Strong government, imperialism at home
and abroad, at its best deeply conscious of the price of disorder,
relies at last on the notion that all that matters to the governed
will be known by the governors. In each theory there is a spot of
blind automatism.
That spot covers up some fact, which if it were taken into account,
would check the vital movement that the stereotype provokes. If the
progressive had to ask himself, like the Chinaman in the joke, what he
wanted to do with the time he saved by breaking the record, if the
advocate of laissez-faire had to contemplate not only free and
exuberant energies of men, but what some people call their human
nature, if the collectivist let the center of his attention be
occupied with the problem of how he is to secure his officials, if the
imperialist dared to doubt his own inspiration, you would find more
Hamlet and less Henry the Fifth. For these blind spots keep away
distracting images, which with their attendant emotions, might cause
hesitation and infirmity of purpose. Consequently the stereotype not
only saves time in a busy life and is a defense of our position in
society, but tends to preserve us from all the bewildering effect of
trying to see the world steadily and see it whole.
CHAPTER IX
CODES AND THEIR ENEMIES
ANYONE who has stood at the end of a railroad platform waiting for a
friend, will recall what queer people he mistook for him.
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