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Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds #2
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Volume 2
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197 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1841
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303 people want to read
About the author
Charles Mackay
667 books150 followersCharles Mackay was a Scottish poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist, and songwriter, remembered mainly for his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
Mackay became a journalist in London: in 1834 he was an occasional contributor to The Sun. From the spring of 1835 till 1844 he was assistant sub-editor of the Morning Chronicle. In the autumn of 1839 he spent a month's holiday in Scotland, witnessing the Eglintoun Tournament, which he described in the Chronicle, and making acquaintances in Edinburgh. In the autumn of 1844, he moved to Scotland, and became editor of the Glasgow Argus, resigning in 1847. He worked for the Illustrated London News in 1848, becoming editor in 1852.
Mackay published Songs and Poems (1834), a History of London, The Thames and its Tributaries or, Rambles Among the Rivers (1840), Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), and a romance entitled Longbeard. He is also remembered for his Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe and the later Dictionary of Lowland Scotch.
His daughter was English novelist and mystic Marie Corelli.
Mackay became a journalist in London: in 1834 he was an occasional contributor to The Sun. From the spring of 1835 till 1844 he was assistant sub-editor of the Morning Chronicle. In the autumn of 1839 he spent a month's holiday in Scotland, witnessing the Eglintoun Tournament, which he described in the Chronicle, and making acquaintances in Edinburgh. In the autumn of 1844, he moved to Scotland, and became editor of the Glasgow Argus, resigning in 1847. He worked for the Illustrated London News in 1848, becoming editor in 1852.
Mackay published Songs and Poems (1834), a History of London, The Thames and its Tributaries or, Rambles Among the Rivers (1840), Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), and a romance entitled Longbeard. He is also remembered for his Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe and the later Dictionary of Lowland Scotch.
His daughter was English novelist and mystic Marie Corelli.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 9, 2016
Overall, this is my least favorite of the three volumes of Mackay's epic investigation, although it is worth reading with an end that balances the beginning. This volume covers alchemists, fortune-tellers, and animal magnetism. The alchemists are treated with a series of quick, paragraph biographies like reading something from Tebbo (publisher of a number of "What You Need to Know..." books repackaging Wikipedia content). Fortune-tellers is a bit better, but Mackay does not get into his usual stride until he deals with the "mummery" of the quack science of animal magnetism. The dissection of this combination of (self-?)hypnosis, feigning, and hysteria is fascinating with the introduction of blind and even double-blind tests to show the pseudoscience for what it is. Overall, this book made me again see the 19th Century as a fascinating time of science pushing light into the dark corners and how long the history is of baseless beliefs that lead people to even now read horoscopes and pay good money to converse with a "psychic".
July 29, 2018
THE CRUSADES
It's funny and sad to read the most of the crusades failed (at least in the view of its organizers) due to miscommunication, pride and lack of cooperation of the western powers. It's almost unbelievable to see how disorganized some of the crusades were.
It reflects a lot of our current society, that still fails in several endeavors due to this kind lack of cohesion and disorganization.
THE WITCH MANIA
I found it interesting because it was written about 100 years after the end of the mania. However, this chapter is extremely repetitive, because it tells how the witch hunt progressed in several countries, and, since it happened in a similar manner in all of them, the stories are just repetitions.
THE SLOW POISONERS, HAUNTED HOUSES
The interesting, but also suffers from the repetition.
HAUNTED HOUSES
In my opinion, boring and repetitive (maybe because I'm not fond of the subject :P)
In general, an interesting read, but I'm not sure that it's historically accurate. I cross searched some facts about the crusades and found different versions. Since the author is not a historian, I wouldn't be surprised if there are indeed some errors in the book. Overall, though, it looks plausible.
It's funny and sad to read the most of the crusades failed (at least in the view of its organizers) due to miscommunication, pride and lack of cooperation of the western powers. It's almost unbelievable to see how disorganized some of the crusades were.
It reflects a lot of our current society, that still fails in several endeavors due to this kind lack of cohesion and disorganization.
THE WITCH MANIA
I found it interesting because it was written about 100 years after the end of the mania. However, this chapter is extremely repetitive, because it tells how the witch hunt progressed in several countries, and, since it happened in a similar manner in all of them, the stories are just repetitions.
THE SLOW POISONERS, HAUNTED HOUSES
The interesting, but also suffers from the repetition.
HAUNTED HOUSES
In my opinion, boring and repetitive (maybe because I'm not fond of the subject :P)
In general, an interesting read, but I'm not sure that it's historically accurate. I cross searched some facts about the crusades and found different versions. Since the author is not a historian, I wouldn't be surprised if there are indeed some errors in the book. Overall, though, it looks plausible.
September 15, 2021
The section on the Witch trials was like reading a grimdark fantasy novel… except that this actually happened.
And there are so many poignant quotes, like:
"We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first."
And there are so many poignant quotes, like:
"We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object, and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first."
December 16, 2020
Amazing book, everything you need to know about the stupidity of the Crusades, witch trials, and more.
January 7, 2022
Jilid dua buku ini hanyalah membicarakan empat bab sahaja; namun bagi setiap satu, panjangnya sahaja boleh menjadi satu buku!
Dimulakan bab pertama mengenai Perang Salib The Crusades, yang semestinya rujukan yang diberi sangat menarik untuk terus diterokai. Meskipun dikisahkan dengan agak panjang mengenainya, namun apa yang ditekankan oleh penulis adalah kegilaan yang dilakukan oleh masyarakat. Dari siri-siri awal Crusades hinggalah yang kelapan. Sepertimana yang disebut dalam bab yang sebelumnya, Modern Prophecies, siri awal perang salib adalah disebabkan oleh takwilan terhadap hari kiamat (yang sampai kesudah siri kelapan, belum juga kiamat-kiamat!). “A strange idea had taken possession of the popular mind at the close of the tenth and the commencement of the eleventh century. It was universally believed that the end of the world was at hand; that the thousand years of the Apocalypse were near completion, and that Jesus Christ would descend upon Jerusalem to judge mankind.” Maka, diguna segala kuasa elit agama yang sememangnya selama ini berkuasa penuh. “The clergy were all in all; and though they kept the popular mind in the most slavish subjection with regard to religious matters, they furnished it with the means of defence against all other oppression except their own.” Di setiap kampong dan desa, mereka ini sibuk menghangatkan isu penyertaan ke dalam ekspedisi ini; dengan menjanjikan pahala besar kepada yang menyertainya (seolah mereka-lah penentu dosa pahala) dan memberi seburuk-buruk penghinaan kepada mereka yang menentang mahupun ragu-ragu. “In every village, the clergy were busied in keeping up the excitement, promising eternal rewards to those who assumed the red cross, and fulminating the most awful denunciations against all worldly-minded who refused or even hesitated.” Nah, namun mereka yang mulanya berazam dan ragu-ragu akan ekspedisi ini, turut sama terkena penyakit ‘joining the bandwagon’! “Those who had not determined upon the journey, joked and laughed at those who were thus disposing of their goods at such ruinous prices, prophesying that the expedition would be miserable and their return worse. But they held this language for a day. The next, they were suddenly seized with the same frenzy as the rest.” Nah, setelah meneruskan perjalanan pula, boleh pula mereka, setelah diberi tempat tidur dan makan oleh penduduk kawasan/wilayah yang mereka lalui, menyerang dan membunuh pembunuh asal, misalannya di Hungary. “The first multitude that set forth was led by Walter the Pennyless early in the spring of 1096, within a few months after the Council of Clermont. Each man of that irregular host aspired to be his master: like their nominal leader, each was poor to penury, and trusted for subsistence on his journey to the chances of the road. Rolling through Germany like a tide, they entered Hungary, where at first, they were received with some degree of kindness by the people. The latter had not yet caught sufficient of the fire of enthusiasm to join the crusade themselves, but were willing enough to forward the cause by aiding those embarked in it. Unfortunately, this good understanding did not last long. The swarm were not contented with food for their necessities, but craved for luxuries also: they attacked and plundered the dwellings of the country people, and thought nothing of murder where resistance were offered.” Semestinya, ini hanya preview kepada isi bagi bab ini. Banyak lagi sisi pandang yang boleh diterokai sama ada dengan diulang baca, atau ditambah baca bagi subjek yang besar ini.
Dimulakan bab pertama mengenai Perang Salib The Crusades, yang semestinya rujukan yang diberi sangat menarik untuk terus diterokai. Meskipun dikisahkan dengan agak panjang mengenainya, namun apa yang ditekankan oleh penulis adalah kegilaan yang dilakukan oleh masyarakat. Dari siri-siri awal Crusades hinggalah yang kelapan. Sepertimana yang disebut dalam bab yang sebelumnya, Modern Prophecies, siri awal perang salib adalah disebabkan oleh takwilan terhadap hari kiamat (yang sampai kesudah siri kelapan, belum juga kiamat-kiamat!). “A strange idea had taken possession of the popular mind at the close of the tenth and the commencement of the eleventh century. It was universally believed that the end of the world was at hand; that the thousand years of the Apocalypse were near completion, and that Jesus Christ would descend upon Jerusalem to judge mankind.” Maka, diguna segala kuasa elit agama yang sememangnya selama ini berkuasa penuh. “The clergy were all in all; and though they kept the popular mind in the most slavish subjection with regard to religious matters, they furnished it with the means of defence against all other oppression except their own.” Di setiap kampong dan desa, mereka ini sibuk menghangatkan isu penyertaan ke dalam ekspedisi ini; dengan menjanjikan pahala besar kepada yang menyertainya (seolah mereka-lah penentu dosa pahala) dan memberi seburuk-buruk penghinaan kepada mereka yang menentang mahupun ragu-ragu. “In every village, the clergy were busied in keeping up the excitement, promising eternal rewards to those who assumed the red cross, and fulminating the most awful denunciations against all worldly-minded who refused or even hesitated.” Nah, namun mereka yang mulanya berazam dan ragu-ragu akan ekspedisi ini, turut sama terkena penyakit ‘joining the bandwagon’! “Those who had not determined upon the journey, joked and laughed at those who were thus disposing of their goods at such ruinous prices, prophesying that the expedition would be miserable and their return worse. But they held this language for a day. The next, they were suddenly seized with the same frenzy as the rest.” Nah, setelah meneruskan perjalanan pula, boleh pula mereka, setelah diberi tempat tidur dan makan oleh penduduk kawasan/wilayah yang mereka lalui, menyerang dan membunuh pembunuh asal, misalannya di Hungary. “The first multitude that set forth was led by Walter the Pennyless early in the spring of 1096, within a few months after the Council of Clermont. Each man of that irregular host aspired to be his master: like their nominal leader, each was poor to penury, and trusted for subsistence on his journey to the chances of the road. Rolling through Germany like a tide, they entered Hungary, where at first, they were received with some degree of kindness by the people. The latter had not yet caught sufficient of the fire of enthusiasm to join the crusade themselves, but were willing enough to forward the cause by aiding those embarked in it. Unfortunately, this good understanding did not last long. The swarm were not contented with food for their necessities, but craved for luxuries also: they attacked and plundered the dwellings of the country people, and thought nothing of murder where resistance were offered.” Semestinya, ini hanya preview kepada isi bagi bab ini. Banyak lagi sisi pandang yang boleh diterokai sama ada dengan diulang baca, atau ditambah baca bagi subjek yang besar ini.
August 19, 2016
"CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
THE CRUSADES ..."
Mackay here revels in the criminalistic excess and folly of the crusades. Largely they became a visitation of hell onto Eastern Europe resulting from the exportation of holy warriors from Western Europe. Over the decades, the infidels of the Holy Land actually by and large were more equitable and reasonable combatants than the inharmonious and superstitions Christians.
THE WITCH MANIA
Writing from 1840, Mackay looks back on the persecutions of witches with a dim view and easily debunks the holocaust largely against women and girls. Herein is also evidence of a touch of the Herodotus in the credulous Mackay. Of the death of self-described Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, Mackay says,
"It is consoling to think that this impostor perished in his own snare. Mr. Gaul's exposure and his own rapacity weakened his influence among the magistrates; and the populace, who began to find that not even the most virtuous and innocent were secure from his persecution, looked upon him with undisguised aversion. He was beset by a mob, at a village in Suffolk, and accused of being himself a wizard. An old reproach was brought against him, that he had, by means of sorcery, cheated the devil out of a certain memorandum-book, in which he, Satan, had entered the names of all the witches in England. "Thus," said the populace, "you find out witches, not by God's aid, but by the devil's." In vain he denied his guilt. The populace longed to put him to his own test. He was speedily stripped, and his thumbs and toes tied together. He was then placed in a blanket, and cast into a pond. Some say that he floated; and that he was taken out, tried, and executed upon no other proof of his guilt. Others assert that he was drowned. This much is positive, that there was an end of him. As no judicial entry of his trial and execution is to be found in any register, it appears most probable that he expired by the hands of the mob."
Mackay is not alone in the belief of this ignominious end as the tale is in The Miscellaneous Works of Sir Walter Scott. But, according to more recent scholarship like Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy, Matthew Hopkins died at his home in Manningtree, Essex, on 12 August 1647, probably of pleural tuberculosis. He was buried a few hours after his death in the graveyard of the Church of St Mary at Mistley Heath.
THE SLOW POISONERS
I have been looking forward to reading this since I interviewed Andrew Goldfarb of the band The Slow Poisoners some years ago and learned of the inspiration for the group's name. In Mackay's sensationalist reportage (today he would have had a cable TV series like Forensic Files or Ghost Hunters), this is a vivid depiction of a homicide spree of active patience.
HAUNTED HOUSES
This seems more a continuation of THE WITCH MANIA in the belief in the supernatural, pranksterism, etc. Some of the unveiling, like servants mocking as poltergeists by using long horse hairs to ring down china, reads like the denouement of a Scooby-Doo episode.
THE CRUSADES ..."
Mackay here revels in the criminalistic excess and folly of the crusades. Largely they became a visitation of hell onto Eastern Europe resulting from the exportation of holy warriors from Western Europe. Over the decades, the infidels of the Holy Land actually by and large were more equitable and reasonable combatants than the inharmonious and superstitions Christians.
THE WITCH MANIA
Writing from 1840, Mackay looks back on the persecutions of witches with a dim view and easily debunks the holocaust largely against women and girls. Herein is also evidence of a touch of the Herodotus in the credulous Mackay. Of the death of self-described Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, Mackay says,
"It is consoling to think that this impostor perished in his own snare. Mr. Gaul's exposure and his own rapacity weakened his influence among the magistrates; and the populace, who began to find that not even the most virtuous and innocent were secure from his persecution, looked upon him with undisguised aversion. He was beset by a mob, at a village in Suffolk, and accused of being himself a wizard. An old reproach was brought against him, that he had, by means of sorcery, cheated the devil out of a certain memorandum-book, in which he, Satan, had entered the names of all the witches in England. "Thus," said the populace, "you find out witches, not by God's aid, but by the devil's." In vain he denied his guilt. The populace longed to put him to his own test. He was speedily stripped, and his thumbs and toes tied together. He was then placed in a blanket, and cast into a pond. Some say that he floated; and that he was taken out, tried, and executed upon no other proof of his guilt. Others assert that he was drowned. This much is positive, that there was an end of him. As no judicial entry of his trial and execution is to be found in any register, it appears most probable that he expired by the hands of the mob."
Mackay is not alone in the belief of this ignominious end as the tale is in The Miscellaneous Works of Sir Walter Scott. But, according to more recent scholarship like Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy, Matthew Hopkins died at his home in Manningtree, Essex, on 12 August 1647, probably of pleural tuberculosis. He was buried a few hours after his death in the graveyard of the Church of St Mary at Mistley Heath.
THE SLOW POISONERS
I have been looking forward to reading this since I interviewed Andrew Goldfarb of the band The Slow Poisoners some years ago and learned of the inspiration for the group's name. In Mackay's sensationalist reportage (today he would have had a cable TV series like Forensic Files or Ghost Hunters), this is a vivid depiction of a homicide spree of active patience.
HAUNTED HOUSES
This seems more a continuation of THE WITCH MANIA in the belief in the supernatural, pranksterism, etc. Some of the unveiling, like servants mocking as poltergeists by using long horse hairs to ring down china, reads like the denouement of a Scooby-Doo episode.
July 29, 2018
This third volume is the one I liked the least.
"The alchemists" tells the tales of dozens of alchemists throughout Europe. Most of the tales are short and after a while they become repetitive.
"Fortune telling" tries to describe all kinds of divinations, provides a list of dreams meanings and omens. It's slightly boring, but is short, which kind of alleviates the boredom.
"Magnetizers" is the most interesting of the chapters (maybe because I never heard of it before?).
It talks about magnetism/mesmerism, which was/is the pseudoscience that studies invisible forces that would cure/hypnotize people. There are several stories about famous magnetizers, and reports about their experiments, results (mostly lack of results).
The author makes clear throughout the book that he believes that everything related to magnetism is foolishness and quackery (the heavy judgment is tiresome sometimes). It's interesting to know, however, that these experiments started the studies around autosuggestion and the power of the mind over the body.
"The alchemists" tells the tales of dozens of alchemists throughout Europe. Most of the tales are short and after a while they become repetitive.
"Fortune telling" tries to describe all kinds of divinations, provides a list of dreams meanings and omens. It's slightly boring, but is short, which kind of alleviates the boredom.
"Magnetizers" is the most interesting of the chapters (maybe because I never heard of it before?).
It talks about magnetism/mesmerism, which was/is the pseudoscience that studies invisible forces that would cure/hypnotize people. There are several stories about famous magnetizers, and reports about their experiments, results (mostly lack of results).
The author makes clear throughout the book that he believes that everything related to magnetism is foolishness and quackery (the heavy judgment is tiresome sometimes). It's interesting to know, however, that these experiments started the studies around autosuggestion and the power of the mind over the body.
December 31, 2022
Though this book was written in the mid nineteenth century it could have been written today. It provides an entertaining and anecdotal history of a number of historical movements and beliefs - from witchcraft to the Crusades, duelling to tulipmania in the Netherlands. It makes you wonder about the future of mankind (if future there be).
February 10, 2011
It was interesting enough; opened the mind, made me think a bit. But it went on a bit too much, repetitive.
May 9, 2014
Interesting look into human folly. It left me wondering and sometimes smiling at the fact how silly we can be. Recommended for history buffs.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews