ABSTRACT
In the self-contained community one could assume, or at least did assume, a homogeneous code of morals. The community could take its supply of information for granted; its codes it passed on through school, church, and family, and the power to draw deductions from a premise, rather than the ability to find the premise, was regarded as the chief end of intellectual training. These chosen people in their self-contained environment had all the facts before them. The environment must be confined within the range of every man's direct and certain knowledge. The democrat has understood what an analysis of public opinion seems to demonstrate: that in dealing with an unseen environment decisions "are manifestly settled at haphazard, which clearly they ought not to be." The environment was so familiar that one could take it for granted that men were talking about substantially the same things.
