PANIC is where fear, whether arising from an adequate or inadequate 'cause, obtains the mastery over every other consideration and motive, and urges to dastard extrava gance, or hurries into danger or death. An inexplicable sound causes a rush from a church, a vague report in the market-place causes a run on a bank, and precipitate the very events that are dreaded. This emotion either differs from natural apprehension, or presents so intense and uncontrollable a form of the feeling, that it is propagable from one person to another, and involves alike the educated and ignorant—those who act from judgment as well as those who act from impulse. There are, besides this fea ture, several grounds for believing that such manifestations of involuntary terror are of morbid origin, and should be regarded as moral epidemics. They have generally arisen clarity, or have followed, seasons of scarcity and physical want and disease, the ravages of war, or periods of great religious fervor and superstition. The dancing mania, the retreat of the French army from Moscow, and recent and familiar commercial panics afford illustrations of certain of these relations. The most notable instance or universal panic, and that which demonstrates most aptly the connection here indicated, is the dread of the approaching end of the world which pervaded all minds, and almost broke up human society in the 10th century. The empire of Charlemagne had fallen to pieces;
public misfortune and civil discord merged into misery and famine so extreme that can nibalism prevailed even in Paris; superstitious and vague predictions became formalized into a prophecy of the end of all things and universal doom in the God" 1000. .This expectation suspended even vengeance and war. The "truce of God' was proclaimed. Enormous riches were placed upon the altars. Worship and praise never ceased. The fields were left uncultivated; serfs were set free: four kings and thousands of nobles retired to the cloister; and all men, according to their tendencies, prepared to die.
It is worthy of note that during a11 pestilences there have arisen epidemic terrors, not so much of the devastations of disease, as of plots and poisonings directed by the rich against the poor. Even where these epidemic terrors are legitimately traceable to local and physical causes, as in the casvif the singular affection thnoria, which occurs in the marshy and unhealthy districts in Sardinia, the tremor and trepidation, and other phe nomena, are ascribed to the magical influence of enemies. For the origin of the name, see PAN. •