Page:Public Opinion (Lippmann).djvu/207



goes to show that there are many variables in each man's impressions of the invisible world. The points of contact vary, the stereotyped expectations vary, the interest enlisted varies most subtly of all. The living impressions of a large number of people are to an immeasurable degree personal in each of them, and unmanageably complex in the mass. How, then, is any practical relationship established between what is in people's heads and what is out there beyond their ken in the environment? How in the language of democratic theory, do great numbers of people feeling each so privately about so abstract a picture, develop any common will? How does a simple and constant idea emerge from this complex of variables? How are those things known as the Will of the People, or the National Purpose, or Public Opinion crystallized out of such fleeting and casual imagery?

That there is a real difficulty here was shown by an angry tilt in the spring of 1921 between the American Ambassador to England and a very large number of other Americans. Mr. Harvey, speaking at a British dinner table, had assured the world without the least sign of hesitancy what were the motives