.. presented to the
ruling classes of that time the type of human being most likely to win
the day in the combat of human forces... Who had the power to break
through this new standard of vision and, out of the chaos of things,
to select shapes more definitely expressive of reality than those
fixed by men of genius? No one had such power. People had perforce to
see things in that way and in no other, and to see only the shapes
depicted, to love only the ideals presented...." [Footnote: _The
Central Italian Painters_, pp. 66-67.]
2
If we cannot fully understand the acts of other people, until we know
what they think they know, then in order to do justice we have to
appraise not only the information which has been at their disposal,
but the minds through which they have filtered it. For the accepted
types, the current patterns, the standard versions, intercept
information on its way to consciousness. Americanization, for example,
is superficially at least the substitution of American for European
stereotypes. Thus the peasant who might see his landlord as if he were
the lord of the manor, his employer as he saw the local magnate, is
taught by Americanization to see the landlord and employer according
to American standards. This constitutes a change of mind, which is, in
effect, when the inoculation succeeds, a change of vision. His eye
sees differently. One kindly gentlewoman has confessed that the
stereotypes are of such overweening importance, that when hers are not
indulged, she at least is unable to accept the brotherhood of man and
the fatherhood of God: "we are strangely affected by the clothes we
wear.
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