PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

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But if one could assume that there was circulation through the whole system between government departments, factories, offices, and the universities; a circulation of men, a circulation of data and of criticism, the risks of dry rot would not be so great. Nor would it be true to say that these intelligence bureaus will complicate life. They will tend, on the contrary, to simplify, by revealing a complexity now so great as to be humanly unmanageable. The present fundamentally invisible system of government is so intricate that most people have given up trying to follow it, and because they do not try, they are tempted to think it comparatively simple. It is, on the contrary, elusive, concealed, opaque. The employment of an intelligence system would mean a reduction of personnel per unit of result, because by making available to all the experience of each, it would reduce the amount of trial and error; and because by making the social process visible, it would assist the personnel to self-criticism. It does not involve a great additional band of officials, if you take into account the time now spent vainly by special investigating committees, grand juries, district attorneys, reform organizations, and bewildered office holders, in trying to find their way through a dark muddle. If the analysis of public opinion and of the democratic theories in relation to the modern environment is sound in principle, then I do not see how one can escape the conclusion that such intelligence work is the clue to betterment. I am not referring to the few suggestions contained in this chapter. They are merely illustrations. The task of working out the technic is in the hands of men trained to do it, and not even they can to-day completely foresee the form, much less the details. The number of social phenomena which are now recorded is small, the instruments of analysis are very crude, the concepts often vague and uncriticized. But enough has been done to demonstrate, I think, that unseen environments can be reported effectively, that they can be reported to divergent groups of people in a way which is neutral to their prejudice, and capable of overcoming their subjectivism. If that is true, then in working out the intelligence principle men will find the way to overcome the central difficulty of self-government, the difficulty of dealing with an unseen reality. Because of that difficulty, it has been impossible for any self-governing community to reconcile its need for isolation with the necessity for wide contact, to reconcile the dignity and individuality of local decision with security and wide coordination, to secure effective leaders without sacrificing responsibility, to have useful public opinions without attempting universal public opinions on all subjects. As long as there was no way of establishing common versions of unseen events, common measures for separate actions, the only image of democracy that would work, even in theory, was one based on an
isolated community of people whose political faculties were limited, according to Aristotle's famous maxim, by the range of their vision. But now there is a way out, a long one to be sure, but a way. It is fundamentally the same way as that which has enabled a citizen of Chicago, with no better eyes or ears than an Athenian, to see and hear over great distances. It is possible to-day, it will become more possible when more labor has gone into it, to reduce the discrepancies between the conceived environment and the effective environment. As that is done, federalism will work more and more by consent, less and less by coercion. For while federalism is the only possible method of union among self-governing groups, [Footnote: _Cf._ H. J. Laski, _The Foundations of Sovereignty_, and other Essays, particularly the Essay of this name, as well as the Problems of Administrative Areas, The Theory of Popular Sovereignty, and The Pluralistic State.] federalism swings either towards imperial centralization or towards parochial anarchy wherever the union is not based on correct and commonly accepted ideas of federal matters. These ideas do not arise spontaneously. They have to be pieced together by generalization based on analysis, and the instruments for that analysis have to be invented and tested by research. No electoral device, no manipulation of areas, no change in the system of property, goes to the root of the matter. You cannot take more political wisdom out of human beings than there is in them. And no reform, however sensational, is truly radical, which does not consciously provide a way of overcoming the subjectivism of human opinion based on the limitation of individual experience. There are systems of government, of voting, and representation which extract more than others. But in the end knowledge must come not from the conscience but from the environment with which that conscience deals. When men act on the principle of intelligence they go out to find the facts and to make their wisdom. When they ignore it, they go inside themselves and find only what is there. They elaborate their prejudice, instead of increasing their knowledge. CHAPTER XXVII THE APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC 1 IN real life no one acts on the theory that he can have a public opinion on every public question, though this fact is often concealed where a person thinks there is no public question because he has no
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TO FAYE LIPPMANN Wading River, Long
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CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION THE WORLD
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Far less should he go to the Antipo
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darkened brains toward him as towar
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Pennsylvania mining town, plunged s
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of American marines on the Dalmatia
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describe. Yet these fictions determ
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[Footnote: _Cf_. Wallas, _Our Socia
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p. 151.] What for a sociologist is
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task of a political science that ha
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eal one was. But a few days later a
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already at the front. There will re
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treaties, or when Mr. Hughes invest
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that a change in the art of shipbui
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iological clan. Membership is intim
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It is no part of our inquiry to att
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ated themselves at more than fiftee
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Chicago business men in 1916 for pr
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It is doubtful whether a supreme ma
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"A native of an unfriendly country.
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9% increase of clang in the second
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difference between Frege and Peano,
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otherwise vague and wavering." But
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_Cf._ also his comment on _Dante's
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painter, for example, or a cultivat
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world, however, during the last few
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have arranged their lives as if the
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happens. If the man is no longer pl
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an ecclesiastical bearing and "conf
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once more the purely technical conc
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overcrowding; they pointed with pri
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will be known by the governors. In
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uildings which rose, and the bank a
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misjudged the facts, imagined the a
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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
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_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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Page 163 and 164: about other people's views of that
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Page 167 and 168: absorbed by one interest: self-gove
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Page 173 and 174: undertakes to discuss the press. Mr
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Page 185 and 186: worker in the Pittsburgh district,
Page 187 and 188: phase of a situation. It comes from
Page 189 and 190: headline of the second is "Mrs. Sti
Page 191 and 192: eport that he is dead from a source
Page 193 and 194: encouraged a democracy, still bound
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Page 197 and 198: conclusions of a sort that could no
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Page 201 and 202: 2 It is no accident that the best d
Page 203 and 204: in order to effect a truly logical
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Page 211 and 212: some study of this material by news
Page 213 and 214: the intelligence men for wage table
Page 215 and 216: fate, but with the fate of the oute
Page 217 and 218: When Plato came to the point where
Page 219 and 220: slower than the rate at which actio
Page 221: quality which a human being has exh
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PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

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