PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

_Cf._ also his comment on _Dante's Visual Images, and his Early
Illustrators_ in _The Study and Criticism of Italian Art_ (First
Series), p. 13. "_We_ cannot help dressing Virgil as a Roman,
and giving him a 'classical profile' and 'statuesque carriage,' but
Dante's visual image of Virgil was probably no less mediaeval, no
more based on a critical reconstruction of antiquity, than his entire
conception of the Roman poet. Fourteenth Century illustrators make
Virgil look like a mediaeval scholar, dressed in cap and gown, and
there is no reason why Dante's visual image of him should have been
other than this."] He goes on to show how in regard to the human
figure we have been taught to see what we do see. "Created by
Donatello and Masaccio, and sanctioned by the Humanists, the new canon
of the human figure, the new cast of features ... presented to the
ruling classes of that time the type of human being most likely to win
the day in the combat of human forces... Who had the power to break
through this new standard of vision and, out of the chaos of things,
to select shapes more definitely expressive of reality than those
fixed by men of genius? No one had such power. People had perforce to
see things in that way and in no other, and to see only the shapes
depicted, to love only the ideals presented...." [Footnote: _The
Central Italian Painters_, pp. 66-67.]
2
If we cannot fully understand the acts of other people, until we know
what they think they know, then in order to do justice we have to
appraise not only the information which has been at their disposal,
but the minds through which they have filtered it. For the accepted
types, the current patterns, the standard versions, intercept
information on its way to consciousness. Americanization, for example,
is superficially at least the substitution of American for European
stereotypes. Thus the peasant who might see his landlord as if he were
the lord of the manor, his employer as he saw the local magnate, is
taught by Americanization to see the landlord and employer according
to American standards. This constitutes a change of mind, which is, in
effect, when the inoculation succeeds, a change of vision. His eye
sees differently. One kindly gentlewoman has confessed that the
stereotypes are of such overweening importance, that when hers are not
indulged, she at least is unable to accept the brotherhood of man and
the fatherhood of God: "we are strangely affected by the clothes we
wear. Garments create a mental and social atmosphere. What can be
hoped for the Americanism of a man who insists on employing a London
tailor? One's very food affects his Americanism. What kind of American
consciousness can grow in the atmosphere of sauerkraut and Limburger
cheese? Or what can you expect of the Americanism of the man whose
breath always reeks of garlic?" [Footnote: Cited by Mr. Edward Hale
Bierstadt, _New Republic_, June 1 1921 p. 21.]