Popular belief

“ Every nation and every man instantly surround themselves with a material apparatus which exactly corresponds to their moral state, or their state of thought. Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of some man’s mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers. Observe the ideas of the present day,—orthodoxy, skepticism, missions, popular education, temperance, anti-masonry, anti-slavery; see how each of these abstractions has embodied itself in an imposing apparatus in the community ”

“ I advise you to look askance upon every movement that in the language of the day is called popular. Do not accept a theory or a doctrine because it is popular, but on the other hand do not reject it for that reason. ”

“ Let us leave reason, then, to philosophers, and not insist too strongly on its intervention in the governing of men. It is not by reason, but most often in spite of it, that are created those sentiments that are the mainsprings of all civilisation—sentiments such as honour, self- sacrifice, religious faith, patriotism, and the love of glory. ”

“ Become a popular truth the idea returns, as it were, to its source and exerts an influence on the upper classes of a nation. In the long run it is intelligence that shapes the destiny of the world, but very indirectly. The philosophers who evolve ideas have long since returned to dust, when, as the result of the process I have just described, the fruit of their reflection ends by triumphing.
3. PRESTIGE Great power is given to ideas propagated by affirmation, repetition, and contagion by the circumstance that they acquire in time that mysterious force known as prestige. ”

“ The sentiments and beliefs, organized and transmitted, which, during certain stages of social evolution, lead the many to submit to the few, come, under some circumstances, to be traversed by other sentiments and beliefs. ”

“ In the case of every thing that belongs to the realm of sentiment—religion, politics, morality, the affections and antipathies, &c.—the most eminent men seldom surpass the standard of the most ordinary individuals. ”

“ Place your ear to the ground, study the whims of the people, learn how they worship, how they play and how they work, then preach their doctrines, pat them on the back, applaud their errors, and you can be popular. ”

“ Put all three together, and it is not their aim to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, nor to promote justice, the whole of justice, and nothing but justice. The popular literature helps bring to consciousness the sentiments and [Pg 176] ideas which prevail in the state, the church, and business. It brings those sentiments and ideas intimately into connection with men, magnetizing them with the good and ill of those three powers, but it does little directly to promote a higher form of human character. ”

“ Thus it is that, thanks to general beliefs, the men of every age are enveloped in a network of traditions, opinions, and customs which render them all alike, and from whose yoke they cannot extricate themselves. ”

“ Only it must be real thought and real beauty; real sweetness and real light. Plenty of people will try to give the masses, as they call them, an intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think proper for the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is an example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments constituting the creed of their own profession or party. ”

“ Popular judgment as to a man's conduct,—what society imposes,—is one of the things most difficult to predict: it is under the influence of most heterogeneous causes, personal, industrial, religious, political, &c. ”

“ They represent the average intelligence of society; hence, while keeping the old, they welcome not the now. They promote only popular forms of truth, popular in all Christendom, or m their special sect. They lead in no intellectual reforms ”

“ THE CHANGEABLE OPINIONS OF CROWDS Above the substratum of fixed beliefs, whose power we have just demonstrated, is found an overlying growth of opinions, ideas, and thoughts which are incessantly springing up and dying out. ”

“ All views of the future condition of society, the views of practical men as well as of philosophic thinkers, agree in the belief that the principal feature of the state to which we are tending, will be the increased influence which Public Opinion is destined to exercise. ”

“ Why, all the intellect that ever was is theirs. The public opinion expresses not only the collective sense of the whole people, but of all ages and nations, of all those minds that have devoted themselves to the love of truth and the good of mankind,—who have bequeathed their instructions, their hopes, and their example to posterity,—who have thought, spoke, written, acted, and suffered in the name and on the behalf of our common nature. ”

“ Beneath the mask of mere externals, their eyes discern the character of those whom they meet, and, refusing to accept popular judgment in [pg v] place of truth, they see often the real relation which men bear to their race and age, and observe the facts by which to determine whether such men are great only because of circumstances, or by the irresistible power of their own minds. ”

“ This submitting of the questions in dispute to the public, man by man, after the Protestant, the American fashion—concedes at the outset one great and most vital principle, to wit, that the ultimate appeal in questions of personal belief, is to each man's reason and conscience in the sight of God. ”

“ But in reality it is not the institutions that react in this manner, since we know that, whether triumphant or vanquished, they possess in themselves no virtue. It is illusions and words that have influenced the mind of the crowd, and especially words— words which are as powerful as they are chimerical, and whose astonishing sway we shall shortly demonstrate. ”

“ What were become of the most essential laws of human feeling, if such experience could leave those who are undergoing its discipline still faithfully attached to the social order on the strength of its consecration by time, and of the former settled opinions in its favor,—however tenacious the impressions so wrought into habit are admitted to be? ”

“ But that power of aspiration that once surged full and hot in the cults of faith, fashion, sentiment, exploit, and honor, now at its best comes to such a head as it may in the concerted adulation of matter-of-fact. ”

“ The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit, and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise. If beliefs do not differ in this respect, if they appease the same doubt by producing the same rule of action, then no mere differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different beliefs, any more than playing a tune in different keys is playing different tunes. ”

“ This, then, is the view that it seems to me the Society should endeavour to set before the world,—that Folklore is not "a fortuitous concourse of atoms," but an entity, the product of the human mind, made up of three complementary elements,—Belief, Custom, and Story,—and liable to be influenced and varied by external circumstances. ”

“ What would politics and religion, the two poles round which the whole of human life turns, be without that power of imagination, which on the one side sees mankind uplifted and glory everlasting bestowed, and on the other the firm establishment of society on the basis of truth and justice? Take imagination away, and we are hurled down from the height of bliss to the depth of despair. ”

“ Unless the principles of Christianity will acknowledge the supremacy of something else than Christianity, in the mode of their application to estimate the importance of the popular mind, they may take their repose in bodies of divinity, sermons, catechisms, systems of ethics, or wherever they can find a place. ”

“ In complex modern societies there will, of course, be found men devoted to different ideals, and a certain amount of popular favor or regard will be accorded to them all. But which of them receives the highest consideration, and what are the predominant national passions? ”

“ As soon as you note what a large part temperament plays in the forming of opinions in politics and religion and social questions, and remember that no two people ever react to any truth in exactly the same way—that what seems to one sensible person monstrous will appear to another equally sensible person as highly [Pg 23] virtuous—you will see that in all writing, where either the understanding or the emotions are involved, this question assumes importance. ”

“ Only a few people seem interested in that spectacle, so full of surprises—the development of all human institutions, from fairy tales to democracy. In beholding it we learn how we owe all things, humanly speaking, to the people and to genius. The natural people, the folk, has supplied us, in its unconscious way, with the stuff of all our poetry, law, ritual: and genius has selected from the mass, has turned customs into codes, nursery tales into romance, myth into science, ballad into epic, magic mummery into gorgeous ritual. ”

“ If you profess to believe in their truth, how do you reconcile their character with the universal aspect of human life, as it appears to us and to our friends? And finally, if you claim for them the assent to which proved facts have a right from every candid mind, to what extent of detail do you profess to believe in their authenticity? ”

“ In popular ethics a dead formalism puts an end to moral advance. Straight thinking on political subjects is subordinated to partisan ends. Catch-phrases and magic formulas become substituted for scientific information. ”

“ There was a fermentation of opinion in the public mind which never could cease, if the idea of a universal and impartial Providence, the Author of all knowledge, as of all worlds, was true, till the whole mass was leavened by the exciting principle. ”

“ And we, on this sea of human thought, in like manner inquire, Where are the old idealists? where are they who represented to the last generation that extravagant hope, which a few happy aspirants suggest to ours? In looking at the class of counsel, and power, and wealth, and at the matronage of the land, amidst all the prudence and all the triviality, one asks, Where are they who represented genius, virtue, the invisible and heavenly world, to these? ”

“ I fear the popular notion of success stands in direct opposition in all points to the real and wholesome success. One adores public opinion, the other private opinion; one fame, the other desert; one feats, the other humility; one lucre, the other love; one monopoly, and the other hospitality of mind. ”

“ A just admiration of ancient literature, an opinion that human sentiment, and human reason, without this aid, were to have vanished from the societies of men, have led us into the shade, where we endeavour to derive from imagination and study what is in reality matter of experience and sentiment; and we endeavour, through the grammar of dead languages, and the channel of commentators, to arrive at the beauties of thought and elocution, which sprang from the animated spirit of society, and were taken from the living impressions of an active life. ”

“ With the going out of this century some great lives have ended—lives that embodied high types of rugged, honest satire, political power, poetic thought, pure statesmanship, ethical standards, religious faith, scientific devotion. ”

“ It pleases us to discover underneath the parade of public spirit, disinterested regard for truth, justice, and the good of others, the secret play of some natural urge towards self-importance, acquisition, or other private satisfaction. ”

“ The religion of amity and the religion of enmity, with the emotions they respectively enlist, are important factors in sociological conclusions; and rational sociological conclusions can be produced only when both sets of factors come into play. We have to look at each cluster of social facts as a phase in a continuous metamorphosis. ”

“ But in the popular acceptation, common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. ”

“ And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, entering into active life, going into society, travelling, gaining acquaintance with the various classes of the community, coming into contact with the principles and modes of thought of various parties, interests, and races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their religious creeds and forms of worship,—gaining experience how various yet how alike men are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in their opinions ”

“ Make a whirlwind of the idea. This crowd may be rendered sublime. Let us learn how to make use of that vast conflagration of principles and virtues, which sparkles, bursts forth and quivers at certain hours. These bare feet, these bare arms, these rags, these ignorances, these abjectnesses, these darknesses, may be employed in the conquest of the ideal. Gaze past the people, and you will perceive truth. ”

“ Few make up their minds; they are made up for them.
The common opinion which reflects the mind of the great majority, embodies the prevailing idea, the universal sentiment, and directs the common action is called. ”

“ Crowds always, and individuals as a rule, stand in need of ready-made opinions on all subjects. The popularity of these opinions is independent of the measure of truth or error they contain, and is solely regulated by their prestige. ”

“ This is in some degree the origin of our cant in morality and religion, which our politicians, when there is no other absorbing topic, such as manufactures, commerce, fisheries, &c. employ for the purpose of ‘making a hit.’ In the absence of enthusiasm, which would inspire them with natural eloquence, they seek to maintain themselves at a certain elevation by pressing hard on lofty topics; having no wings, they endeavour to support themselves in the air by a parachute. Thus the words ‘virtue,’ ‘patriotism,’ ‘morality,’ ‘religion,’ ‘piety,’ are in every one’s mouth. ”