Extraordinary Popular Delusions Book

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and Madness of the Crowds
By Charles Mackay 1814-1889)
Charles Mackay was a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter remembered mainly for his book 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds'.

The themes of the madness of the crowds are mostly situated in the eighteenth to the nineteenth century.

The Mississippi scheme:
Louis XIV died in 1715. The heir to the throne is an infant of only seven years of age,
The Duke of Orleans assumed the reins of government, as regent.

John Law was a Scotsman with financial experience from all over Europe over thirty years.
With the help of exceptional gifts of intelligence, charm, and persuasion and some high ranking connection succeed in approaching the new regent with credible proposals to
Save the country's finances from its utmost state of disorder.

He proposed the creation of paper money of which he had seen very successful operations in Holland and Germany. He was listened to and allowed to register a new bank called 'Law and Company.' He went to work as proposed and could soon prove that his bank was prosperous and his methods safe.

His next step in 1717 was to establish a new company 'The Mississippi Company' and obtained from the regent to have exclusive rights to trading with the province of Louisiana. The country was supposed to abound in gold and other precious metals. Letters Patent were issued and the company registered with two hundred thousand shares of five hundred lives each.
It was then that the frenzy of speculation began to seize the whole nation. The entire country handed in their gold and silver in exchange for paper notes promising 120% revenue p.a.
The system worked for a while due to ever more new share emissions, paying the income for the first patch.
The rest of the story is the adventurous unravelling over several years of some grand illusions of hope, ending in disappointment and national disaster.

The blame for the failure had been laid on John Law's head, and he had to leave France in a hurry to avoid being lynched, but it is reported that the regent had been at the lever to overstep the limits of saving speculation.

People never learn. Modern stock exchanges are no different. Except that they are slightly better managed. We have seen in our lifetime several speculation bubbles burst and crowds of people ruined.

The south sea bubble;
While John Law's Mississippi scheme in France was at its highest point of popularity, the Earl of Oxford, in the year of 1711, introduced to England the "South Sea Company" with the pretended aim of restoring public credit. Similar to John Law's scheme this company promised immense riches from the eastern coast of South America, the Gold and Silver mines of Peru and Mexico. Reports smartly spread reported that Spain was willing to concede four maritime ports for traffic. Philip V. of Spain however never had any intention of granting England any free trade to Spanish America. But the public confidence in the South Sea Company was not shaken, and investments continued at great sped and volumes.
Even though the company had hardly any income from trade, it continued flourishing by purely financial means.
In addition to this, the government promoted additional means of harvesting money from investors in passing acts of law like the South Sea Act, the Bank Act, and the General Fund Act.
The great principle of the project was to raise artificially the value of the stocks, by exciting and influencing a general infatuation, and by promising dividends out of funds that could never be adequate to the purpose.
It seemed at that time that the whole nation had turned stock-jobbers. Other schemes and innumerable joint-stock companies of the most extravagant kind started up everywhere.
The popular appellation called the fittingly 'bubbles 'and mere cheats.
I leave it to the future reader to follow the unravelling of this national disaster to the end.
Just like in France at almost the same time.

The Tulipmania:
The tulip seems to have been a flower originating from Constantinople.
A certain Conrad Gesner says that he first saw it in 1559 in a botanical garden in Augsburg.
In the course of ten to twenty year afterwards, tulips were much sought after by the rich and famous of Holland and Germany.
The first tulips planted in England came from Vienna in 1600. Until the year 1634, the tulip increased annually in reputation. Soon the middle-class society, merchants, and shopkeepers began to vie which each other in the rarity of these flowers and the extraordinarily high prices that they paid for them. Any particular virtue of this flower is not known, it has neither the beauty nor the perfume of a rose and is not enduring either. However, in 1634 the rage among the Dutch to possess them was so high that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected. In 1635 many people were known to invest 100 000 florins for the purchase of 40 roots. A species called 'Semper Augustus' would be paid 5500 florins.
The operations of the trade became so extensive and complicated that it was found necessary to draw up a code of laws for the guidance of the dealers.
At last, however, the more prudent began to see that this folly could not go on forever.
They started a selling movement. The prices fell and never rose again. A universal panic seized upon the dealers and the bubble burst. Many were left ruined.

This is the only madness of the crowds that I can not blame. Any passionate collector of things, be they rare or standard or be they tulips, will understand that urge of gathering what he regards as treasures. It seems to be part of human nature.

The Alchemists:

Dissatisfaction with his fate seems to be the characteristic of all men.
Three causes especially have excited the discontent, death, poverty, and ignorance of the future.
The first was the reason of many savant men to search for some secret way of avoiding death, and if not, to at least live for several centuries instead of several years. It was the search for the elixir vitae or water of life.
The second was the search for the philosopher's stone, which was to create riches in transforming any metal into gold.
The third was the search for means of discovering the future.
They were the alchemists, sorcerers, geomancers, and dealers in charms, amulets for all sorts of functions, like philtres of love, fortune telling, healing all maladies and working miracles of all kinds.

For more than a thousand years the art of alchemy captivated many noble spirits and was believed in by millions. It was practised by the Chinese two thousand five hundred years BC.
Pretenders to the art of making gold and silver flourished in Ancient Rome and Constantinople up to the fourth century and later.

Some of the most renowned philosophers are Geber of the year 730, Alfarabi of the 10th century, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas of 1193, 1244, Alain de Lisle the universal Doctor, Atrophies, Arnold de Villeneuve, Pietro d'Apone, Raymond Lully, Roger Bacon 1214, Pope John XXII, 1244, Jean de Meung, 1279 (Roman de la Rose)Nicholas Flamel,1257
And many more in this chapter, of whom short biographies are developed with many exciting and amusing incidents, adventures and anecdotes, too many to be listed here, but well worth reading.

Modern Prophecies:

End of the world prophecies seized the Christian World, spread by fanatics, in the middle of the tenth century, preaching that the thousand year cycle prophesized in the Apocalypse, was about to expire. The last judgment was expected to take place in Jerusalem. Large crowds of people from all over Europe sold all their belongings and went the Holy Land where they lived on their proceeds waiting for the end of the world which was near.

In the year One thousand the situation grew worse. Every meteor, every thunder was the voice of God. Numbers expected the earth to open and give up the dead for the last judgment day. Fanatic preachers kept up the flame of terror. When nothing happened, it might have taken a year or more for the return home. Ruined and destitute, victims of their madness.

Credulity is always greatest in time of disaster and calamity. During the Years 1345 and 1350
During the great plague, it was considered that the end of the world was near.
London was hit by great consternation by the prophecy of the famous Whiston, that the world would be destroyed on the 13th of October 1736.

In the year 1761 London was alarmed by two shocks of earthquake. The first fell on the 8th of February, the second on the 8th of March, pointing at exactly one month between the two blows. Some madman predicted the end of London in one month time, the 5 the of April. The word spread quickly, and crowds of people left the city to wait for the end of the world in the open fields outside the city. When nothing happened, the prophet named Bell was apprehended and locked up in a madhouse.

Other prophecies have been numerous, which were asserted to have been delivered hundreds of years before, with always a most pernicious effect on the mind of the vulgar population.


Fortune telling:
In this chapter, the author proceeds to consider all the follies into which men have been led in the hope of piercing the thick darkness of the futurity.
"God himself for his wise purpose has more than once undrawn the impenetrable veil of which shrouds those awful secrets."
We found that the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the golden ages of the imposters of foretelling the future.
The most celebrated astrologers in England, three centuries ago were alchemists, such as Agrippa, Paracelsus, Dr Dee, the Rosicrucian's, Lilly, Lamb, Brooker, Gadbury.

In France and Germany astrologers met even more encouragements. Louis XI., the most superstitious of men and Catherine de Medicis, the most superstitious of women kept great numbers of them at their court.
The most celebrated of them was Nostradamus who flourished around 1556. The prophecies of Nostradamus consist of more than thousand stanzas written in obscure language, hardly intelligible and likely to fit any outcome.
He is to this day extremely popular in France and some parts of Belgium.
Another famous astrologer named Antiochus Tiberius lived in Romagna in the fifteenth century.
Other sciences resorted to prying into the future were:
Necromancy, Geomancy Augury and Divination, the most enduring of them. It was practised alike by Jews, the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Persians, The Greeks and the Romans.
Divination is practised to the present day in civilized Europe, chiefly from Cards, coffee cups, and lines of the hand. Among an endless list of other forms.
Omens are among the other means of self-annoyance upon which man has stumbled on, and is in use since the darkest ages of the past.
Everyone I believe, has his omens in mind and reacts to them instinctively to this very day, myself included.

The Magnetisers;

The influence of the imagination in the cure of diseases is well known.
The mineral magnetizers claim the first notice, as worthy predecessors of today's quacks.
Paracelsus was the first to practice the art of healing by magnetism.
Messmer of Vienna was another famous practitioner of the art. He arrived in Paris in 1778 and became a fashionable physician throughout every grade of society. His name became a popular expression: to be mesmerized, still in use today.
Amusing anecdotes and adventures by the dozen.

The Crusades:
This is an exciting historical report on all the 8 or 9 crusades. I did not know there had been so many.
The first (1096) two crusades were indeed an example of the complete Madness of the Crowds. The poorest of the French and German population was harangued and motivated by the ruthless and fanatic Monk Peter the Hermit endorsed by Pope Urban II.

They gathered in vile, lawless and ruthless crowds of several hundred thousand and started up to reach Jerusalem by foot. None of them knew where Jerusalem was nor how far away, they just went to the East, like devouring flocks of locusts, stealing looting and burning everything on the way until the neighbouring countries got organized and killed them as they came. None ever reached the holy land.
Later crusades spanning over more than two centuries were of a more military nature organized by French English and German noblemen and their armies. Their intent to conquer and control Jerusalem fighting away the Muslims was obtained with the cost the lives of thousands amid rivers of blood.

Europe had spent millions of her treasures and lost two million of her population, and a handful of quarrelsome knights retained possession of Palestine for about one hundred years.

I had only read the extraordinary true-life report of "The Conquest of Constantinople" by Vill ehardouin, about the third and fourth crusades, in the twelfth century. And also the remarkable book of "Vie de Saint Louis" by Joinville, one of his faithful knights, who led the crusades to Egypt and Jerusalem in 1248-1254.

I appreciate this complement of history to my knowledge.

The following chapters:

The Witch mania;
The slow poisoners;
Haunted houses;
Popular follies of great cities;
Popular admiration of great thieves;
Duels and Ordeals;
Relics.

I leave it to future readers to discover these chapters.
Enough is said about the style and excellent quality of this very elaborate, but easy to read, work of Charles Mackey.