny that could hardly be surpassed in a Catholic monastery. They were to meet every week, to make an open and particular confession of every frailty, to submit to be crossexamined on all their thoughts, words, and deeds. The following among others were the questions asked at every meeting: "What known sin have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not? Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?"

Such rules could only have been accepted under the influence of an overpowering religious enthusiasm, and there was much truth in the judgment which the elder brother of John Wesley passed upon them in 1739. "Their societies," he wrote to their mother, "are sufficient to dissolve all other societies but their own. Will any man of common sense or spirit suffer any domestic to be in a band engaged to relate to five or ten people everything without reserve that concerns the person's conscience how much soever it may concern the family? Ought any married persons to be there unless husband and wife be there together?"

From this time the leaders of the movement became the most active of missionaries. Without any fixed parishes they wandered from place to place, proclaiming their new doctrine in every pulpit to which they were admitted, and they speedily awoke a passionate enthusiasm and a bitter hostility in the Church.

We may blame, but we can hardly, I think, wonder at the hostility all this aroused among the clergy. It is, indeed, certain that Wesley and Whitefield were at this time doing more than any other contemporary clergymen to kindle a living piety among the people. Yet before the end of 1738 the Methodist leaders were excluded from most of the pulpits of the Church, and were thus compelled, unless they consented to relinquish what they considered a Divine mission, to take steps in the direction of separation.

Two important measures of this nature were taken in 1739. One of them was the creation of Methodist chapels, which were intended not to oppose or replace, but to be supplemental and ancillary to, the churches, and to secure that the doctrine of the new birth should be faithfully taught to the people. The other and still more important event was the institution by Whitefield of field-preaching. The idea had occurred to him in London, where he found congregations too numerous for the church in which he preached, but the first actual step was taken in the neighborhood of Bristol. At a time when he was himself excluded from the pulpits at Bristol, and was thus deprived of the chief normal means of exercising his talents, his attention was called to the condition of the colliers at Kingswood. He was filled with horror and compassion at finding in the heart of a Christian country, and in the immediate neighborhood of a great city, a population of many thousands, sunk in the most brutal ignorance and vice, and entirely excluded from the ordinances of religion. Moved by such feelings, he resolved to address the colliers in their own haunts. The resolution was a bold one, for field-preaching was then utterly unknown in England, and it needed no common courage to brave all the obloquy and derision it must provoke, and to commence the experiment in the center of a half-savage population. Whitefield, however, had a just confidence in his cause and in his powers. Standing himself upon a hillside, he took for his text the first words of the sermon which was spoken from the Mount, and he addressed with his accustomed fire an astonished audience of some two hundred men. The fame of his eloquence spread far and wide. On successive occasions, five, ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand were present. It was February, but the winter sun shone clear and bright. The lanes were filled with carriages of the more wealthy citizens, whom curiosity had drawn from Bristol. The trees and hedges were crowded with humbler listeners, and the fields were darkened by a compact mass. The voice of the great preacher pealed with a thrilling power to the outskirts of that mighty throng. The picturesque novelty of the occasion and of the scene, the contagious emotion of so great a multitude, a deep sense of the condition of his hearers and of the momentous importance of the step he was taking, gave an additional solemnity to his eloquence. His rude auditors were electrified. They stood for a time in rapt and motionless attention. Soon tears might be seen forming white gutters down cheeks blackened from the coal mine. Then sobs and groans told how hard hearts were melting at his words. A fire was kindled among the outcasts of Kingswood which burnt long and fiercely, and was destined in a few years to overspread the land.

But for the simultaneous appearance of a great orator and a great statesman, Methodism would probably have smouldered and at last perished like the very similar religious societies of the preceding century. Whitefield was utterly destitute of the organizing skill which could alone give a permanence to the movement, and no talent is naturally more ephemeral than popular oratory; while Wesley, though a great and impressive preacher, could scarcely have kindled a general enthusiasm had he not been assisted by an orator who had an unrivaled power of moving the passions of the ignorant. The institution of field-preaching by Whitefield in the February of 1739 carried the impulse through the great masses of the poor, while the foundation by Wesley, in the May of the same year, of the first Methodist chapel was the beginning of an organized body capable of securing and perpetuating the results that had been achieved.

From the time of the institution of lay preachers Methodism became in a great degree independent of the Established Church. Its chapels multiplied in the great towns, and its itinerant missionaries penetrated to the most secluded districts. They were accustomed to preach in fields and gardens, in streets and lecture-rooms, in market places and churchyards. On one occasion we find Whitefield at a fair mounting a stage which had been erected for some wrestlers, and there denouncing the pleasures of the world; on another, preaching among the mountebanks at Moorfields; on a third, attracting around his pulpit ten thousand of the spectators at a race course; on a fourth, standing beside the gallows at an execution to speak of death and of eternity. Wesley, when excluded from the pulpit of Epworth, delivered some of his most impressive sermons in the churchyard, standing on his father's tomb. Howell Harris, the apostle of Wales, encountering a party of mountebanks, sprang into their midst exclaiming, in a solemn voice, "Let us pray," and then proceeded to thunder forth the judgments of the Lord. Rowland Hill was accustomed to visit the great towns on market day in order that he might address the people in the market place, and to go from fair to fair preaching among the revelers from his favorite text, "Come out from among them." In this manner the Methodist preachers came in contact with the most savage elements of the population, and there were few forms of mob violence they did not experience. In 1741 one of their preachers named Seward, after repeated ill treatment in Wales, was at last struck on the head while preaching at Monmouth, and died of the blow. In a riot, while Wheatley was preaching at Norwich, a poor woman with child perished from the kicks and blows of the mob. At Dublin, Whitefield was almost stoned to death. At Exeter he was stoned in the very presence of the bishop. At Plymouth he was violently assaulted and his life seriously threatened by a naval officer.

Scenes of this kind were of continual occurrence, and they were interspersed with other persecutions of a less dangerous description. Drums were beaten, horns blown, guns let off, and blacksmiths hired to ply their noisy trade in order to drown the voices of the preachers. Once, at the very moment when Whitefield announced his text, the belfry gave out a peal loud enough to make him inaudible. On other occasions packs of hounds were brought with the same object, and once, in order to excite the dogs to fury, a live cat in a cage was placed in their midst. Fire engines poured streams of fetid water upon the congregation. Stones fell so thickly that the faces of many grew crimson with blood. At Hoxton the mob drove an ox into the midst of the congregation. At Pensford the rabble, who had been baiting a bull, concluded their sport by driving the torn and tired animal full against the table on which Wesley was preaching. Sometimes we find innkeepers refusing to receive the Methodist leaders in their inns, farmers entering into an agreement to dismiss every laborer who attended a Methodist preacher, landlords expelling all Methodists from their cottages, masters dismissing their servants because they had joined the sect. The magistrates, who knew by experience that the presence of a Methodist preacher was the usual precursor of disturbance and riot, looked on them with the greatest disfavor, and often scandalously connived at the persecutions they underwent.

It was frequently observed by Wesley that his preaching rarely affected the rich and the educated. It was over the ignorant and the credulous that it exercised its most appalling power, and it is difficult to overrate the mental anguish it must sometimes have produced. Timid and desponding natures unable to convince themselves that they had undergone a supernatural change, gentle and affectionate natures who believed that those who were dearest to them were descending into everlasting fire, must have often experienced pangs compared with which the torments of the martyr were insignificant. The confident assertions of the Methodist preacher and the ghastly images he continually evoked poisoned their imaginations, haunted them in every hour of weakness or depression, discolored all their judgments of the world, and added a tenfold horror to the darkness of the grave. Sufferings of this description, though among the most real and the most terrible that superstition can inflict, are so hidden in their nature that they leave few traces in history; but it is impossible to read the journals of Wesley without feeling that they were most widely diffused. Many were thrown into paroxysms of extreme, though usually transient, agony; many doubtless nursed a secret sorrow which corroded all the happiness of their lives, while not a few became literally insane. On one occasion Wesley was called to the bedside of a young woman at Kingswood. He tells us:

For more than two hours Wesley and his brother continued praying over her. At last the paroxysms subsided and the patient joined in a hymn of praise.

In the intense religious enthusiasm that was generated, many of the ties of life were snapped in twain. Children treated with contempt the commands of their parents, students the rules of their colleges, clergymen the discipline of their Church. The whole structure of society, and almost all the amusements of life, appeared criminal. The fairs, the mountebanks, the public rejoicings of the people, were all Satanic. It was sinful for a woman to wear any gold ornament or any brilliant dress. It was even sinful for a man to exercise the common prudence of laying by a certain portion of his income. When Whitefield proposed to a lady to marry him, he thought it necessary to say, "I bless God, if I know anything of my own heart, I am free from that foolish passion which the world calls love." "I trust I love you only for God, and desire to be joined to you only by His commands, and for His sake." It is perhaps not very surprising that Whitefield's marriage, like that of Wesley, proved very unhappy. Theaters and the reading of plays were absolutely condemned, and Methodists employed all their influence with the authorities to prevent the erection of the former. It seems to have been regarded as a divine judgment that once, when Macbeth was being acted at Drury Lane, a real thunderstorm mingled with the mimic thunder in the witch scene. Dancing was, if possible, even worse than the theater. "Dancers," said Whitefield, "please the devil at every step"; and it was said that his visit to a town usually put "a stop to the dancing-school, the assemblies, and every pleasant thing." He made it his mission to "bear testimony against the detestable diversions of this generation"; and he declared that no "recreations, considered as such, can be innocent."

Accompanying this asceticism we find an extraordinary revival of the grossest superstition. It was a natural consequence of the essentially emotional character of Methodism that its disciples should imagine that every strong feeling or impulse within them was a direct inspiration of God or Satan. The language of Whitefield—the language in a great degree of all the members of the sect—was that of men who were at once continually inspired and the continual objects of miraculous interposition. In every perplexity they imagined that, by casting lots or opening their Bibles at random, they could obtain a supernatural answer to their inquiries.

In all matters relating to Satanic interference, Wesley was especially credulous. "I cannot give up to all the Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft till I give up the credit of all history, sacred and profane." He had no doubt that the physical contortions into which so many of his hearers fell were due to the direct agency of Satan, who tore the converts as they were coming to Christ. He had himself seen men and women who were literally possessed by devils; he had witnessed forms of madness which were not natural, but diabolical, and he had experienced in his own person the hysterical affections which resulted from supernatural agency.

If Satanic agencies continually convulsed those who were coming to the faith, divine judgments as frequently struck down those who opposed it. Every illness, every misfortune that befell an opponent, was believed to be supernatural. Molther, the Moravian minister, shortly after the Methodists had separated from the Moravians, was seized with a passing illness. "I believe," wrote Wesley, "it was the hand of God that was upon him." Numerous cases were cited of sudden and fearful judgments which fell upon the adversaries of the cause. A clergyman at Bristol, standing up to preach against the Methodists, "was suddenly seized with a rattling in his throat, attended with a hideous groaning," and on the next Sunday he died. At Todmorden a minister was struck with a violent fit of palsy immediately after preaching against the Methodists. At Enniscorthy a clergyman, having preached for some time against Methodism, deferred the conclusion of the discourse to the following Sunday. Next morning he was raging mad, imagined that devils were about him, "and not long after, without showing the least sign of hope, he went to his account." At Kingswood a man began a vehement invective against Wesley and Methodism. "In the midst he was struck raving mad." A woman, seeing a crowd waiting for Wesley at the church door, exclaimed, "They are waiting for their God." She at once fell senseless to the ground, and next day expired. "A party of young men rode up to Richmond to disturb the sermons of Rowland Hill. The boat sank, and all of them were drowned." At Sheffield the captain of a gang who had long troubled the field-preachers, was bathing with his companions. "Another dip," he said, "and then for a bit of sport with the Methodists." He dived, struck his head against a stone, and appeared no more. By such anecdotes and by such beliefs a fever of enthusiasm was sustained.

But with all its divisions and defects the movement was unquestionably effecting a great moral revolution in England. It was essentially a popular movement, exercising its deepest influence over the lower and middle classes. Some of its leaders were men of real genius, but in general the Methodist teacher had little sympathy with the more educated of his fellow-countrymen. To an ordinarily cultivated mind there was something extremely repulsive in his tears and groans and amorous ejaculations, in the coarse and anthropomorphic familiarity and the unwavering dogmatism with which he dealt with the most sacred subjects, in the narrowness of his theory of life and his utter insensibility to many of the influences that expand and embellish it, in the mingled credulity and self-confidence with which he imagined that the whole course of nature was altered for his convenience. But the very qualities that impaired his influence in one sphere enhanced it in another. His impassioned prayers and exhortations stirred the hearts of multitudes whom a more decorous teaching had left absolutely callous. The supernatural atmosphere of miracles, judgments, and inspirations in which he moved, invested the most prosaic life with a halo of romance. The doctrines he taught, the theory of life he enforced, proved themselves capable of arousing in great masses of men an enthusiasm of piety which was hardly surpassed in the first days of Christianity, of eradicating inveterate vice, of fixing and directing impulsive and tempestuous natures that were rapidly hastening toward the abyss. Out of the profligate slave-dealer, John Newton, Methodism formed one of the purest and most unselfish of saints. It taught criminals in Newgate to mount the gallows in an ecstasy of rapturous devotion. It planted a fervid and enduring religious sentiment in the midst of the most brutal and most neglected portions of the population, and whatever may have been its vices or its defects, it undoubtedly emancipated great numbers from the fear of death, and imparted a warmer tone to the devotion and a greater energy to the philanthropy of every denomination both in England and the colonies.

III. INVESTIGATIONS AND PROBLEMS

1. Social Unrest

The term collective behavior, which has been used elsewhere to include all the facts of group life, has been limited for the purposes of this chapter to those phenomena which exhibit in the most obvious and elementary way the processes by which societies are disintegrated into their constituent elements and the processes by which these elements are brought together again into new relations to form new organizations and new societies.

Some years ago John Graham Brooks wrote a popular treatise on the labor situation in the United States. He called the volume Social Unrest. The term was, even at that time, a familiar one. Since then the word unrest, in both its substantive and adjective forms, has gained wide usage. We speak in reference to the notorious disposition of the native American to move from one part of the country to another, of his restless blood, as if restlessness was a native American trait transmitted in the blood. We speak more often of the "restless age," as if mobility and the desire for novelty and new experience were peculiarly characteristic of the twentieth century. We use the word to describe conditions in different regions of social life in such expressions as "political," "religious," and "labor" unrest, and in every case the word is used in a sense that indicates change, but change that menaces the existing order. Finally, we speak of the "restless woman," as of a peculiar modern type, characteristic of the changed status of women in general in the modern world. In all these different uses we may observe the gradual unfolding of the concept which seems to have been implicit in the word as it was first used. It is the concept of an activity in response to some urgent organic impulse which the activity, however, does not satisfy. It is a diagnostic symptom, a symptom of what Graham Wallas calls "balked disposition." It is a sign that in the existing situation some one or more of the four wishes—security, new experience, recognition, and response—has not been and is not adequately realized. The fact that the symptom is social, that it is contagious, is an indication that the situations that provoke it are social, that is to say, general in the community or the group where the unrest manifests itself.[313] The materials in which the term unrest is used in the sense indicated are in the popular discussions of social questions. The term is not defined but it is frequently used in connection with descriptions of conditions which are evidently responsible for it. Labor strikes are evidences of social unrest, and the literature already referred to in the chapter on "Conflict"[1] shows the conditions under which unrest arises, is provoked and exploited in labor situations. The relation of unrest to routine and fatigue has been the subject of a good deal of discussion and some investigation. The popular conception is that labor unrest is due to the dull driving routine of machine industry. The matter needs further study. The actual mental experiences of the different sexes, ages, temperamental and mental types under the influence of routine would add a much needed body of fact to our present psychology of the worker.

2. Psychic Epidemics

If social unrest is a symptom of disorganization, then the psychic epidemics, in which all the phenomena of social unrest and contagion are intensified, is evidence positive that disorganization exists. Social disorganization must be considered in relation to reorganization. All change involves a certain amount of disorganization. In order that an individual may make new adjustments and establish new habits it is inevitable that old habits should be broken up, and in order that society may reform an existing social order a certain amount of disorganization is inevitable. Social unrest may be, therefore, a symptom of health. It is only when the process of disorganization goes on so rapidly and to such an extent that the whole existing social structure is impaired, and society is, for that reason, not able to readjust itself, that unrest is to be regarded as a pathological symptom.

There is reason to believe, contrary to the popular conception, that the immigrant in America, particularly in the urban environment, accommodates himself too quickly rather than too slowly to American life. Statistics show, particularly in the second generation, a notable increase in juvenile delinquency, and this seems to be due to the fact that in America the relation between parents and children is reversed. Owing to the children's better knowledge of English and their more rapid accommodation to the conditions of American life, parents become dependent upon their children rather than the children dependent upon their parents.

Social epidemics, however, are evidence of a social disintegration due to more fundamental and widespread disorders. The literature has recorded the facts but writers have usually interpreted the phenomena in medical rather than sociological terms. Stoll, in his very interesting but rather miscellaneous collection of materials upon primitive life, disposes of the phenomena by giving them another name. His volume is entitled Suggestion and Hypnotism in Folk Psychology.[314] Friedmann, in his monograph, Über Wahnideen im Völkerleben, is disposed as a psychiatrist to treat the whole matter as a form of "social" insanity.

3. Mass Movements

In spite of the abundance of materials on the subject of mass movements no attempt has been made as yet to collect and classify them. There have been a number of interesting books in the field of collective psychology, so called mainly by French and Italian writers—Sighele, Rossi, Tarde, and Le Bon—but they are not based on a systematic study of cases. The general assumption has been that the facts are so obvious that any attempt to study systematically the mechanisms involved would amount to little more than academic elaboration of what is already obvious, a restatement in more abstract terms of what is already familiar.

On the other hand, shepherds and cowboys, out of their experience in handling cattle and sheep, have learned that the flock and the herd have quite peculiar and characteristic modes of collective behavior which it is necessary to know if one is to handle them successfully. At the same time, practical politicians who make a profession of herding voters, getting them out to the polls at the times they are needed and determining for them, by the familiar campaign devices, the persons and the issues for which they are to cast their ballots, have worked out very definite methods for dealing with masses of people, so that they are able to predict the outcome with considerable accuracy far in advance of an election and make their dispositions accordingly.

Political manipulation of the movements and tendencies of popular opinion has now reached a point of perfection where it can and will be studied systematically. During the world-war it was studied, and all the knowledge which advertisers, newspaper men, and psychologists possessed was used to win the war.

Propaganda is now recognized as part of the grand strategy of war. Not only political and diplomatic victories, but battles were won during the world-war by the aid of this insidious weapon. The great victory of the Austrian and German armies at Caporetto which in a few days wiped out all the hard-won successes of the Italian armies was prepared by a psychic attack on the morale of the troops at the front and a defeatist campaign among the Italian population back of the lines.