These peripatetic assemblages moved in a direct line, and could only be stopped by putting obstructions in their way which were too high to be leaped over. From the violence of their exercise some were permanently injured, though many of them had been strong, athletic mechanics and peasants who had left their workshops and fields; while others continued with them for a short period, and then returned to their usual occupations as if nothing special had happened.
In Italy the dancing mania originated in the spasmodic action of a person who believed himself to have been bitten by a tarantula, or venomous spider, and his singular dancing movements being seen and extensively reported, every one who found a little speck or injury upon his body began to imagine that he also had been bitten, and consequently to imitate the actions of the original nervous victim. The army of imitators daily increased, and their apparent malady could only be relieved by music, mostly of a lively kind, which aided them to "dance out the attack"; it was for this purpose that the gay music now known as the Tarentella was invented, which has finally become a form of national music in Italy. Toward the waning of this mania, many of the poorer class, especially women, would seize upon the opportunity, whenever this music was heard in the streets, of joining the throng of dancers, so that the season for the appearance of the players—early summer—came at last to be called the "Women's Little Carnival."
A still more curious and offensive form of imitative mania, combined with imposture, was that of the various armies of Flagellants who marched through Germany and other parts of Europe; in this case the singular movement was led by designing persons who desired to undermine the power of the priesthood and to turn their dethronement to their own profit; but the mass of followers had no idea of the aim and object of the movement, viewing it, so far as they had any reason, as an act of acceptable penance: the great majority, as usual, uniting with the body simply through the irrepressible instinct of imitation—to do as others were doing, just as we have seen young people following one another up to the altar to be prayed for during a so called revival of religion—not one in a score of whom would have ventured to be the first. Even the recent mania of suddenly "lifting" church debts by the high-pressure method of inciting the instinct of imitation and emulation in the mode of subscribing, was very sagaciously based upon this well-recognized principle that the foolish many will always try to do what the leaders of society initiate, often with as little reason as a herd of quadrupeds. The "walking" mania is a still later example of the irresistible fascination of doing what others are doing.
But it is not always in masses that the powerful instinct of imitation shows itself. In nothing is it more common than in the form which suicides adopt—and suicide is naturally enacted à la solitaire.
