PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

himself. For in his private life the choices are narrow, and much of
himself is squeezed down and out of sight where it cannot directly
govern his outward behavior. And thus, beside the more average people
who project the happiness of their own lives into a general good will,
or their unhappiness into suspicion and hate, there are the outwardly
happy people who are brutal everywhere but in their own circle, as
well as the people who, the more they detest their families, their
friends, their jobs, the more they overflow with love for mankind.
As you descend from generalities to detail, it becomes more apparent
that the character in which men deal with their affairs is not fixed.
Possibly their different selves have a common stem and common
qualities, but the branches and the twigs have many forms. Nobody
confronts every situation with the same character. His character
varies in some degree through the sheer influence of time and
accumulating memory, since he is not an automaton. His character
varies, not only in time, but according to circumstance. The legend of
the solitary Englishman in the South Seas, who invariably shaves and
puts on a black tie for dinner, bears witness to his own intuitive and
civilized fear of losing the character which he has acquired. So do
diaries, and albums, and souvenirs, old letters, and old clothes, and
the love of unchanging routine testify to our sense of how hard it is
to step twice in the Heraclitan river.
There is no one self always at work. And therefore it is of great
importance in the formation of any public opinion, what self is
engaged. The Japanese ask the right to settle in California. Clearly
it makes a whole lot of difference whether you conceive the demand as
a desire to grow fruit or to marry the white man's daughter. If two
nations are disputing a piece of territory, it matters greatly whether
the people regard the negotiations as a real estate deal, an attempt
to humiliate them, or, in the excited and provocative language which
usually enclouds these arguments, as a rape. For the self which takes
charge of the instincts when we are thinking about lemons or distant
acres is very different from the self which appears when we are
thinking even potentially as the outraged head of a family. In one
case the private feeling which enters into the opinion is tepid, in
the other, red hot. And so while it is so true as to be mere tautology
that "self-interest" determines opinion, the statement is not
illuminating, until we know which self out of many selects and directs
the interest so conceived.
Religious teaching and popular wisdom have always distinguished
several personalities in each human being. They have been called the
Higher and Lower, the Spiritual and the Material, the Divine and the
Carnal; and although we may not wholly accept this classification, we
cannot fail to observe that distinctions exist. Instead of two
antithetic selves, a modern man would probably note a good many not so