It is hard not to picture the future as if it obeyed our present
purposes, to annihilate whatever delays our desire, or immortalize
whatever stands between us and our fears.
8
In putting together our public opinions, not only do we have to
picture more space than we can see with our eyes, and more time than
we can feel, but we have to describe and judge more people, more
actions, more things than we can ever count, or vividly imagine. We
have to summarize and generalize. We have to pick out samples, and
treat them as typical.
To pick fairly a good sample of a large class is not easy. The problem
belongs to the science of statistics, and it is a most difficult
affair for anyone whose mathematics is primitive, and mine remain
azoic in spite of the half dozen manuals which I once devoutly
imagined that I understood. All they have done for me is to make me a
little more conscious of how hard it is to classify and to sample, how
readily we spread a little butter over the whole universe.
Some time ago a group of social workers in Sheffield, England, started
out to substitute an accurate picture of the mental equipment of the
workers of that city for the impressionistic one they had. [Footnote:
_The Equipment of the Worker_.] They wished to say, with some
decent grounds for saying it, how the workers of Sheffield were
equipped. They found, as we all find the moment we refuse to let our
first notion prevail, that they were beset with complications.
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