PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

judging it as well. And, therefore, the stereotypes are loaded with
preference, suffused with affection or dislike, attached to fears,
lusts, strong wishes, pride, hope. Whatever invokes the stereotype is
judged with the appropriate sentiment. Except where we deliberately
keep prejudice in suspense, we do not study a man and judge him to be
bad. We see a bad man. We see a dewy morn, a blushing maiden, a
sainted priest, a humorless Englishman, a dangerous Red, a carefree
bohemian, a lazy Hindu, a wily Oriental, a dreaming Slav, a volatile
Irishman, a greedy Jew, a 100% American. In the workaday world that is
often the real judgment, long in advance of the evidence, and it
contains within itself the conclusion which the evidence is pretty
certain to confirm. Neither justice, nor mercy, nor truth, enter into
such a judgment, for the judgment has preceded the evidence. Yet a
people without prejudices, a people with altogether neutral vision, is
so unthinkable in any civilization of which it is useful to think,
that no scheme of education could be based upon that ideal. Prejudice
can be detected, discounted, and refined, but so long as finite men
must compress into a short schooling preparation for dealing with a
vast civilization, they must carry pictures of it around with them,
and have prejudices. The quality of their thinking and doing will
depend on whether those prejudices are friendly, friendly to other
people, to other ideas, whether they evoke love of what is felt to be
positively good, rather than hatred of what is not contained in their
version of the good.
Morality, good taste and good form first standardize and then
emphasize certain of these underlying prejudices. As we adjust
ourselves to our code, we adjust the facts we see to that code.
Rationally, the facts are neutral to all our views of right and wrong.
Actually, our canons determine greatly what we shall perceive and how.
For a moral code is a scheme of conduct applied to a number of typical
instances. To behave as the code directs is to serve whatever purpose
the code pursues. It may be God's will, or the king's, individual
salvation in a good, solid, three dimensional paradise, success on
earth, or the service of mankind. In any event the makers of the code
fix upon certain typical situations, and then by some form of
reasoning or intuition, deduce the kind of behavior which would
produce the aim they acknowledge. The rules apply where they apply.
But in daily living how does a man know whether his predicament is the
one the law-giver had in mind? He is told not to kill. But if his
children are attacked, may he kill to stop a killing? The Ten
Commandments are silent on the point. Therefore, around every code
there is a cloud of interpreters who deduce more specific cases.
Suppose, then, that the doctors of the law decide that he may kill in
self-defense. For the next man the doubt is almost as great; how does
he know that he is defining self-defense correctly, or that he has not