Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1871-06-21
Contagious Mental Alienation i'm Paris
ICor. Cincinnati Gazettel


As between the two branches of the armed
sayages, on the 18th of March, it was the toss Of
a S0atS, and the communists knew it, And
knowing it, we are not to be surprised at theil
acting accordingly. They always acted upon
the well grounded hope that NJ. Theirs would
be betrayed" No less when he came back to
Paris with his ears up and colors flying as when
he sneaked away from it with his tail between
his legs. They may well cry treason" always
in France, for in France parties are always
reasonable. Therefore, to set upon the com
munists Giving and dead) as sinners above all
men who are in that Sodom is preposterous
Communism is not moral island in France
When you see lot of men standing up against
the wall and another lot of men shooting them,
you will see that there is very little to choose
between them, whether you regard their physi-
ognomy, their politics, their social ethics OF
their religion. Both parties smell strongly of
petroleum. The chaos of France is not thing
of yesterday as to origin, and il will not be a
thing of tomorrow as to result
An eminent Paris physician gives it as his
opinion that the whole trouble arises from con-
tagious mental alienation. He says the minds
of the Parisians were gradually unhiuged by
the privations of the siege. BY the lascivious
atheism of a century he should have said. The
revolt of the 18th of March gave the last blow,
he says, and the greater part of the people went
raving mad. This epidemical insanity is one of
the most surprising cases that Psychologists
have ever witnessed. Women, young girls
and little children went about throwing
lighted torches and petroleum into houses,
under the influence of mania for in
cendiarism. They acted under a halluci-
nation which is as incontestable as it is
difficult to explain. Women are more reckless
than men, because their brains are weaker, and
their sensibilities more acute, which by the way
may suggest the reason Why the French are
more given to volcanic eruptiOns than any other
nation, not excepting their Latin sisters Spain
and Italy, and their Celtic sister ireland. Their
brains are weaker and their sensiblities more
acute than those of their Teutonic, Anglo-Saxon
and Scandinavian brothers, Consequently, as
the doctor says, they are far more dangerous
and do more harm; and because lascivious
atheism has eaten up their common sense and
virtue, without which there can be no sanity,
mental or moral, and left nothing behind but
rhetoric and what the physician calls "yertigO,"
and what Lamartine called Revolutionary YER
tlgo." We are told that the "men who threw
themselves on the bayOnets of the soldiers in a
paroXysm of passion were seen ten minutes after
utterly PROSTATE and begging for mercy. They
were no more towards in the last instance than
they were heroes in the first; they are simply
madmen." So these same poor, desperate
wretches" would plead for mercy of the Deity
ten minutes after they had fallen into His hands.
The so-called friends of ORDER are repre-
scented as "struck with paralysis" "The air of
Paris is poisoned with deeterous miasmata,"
says the physician, (Which makes some people
furious madmen, and Others helpless idiots
have seen the strongest intellects stagger under
this pernicious influence, and have myself felt
as if reason was going"
believe firmly in the doctors solution, to a
certain extent, or rather TO greater than he
does. He puts the origin of the curious mad
ness" and "hepless idiocy" at the siege put
it about century further back, and the contnu-
ance Of it, am afraid, may be put for a century
ahead. Paris is to-day as jolly and vain and
rhetorical and lascivious and atheistic as ever
she was. She sips and sips around the smold-
ering embers. The Curious mailman" of YES
terday is the "helpless IDIOT of to-day. Nc
Mahon's admirable army" is standing about,
with its chassepot loaded and its eye upon the
third-story window Saving society" Again
society is saved by force of arms, and the ''edi-
flee is crowned" with diadem of bayonets.
They are going to put a statue of France" on
the top of the new column. Let it have two
faces; the one the face of Curious mailman"
the other the face Of "helpless idiot;' or let
one face be that Of tiger, and the other that of
monkey, according to the description of his
countrymen by Voltaire and let both faces be
vital with the leer and sneer of lascivious atbe-
ism