III.
Lately Sikórski, a professor of psychiatry, described in the Kíev University Record the psychopathic epidemic, as he calls it, of the Malévannians, as manifested in a few villages of Vasilkóv County of the Government of Kíev. The essence of this epidemic, as Mr. Sikórski, the investigator of it, says, consisted in this, that certain persons of these villages, under the influence of their leader, by the name of Malévanny, came to imagine that the end of the world was at hand, and so, changing their whole mode of life, began to distribute their property, to dress up, and to eat savoury food, and stopped working. The professor found the condition of these men to be abnormal. He says: "Their unusual good nature frequently passed into exaltation, a joyous condition, which was devoid of external motives. They were sentimentally disposed: excessively polite, talkative, mobile, with tears of joy appearing easily and just as easily disappearing. They sold their necessaries, in order to provide themselves with umbrellas, silk kerchiefs, and similar objects, and at that the kerchiefs served them only as ornaments for their toilet. They ate many sweet things. They were always in a cheerful mood, and they led an idle life,—visited one another, walked together.... When the obviously absurd character of their refusal to work was pointed out to them, one every time heard in reply the stereotyped phrase, 'If I want to, I shall work, and if I do not want to, why should I compel myself?'"
The learned professor considers the condition of these men a pronounced case of a psychopathic epidemic, and, advising the government to take certain measures against its spread, ends his communication with the words: "Malévannism is the wail of a morbidly sick population and a supplication to be freed from liquor and to have education and sanitary conditions improved."
But if Malévannism is the wail of a morbidly sick population and a supplication to be freed from liquor and from harmful social conditions, then this new disease, which has appeared in Paris and has with alarming rapidity embraced a great part of the city population of France and almost the whole of governmental and cultured Russia, is just such an alarming wail of a morbid population and just such a supplication to be freed from liquor and from false social conditions.
And if we must admit that the psychopathic suffering of Malévannism is dangerous, and that the government has done well to follow the professor's advice and remove the leaders of Malévannism by confining some of them in lunatic asylums and monasteries and by deporting others to distant places, how much more dangerous must be considered to be this new epidemic, which appeared in Toulon and Paris and from there spread over the whole of France and of Russia, and how much more necessary it is, if not for the government, at least for society, to take decisive measures against the spread of such epidemics!
The resemblance between the diseases is complete. There is the same good nature, passing into causeless and joyful exaltation, the same sentimentality, excessive politeness, talkativeness, the same constant tears of meekness of spirit, which come and go without cause, the same festive mood, the same walking for pleasure and visiting one another, the same dressing up in the best clothes, the same proneness for sweet food, the same senseless talks, the same idleness, the same singing and music, the same leadership of the women, and the same clownish phase of attitudes passionelles, which Mr. Sikórski has noticed in the case of the Malévannians; that is, as I understand this word, those different, unnatural poses, which men assume during solemn meetings, receptions, and after-dinner speeches.
The resemblance is complete. The only difference is this,—and the difference is very great for the society in which these phenomena are taking place,—that there it is the aberration of a few dozen peaceful, poor village people, who live on their small means and, therefore, cannot exert any violence on their neighbours, and who infect others only by the personal and oral transmission of their mood, while here it is the aberration of millions of people, who possess enormous sums of money and means for exerting violence against other people,—guns, bayonets, fortresses, ironclads, melinite, dynamite, and who, besides, have at their command the most energetic means for the dissemination of their madness, the post, the telegraph, an enormous number of newspapers, and all kinds of publications, which are printed without cessation and carry the infection to all the corners of the globe. There is also this difference, that the first not only do not get themselves drunk, but even do not use any intoxicating liquor, while the second are constantly in a state of semi-intoxication, which they never stop maintaining in themselves. And so for a society in which these phenomena are taking place, there is the same difference between the Kíev epidemic, during which, according to Mr. Sikórski's information, it does not appear that they commit any violence or murders, and the one which made its appearance in Paris, where in one procession twenty women were crushed to death, as there is between a piece of coal, which has leaped out of the stove and is glowing on the floor without igniting it, and a fire which is already enveloping the door and walls of the house. In the worst case the consequences of the Kíev epidemic will consist in this, that the peasants of one millionth part of Russia will spend what they have earned by hard labour, and will be unable to pay the Crown taxes; but the consequences from the Toulon-Paris epidemic, which is embracing men who are in possession of a terrible power, of vast sums of money, and of implements of violence and of the dissemination of their madness, can and must be terrible.