The mass of absolutely illiterate, of
feeble-minded, grossly neurotic, undernourished and frustrated
individuals, is very considerable, much more considerable there is
reason to think than we generally suppose. Thus a wide popular appeal
is circulated among persons who are mentally children or barbarians,
people whose lives are a morass of entanglements, people whose
vitality is exhausted, shut-in people, and people whose experience has
comprehended no factor in the problem under discussion. The stream of
public opinion is stopped by them in little eddies of misunderstanding,
where it is discolored with prejudice and far fetched analogy.
A "broad appeal" takes account of the quality of association, and is
made to those susceptibilities which are widely distributed. A
"narrow" or a "special" appeal is one made to those susceptibilities
which are uncommon. But the same individual may respond with very
different quality to different stimuli, or to the same stimuli at
different times. Human susceptibilities are like an alpine country.
There are isolated peaks, there are extensive but separated plateaus,
and there are deeper strata which are quite continuous for nearly all
mankind. Thus the individuals whose susceptibilities reach the
rarefied atmosphere of those peaks where there exists an exquisitive
difference between Frege and Peano, or between Sassetta's earlier and
later periods, may be good stanch Republicans at another level of
appeal, and when they are starving and afraid, indistinguishable from
any other starving and frightened person.
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