This book deals with the cause and cure of the nervous ills. As I carry on my work on nervous ills I become more and more convinced that a knowledge of Social Psychology is essential to a clear comprehension of nervous ills. The number of cases given in the volume will, I am sure, be of great help to the reader. For the concrete cases, carefully studied by me, bring out distinctly the mechanism, the factors, and the main principles of nervous ills... In nervous ills we find the same fundamental factors: the fear instinct and the Self-preservation which is the central aim of all life-activities.

This book deals with the source and aim of Human Progress. If we wish social life not to become stationary and stagnant, we should give free scope to all individuality and originality, no matter how eccentric they may seem to us. We should allow free play to all opinions, doctrines, and expressions of human thought, no matter how absurd and contagious the superstitions may appear to us. New ideas, ideals, and beliefs should not be persecuted but should rather be left for discussion and criticism, because we should not assume that we are in possession of the whole truth, and that no further advance is possible. We may learn from other people who look at the world from a different angle, and thus may be able to see things in a different light which may either add to the truth which we already possess, or may even transform it by some new additional element or principle which at first may appear to us as bizarre and paradoxical... The manifestation of the apparently false opinion keeps thought awake; it constantly challenges us, making us review again and again our established truths, and contributes to an ever deeper realization of what has been gained by severe thought and hard labor. The freedom of the seemingly false opinion and our tolerance of it and our willingness to meet with it in the open help test the validity of truth while keeping alive the critical sense which is the main spring of all advancement of human thought and is the vital point, the very soul, of all human progress. In a certain sense it may be said that it is the function of the false to keep the truth alive. The suppression of the freedom of thought or the liberty of individual expression, whether in speech or in press, is the crushing of all true human progress. Thus science, Sociology, Social Psychology, all go to confirm the same central attitude towards the free manifestation of individuality in the life existence of a well-ordered, progressive commonwealth...

What is the nature and the source of the mob? It is at one moment so humane, at another so savage, at one moment so heroic, at the next so cowardly, that it would seem at first glance as if it were governed by caprice, not by law. Yet there are certain conditions which favor the production of a mob, and a study of these conditions may help us to understand its apparently lawless nature. The examination of a few cases may disclose some of the factors which form the problem. In 1883, in the city of Ekaterinoslav, Russia, a Jewish merchant happened to quarrel with a peasant woman. "Murder! murder!" she screamed at the top of her voice. A crowd of idlers soon gathered about the two combatants. "Beat the Jews!" suggested someone in the crowd. A few stones flew in the direction of the Jew's store, more and more followed; then the mob made a rush for the building and destroyed it. At about the same time, in one of the suburbs of Nijni-Novgorod, the following incident occurred. A child fell into a ditch; a Jewess pitied it, took it in her arms, and carried it into the synagogue to warm it A Christian woman witnessed the scene, and began to cry out that a Christian child had had been kidnapped for sacrificial purposes. A crowd of about three thousand men gathered; a drunken fellow called out, "Beat the Jews!" Thereupon an attack was made, and the mob, after having demolished the Jewish synagogue proceeded after the manner peculiar to all Russian anti-Jewish riots, breaking into Jewish houses, killing, violating, and barbarously demolishing every person And thing they found in them.

The causation of all psychopathic diseases can be referred to one fundamental instinct, the instinct of fear with its concomitant manifestation, the feeling of anxiety. Fear is one of the most primitive instincts of animal life. What we find on examination of the psychogenesis of psychopathic cases, and especially of psychoneurotic cases, is the presence of the fear instinct which may become associated with some important interest of life. This interest may be physical in regard to the bodily functions, or the interest may be sexual, social, it may be one of ambition in life, or it may be of a general character referring to the loss of personality or even to the loss of mind...