Practically all the world’s masters, all the founders of religions or empires, the apostles of all beliefs, eminent statesmen, and in a more modest sphere, the mere chiefs of small groups of men have always been unconscious psychologists, possessed of an instinctive and often very scientific knowledge of the character of public opinion. It was mostly this accurate knowledge that enabled them so easily to establish their complete mastery as was so often done.
Napoleon had a marvellous insight into the public opinion of the country over which he reigned, but he, at times, completely misunderstood it, and overshot the mark, and as a rule completely misunderstood the public opinion of other nations. It was because he misunderstood it that he engaged in Spain, and notably in Russia, in conflicts in which his power received blows, which were destined within a brief period of time to ruin it. Neither did the most subtle advisers of Napoleon understand public opinion, as they should have done, for Talleyrand wrote him, that: “Spain would receive his soldiers as Liberators.” The real truth of the matter was, that it received them as beasts of prey. A slight acquaintance with public opinion in that case would have easily foreseen this reception.
Public opinion rules and is practically as unattackable as our religious ideas were in the Middle Ages. Imagine a modern free thinker translated into those days of the Middle Ages. Can you think that, after having ascertained the sovereign power of the religious opinion that was then in force, that he would have been tempted to attack it? Having fallen into the hands of a judge disposed to have him burned at the stake, under the imputation of having concluded a pact with the Devil, or of having participated in the Witches’ Sabbath, would it have occurred to him to dispute the existence of the Devil or of the Witches’ Sabbath? It were as wise to oppose a cyclone with discussion as public opinion, which is a slow growth and gradually comes from within, or, in other words, is the product of education.
As a consequence of the slowness of the movement of the psychological characteristics of races, great stability and fixity, which prevents the overthrow of the equilibrium of races, and their works, is the result. Only in the long run, and by slow hereditary accumulations, is it possible for the psychological and the anatomical elements of the human species to be transformed. The evolution of civilization depends wholly on these transformations.
Public opinion is often made by prominent factors, such as wants, the struggle for life, the action of certain surroundings, the progress of industry and the sciences, education facilities, wars, etc. Ideas do not become public opinion, until, as the consequence of a very slow elaboration, they have descended from the mobile regions of thought, to that stable, and unconscious region of the sentiments, in which the motives of our intentions are elaborated. They then become elements of character and begin to influence conduct. It is this line up of unconscious ideas, that give us character. The idea of international Peace, has been at work for several generations, and on account of the slowness of our mental transformations, many generations of men are needed to secure the triumph of new ideas, and many generations are necessary to cause old ideas to disappear. During the Middle Ages, there were two principal ideas: Religious and feudal. Its arts, literature and whole conception of life were derived from these ideas, until the time of the Renaissance when they began to change; and also the conception of life, the arts and literature underwent an entire transformation.
No matter what the nature of the ideas may be, whether scientific, artistic, philosophic, or religious, the mechanism of its propagation remains identically the same. With International Peace, it is the same, and must first be adopted, as has been done, by a small number of apostles, the intensity of whose faith and the authority of whose names give great prestige. As soon as these apostles succeed in convincing a small circle of adepts and thus form new apostles, the new idea enters into the domain of discussion, where it first arouses universal opposition, because it necessarily clashes with much that is very old and well established. The apostles who defend it are naturally greatly excited by the opposition, which causes them to defend the new idea with energy and diligence. The new idea becomes more and more a subject of discussion, and of course is entirely accepted by the one side and entirely rejected by the other side, with almost as much vehemence. These impassioned debates help the progress of the idea very materially, and it keeps going and going, and the new generations who find it controverted tend to adopt it merely because it is a progressive measure, and because young people, always eager to be independent, find wholesale opposition to old ideas to be the most accessible form of originality.
Consequently, the new idea continues to gain in strength, and finally it does not need any more support, and spreads everywhere by the mere effect of imitation, acting with contagion, a faculty with which humans are very heavily endowed. Just as soon as the mechanism of contagion intervenes, the idea enters on the phase which necessarily signifies ultimate success, and it then becomes public opinion, and takes on a penetrating and subtle force, which spreads it progressively among all intellects, creating simultaneously a sort of special receptive atmosphere or a general manner of thinking. Like the fine dust of the prairie, which penetrates everywhere, it finds its way into the interior of all the conceptions, and all the productions of an epoch, and the idea and its consequences, then form part of that compact stock of hereditary commonplaces loaded on us by education. Thus the idea has triumphed, and has entered the domain of public opinion, where it has nothing to fear.
The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is a fine example of the reception accorded an idea by public opinion as I have illustrated above. For seventy years the apostles of the political doctrine that the direct election of United States Senators by the people is best for them, kept hammering away with their arguments, until it was finally adopted as an amendment to the Constitution. The object of most arguments are at first abhorred, finally endured, and eventually embraced.
The idea of International Peace like the Seventeenth Amendment, has practically run its prescribed course for adoption. It has reached the point where progress is rapid. Of the various ideas which guide a civilization, some rest confined with the upper grades of the nation, while others go deep down among the population. As a rule they arrive there much deformed, but, when they do arrive there, the power they exert over primitive minds incapable of much reasoning is wonderfully large. Under such conditions the idea represents something that is practically invincible, and its efforts are hurled forward with violence analagous to a stream that has overflown its banks. There are always hundreds of thousands of men in a nation of the larger sort who are ready to risk their lives to defend an idea as soon as this idea has actually convinced or subjugated them.
International Peace has been talked and discussed for so many years, that the time is now ripe for it to be inaugurated as part of the international law of the world.