Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds

by Charles MacKay, D. Kirichenko (Translator)

Overview

Charles McKay's book is a compilation of the most outstanding delusions and follies of mankind: from pyramid schemes to religious psychoses. It has become a classic work on mass mania, mob behavior and human stupidity. The "delusions" and "madness" set forth in the book refer to the chronic "diseases" of mankind. Financial pyramid schemes, corruption of power, falsification and self-deception of imaginary healers and prophets - all this was, is and will be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9785961440164
Publisher:	Alpina Publisher
Publication date:	05/03/2023
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	683
File size:	5 MB
Language:	Russian

Table of Contents

	The Mississippi Scheme	1
	John Law; his birth and youthful career
	Duel between Law and Wilson
	Law's escape from the King's Bench
	The "Land-bank"
	Law's gambling propensities on the continent, and acquaintance with the Duke of Orleans
	State of France after the reign of Louis XIV
	Paper money instituted in that country by Law
	Enthusiasm of the French People at the Mississippi Scheme
	Marshal Villars
	Strategems employed and bribes given for an interview with Law
	Great fluctuations in Mississippi stock
	Dreadful murders
	Law created comptroller-general of finances
	Great sale for all kinds of ornaments in Paris
	Financial difficulties commence
	Men sent out to work the mines on the Mississippi, as a blind
	Payment stopped at the bank
	Law dismissed from the ministry
	Payments made in specie
	Law and the Regent satirised in song
	Dreadful crisis of the Mississippi Scheme
	Law, almost a ruined man, flies to Venice
	Death of the Regent
	Law obliged to resort again to gambling
	His death at Venice
	The South-sea Bubble	46
	Originated by Harley Earl of Oxford
	Exchange Alley a scene of great excitement
	Mr. Walpole
	Sir John Blunt
	Great demand for shares
	Innumerable "Bubbles"
	List of nefarious projects and bubbles
	Great rise in South-Sea stock
	Sudden fall
	General meeting of the directors
	Fearful climax of the South-Sea expedition
	Its effects on society
	Uproar in the House of Commons
	Escape of Knight
	Apprehension of Sir John Blunt
	Recapture of Knight at Tirlemont
	His second escape
	Persons connected with the scheme examined
	Their respective punishments
	Concluding remarks
	The Tulipomania	89
	Conrad Gesner
	Tulips brought from Vienna to England
	Rage for the tulip among the Dutch
	Its great value
	Curious anecdote of a sailor and a tulip
	Regular marts for tulips
	Tulips employed as a means of speculation
	Great depreciation in their value
	End of the mania
	The Alchymists	98
	Introductory remarks
	Pretended antiquity of the art
	Geber
	Alfarabi
	Avicenna
	Albertus Magnus
	Thomas Aquinas
	Artephius
	Alain de Lisle
	Arnold de Villeneuve
	Pietro d'Apone
	Raymond Lulli
	Roger Bacon
	Pope John XXII.
	Jean de Meung
	Nicholas Flamel
	George Ripley
	Basil Valentine
	Bernard of Treves
	Trithemius
	The Marechal de Rays
	Jacques Coeur
	Inferior adepts
	Progress of the infatuation during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
	Augurello
	Cornelius Agrippa
	Paracelsus
	George Agricola
	Denys Zachaire
	Dr. Dee and Edward Kelly
	The Cosmopolite
	Sendivogius
	The Rosicrucians
	Michael Mayer
	Robert Fludd
	Jacob Bohmen
	John Heydon
	Joseph Francis Borri
	Alchymical writers of the seventeenth century
	Delisle
	Albert Aluys
	Count de St. Germain
	Cagliostro
	Present state of the science
	Modern Prophecies	257
	Terror of the approaching day of judgment
	A comet the signal of that day
	The prophecy of Whiston
	The people of Leeds greatly alarmed at that event
	The plague in Milan
	Fortune-tellers and Astrologers
	Prophecy concerning the overflow of the Thames
	Mother Shipton
	Merlin
	Heywood
	Peter of Pontefract
	Robert Nixon
	Almanac-makers
	Fortune-Telling	281
	Presumption and weakness of man
	Union of Fortune-tellers and Alchymists
	Judicial astrology encouraged in England from the time of Elizabeth to William and Mary
	Lilly the astrologer consulted by the House of Commons as to the cause of the Fire of London
	Encouragement of the art in France and Germany
	Nostradamus
	Basil of Florence
	Antiochus Tibertus
	Kepler
	Necromancy
	Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Arnold Villeneuve
	Geomancy
	Augury
	Divination: list of various species of divination
	Oneiro-criticism (interpretation of dreams)
	Omens
	The Magnetisers	304
	The influence of imagination in curing disease
	Mineral magnetisers
	Paracelsus
	Kircher the Jesuit
	Sebastian Wirdig
	William Maxwell
	The Convulsionaries of St. Medard
	Father Hell
	Mesmer, the founder of Animal Magnetism
	D'Eslon, his disciple
	M. de Puysegur
	Dr. Mainauduc's success in London
	Holloway, Loutherbourg, Mary Pratt, &c.
	Perkins's "Metallic Tractors"
	Decline of the science
	Influence of Politics and Religion on the Hair and Beard	346
	Early modes of wearing the hair and beard
	Excommunication and outlawry decreed against curls
	Louis VII.'s submission thereto the cause of the long wars between England and France
	Charles V. of Spain and his courtiers
	Peter the Great
	His tax upon beards
	Revival of beards and moustaches after the French Revolution of 1830
	The King of Bavaria (1838) orders all civilians wearing moustaches to be arrested and shaved
	Examples from Bayeux tapestry
	The Crusades	354
	Different accounts of the Crusaders derived from History and Romance
	Pilgrimages to the Holy Land first undertaken by converted Jews and the very credulous
	Increasing number of pilgrims every year
	Relics greatly valued
	Haroun al Reschid
	The pilgrims taxed
	Robert of Normandy
	The pilgrims persecuted by the Turks
	Peter the Hermit
	His first idea of rousing the powers of Christendom
	His interview with Simeon
	Peter the Hermit preaches the Holy War to all the nations of Christendom
	The Pope crosses the Alps
	King Philip accused of adultery with Bertrade de Montfort
	The Council of Clermont
	Oration of Urban II.
	The "Truce of God"
	Gautier sans Avoir, or Walter the Pennyless
	Gottschalk
	The arrival at Semlin
	Peter the Hermit at Nissa
	At Constantinople
	The Crusaders conducted in safety to Constantinople
	Fresh hordes from Germany
	Godfrey of Bouillon
	Count of Vermandois
	Tancred
	The siege of Antioch
	The Holy Lance
	Fate of Peter Barthelemy
	Siege of Jerusalem
	St. Bernard
	Second Crusade: Siege of Damascus
	Third Crusade: Death of Henry II.
	Richard Coeur de Lion
	Fourth Crusade
	Fifth Crusade: Constantinople assaulted
	Sixth Crusade: Camhel and Cohreddin
	Seventh Crusade: Departure of Louis IX. for Cyprus
	For Acre
	His death at Carthage
	End of the Crusades
	The Witch Mania	462
	Popular notions of the devil
	Inferior demons
	Demons of both sexes
	Demons preferring the night between Friday and Saturday
	The devil in the shape of a goat
	Sorcery
	Execution of Joan of Arc
	Witches burned in Europe
	Various charges of Witchcraft
	Trois Echelles
	The Witches of Warbois
	John Knox
	Torture of Dr. Fian
	The Lancashire Witches
	Matthew Hopkins
	Burnings at Wurzburg, at Lindheim, at Labourt
	Request of the parliament of Rouen to the King, in 1670
	Wurzburg the scene of the last case of Witchcraft
	The Witchcraft of Lady Hatton
	Witchcraft at Hastings and many other parts of England
	The Slow Poisoners	565
	Murder of Sir Thomas Overbury
	Trial of Weston
	Of Sir Jervis Elwes
	Poisoning most prevalent in Italy
	Poisons manufactured by La Tophania
	Her death
	Madame de Brinvilliers
	The poisoning of her father and two brothers
	Lavoisin and Lavigoreux
	Haunted Houses	593
	The haunted house in Aix-la-Chapelle
	In Tours
	The royal palace of Woodstock a haunted house
	The supposed ghosts at Tedworth
	At Cock Lane
	At Stockwell
	Haunted house at Baldarroch
	Popular Follies of Great Cities	619
	Cant phrases
	"Quoz"
	"What a shocking bad hat"
	"Hookey Walker"
	"There he goes with his eye out"
	"Has your mother sold her mangle?"
	"Does your mother know you're out?"
	"Tom and Jerry"
	"Jim Crow"
	Popular Admiration of Great Thieves	632
	Robin Hood
	Claude Duval
	Dick Turpin
	Jonathan Wild
	Jack Sheppard
	Vidocq
	Mausch Nadel
	The Beggars' Opera
	Rob Roy
	Duels and Ordeals	647
	The origin of the Duello
	All persons engaged in duelling excommunicated by the Council of Trent
	The fire ordeal
	The water ordeal
	The Corsned
	Duel between Ingelgerius and Gontran
	Duel between Francois de Vivonne and Guy de Chabot
	L'Isle-Marivaut and Marolles
	Richelieu
	Duel between the Dukes De Beaufort and De Nemours
	Laws against duelling
	Duel between Lord Sanquir and Turner
	Between the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun
	German students inveterate duellists
	Relics	695
	The True Cross
	Tears of our Saviour
Introduction There are fewer than a dozen books written more than a century ago that could be called classics of the social sciences. Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is one of them, and it is probably the oldest. First published in 1841, Mackay's work was substantially revised and expanded in 1852, and this latter version has been reprinted often, and has probably never been long out of print in the past one hundred fifty years. The book includes quite a cast of characters: ghost hunters, alchemists, prophets, economic speculators, witches, crusaders, and faith healers, among others, all hold center stage in what amounts to a catalogue of beliefs gone awry and mass behaviors turned goofy (if not dangerous). Although modern scholars have more thoroughly explored most of the material Mackay covers, Mackay's descriptions have held up well; they are accurate and engaging. The range of topics Mackay covers is wide and in some cases deep. One reason Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds has become such a classic is that irrational behavior has never been in short supply, and modern examples of crazes, speculative bubbles, and mass hysteria continue to amuse, frustrate, and provoke us today. Charles Mackay was born in 1814 in Perth, Scotland. His father was a military officer who was often away from home, and because Mackay's mother died when he was young, he was raised by foster parents. At age sixteen, Mackay began to earn his living as a private secretary to an industrialist based in Belgium, and he also wrote articles for newspapers in his spare time. Moving to London in 1832, Mackay embarked on a journalismcareer that resulted in major editorial positions at a succession of papers in Scotland and London, where his colleagues included Charles Dickens. As a journalist he did investigative reporting on the condition of the laboring classes in Great Britain, and he also served as a special correspondent for The Times, reporting on the Civil War in America. While Extraordinary Popular Delusions was well received and is the work that has kept Mackay's name alive today, its authorship does not seem to have been a major part of his reputation while he was alive. During his lifetime, Mackay was best known for his poetry. His collected verse, Voices from the Crowd (1846), was popular, and some of his poems were set to music and became hits of the day. He died on Christmas Eve, 1889. The material covered in Extraordinary Popular Delusions provides ample support for the truth of the cliché that the more things change, the more they stay the same. For example, the first three chapters of the book describe financial schemes that escalated well beyond rational bounds and ultimately led to economic meltdown. Perhaps the most famous of those and arguably the most widely read chapter in the book concerns the tulip mania in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century. Tulips were introduced into Europe about 1550, and through hybridization and accidental variation a wide range of colors and shapes soon became available. Initially a garden of these plants was considered the mark of a discriminating gentleman, but by the 1630s, the Dutch began to collect tulip bulbs less for their blooms than for purposes of economic speculation. Tulip bulbs were bought and sold for what today might be tens of thousands of dollars; in some cases large mansions were given in payment for a single bulb. For a brief period, tulip mania drove the entire Dutch economy and, when the inevitable crash occurred, nearly crippled it. One suspects that modern readers do not need to be reminded that in the 1990s silly high-tech solutions to trivial problems and internet ventures of dubious value were financed all out of proportion to their economic viability. And, as happened during the tulip craze of 350 years ago, intelligent people realized that the internet boom could not last but continued to play the odds in hopes of getting rich fast. Some actually did, though most did not. The longest chapters in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds describe alchemists, who believed that they could turn base metals into ones of value and who, in some cases, believed they could discover the secret of eternal (or at least long) life. (Although their experiments did not produce their desired results, it must be noted that alchemists made non-trivial contributions to the early development of chemistry.) While we no longer have alchemists among us today, we do have considerable interest in freezing dead people for a distant awakening, and herbs, drugs, and medical treatments of no value are bought by people because of claims that they promote health and prolong life. Get-rich schemes based only loosely on existing technologies and what can only be described as science crazes (remember cold fusion) are no less a part of today's world than they were in the time of alchemists. In subsequent chapters, Mackay deals with those who issue prophecies, fortune-telling, magnetizers (a form of medical quackery), fashions in hairstyles and beards, the crusades, witch hunts, murderers who used slow-acting poisons, haunted houses and ghosts, fads in slang, admiration of criminals, duels and ordeals, and the appeal of relics. Quite a list. It would be dull (and would spoil the reader's fun) to play the game of finding modern counterparts for all of Mackay's chapters. Individual readers will be able to come up with their own candidates easily enough. Superstition casts a long, dark shadow over history, and each generation has to discover independently the consequences of our failures to benefit fully from advances in human knowledge. Even today, despite the fact that the world is awash in education and we have the highest levels of intellectual sophistication in history, we cannot seem to escape the perils of a certain kind of irrationality. Of course, this is nothing new. The Old Testament is filled with examples of the chosen people not choosing wisely. The Trojan Horse is by no means the only example in ancient Greece of people ignoring potential perils of the big score. Indeed, viewed through a certain lens, history is a continuing struggle between the rational and irrational. Certainly Mackay was far from the first to document how fragile rationality can be when overwhelmed by wishes. In a much different manner Plato, the Stoics, and many early Christian thinkers paved the way with analyses that are often surprisingly modern and psychologically penetrating. One thinks immediately of Francis Bacon's (1561-1626) doctrine of the idols that fostered the modern philosophical interest in false beliefs. Indeed, by the nineteenth century the study of false belief had become a major focus of epistemology and philosophy of science. But Mackay was only partially concerned with false beliefs per se; his larger interest was in exploring how such beliefs become established and supported socially, culturally, and collectively. In this sense his work might be seen as an early forerunner of the sociology of knowledge, a field largely initiated by Mackay's near contemporary Karl Marx (1818-1883). Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a social-science classic but not because it was social science as we understand that term today. Later books such as Gustav Le Bon's The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895) provided the bridge between descriptive and more theoretical accounts. Mackay was a journalist and not a social scientist, not even an embryonic one. In many respects the tone of Mackay's book is close to Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1862), in which his observations on the United States in 1831-32 have the same sort of attention to telling detail, perspicacity, and objectivity mingled with some bemusement, that we find in Extraordinary Popular Delusions. Mackay's descriptions are clear and supply enough detail to provide a real flavor for the phenomena he describes. But rarely does he make an attempt at explanation, and the explanations he does provide (e.g., for the crusades) are standard confluences of historical and economic forces, the kind that have been used freely (and usually not very carefully) for the past several centuries. One looks in vain for the influence of social class, social strain, anxiety, alienation (to name but four major categories of explanation used today) on the behavior he describes. Despite the fact that Mackay is dealing with phenomena of great psychological interest, he rarely goes beyond standard descriptions of emotion and feeling. Of course, we ought to remember that Extraordinary Popular Delusions was written well before any reasonable date for the birth of modern psychology. Nevertheless, that may be letting Mackay off a bit too easily because he was native to a country that had produced more than its share of what might be called pre-modern psychologists. Scotland was, after all, the home of David Hume (1711-1776), Thomas Reid (1710-1796), Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), William Hamilton (1788-1856) - all psychologically oriented philosophers, many of whom wrote about both the limitations of human reason and the nasty effects of its abandonment for superstition. Perhaps it was too much to expect Mackay, who never went to university and had a truncated secondary education, to have made use of their insights, yet the Scottish philosophers were better known among intellectually sophisticated people of the time (a group that certainly included Mackay) than philosophers tend to be these days. In the final analysis we must take Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds for what it is and not for what a modern social scientist might have done with the same material. But that is justification enough for his work. Mackay's purpose was to warn rather than explain, and at the beginning of an era in Great Britain that celebrated the importance of rational and scientific approaches to solving problems and a belief in the power of education to create rationality, this book was caution indeed. Its main value in both Mackay's time and ours may lie in its documentation of a wide range of material which seems eternally modern, making only slight allowance for differences between the witch hunts of yore and the communist investigations of the 1950s in the United States or the hysteria over alleged sexual abuse in daycare centers during the 1980s. While each of the topics Mackay discusses had been described and even analyzed before, it does not seem to be the case that anyone had previously brought such a wide range of material together under a common roof. Extraordinary Popular Delusions not only provides a readily accessible archive of human silliness for subsequent scholars to mine, but it also prompts thoughtful readers to wonder about the connections between the various phenomena Mackay describes. What do witch hunts, crusades, and economic panics have in common? To some extent we are still trying to figure out the answer to that question, but modern readers can, at a minimum, thank Charles Mackay for broadening the "database" and implicitly raising questions of comparison. More important than situating Extraordinary Popular Delusions in a historical context is the question of whether this curious book is worth reading today. It surely is. The material is fascinating, the writing engaging, and the phenomena are in their own way as modern as can be. The book is literate (in a Victorian sort of way, but without being fussy), and for the most part it is an interesting read. While Mackay always makes clear that he is well on the respectable side of a line separating rationality from superstition, he generally avoids making fun of his subjects - he plays it remarkably straight. Perhaps one reason Mackay is able to be evenhanded is that most of the examples he discusses were historical even by the mid-nineteenth century. Distance can provide a measure of objectivity that most of us find hard to achieve in describing our own times. Since Extraordinary Popular Delusions lacks an overarching explanatory framework (if it had one, it would likely be outdated), the chapters are independent and one does not have to read the book from beginning to end. The reader can begin anywhere. One good place to begin is with the relatively short chapter on the tulip craze, and then perhaps to move on to the chapters on the crusades or witch hunts. Although some chapters (such as the lengthy discussion of alchemy) are somewhat repetitious and can begin to feel like too much of a good thing, there is something of interest in every chapter. The reader can pick and choose, even read selectively within chapters. The phenomena Mackay describes still have the power to fascinate and intrigue. David J. Schneider graduated from Wabash College and obtained a Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has taught at Amherst College, Brandeis University, Stanford University, Indiana University, and the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is presently Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences at Rice University, where he teaches courses in social psychology, stereotyping and prejudice, history of psychology, and the psychology of beliefs. From the B&N Reads Blog Page 1 of Related Subjects Current Affairs & Politics Politics & Government - General & Miscellaneous General & Miscellaneous - Politics & Government Current Affairs & Politics Politics & Government - General & Miscellaneous General & Miscellaneous - Politics & Government Customer Reviews