Any audit of the human significance of politics would have to press far beyond the narrow circle of professional politicians. Crises like wars, revolutions, and elections enter the lives of people in far-reaching ways. The effect of crises on mental attitude is an important and uncertain field. Thus it is reported that during the rebellion of 1745-46 in Scotland there was little hysteria (in the technical pathological sense). The same was true of the French Revolution and of the Irish Rebellion. Rush reported in his book _On the Influence of the American Revolution on the Human Body_ that many hysterical women were “restored to perfect health by the events of the time.” Havelock Ellis, who cites these instances, comments that “in such cases the emotional tension is given an opportunity for explosion in new and impersonal channels, and the chain of morbid personal emotions is broken.”[53] The physical consequences of political symbolism may be made the topic of investigation from this point of view: When the affect can not acquire what it needs, uncomfortable tensions or anxiety (fear) are felt, and the use of the symbol or fetish, relieving this anxiety, has a marked physiological value in that it prevents the adrenal, thyroid, circulatory, hepatic and pulmonic compensatory strivings from becoming excessive.[54] Political programs will continually demand reconsideration in the light of the factors which current research discloses as bearing upon the tension level. Franz Alexander recently drew attention to the strains produced in modern civilization by the growing sphere of purposive action. He summed up the facts in the process of civilized development in the following way: “Human expressions of instinct are subject to a continual tendency to rationalization, that is, they develop more and more from playful, uncoordinated, purely pleasure efforts into purposive actions.” The “discomfort of civilization” of which Freud recently wrote in the _Unbehagen der Kultur_ is characteristic of the rationalized cultures with which we are acquainted. Life is poor in libidinal gratifications of the primitive kind which the peasant, who is in close touch with elementary things, is in a position to enjoy.[55] Modern life furnishes irrational outlets in the moving picture and in sensational crime news. But it may be that other means of relieving the strain of modern living can be invented which will have fewer drawbacks.