The dangers of enthusiasm. Excavating the history of words can sometimes be as revealing as excavating the ruins of an ancient city.

Take the English word enthusiasm. Today we see this as something positive. One dictionary defines it as a feeling of energetic interest

in a particular subject or activity and an eagerness to be involved in it. People with enthusiasm

have passion, zest and excitement, and this can be contagious. It's one of the gifts of a great

teacher or leader. People follow people of passion.

If you want to influence others, cultivate enthusiasm. But the word did not always have a

favorable connotation. Originally it referred to someone possessed by a spirit or demon. In the 17th century, in 17th century England,

it came to refer to extreme and revolutionary Protestant sects and more recently to the Puritans

who fought the English Civil War. It became a synonym for religious extremism, zealotry and fanaticism. It was looked on as

irrational, volatile and dangerous. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher who lived from

1711 to 1776, wrote a fascinating essay on the subject. He begins by noting that the corruption

of the best things produces the worst, and that's especially true of religion. There are, he says,

two ways in which religion can go wrong, through superstition and through enthusiasm. And they are quite different phenomena.

Superstition is driven by ignorance and fear. We can sometimes have irrational anxieties and

terrors and we deal with them by resorting to equally irrational remedies.

Enthusiasm is the opposite. It's the result not of fear, but of overconfidence.

The enthusiast in a state of high religious rapture comes to believe that he's being inspired by

God himself and is thus empowered to disregard reason and restraint.

Enthusiasm, in Hume's words,

thinks itself sufficiently qualified to approach the divinity

without any human mediator.

The person in its grip is so full of what he takes to be Holy Rapture

...