LOOKING FOR ULTIMATE WISDOM--IN THE BOSOM OF THERESE
We now pursue further the search for authority. We shall surely find
"divine right" somewhere, now that business has lost it. Someone
certainly has the final word about the pictures to put in our heads. Ah!
there is the public, the imputation of a miraculous quality to whose
opinion has a curious history.
Everybody agrees that we owe most of the pleasant illusions upon which
this democracy of ours is based to Rousseau. This Swiss sentimentalist
about humanity, whose ideas have so profoundly affected the history of
the last century and a half, was a convinced believer that perfect good
sense resided in the bosom of the natural man, the man "born free and
equal" of our Declaration of Independence.
Rousseau could find this simple wisdom which was his delight in the most
unexpected places. He describes his mistress Therese with whom he lived
many happy years: "Her mind is what nature has made it; cultivation is
without effect. I do not blush to avow that she has never known how to
read, although she writes passably. When I went to live in the Rue Neuve
des Petits Champs I had opposite my windows a clock face on which I
tried during several months to teach her to tell time. She can scarcely
do it even now. She has never known in their order the twelve months of
the year, and she does not know a single figure in spite of all the
pains I have taken to explain them to her.... But this person, so
limited and, if you wish, so stupid, has excellent judgment on occasions
of difficulty. Often in my troubles she has seen what I did not see
myself; she has given me the best advice to follow. She has pulled me
out of dangers into which I rushed blindly.... The heart of my Therese
was the heart of an angel. (_Le coeur de ma Therese etait celui d'un
ange._)"
It would be amusing to trace our belief in the good sense of man, in the
wisdom and justice of public opinion, back to a philosopher's delight in
a female moron; but that would be too great a paradox for a serious
discussion of today's crisis in popular government. The truth probably
is that Rousseau reached _a priori_ the conclusions about the sound
sense of the simple and natural man that captivated a society so simple
and natural as our own was in the eighteenth century, and then stumbled
upon such convincing evidence in the person of Therese that he had to
keep it by him all the rest of his days.
And where after all has there been found any better evidence for our
belief in the soundness and justice of public opinion than was furnished
by the unlettered and unteachable Therese, who had "le coeur d'un ange"
and "devant les dames du plus haut rang, devant les grands et les
princes, ses sentiments, son bon sens, ses reponses et sa conduite lui
out tire l'estime universelle"?
To accept the doctrine of the rightness of public opinion you must
believe that there resides in every man, even in the most unpromising
man, of the mental level of Therese, "si bornee et, si l'on veut, si
stupide," the capacity to be, like her, "d'un conseil excellent dans les
occasions difficiles."
The doctrine of the rightness of public opinion, however, never required
proof. It was a political necessity. The world at the time when modern
democracies had their birth accepted government only because it rested
upon divine right. The government of men by mere men has always been
intolerable.
The new democracies which were to take the place of the old kingdoms had
to have some sanction other than the suffrages of the people. Room had
to be found in them somewhere for divine right. Those who established
the modern system could never have sold self-government to the people as
self government. There had to be some miracle about it, something
supernatural, like that marvel which turned a mere man into a King and
gave him that power of healing by touch which was exercised in Galilee,
so that the laying on of his hands cured the king's evil.
The miracle was accomplished somewhere in the process through which your
opinion and my opinion and Therese's opinion became public opinion. Just
as the anointment or the coronation turned a mere human being by a
miracle into the chosen of God ruling by divine right, so by some
transmutation which does not take place before the eyes, mere human
opinion becomes itself the choice of God, ruling by divine right.
If you doubt that the founders of modern democracy had to carry over
into their systems the old illusions about divine right, read what
Thomas Jefferson, more or less a free thinker, quoted by Mr. Walter
Lippmann in his _Public Opinion_, has to say about the divine basis for
popular government: "Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people
of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His
peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in
which He keeps alive that sacred fire which might otherwise escape from
the earth."
That "deposit for substantial and genuine virtue" was public opinion.
Nothing was lost of the sanctions of monarchic government when we
changed to popular government.
Since the days of Jefferson we have ceased to be an agricultural people
and we can no longer derive the authority of our government from the
Rousseauist notion that the farmer, being near to nature, thrusting his
hands into the soil, was the choice of God and ruled by a kind of divine
right. But "aucune religion n'est jamais morte, ni ne mourra jamais."
Let us examine the doctrine of Jefferson. Public opinion ruled by divine
right because, in this country and in his day, it was the opinion of
farmers, who were "the chosen people of God whose breasts He has made
the peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue."
When we ceased to be a nation of farmers did we abandon the basis of our
government in divine right? Not in the least. We broadened our ground to
cover the added elements of the community and went along further with
Rousseau than Jefferson had need to do; we said that the breasts of all
men "He has made the peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine
virtue." The art of uncovering their substantial and genuine virtue,
this quality in Therese which drew down upon her universal esteem for
her good sense and her sound sentiments, is the art of arriving at
public opinion.
The legend of public opinion is thus accounted for; first, you will
observe, it was politically necessary to assert the inspiration of
public opinion, for divine right had to reside somewhere. Second, in a
democracy the press and public men had to flatter the mass of voters and
readers by declaring on every possible occasion that wisdom reposed in
their breasts. And third, the public mind differed so from the ordinary
thinking mind that, to put its conclusions in a favorable light, men had
to assume some supernatural quality, some divine "deposit for
substantial and genuine virtue."
The public did not think, in the ordinary sense, yet its decisions were
more right than the carefully elaborated decisions of those who did
think; the wonder of Therese over again, who "si bornee et si stupide"
gave such excellent advice on difficult occasions. No processes by which
results were reached could be perceived by the trained mind. The mystery
of the public mind was as great as the mystery of intuitions is to the
logical or the mystery of poetry is to the prosaic. Clearly, a miracle;
clearly, a deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.
When modern democracy got its start, kings by their folly had shaken
faith in their divine right. In a similar way at this moment, public
opinion by its excesses has made men question whether any "deposit for
substantial and genuine virtue" has been placed in human breasts upon
which states may rely for justice and wisdom.
Walter Lippmann's book, _Public Opinion_, with its destructive analysis
of the public mind, is a symptom of those doubts with which the war has
left us. The years from 1914 on furnished the most perfect exhibition of
public opinion and its workings that the world has ever seen. You saw on
a grand scale its miraculous capacity for instant formation and, if you
are sufficiently detached now, you look back and doubt whether what was
revealed was a "deposit for substantial and genuine virtue."
Both sides to the conflict resembled nothing so much as prehistoric
tribes meeting accidentally in the night and, precipitated into panic,
fighting in the belief that each was being attacked by the other.
Public opinion in France and England felt that the war was defensive.
Public opinion in Germany was equally sure that Germany was only
defending herself. Either the German Therese or the French Therese and
the English Therese and the American Therese must have been wrong. The
fight could not have been defensive on both sides. And if Therese is
ever so wrong as this, the whole case of the divine rightness of public
opinion falls.
And not only do we know that some Therese, perhaps all the Thereses,
made a mistake in this instance, but we have come to feel that whenever
danger arises Therese is inevitably wrong; her mind, such as it is,
closes up and she fails to show those _sentiments_ and that _bon sens_
which drew down the applause of the princes and the persons _du haut
rang_ who have been praising the deposit of virtue that she carries in
her breast.
We have watched the course of Therese confronted by other and smaller
fears since the close of the war, and we have reached the conclusion
that Therese always reacts a certain way. In that large range of
situations which may be artfully presented to her simple mind as perils
she is no longer _d'un conseil excellent_; her heart _d'un ange_
hardens; she abandons her babies quite unfeelingly at the hospital of
the _Nouveaux Nes_.
Therefore you do not reach the "deposit for virtue" by simply employing
an intelligence unencumbered by mental processes. You must at least
assure that intelligence against fear, a serious limitation upon the
doctrine of an infallible public opinion.
Students of public opinion will for a long time go back to the period of
the war for their materials. Opinion was then unmistakable. The methods
by which it was formed were clear. In times of great peril men throw off
their polite disguises and are frank; so too are institutions.
The making of opinion became an official function in which we all
co-operated. We bound ourselves voluntarily not to publish and not to
regard any information inconsistent with the state of mind which it was
deemed expedient to create and maintain. We probably always in the
forming of opinion tacitly impose voluntary censorships, but they are
so habitual, so unconscious, so covered with traditional hypocrisy, that
it is difficult to bring them into the light.
Conscious self-deception to the good end of keeping ourselves united and
determined was during the war a great virtue. Playing upon prejudice,
rousing the depths of the primitive mind in man, was a laudable act of
patriotism.
What happened then was only an exaggeration of what happens all the
time, for war makes no new contributions to the art of self-government.
In war we merely throw off the restraints of peace and impose others
which operate in the reverse direction. In peace we are shamefaced about
direct killing; in war we brag of it. In peace we are shamefaced about
manufacturing public opinion; in war it is our patriotic duty.
No, war has made us rather doubtful about Therese. After all Rousseau
was a prejudiced witness. When you take to your bosom a lady who cannot
learn to tell time by the clock, you have to make out a case for her--or
for yourself. When like Jefferson and his successors you take to your
bosom the public, you have to make out a case for it, for the deposit
for substantial and genuine virtue that you rely upon.
The war revealed at once the immense power and the immense dangers of
public opinion when its full force is aroused and one hundred million
people come to think--thinking is not the word--to feel, as one man.
Minorities, the great corrective in democracy, disappeared. They had
their choice of going to jail or bowing to the general will.
Few realized this alternative, so irresistible was the mob impulse,
awakened by the sense of common danger, even to individuals ordinarily
capable of maintaining their detachment. The primitive instinct of
self-preservation subdued all capacity for independent thinking, so that
one who has ordinarily the habit of making up his own mind, a most
difficult habit to maintain in modern society, can not look back on
himself during the war without a sense of shame. Romain Rolland, in
_Clerambeault_, pictures the devastating effect of public opinion at its
mightiest upon the individual conscience.
The mechanism by which this state of mind was created was unconcealed.
The government reserved to itself the right to suppress truth or to put
out untruth for the common good. Private organizations of endless number
co-operated to this laudable end. The press submitted itself to a
voluntary censorship, passing the responsibility for what it printed
over to society whose general end of maintaining unity for the real or
imaginary necessities of self-defense it served. A lynch law of opinion
was established by common consent.
What went on during the war goes on, though less openly and less
formidably, all of the time. Everyone realizes the immense power of
public opinion. Many seek to direct its formation. The government
conducts all of the time a vast propaganda, always with a certain favor
of the press.
We submit always to a certain voluntary censorship, not so conscious as
that which existed during the war but none the less real. We receive
upon the whole the information which is good for us to receive. We are
all a little afraid of public opinion, its tyranny, its excesses, its
blind tendencies. We do not find it, as Jefferson thought we should, a
"deposit for substantial and genuine virtue," and we are all more or
less consciously trying to make it one; that is the process of rendering
modern democracy workable; but we may not be all unprejudiced about what
the deposit should be or scrupulous about the means of improving it.
The part which the press plays in this process is peculiar. When editors
or correspondents meet together the speaker addresses them invariably
as, "You makers of public opinion," but the last responsibility which
journalism cares to assume is the making of public opinion.
This disinclination began with the exclusion of the editor's opinion
from the news columns. Gradually, it extended to the exclusion of his
opinion from the editorial pages and finally to its exclusion from his
own mind. I am speaking only of tendencies, not of their complete
realization, for there are notable exceptions among the greater dailies
of this country.
This movement is at its strongest in the nation's capital, for official
Washington likes to live in an intellectual vacuum, and journalism
strives successfully to please. With the world crashing about his ears
the editor of the _Star_, the best newspaper in the capital, finds this
to say:
"The Crown Prince of Japan and the Prince of Wales are young men
destined for great parts in world affairs. They are now qualifying for
their work.
"Last year the former took his first look around in the occidental
world. He was everywhere most cordially received, and returned home
informed and refreshed by what he had seen and heard. His vision,
necessarily, was considerably enlarged.
"The latter is now taking his first look around in the oriental world.
In a few days he will land in Japan and be the guest of the country for
a month. The arrangements for his entertainment are elaborate, and
insure him with a delightful and a profitable visit. That he will return
home informed and refreshed by his travels is certain.
"The war has produced a new world, which in many things must be ordered
in new ways. Young men for action; and here are two young men who when
they get into action and into their stride will be prominent and
important in the world picture."
But if a newspaper rigidly excludes its editor's opinions from its
columns, it is singularly hospitable to all other opinions. The
President twice a week may edit the papers of the entire country, or Mr.
Hughes may do it every day,--or Mr. Hoover or Mr. Daugherty for that
matter, even having extended to him the privilege of anonymity which
editors used to keep to themselves, as a device for giving force and
effect to their ideas.
The President "sees the press" Tuesdays and Fridays, volunteering
information or answering questions. Mr. Hughes holds daily receptions.
Everyone else big enough to break into print follows the same practice.
A curious modesty prevails. Every public man loves to see his name in
the newspapers, yet no one of them at these conferences will assume
responsibility for what he says. All of them resort to the editorial
practice of anonymity.
The rule is that the correspondents must not quote Mr. Harding or Mr.
Hughes or anyone else.
They must not write "Mr. Harding said" or "Mr. Hughes said." They must
print what Mr. Harding or Mr. Hughes said as a fact; that is, they must
put the authority of their paper behind it or, if they doubt, they must
assign for it "a high authority," thus putting the authority of their
paper behind it at one remove.
The editor, having excluded his own opinions from his news columns,
opens his news columns to Mr. Harding's or Mr. Hughes's opinions, giving
no guide to the reader whether he is printing fact or opinion, and, if
obviously opinion, as to whose opinion it is.
The rule is, nothing but news in the news column. The news is, "Mr.
Harding said so and so." But what is printed is, "so and so is a fact"
or, "so and so the paper believes on unimpeachable authority to be a
fact."
This official control of news columns goes further. Not only, according
to the rules, must the source of certain information be regarded as a
confidence but essential facts themselves may not be disclosed.
One of the most remarkable uses of the news columns to create public
opinion was that of Attorney-General Palmer whose several announcements
of red revolution in the United States startled the country two years
ago. A series of sensational plots was described. Very soon every
intelligent correspondent felt sure that Mr. Palmer was largely
propaganding. But to say so would have been to violate that law against
the expression of opinion in news columns, so essential to the truth and
accuracy of our press. Moreover, if my memory is correct, somewhere in
the series the Attorney-General told the press, in confidence, that he
was putting forth his stories of revolution for a purpose. But one does
not print confidences.
In this case the news was that Attorney-General Palmer was issuing
stories of discovered revolutionary plots to combat a certain radicalism
in the labor movement. As printed it was that Attorney-General Palmer
said--he permitted his name to be used--that he had discovered
revolutionary plots.
But the uncritical reader does not ask himself whether the
Attorney-General may not be lying. And even if he were inclined to do so
the headline throws him off his guard, for in the limited space
available for captions, mere assertions tend to become facts. As it
reached the reader's mind the fact that Mr. Palmer was avowedly issuing
propaganda became the fact that evidences of a great Bolshevist plot
against our institutions were being discovered almost daily.
There are disadvantages in the official editing of news columns. The
official does not always escape by shifting responsibility to the
editor. The British during the Washington Conference introduced an
improvement. They put out propaganda which had no authority at all. This
the newspapers either had to leave out or to print on their own
authority.
Lord Riddell had "no official connection with the British delegation."
He had moreover a perfect alibi. There was Sir Arthur Willert, the
official spokesman, who knew nothing and told nothing. Riddell's was a
private enterprise. He was just a journalist willing to share with
other journalists what information he collected. Just a journalist?
Well, it was true that "Lloyd George had asked him to stay on" when he
was on the point of departing. But that was a confidence and under the
rules the press does not print confidences.
Riddell's disclosures were perfectly timed. The best of them came out in
the morning when afternoon correspondents must either rush them through
as facts--they could not even say "on the highest authority"--or explain
to their editors why they had been beaten by their rivals.
Riddell is one of the British Premier's intimates. A lawyer turned
newspaper proprietor, he brings out the _News of the World_, a London
Sunday publication, sensational and trashy, of which 3,500,000 copies or
some such preposterous number are sold. He started in during the war as
a spokesman for the British Premier. He kept it up at the Paris
Conference. And at Washington he scored his greatest success.
What he had said at his seance was, "Now, of course, I don't know, but I
imagine the Conference will do thus and so." He was delightfully
irresponsible, having no official connection. He could leak when he had
anything to leak. He could guess, near the truth or far from the truth,
for, after all, he was only "imagining." He joked. He indulged in
buffoonery. He put out propaganda when he wished. But he mixed enough
truth with it all so that the correspondents thronged his meetings. So
far as there was publicity at the Conference, he was that publicity.
There was nothing of the great man about him. He did not pretend to be a
statesman. He did not take himself seriously. He reached out for his
public in the same undress way that he does in his Sunday newspaper.
"Ex-tra-ter-ri-to-ri-al-ity," he would say, "that's a long word. I never
heard it before I came here." "Kow Loon, where is the place anyway?" You
felt that for the British Empire these places and issues were
trivialities.
He was familiar, quite inoffensively. "The highly intelligent seal of
the Associated Press--was it Mr. Hood here?--must have been under the
table in the committee room when he got this story. He knows more about
it than I do." He was humorous. "The Conference means to do good and,
according to the well known rule--what is it?--Oh, yes! 'Cast your bread
upon the waters'--and by--er--a certain repercussion we all expect to
benefit."
It was not said cynically. It was no effort to be funny. It was natural
and inevitable. Lord Riddell himself did good to the press, and by a
certain repercussion the British Empire benefited. It was a publicity
"stunt" that has never been equalled. Never before did one man have
world opinion so much in his hands. Only Riddell's personality, his
friendliness, his apparent disingenuousness, his trifling, enabled him
to exercise his power--these and the immense demand for publicity, where
aside from his there was little.
[Illustration: LORD RIDDELL]
The hospitality of news columns is not extended to officials alone. A
vast industry second only to that of news collecting has been built up
for the purpose of conveying opinions to readers in the guise of news.
Its constant growth is a proof of its success.
The reason for the opening of newspaper columns to it is commercial. A
variety of interests and opinions tends to reflect itself, as at Paris,
in a multiplicity of newspapers. The American newspaper proprietor has
avoided competition by steadily restricting the expression of opinion
first in the news columns and then on the editorial page, so as to
offend as few of his readers as possible, and then opening his news
columns to opinions which he could not approve on his editorial page,
provided they could be disguised as news.
But the faults of public opinion as a governing force do not spring from
an uncritical journalism, conducted in haste and under compulsion to be
interesting rather than adequate, too little edited by its editors and
too much edited by others. The trouble with Therese is her lack of mind.
In spite of her good sense and habit of giving excellent advice she is
_bornee et, si l'on veut, stupide_. We do not find in her what
Rousseau was convinced he found in her, "a deposit for substantial and
genuine virtue."
We know more about the public mind today than Jefferson did when he
wrote about it. We have studied the psychology of the mob and we know
that the psychology of the public is not different. Like the mind of
Therese, the public mind has never grown up; with this difference, that
the mind of Therese never could grow up and the mind of the public, we
hope, will.
The public mind is young. Only for a very few years in the history of
the race has there been any such thing as a conscious public. Jefferson
was right in thinking that its mind was not the sum of the individual
minds: nevertheless, it is not a "deposit for virtue." Men act in a mass
quite differently from the way they act as individuals, only
unfortunately there is not any necessary divine rightness about the way
they act: there is often divine wrongness.
We have built up the machinery for converting one hundred million widely
scattered people into a public, for giving it a sense of community, but
we have not at an equal rate built up a public mind.
With the telegraph, the wireless telephone, the standardized press, the
instant bulletin going everywhere, we can stir the whole people as a
mob, make it revert into a frightened herd, but we can not make it
think.
The public is too young to have a developed mind. In a hundred
generations it may have one.
This experiment in democracy is conducted in the faith that it will have
one, that the mass of mankind may be lifted up so that there will be as
much freedom of thinking in a democratic society as there once was in an
aristocratic society. It is the bravest experiment in history but its
success is afar off, Rousseau's belief in Therese to the contrary
notwithstanding.
In the present state of undeveloped mind and overdeveloped machinery of
communication public opinion is a great negative force. It does nothing
constructive. It can only be thoroughly aroused by a suggestion of
danger. Statesmen are both afraid of it and despise it, and between
contempt and fear are reduced to temporary expedients.
So that when we speak of government by public opinion we speak of
something that has been as badly shaken as government by business, or
executive government or party government or any one of the various
governments upon which we once relied. The war has made it almost as
intolerable as it made autocracy, as practiced by Mr. Wilson.
Shall official Washington turn to public opinion as its guide? Official
Washington is busy all the time with all the arts it used during the war
shaping public opinion to its own ends. It must have been hard for a
king's minister to believe in the divinity of the monarch he was
gulling. And at any moment public opinion may belong to Mr. Hearst.
This new ruler by divine right is not going to be so easy to dethrone as
his predecessors. No new Rousseau will discern a new Therese. Mr. Walter
Lippmann would set up in its place the expert by divine right, but the
expert is a palpable pretender.
The best hope for the present moment is perhaps to divide the public.
Minorities based on interest will at least be constructive. Organized,
they may offer an effective resistance. Out of them may come a
development of the public mind.
If Jefferson were writing today he might say that the farm bloc
contained the "deposit for substantial and genuine virtue." At any rate
it tills the soil.
If we break up the threatening mass which the war has taught us to fear,
there might be organized a thinkers' bloc. Thinking in this country
certainly needs a bloc.