Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ... of the control of political affairs by public opin-i ion." Now there is to-day a vast organization for manipulating public opinion in favor of the workingman and for deluding it in the interest of those who grow fat by pandering in the name of emancipation to the baser emotions of mankind; but of organization among those who suffer from the vulgarizing trend of democracy there is little or none. As a consequence we see the conditions of J life growing year by year harder for those whose labour is not concerned immediately with the direction of material forces or with the supply of sensational pleasure; they are ground, so to speak, between the upper and the nether millstone. Perhaps organization is not the word to describe accurately what is desired among those who are fast becoming the silent members of society, for it implies a sharper discrimination into grades of taste and character than exists in nature; but there is nothing chimerical in looking for a certain conscious solidarity at the core of the aristocratical class (using "aristocratical" always in the Platonic sense), with a looser cohesion at the edges. Let that class become frankly convinced I that the true aim of a State is, as in the magnifi- I cent theory of Aristotle, to make possible the I high friendship of those who have raised them- / selves to a vision of the supreme good, let them / adopt means to confirm one another in that faith, / and their influence will spread outward through society and leaven the whole range of public opinion. The instrument by which this control of public opinion is effected is primarily the imagination; and here we meet with a real difficulty. It was the advantage of such a union of aristocracy and inherited oligarchy as Burke advocated...
