Popularization

“ In our own days, on the contrary, it is the testimony of the middle 438classes to merits which they are now qualified to discern, and the gratification which they manifest in the productions of the lettered world, which lead the way to what is vaguely called popularity. It is not easy to define the causes of this remarkable change in one part of our social economy. ”

“ At this stage a new civilisation, with its institutions, its beliefs, and its arts, may be born. In pursuit of its ideal, the race will acquire in succession the qualities necessary to give it splendour, vigour, and grandeur. At times no doubt it will still be a crowd, but henceforth, beneath the mobile and changing characteristics of crowds, is found a solid substratum, the genius of the race which confines within narrow limits the transformations of a nation and overrules the play of chance. ”

“ And if to the popular nature must be ascribed the growth of an irresponsible ruling class; then to the popular nature must be ascribed the social arrangements which that class creates in the pursuit of its own ends. ”

“ And where is the strength of our Republic, if not in our cities and large towns? There talent in every art and profession is fostered, and exerts peculiar influence. There wealth concentrates its millions upon millions, to exert extensively a blasting or brightening influence on society. There the press daily sends out its thousands and its tens of thousands of winged messengers, to excite the passions, to influence the opinions, to control the energies of a nation. ”

“ The whole trend of public opinion, in short, outside the wealthier burghers of the larger cities—the class immediately interested—was adverse to the condition of things created by the new world-market, and by the new class embodying it. ”

“ The republic of literature, like society, has its aristocratic, its middle, and its lower classes. No one has combined, in one performance, the refinement applauded in the universities, with the practical purpose, popular among those who toil to live, and live to toil. The populace are my choice—of them I am one, and, like a recent premier, Earl Grey, am disposed 'to stand by my order.' I write for this class both from affection and taste. ”

“ Popularity is the keystone of modern politics. Alas, too few men have we, who think, say, or act, without weighing the probabilities of its popularity. Our statesmen care more for what is popular than for what is right, and popularity is generally the sole consideration. To attain the honors of posterity and of history, a more solid merit is required than the ephemeral smile of popularity. ”

“ It is not, then, the facts in themselves that strike the popular imagination, but the way in which they take place and are brought under notice. It is necessary that by their condensation, if I may thus express myself, they should produce a startling image which fills and besets the mind. To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them. ”

“ There is a popularity which is born of the worship of noble deeds,—it is the best. There is another, which comes of the crowd's passion for what is noisy and spectacular,—it is the worst. The one is the popularity of heroes, the other that of charlatans. ”

“ What a thing is popularity—​or becoming the fashion would perhaps be the better term! The English public are afflicted every now and then with a sort of mad infatuation for eccentricity, and are apt to applaud to the very echo things they do not understand. ”

“ I would like to try to express the type of modern man who, as it seems to me, is about to prove himself the real ruler of our modern world, the silent master of what the crowds shall think. It has seemed to me that it is going to be a man of a marked type, and of a particular temperament, to whom we will have to look in our new and crowded world for the crowd-interpreter, or man who touches the imagination of crowds. ”

“ Where is the poet who shares half the popularity of Warren, Turner, or Day and Martin, whose ebony fames are spread through every dirty little village in England? These instances of the trifling and ridiculous made as much noise and stir in their day as the best, and noise and bustle are the essence and soul of popularity.
The nearest akin to popularity is common fame. I mean names that are familiar among the common people. It is not a very envious species, for they seldom know how to value or appreciate what they are acquainted with. ”

“ A statesman of that stamp—one who does not watch and chronicle the shiftings of popular opinion, in order to know with certainty what are his own opinions, or in order to shape his own political ‘principles’—rarely enjoys popularity. ”

“ We are no exceptions, we leaders of thought, and teachers of youth, and captains of industry; we too must have Publicity or—ahem—pass under. And as the demand for Publicity increases, the supply of it naturally diminishes. You understand that? Well, now, any association with Masticator B. Fellows means Publicity at once for the lucky individual. But there are times when the vast sweep of economic currents ties up all the available Publicity, and at those times great enterprises languish from its scarcity. ”

“ The debates surrounding even the definition of popular culture engage a concept that attempts to define, characterize and name practices never designated by its actors as part of „popular culture‟. [...] One can reduce the innumerable definitions of popular culture to two great descriptive models. ”

“ Can a few hundreds, or even thousands, of men and women, drawn largely by curiosity or want of occupation into societies of which the very names are hardly known to the general public, exercise any influence on the world at large? ”

“ Royalty itself, in its idea the expression of the collective nation, and a sort of constituted witness to its best mind, we try to turn into a kind of grand advertising van, meant to give publicity and credit to the inventions, sound or unsound, of the ordinary self of individuals. ”

“ He who built on popularity built on a shifting sand. The man who showed he was ready to suffer for his principles as well as triumph with his principles was far beyond comparison with the mere popularity hunter. ”

“ All phases of opinion, including the most earnest and honest inquiry into social questions, finds some voice in print, but—leaving aside times when public opinion is greatly aroused—those phases that are backed by wealthy interests have a great advantage in the urgency, persistence and cleverness with which they are presented. ”

“ Whether it was a crowd that thought of stealing a penny and did or did not, if the pennies rolling around among their feet made them think, made them experiment, played upon the initiative, the individuality or invention in them, the personal self-control, the social responsibility in them, it was a crowd to be proud of. ”

“ Popularity is nowhere a greater snare than it is in this region of work, and magazine articles, and review articles, the romance of history, and historic scenes and characters, are produced with great facility when the principal object is to attract the half-educated to read. ”

“ And yet there is a shadow of choice even there; for they won’t at least buy what they dislike. And again the growth in popularity may be only what first attracted their attention—not determined their choice. ”

“ Finally, there is one proper test to prove that all this jargon about “The Public” is nonsense, which is that it is altogether modern. Who quarrelled with the Public in the old days when men lived a healthy corporate life, and painted, wrote, or sang for the applause of their fellows? ”

“ The Public is not this or that class, this or that type; the Public is an hypothetical average human being, endowed with average human qualities—a distillation, in fact, of all the people in this hall, the people in the street outside, the people of this country everywhere. ”

“ We may naturally suppose that all those persons who are possessed of popularity in the different States, and which they make use of, not for the public benefit, but for their private emolument, will oppose any system of this kind. ”

“ Thus suiting the taste and genius of the people, and in some degree comporting with what they had been accustomed to, at the same time assuming great affability of manner, both in private and in the discharge of his public duties, he rendered himself extremely popular with both populations. ”

“ Instead of representing, as a government should, the better contemporary ideals and methods, they have reflected at best the average standard of popular behavior and at worst a standard decidedly below the average. ”

“ A truly intelligent class—almost too intelligent—with a touch of the morbid: the people of a large city. And this public might in a few years' time become the ideal audience: intellectual and passionate. ”

“ But for a high ideal of public responsibility and duty, conjoined with high culture and with great “staying-power,” in the editorial rooms, all these marvels of ingenuity—which now combine to develop public opinion on great public interests, and to guide it—would be nothing better than a vast mechanism for making money out of, man's natural aptitude to spend his time either in telling or in hearing some new thing. ”

“ The fact is, our fair becoming one of the most popular and genteel exhibitions of the year. We are glad of its prosperity, not because we love popularity, but because of the change in public opinion which it indicates. We know that imputations have been cast upon those who act most prominently in conducting this fair. ”

“ So constantly have the writers, the orators and the dramatists held this idea up to the popular gaze that public sentiment has learned to accept it as correct, and even those who suffer most from the effects of modern commerce feel their breasts swell with pride as they gaze at the pictures of commercial centers in the illustrated magazines, or hear the stump-speakers boast of our commercial greatness. ”

“ But with persuasion the case is different; emotions are varied, and in each separate instance the arguer must carefully consider the ruling passions and ideals of his audience. The hopes and aspirations of a gang of ignorant miners would differ widely from the desires of an assembly of college students, or of a coterie of metropolitan capitalists. Education, wealth, social standing, politics, religion, race, nationality, every motive that is likely to have weight with the audience should be taken into consideration. ”

“ We have shown that crowds do not reason, that they accept or reject ideas as a whole, that they tolerate neither discussion nor contradiction, and that the suggestions brought to bear on them invade the entire field of their understanding and tend at once to transform themselves into acts. We have shown that crowds suitably influenced are ready to sacrifice themselves for the ideal with which they have been inspired. ”

“ The temptation is all the stronger from the circumstance that most specialists take no interest in works of popularisation, that these works are, in general, lucrative, and that the public at large is not in a position to distinguish clearly between honest and sham popularisation. ”

“ Every class is there; from the prince and peer, to the labouring man and peasant, all have come, attracted by the all-powerful genius who is to address that monster meeting this day. Imbued with the same feeling, impelled by the same curiosity, attracted by the same sentiment, that crowd of mixed denominations and sexes awaits his coming in breathless expectation. ”

“ But the mission of raising the tone of democracy, which they had proved themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert, was assumed with rare enthusiasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill and success by a new educational power; and for the clarification of their human sympathies and elevation of their human preferences, the people at large acquired the habit of resorting exclusively to the guidance of certain private literary adventures, commonly designated in the market by the affectionate name of ten-cent magazines. ”

“ It would be vain to deny the gravity of this danger or the extent to which, in the best of democracies, the seekers after all kinds of distinction have been hypnotized by an express desire for popularity. ”

“ Questions affecting individuals, again, or small interests, or classes, excite here a greater interest, and occupy a larger share of time, than, perhaps, in any other community. In no country, I may add, are the interests of persons or classes so favored when they compete with those of the public ”

“ You have advantages. You can speak well. You will have plenty of money. You are beginning with the proletariat—that is laying a foundation of popularity. You have youth and heaps of strength on your side. ”

“ The newspaper, in order to flourish, must be a moulder of opinion, and to accomplish this those who control its columns must more and more be men of education, force, and high ideals. Competition will winnow here as elsewhere, but those who by ability and industry win the chief places will stand high in the community and command large pay for their services.
An aristocracy of brains—that is to say, an aristocracy composed of individuals successful and prominent in their several callings—seems to be the logical sequence of our institutions under present social and industrial conditions. ”

“ The crowd theory, like the particularist doctrine, has been strengthened by the upholders of the imitation theory of society. Many of our political as well as our sociological writers have seen life as some exceptional individual suggesting and the crowd following without reasoning, without effort of mind or will. ”

“ We had now three classes in the state—the unbelievers and scoffers who were in the vast majority; the enthusiasts who believed firmly in local work, who formed a small but powerful minority, and a yet smaller class who thought that there might be a chance to get money out of it and who urged improvements that they might be engaged to carry out. ”