The Growth of Public Opinion^ cr'c. 25 



judgment in water-tight compartments. The "cold clear thinker" 

 would endeavour to make his emotions adjust themselves to his 

 thought. The impassioned devotee would compel himself to 

 think in the direction in which he already feit. The third channel 

 of infection was concerned with conduct. Psychologists were 

 coming to recognize the immense range of imitative impulse. To 

 it were due those manners and habits that constituted the 

 characteristics of a nation. In primitive society there was what 

 anthropologists called the " cake of custom "; in more developed 

 communities there were traditions, and we had all our channels 

 and grooves worn deep by repetition from which we could 

 scarcely escape. We defended ourselves by appealing to the 

 sanction of immemorial usage or by remarking that what was good 

 enough for our ancestors was good enough for us. The moral to 

 be drawn from such study of the genesis of public opinion was, in 

 the first place, that we might easily be too reverential to what was 

 known as " the spirit of the age." Once we had seen inside the 

 great social laboratory where public opinion was in process of 

 manufacture we should regard it as one of the last things before 

 which we should prostrate ourselves. The great upward move- 

 ments of the race had commonly been inspired by men who were 

 the obstinate antagonists rather than the docile followers of the 

 spirit of their time. And the second moral was that we must 

 moderate the sanguine expectations that we tended to entertain 

 regarding the education of the race. Men in the mass would 

 never be moved by reasoning in anything like the degree in which 

 they were moved by non rational forces. And there was strong 

 ground to rejoice that this was so. A world of pure reasoners 

 would not be a better world, but a worse. 



A cordial vote of thanks was passed to the lecturers, on the 

 motion of Mr. R. J. Orr, seconded by Mr. R. M. Young. 



