MORAL CONTAGION.
IF it be true, as we believe it is, that Mr. Eyre, naturally a brave and just, though weakly obstinate, and dictatorial man, has succumbed to the intense feeling of race-hatred and
race-suspicion which alienates the white colonists of Jamaica from the descendants of their former slaves, it is only a remark- able illustration of the, highly contagious character of certain moral disorders to which we are all liable. The close analogies which exist between physical and moral organisms are really very remarkable. In both alike we find that the most hopeless kinds of disease are seldom contagious, though not unfrequently hereditary ; in both alike we find many of the most fatal diseases, —that is, of those which, though seldom hopeless, attack and frequently destroy multitudes in a very short time, what our Registrar-General calls the zymotic class,—to be exceedingly tem- porary in their nature, and if survived at all, scarcely likely to leave the constitution weaker for the attack. Cancer, consumption, scrofula, none of them contagious, all of them slow in their approaches, all of them hereditary, resemble the mental diseases which arise from organic taints in the will, or what in some cases is equivaleut, deficiency in healthy social impulse caused by pre- dominance, of will. No moral disorder is more hereditary than a consuming pride (closely allied to insanity), which we may call an isolating will-disease ; it is pride in great measure which has sapped the strength of the Ottoman race and insulated it in a sort of lonely and fatalistic despair. Pride in its intensest forms may be called moral consumption, and is curiously allied with certain forms of unnatural cruelty, impurity, and sin, which may be called moral scrofula, disorders which so far from being infectious, destroy by their very tendency to evade that social influence which, once brought to bear on them, would extinguish them immediately. And yet no kinds of vices are more distinctly hereditary than these unnatural forms of cruelty, these secretvices of proud natures. Again, the contagious physical diseases which trouble children so much, and are usually dangerous only to youthful blood and overflowing vitality, usually diseases of the skin, have their analogue in the social vices which, though often of the same class as the un- social,—vices of cruelty, for instance, as between race and race, vices of profligacy which are so catching in Universities and any large associations of young men,—have always in them something absolutely distinct in kind from the deeper, unsocial, more hope- less organic diseases which are hereditary, but not contagious. As a rule, we believe the contagious mental diseases do not originate in the will, but in the sympathies and the social emotions, and only overpower the will through its weakness ; while the deeper-rooted organic diseases originate in the centre of our individuality— the will, and creep like a cancer thence to the more superficial portions of our nature.
But if this were true, then it would seem to follow that men, of strong wills and weak social impulses would be less liable to moral contagion than men of weak will and strong social impulses ; and almost all women, who though less generally social than men, are far more closely bound up with the few nearest and dearest to them than men themselves,—would be more so. But how would this apply to the illustration of moral con- tagion with which we set out? Mr. Eyre is unquestionably a man in some sense of more than strong will, of irresistible obstinacy, and there is nothing to show that he is a man of strong social impulses ; what is known of him seems rather to imply an insu- lated man. We believe the explanation in his case would prove that it is not so much his general liability to infection, as his liability to infection in this particular case, which has caused this fatal attack of the prevalent disease. We know that in the case of all infectious physical diseases there is something, extremely difficult to analyze, called predisposing causes. It is by no means universally true that mere delicaCy is a predisposing cause. In one visitation of a great epidemic it has been remarked that all the weakly and sickly persons came off with no ill result, while the strongest and healthiest fell at the first touch. Again, at other times these diseases wither all the sickly plants at once, and leave the healthy ones comparatively uninjured. So it is with moral infections. There are not only generally predisposing causes to catching the contagion, such as strong social impulses, weak will, and an early education adapted to receive the poison instead of to repel it,—but special pre- disposing causes, such as the tendency of the alarm, when it arises, to lend strength and justification to deep-seated currents of purpose already excited in the mind. So far as it is at present possible to judge, this would be Mr. Eyre's case. He was not a timid man, and not originally liable to the feeling of race- hatred and caste-privilege. Had he been in Jamaica as a mere observer, as one of the people unidentified with any part in the political struggle which had been going on, he would probably have never taken the infection of the anti-negro passion whieli has burst out there so violently,—nary, might have done much to stem the tide of impetuous feeling. But it seems that be had been engaged in a vehement, political quarrel with the party com- monly called the negro party in the Assembly, about many local matters of expenditure as well as general policy,—and the naturally tenacious spirit of the man's purposes rendered him peculiarly open to the infection of any hostile feeling running directly against this party. We do not of course mean to imply that Mr. Eyre used a passion he did not share for his own purposes. That would be the most shocking of all wickednes.ses. The whole purport of our remarks- is to show that he did catch the infection from a special predis- posing cause,—the ready and rapid conducting medium supplied to him by the intensity of his own indignation against the party which was resisting as he thought the wise and salutary exercise of his authority in the island. if you are already angry with any- body, you must be very impartial indeed not to believe far more easily what others have to say against him than you would do- ff no such anger had ever been excited. Mr. Eyre was certainly very angry with the Gordon party in the assembly before these troubles began and the planter panic broke out, and this anger was apparently the special predisposingcause which rendered himliable to an infection he would not otherwise have taken. It is nothing more than an individual illustration of the ordinary remark on the greater liability to be deceived by fallacious reasoning displayed by an audience who agree heartily with an orator's practical ends, than is displayed by an audience who are indifferent to the ends which he tries to promote, and judge his reasoning therefore simply by its reasonableness. Convoke an assembly to promote reform, or
the abolition of slavery, or anything else, and the weakest argu- ments will excite even enthusiasm in an audience that goes heart and soul with the drift of the speaker, when they would excite contempt in those who are convinced that he is wrong. In pre- cisely the same way the spread of a moral infection must depOul very much on its finding a state of feeling identical in drift,. though not in origin, with the state of feeling it would promote. This is of course the true reason of the highly contagious character of bad sentimental morality—in French novels or elsewhere. It is not the depth of the sentiment itself, but the highly conducting medium of the passions it finds ready to its purpose, which renders so feeble a poison dangerous.
If, as we have ventured to suggest, the region of infectious diseastv, is usually the social emotions and sympathies—those which bind classes and nations together, and so propagate either false morality or false sentiment almost with as little free choice among the individuals as there thin the meal as to whether it shall or shall not be leavened by the yeast, —then it would follow that the great disinfectant must be solitary judgment,—that habit of mind which habitually interposes a kind of minute capillary repulsion between the pressure of social influences and the attitude of its own secret thought,— which clears a space, as it were, like a, juggler with his balls in a crowd, round the will, into which it will not admit the pressure of social influences till it has given its sanction to their ten- dency. Such a habit of mind would really operate to save society from false corporate judgments, much as the cellular system of build- ing iron vessels operates to save a ship from the disastrous effects of leakage. As it is, when a moral accident happens to the social nature of influential persons iu any closely organized society the,
bad results are never isolated, and sometimes extend so rapidly that the whole ship founders. But if the ship is built of non- communicating cells, one cell may fill and all the others remain as water-tight as before. It is true, as we have admitted, that the worst social vices,—even social cruelty and impurity,— are seldom so utterly destructive of the soul as the organic tendencies to disease originating in a perverted will, which, though often hereditary, are never very eontagious. Yet a French or Jamaica reign of terror destroys the souls as well as bodies of multitudes, and steels by cruel wrongs the souls of multitudes -whom it does not destroy. A perverted and evil enthusiasm is as terrible a force as any which does not imply absolutely the con- stitutional exhaustion of a great community. Nor are men less in need of the disinfectant we have mentioned who apparently, like Mr. Eyre, are not naturally liable to be affected vehemently by social influences, if they permit special conductors, such as political hostility, to open the gates of their minds to besieg- ing influences which, acting alone, would have had no chance of triumph.
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