2 李普曼《舆论学》

Public Opinion

Walter Lippman

Chapter I

THE WORLD OUTSIDE AND THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS

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There

is

an

island

in

the

ocean

where

in

1914

a

few

Englishmen,

Frenchmen, and Germans lived. No cable reaches that island, and the British

mail steamer comes but once in sixty days. In September it had not yet come,

and

the

islanders

were

still

talking

about

the

latest

newspaper

which

told

about the approaching trial of Madame Caillaux for the shooting of Gaston

Calmette. It was, therefore, with more than usual eagerness that the whole

colony assembled at the quay on a day in mid-September to hear from the

captain what the verdict had been. They learned that for over six weeks now

those of

them

who were

English

and

those

of

them who were French had

been fighting in behalf of the sanctity of treaties against those of them who

were Germans. For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends,

when in fact they were enemies.

But their plight was not so different from that of most of the population

of Europe. They had been mistaken for six weeks, on the continent the

interval may have been only six days or six hours. There was an interval.

There was a moment when the picture of Europe on which men were

conducting their business as usual, did not in any way correspond to the

Europe which was about to make a jumble of their lives. There was a time

for each man when he was still adjusted to an environment that no longer

existed. All over the world as late as July 25th men were making goods that

they would not be able to ship, buying goods they would not be able to

import, careers were being planned, enterprises contemplated, hopes and

expectations entertained, all in the belief that the world as known was the

world as it was. Men were writing books describing that world. They trusted

the picture in their heads. And then over four years later, on a Thursday

morning, came the news of an armistice, and people gave vent to their

unutterable relief that the slaughter was over. Yet in the five days before the

real armistice came, though the end of the war had been celebrated, several

thousand young men died on the battlefields.

Looking back we can see how indirectly we know the environment in

which nevertheless we live. We can see that the news of it comes to us now

fast, now slowly; but that whatever we believe to be a true picture, we treat

as if it were the environment itself. It is harder to remember that about the

beliefs upon which we are now acting, but in respect to other peoples and

other ages we flatter ourselves that it is easy to see when they were in deadly

earnest about ludicrous pictures of the world. We insist, because of our

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superior hindsight, that the world as they needed to know it, and the world

as they did know it, were often two quite contradictory things. We can see,

too, that while they governed and fought, traded and reformed in the world

as they imagined it to be, they produced results, or failed to produce any, in

the world as it was. They started for the Indies and found America. They

diagnosed evil and hanged old women. They thought they could grow rich

by always selling and never buying. A caliph, obeying what he conceived to

be the Will of Allah, burned the library at Alexandria.

Writing about the year 389, St. Ambrose stated the case for the prisoner

in Plato's cave who resolutely declines to turn his head.

nature and position of the earth does not help us in our hope of the life to

come. It is enough to know what Scripture states. 'That He hung up the earth

upon nothing' (Job xxvi. 7). Why then argue whether He hung it up in air or

upon the water, and raise a controversy as to how the thin air could sustain

the earth; or why, if upon the waters, the earth does not go crashing down to

the bottom?... Not because the earth is in the middle, as if suspended on

even balance, but because the majesty of God constrains it by the law of His

will, does it endure stable upon the unstable and the void.

It does not help us in our hope of the life to come. It is enough to know

what Scripture states. Why then argue? But a century and a half after St.

Ambrose, opinion was still troubled, on this occasion by the problem of the

antipodes. A monk named Cosmas, famous for his scientific attainments,

was therefore deputed to write a Christian Topography, or

Opinion concerning the World.

expected of him, for he based all his conclusions on the Scriptures as he read

them. It appears, then, that the world is a flat parallelogram, twice as broad

from east to west as it is long from north to south., In the center is the earth

surrounded by ocean, which is in turn surrounded by another earth, where

men lived before the deluge. This other earth was Noah's port of

embarkation. In the north is a high conical mountain around which revolve

the sun and moon. When the sun is behind the mountain it is night. The sky

is glued to the edges of the outer earth. It consists of four high walls which

meet in a concave roof, so that the earth is the floor of the universe. There is

an ocean on the other side of the sky, constituting the

the firmament.

of the universe belongs to the blest. The space between the earth and sky is

inhabited by the angels. Finally, since St. Paul said that all men are made to

live upon the

Antipodes are supposed to be? With such a passage before his eyes, a

Christian, we are told, should not 'even speak of the Antipodes.'

Far less should he go to the Antipodes; nor should any Christian prince

give him a ship to try; nor would any pious mariner wish to try. For Cosmas

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