ABSTRACT
At this point in our inquiry, it is appropriate to study public opinion in a series of widening contexts. Is public opinion concerned only with controversial issues? Is it related to customary modes of thought which have a far greater stability than the changing boundaries of public controversy, or, indeed, can tradition be regarded as a mode of expression of public opinion at all? Beyond this, one encounters the cultural pattern, its interpretation by social scientists, and the question arises concerning the relation of public opinion to the encasement or the envelope of culture which must surround any particular expression of opinion. The material then in this chapter relates primarily to sociological questions, though behind sociological analysis one is certainly touching upon a philosophical anthropology. We are dealing with the social context of the expression of the mind of man, and with some of the contours of his freedom. Thus it must be asked whether public opinion is permanent, as is the force of tradition, or whether it is fluid, as all controversy is fluid. The obvious answer is that it is both. But the modern attempt to broaden the public into the interactive social process, combined with the insistence that opinion must be narrowed to the immediate system of controversy, requires further discussion.*
* It is necessary to observe that any definition of opinion as an "atti95
Every nation which has lost its public opinion, said Hermann Borchardt in 1943, has decayed or been subjugated. In the era of its great emperors, Chinese public opinion held the maxim: "Honor the dead, and ply your trade well." The public opinion of the Persians in their own period of greatness said: "Tell the truth and shoot your arrows straight." The Greeks said: "Honor man, the image of the gods." And Roman opinion declared: "Thou shalt till the soil and respect the law." But the last public opinion of this type in the West existed in Europe, having force until about 1490, and it said: "Fear God and keep His commandments." After that time public opinion gradually perished through the eternal recurrence: the rich and sophisticated began to despise it, and the people fell away. Finally the artificial makers of opinion arrived, as they have in other cultures, and they have brought with them our modern enlightenment which tells the people there is no God, there is beauty in railroad building, and there is a more glorious future before them.*
These observations of Borchardt represent what is probably the most conservative position a modern student may take; it is an ultimate assertion of the traditional and non-controversial nature of public opinion. This position holds that controversy is not the birth of opinion, but that it is rather the death of all force in public opinion. Because the public, according to Borchardt, arises from social consensus, the loss of agreement means the slow death of coherence, and of the public (in this case, general) character of opinion. The more moderate position is that taken by George Creel in 1918 when he said, in discussing the work of the Committee on Public Information: "A great many people think that public opinion is a state of mind, formed and changed by the events of the day or the events of
the hour; that is, sort of a combination kaleidoscope and weathercock. I disagree with this theory entirely. I do not believe that public opinion has its rise in the emotions, or that it is tipped from one extreme to the other by every passing rumor, or by every gust of passion, or by every storm of anger. I feel that public opinion has its source in the minds of people, that it has its base in reason, and that it expresses slow-formed convictions rather than any temporary excitement or passing passion of the moment." "
The fact is that in modern democracies thought has been constantly disturbed by the uncertainties of controversy, by the unpredictable force of emotion in public attitude, and by the slowness with which opinion has moved to new or permanent points of crystallization. A phase of the principle of permanent and traditional opinion has been the belief in an evolution of public opinion toward a more profound conception of the common good and an abiding support of principles which work in the long run for national well-being. "Public opinion is a different thing from mere public feeling, whether taking the form of overwrought emotion or of easy going sentimentality," declared The Independent on June 14, 1906. "Public opinion is compounded of knowledge, discrimination and judgment. It is a product of intellectual activity. It is created by investigation, discussion and a critical review of a situation. It is a net result of a collective 'getting at the facts' and a collective thinking about them in a calm-tempered
way." The writer concluded by hoping that one day the metropolitan newspapers might become real organs of public opinion.
