But it is not only in the formal deliberations of the nation that internal organisation, resting on tradition, secures the predominance of the influence of the best and ablest minds. The same is true of all national thought and feeling. There exists in every great nation the vague influence we call public opinion, which is the great upholder of right and justice, which rewards virtue and condemns vice and selfishness. Public opinion exists only in the minds of individuals (for we have rejected, provisionally at least, the conception of a collective consciousness); yet it is a product not of individual, but of collective, mental life. And it has in any healthy nation far higher standards of right and justice and tolerance than the majority of individuals could form or maintain; that is to say, it is in these respects far superior to an opinion which would be the mere resultant or algebraic sum of the opinions of all the living individuals. In reference to any particular matter its judgment is far superior to that of the average of individuals, and superior probably in many cases to that which even the best individuals could form for themselves.
How does public opinion come to be superior to individual and to average opinion? There seems to be something paradoxical in the statement.
The fact is of the utmost importance; for public opinion is the ultimate source of sanctions of all public acts, the highest court of appeal before which every executive act performed in the name of the nation must justify itself. If public opinion were merely the immediate expression of the collective feelings and judgments of an unorganised mass of men, its verdicts would be (as we have seen) inferior to those of the average individuals, whereas, as a matter of fact, its expressions are much superior to those of the average individuals.
The influence of public opinion is especially clear and interesting in its relations to law. In this country it is not made by law, but makes law. Where law is imposed and long maintained by the authority of despotic power, it will of course mould public opinion; but, in any progressive highly organised nation, law and the lawyers are always one or two or more generations behind public opinion. The most progressive body of law formally embodies the public opinion of past generations rather than of the generation living at the time.
The fact of the superiority of public opinion is generally admitted and various explanations are current, for the most part very vague and incomplete. There is the mystical explanation embodied in the dictum that the voice of the people is the voice of God. A rather less vague explanation is that adopted by Mr Beattie Crozier[101] (among others). It is said that the average man carries within him a germ of an ideal of justice and right, and that he applies this to the criticism or approval of the actions of other men; though he often fails to apply it to his own actions, because, where his own interests are concerned, he is apt to be the sport of purely egoistic impulses.
But this explanation is only partially true. It represents the average man as more hypocritical than he really is, and as falling farther below the standards he acknowledges than he actually does fall. It leaves unexplained the fact that he has this sentiment for an ideal of justice and right; and it proceeds on a false assumption as to the nature of the problem, in assuming that men judge the actions of other men by higher standards than those which they apply to their own conduct; whereas this is by no means generally true.
Is it, then, that superior abilities, which enable a man to gain prestige and to impress his ideas and sentiments upon his fellow men and so to influence public opinion, are commonly combined with a natural superiority of moral sentiment, with a love of right and a hatred of injustice? There may be some degree of such natural correlation of superior abilities with superior moral qualities, but the supposition seems very doubtful; and certainly, if it exists, it is not sufficient to account for the elevation of public opinion. We frequently see consummate ability combined with most questionable moral sentiments, as in Napoleon and many other historic personages.
The true explanation is, I submit, to be found in the basal fact that the moral sentiments are essentially altruistic, while the immoral and non-moral sentiments are in the main self-regarding[102]. Hence, the person who has great abilities but is lacking in moral sentiments and altruism applies his abilities to secure his personal satisfactions and aggrandisement; and, in so far as he aims at affecting the minds of others, he tries only to secure their obedience to his commands and suggestions, to inspire them with deference, admiration, fear and awe, and to evoke an outward display of these feelings. But, as to the ideas and sentiments of the people in general, save in so far as they affect his own gratification, he cares nothing. Accordingly we never find great abilities deliberately, consistently and directly applied to the degradation of public opinion and morals, save occasionally in relation to some particular end. And we find few or no great works of literature and art deliberately aiming at such degradation.
But with those persons in whom great abilities are naturally combined with moral disposition the case is very different. The moral disposition is essentially altruistic; it is concerned for the welfare of others, of men in general. Hence such a man deliberately applies his abilities to influence the minds of others. The exertion of such influence is for him an end in itself. He seeks and finds his chief satisfaction in exerting an influence, as wide and deep as possible, over the minds of men; not merely in evoking fear or admiration of himself, but in inspiring in them the same elevated sentiments and sympathies which he finds within himself.
For this reason such men as G. F. Watts, Carlyle and Ruskin exert a much greater and more widespread and lasting influence over the minds of men than do equally able men who are devoid of moral disposition; for the former make the exertion of this influence their chief end, while the others care not at all about the state of public opinion and the minds of the mass. Still less does the non-moral man of great ability strive with all his powers to make others act upon base motives like his own and to degrade their sentiments; rather, he sees that he can better accomplish his selfish ends if other men are unlike himself and are governed by altruistic sentiments; and he sees also that he can better attain his ends if he does lip-service to altruistic ideals; and he is, therefore, apt to exert whatever direct influence he has over the sentiments of men in the same direction as the moral leaders, praising the same actions, upholding in words the same ideals. In this way the men of great abilities, but of immoral or non-moral character, actually aid the moral leaders to some extent in their work; whereas under no conditions is the relation reversed; the moral leaders never praise or acquiesce in bad actions, but always denounce them and use their influence against them.