It is in a combination of these elements that the power to create
opinion resides. Editorials reinforce. Sometimes in a situation that
on the news pages is too confusing to permit of identification, they
give the reader a clue by means of which he engages himself. A clue he
must have if, as most of us must, he is to seize the news in a hurry.
A suggestion of some sort he demands, which tells him, so to speak,
where he, a man conceiving himself to be such and such a person, shall
integrate his feelings with the news he reads.
"It has been said" writes Walter Bagehot, [Footnote: On the Emotion of
Conviction, _Literary Studies_, Vol. Ill, p. 172.] "that if you
can only get a middleclass Englishman to think whether there are
'snails in Sirius,' he will soon have an opinion on it. It will be
difficult to make him think, but if he does think, he cannot rest in a
negative, he will come to some decision. And on any ordinary topic, of
course, it is so. A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy, a
young lady a complete theory of the sacraments, as to which neither
has any doubt whatever."
Yet that same grocer will have many doubts about his groceries, and
that young lady, marvelously certain about the sacraments, may have
all kinds of doubts as to whether to marry the grocer, and if not
whether it is proper to accept his attentions. The ability to rest in
the negative implies either a lack of interest in the result, or a
vivid sense of competing alternatives.
Pages:
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369