The analysis then turns from these more or less external limitations
to the question of how this trickle of messages from the outside is
affected by the stored up images, the preconceptions, and prejudices
which interpret, fill them out, and in their turn powerfully direct
the play of our attention, and our vision itself. From this it
proceeds to examine how in the individual person the limited messages
from outside, formed into a pattern of stereotypes, are identified
with his own interests as he feels and conceives them. In the
succeeding sections it examines how opinions are crystallized into
what is called Public Opinion, how a National Will, a Group Mind, a
Social Purpose, or whatever you choose to call it, is formed.
The first five parts constitute the descriptive section of the book.
There follows an analysis of the traditional democratic theory of
public opinion. The substance of the argument is that democracy in its
original form never seriously faced the problem which arises because
the pictures inside people's heads do not automatically correspond
with the world outside. And then, because the democratic theory is
under criticism by socialist thinkers, there follows an examination of
the most advanced and coherent of these criticisms, as made by the
English Guild Socialists. My purpose here is to find out whether these
reformers take into account the main difficulties of public opinion.
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