PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

uildings which rose, and the bank accounts which accumulated, were
evidence that the stereotype of how the thing had been done was
accurate. And those who benefited most by success came to believe they
were the kind of men they were supposed to be. No wonder that the
candid friends of successful men, when they read the official
biography and the obituary, have to restrain themselves from asking
whether this is indeed their friend.
2
To the vanquished and the victims, the official portraiture was, of
course, unrecognizable. For while those who exemplified progress did
not often pause to inquire whether they had arrived according to the
route laid down by the economists, or by some other just as
creditable, the unsuccessful people did inquire. "No one," says
William James, [Footnote: _The Letters of William James,_ Vol. I,
p.65] "sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of
detail extends." The captains of industry saw in the great trusts
monuments of (their) success; their defeated competitors saw the
monuments of (their) failure. So the captains expounded the economies
and virtues of big business, asked to be let alone, said they were the
agents of prosperity, and the developers of trade. The vanquished
insisted upon the wastes and brutalities of the trusts, and called
loudly upon the Department of Justice to free business from
conspiracies. In the same situation one side saw progress, economy,
and a splendid development; the other, reaction, extravagance, and a
restraint of trade. Volumes of statistics, anecdotes about the real
truth and the inside truth, the deeper and the larger truth, were
published to prove both sides of the argument.
For when a system of stereotypes is well fixed, our attention is
called to those facts which support it, and diverted from those which
contradict. So perhaps it is because they are attuned to find it, that
kindly people discover so much reason for kindness, malicious people
so much malice. We speak quite accurately of seeing through
rose-colored spectacles, or with a jaundiced eye. If, as Philip
Littell once wrote of a distinguished professor, we see life as
through a class darkly, our stereotypes of what the best people and
the lower classes are like will not be contaminated by understanding.
What is alien will be rejected, what is different will fall upon
unseeing eyes. We do not see what our eyes are not accustomed to take
into account. Sometimes consciously, more often without knowing it, we
are impressed by those facts which fit our philosophy.
3
This philosophy is a more or less organized series of images for
describing the unseen world. But not only for describing it. For