PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

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the faces and presences of unearthly friends. The fourth man may be a theosophist, and only too probably a vegetarian; and I do not see why I should not gratify myself with the fancy that the fifth man is a devil worshiper.... Now whether or not this sort of variety is valuable, this sort of unity is shaky. To expect that all men for all time will go on thinking different things, and yet doing the same things, is a doubtful speculation. It is not founding society on a communion, or even on a convention, but rather on a coincidence. Four men may meet under the same lamp post; one to paint it pea green as part of a great municipal reform; one to read his breviary in the light of it; one to embrace it with accidental ardour in a fit of alcoholic enthusiasm; and the last merely because the pea green post is a conspicuous point of rendezvous with his young lady. But to expect this to happen night after night is unwise...." [Footnote: G. K. Chesterton, "The Mad Hatter and the Sane Householder," _Vanity Fair_, January, 1921, p. 54] For the four men at the lamp post substitute the governments, the parties, the corporations, the societies, the social sets, the trades and professions, universities, sects, and nationalities of the world. Think of the legislator voting a statute that will affect distant peoples, a statesman coming to a decision. Think of the Peace Conference reconstituting the frontiers of Europe, an ambassador in a foreign country trying to discern the intentions of his own government and of the foreign government, a promoter working a concession in a backward country, an editor demanding a war, a clergyman calling on the police to regulate amusement, a club lounging-room making up its mind about a strike, a sewing circle preparing to regulate the schools, nine judges deciding whether a legislature in Oregon may fix the working hours of women, a cabinet meeting to decide on the recognition of a government, a party convention choosing a candidate and writing a platform, twenty-seven million voters casting their ballots, an Irishman in Cork thinking about an Irishman in Belfast, a Third International planning to reconstruct the whole of human society, a board of directors confronted with a set of their employees' demands, a boy choosing a career, a merchant estimating supply and demand for the coming season, a speculator predicting the course of the market, a banker deciding whether to put credit behind a new enterprise, the advertiser, the reader of advertisments.... Think of the different sorts of Americans thinking about their notions of "The British Empire" or "France" or "Russia" or "Mexico." It is not so different from Mr. Chesterton's four men at the pea green lamp post. 6 And so before we involve ourselves in the jungle of obscurities about the innate differences of men, we shall do well to fix our attention upon the extraordinary differences in what men know of the world.
[Footnote: _Cf_. Wallas, _Our Social Heritage_, pp. 77 _et seq_.] I do not doubt that there are important biological differences. Since man is an animal it would be strange if there were not. But as rational beings it is worse than shallow to generalize at all about comparative behavior until there is a measurable similarity between the environments to which behavior is a response. The pragmatic value of this idea is that it introduces a much needed refinement into the ancient controversy about nature and nurture, innate quality and environment. For the pseudo-environment is a hybrid compounded of "human nature" and "conditions." To my mind it shows the uselessness of pontificating about what man is and always will be from what we observe man to be doing, or about what are the necessary conditions of society. For we do not know how men would behave in response to the facts of the Great Society. All that we really know is how they behave in response to what can fairly be called a most inadequate picture of the Great Society. No conclusion about man or the Great Society can honestly be made on evidence like that. This, then, will be the clue to our inquiry. We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made <strong>by</strong> himself or given to him. If his atlas tells him that the world is flat he will not sail near what he believes to be the edge of our planet for fear of falling off. If his maps include a fountain of eternal youth, a Ponce de Leon will go in quest of it. If someone digs up yellow dirt that looks like gold, he will for a time act exactly as if he had found gold. The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do. It does not determine what they will achieve. It determines their effort, their feelings, their hopes, not their accomplishments and results. The very men who most loudly proclaim their "materialism" and their contempt for "ideologues," the Marxian communists, place their entire hope on what? On the formation <strong>by</strong> propaganda of a class-conscious group. But what is propaganda, if not the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another? What is class consciousness but a way of realizing the world? National consciousness but another way? And Professor Giddings' consciousness of kind, but a process of believing that we recognize among the multitude certain ones marked as our kind? Try to explain social life as the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. You will soon be saying that the hedonist begs the question, for even supposing that man does pursue these ends, the crucial problem of why he thinks one course rather than another likely to produce pleasure, is untouched. Does the guidance of man's conscience explain? How then does he happen to have the particular conscience which he has? The theory of economic self-interest? But how
Page 1 and 2: TO FAYE LIPPMANN Wading River, Long
Page 3 and 4: CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION THE WORLD
Page 5 and 6: Far less should he go to the Antipo
Page 7 and 8: darkened brains toward him as towar
Page 9 and 10: Pennsylvania mining town, plunged s
Page 11 and 12: of American marines on the Dalmatia
Page 13: describe. Yet these fictions determ
Page 17 and 18: p. 151.] What for a sociologist is
Page 19 and 20: task of a political science that ha
Page 21 and 22: eal one was. But a few days later a
Page 23 and 24: already at the front. There will re
Page 25 and 26: treaties, or when Mr. Hughes invest
Page 27 and 28: that a change in the art of shipbui
Page 29 and 30: iological clan. Membership is intim
Page 31 and 32: It is no part of our inquiry to att
Page 33 and 34: ated themselves at more than fiftee
Page 35 and 36: Chicago business men in 1916 for pr
Page 37 and 38: It is doubtful whether a supreme ma
Page 39 and 40: "A native of an unfriendly country.
Page 41 and 42: 9% increase of clang in the second
Page 43 and 44: difference between Frege and Peano,
Page 45 and 46: otherwise vague and wavering." But
Page 47 and 48: _Cf._ also his comment on _Dante's
Page 49 and 50: painter, for example, or a cultivat
Page 51 and 52: world, however, during the last few
Page 53 and 54: have arranged their lives as if the
Page 55 and 56: happens. If the man is no longer pl
Page 57 and 58: an ecclesiastical bearing and "conf
Page 59 and 60: once more the purely technical conc
Page 61 and 62: overcrowding; they pointed with pri
Page 63 and 64: will be known by the governors. In
Page 65 and 66:
uildings which rose, and the bank a
Page 67 and 68:
misjudged the facts, imagined the a
Page 69 and 70:
professing the same stock of religi
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of thing is, I believe, less preval
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that it seems less dangerous to fig
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tells me it is three miles and thin
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seasons. If born in winter, we shou
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the main highway for ninety-nine ye
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and assistance "until such time as
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the most troublesome employee or th
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time, and sampling. We must note no
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Morgan or the King become ideas and
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to be easily popular where the mark
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they find, or pay the price of frus
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lives that seem at first glance dul
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sharply separated. He would say tha
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are never exercised again in the wh
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Thus it may be true enough, as Jame
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described in economic materialism w
Page 103 and 104:
_Op. cit._, Vol. II, p. 390.] "ever
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what proportion, by the motives of
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that wizardry which popular leaders
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stability and prosperity. We should
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People differ widely in their susce
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pervaded the whole of western Europ
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All these considerations entered in
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every corner of the earth. No docum
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end of symbols which once provoked
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likely as not, too busy to be consu
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services in a feudal system, to job
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same reaction takes place in many p
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CHAPTER XV LEADERS AND THE RANK AND
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most practiced, and reaches to high
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impinge upon the private habits of
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e indicated by them. Where the inci
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persuasion has become a self-consci
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infallible origin for the new socia
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dignity of all men, were immediatel
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2 To circumvent this conclusion one
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They looked about them. In the city
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consent or community beyond the fro
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without the labor of earning new tr
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They could not consider in their ca
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Jefferson who first taught the Amer
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sense of common interest, have torn
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document has to thank the enterpris
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impose law and order on the localit
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141.] Everyone who shares that hope
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constitute the internal affairs of
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about other people's views of that
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gather together its strength, and f
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absorbed by one interest: self-gove
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was to come from on which the will
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difficult and often dangerous servi
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undertakes to discuss the press. Mr
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a number of obscure elements that i
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imaginary people, with whose gorgeo
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set of well founded hopes, which ar
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in a crudely overt act. Smith's fri
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tradition of privacy, they may not
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worker in the Pittsburgh district,
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phase of a situation. It comes from
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headline of the second is "Mrs. Sti
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eport that he is dead from a source
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encouraged a democracy, still bound
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system of truth than that which ari
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conclusions of a sort that could no
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shaking the foundations of society.
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2 It is no accident that the best d
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in order to effect a truly logical
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lumber, hire carpenters, or constru
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the national university and teacher
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isolated community of people whose
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some study of this material by news
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the intelligence men for wage table
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fate, but with the fate of the oute
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When Plato came to the point where
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slower than the rate at which actio
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quality which a human being has exh
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PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

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