PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

otherwise vague and wavering."
But the kind of definiteness and consistency introduced depends upon
who introduces them. In a later passage [Footnote: _op. cit._, p.
133.] Dewey gives an example of how differently an experienced layman
and a chemist might define the word metal. "Smoothness, hardness,
glossiness, and brilliancy, heavy weight for its size ... the
serviceable properties of capacity for being hammered and pulled
without breaking, of being softened by heat and hardened by cold, of
retaining the shape and form given, of resistance to pressure and
decay, would probably be included" in the layman's definition. But the
chemist would likely as not ignore these esthetic and utilitarian
qualities, and define a metal as "any chemical element that enters
into combination with oxygen so as to form a base."
For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define
first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the
outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us,
and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form
stereotyped for us by our culture. Of the great men who assembled at
Paris to settle the affairs of mankind, how many were there who were
able to see much of the Europe about them, rather than their
commitments about Europe? Could anyone have penetrated the mind of M.
Clemenceau, would he have found there images of the Europe of 1919, or
a great sediment of stereotyped ideas accumulated and hardened in a
long and pugnacious existence? Did he see the Germans of 1919, or the
German type as he had learned to see it since 1871? He saw the type,
and among the reports that came to him from Germany, he took to heart
those reports, and, it seems, those only, which fitted the type that
was in his mind. If a junker blustered, that was an authentic German;
if a labor leader confessed the guilt of the empire, he was not an
authentic German.
At a Congress of Psychology in Gˆttingen an interesting experiment was
made with a crowd of presumably trained observers. [Footnote: A. von
Gennep, _La formation des lÈgendes_, pp. 158-159. Cited F. van
Langenhove, _The Growth of a Legend_, pp. 120-122.]
"Not far from the hall in which the Congress was sitting there was a
public fete with a masked ball. Suddenly the door of the hall was
thrown open and a clown rushed in madly pursued by a negro, revolver
in hand. They stopped in the middle of the room fighting; the clown
fell, the negro leapt upon him, fired, and then both rushed out of the
hall. The whole incident hardly lasted twenty seconds.
"The President asked those present to write immediately a report since
there was sure to be a judicial inquiry. Forty reports were sent in.
Only one had less than 20% of mistakes in regard to the principal