“The master thinkers of the Enlightenment inherited a Europe that had been buoyed up by the moral ethos of Christianity for so long that they thought they could scuttle the ark and wash ashore on the next tide. They were sure that reasonable people, with a wink from Voltaire and Rousseau, would walk away from crowds in droves. When, by the grace of God, we are able to walk away from a crowd in the grip of mimetic contagion, it is not because we are the sturdy individuals we fancy ourselves to be. Rather it is because we, like the members of the mob accusing the adulterous woman, have been moved by a moral force of even greater power than that which the old system of sacred violence has been able to muster” (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, pp. 196-197).
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