It is not necessary, then, to invent a collective intelligence in
order to explain why the judgments of a group are usually more
coherent, and often more true to form than the remarks of the man in
the street. One mind, or a few can pursue a train of thought, but a
group trying to think in concert can as a group do little more than
assent or dissent. The members of a hierarchy can have a corporate
tradition. As apprentices they learn the trade from the masters, who
in turn learned it when they were apprentices, and in any enduring
society, the change of personnel within the governing hierarchies is
slow enough to permit the transmission of certain great stereotypes
and patterns of behavior. From father to son, from prelate to novice,
from veteran to cadet, certain ways of seeing and doing are taught.
These ways become familiar, and are recognized as such by the mass of
outsiders.
4
Distance alone lends enchantment to the view that masses of human
beings ever cooperate in any complex affair without a central machine
managed by a very few people. "No one," says Bryce, [Footnote: _Op.
cit._, Vol. II, p. 542.] "can have had some years' experience of
the conduct of affairs in a legislature or an administration without
observing how extremely small is the number of persons by whom the
world is governed." He is referring, of course, to affairs of state.
To be sure if you consider all the affairs of mankind the number of
people who govern is considerable, but if you take any particular
institution, be it a legislature, a party, a trade union, a
nationalist movement, a factory, or a club, the number of those who
govern is a very small percentage of those who are theoretically
supposed to govern.
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