ABSTRACT
"You call these toys? Well, you manage men with toys!" These words of Napoleon regarding the ribbons and crosses of his Legion of Honor fitly introduce a study of the roe of public opinion in the ordering of human life. The opinion an individual has of himself and his doings, like all judgments not grounded on the perceptions of the senses, is greatly affected by suggestion. The rewards of public opinion are naturally most lavishly employed when society is most in need of services that cannot be got with ordinary material inducements. Public opinion has the advantage of a widegamut of influences. Public opinion is less mechanical in operation than law. Public opinion guards the social peace by enforcing moral claims that law, with its rigid definitions and stern self-consistency, dares not support. The action of public opinion has the virtue of immediacy.
