2李普曼輿論學(xué)

1、1Public OpinionWalter LippmanChapter ITHE WORLD OUTSIDE AND THE PICTURES IN OUR HEADS1There is an island in the ocean where in 1914 a few Englishmen, Frenchmen, andGermans lived. No cable reaches that island, and the British mail steamer comes butonce in sixty days. In September it had not yet come,

2、 and the islanders were stilltalking about the latest newspaper which told about the approaching trial of MadameCaillaux for the shooting of Gaston Calmette. It was, therefore, with more than usualeagerness that the whole colony assembled at the quay on a day in mid-September tohear from the captain

3、 what the verdict had been. They learned that for over six weeksnow those of them who were English and those of them who were French had beenfighting 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 fac

4、t they wereenemies.But their plight was not so different from that of most of the population ofEurope. They had been mistaken for six weeks, on the continent the interval may havebeen only six days or six hours. There was an interval. There was a moment when thepicture of Europe on which men were co

5、nducting their business as usual, did not inany 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 nolonger existed. All over the world as late as July 25th men were making goods thatthey would

6、not be able to ship, buying goods they would not be able to import,careers were being planned, enterprises contemplated, hopes and expectationsentertained, all in the belief that the world as known was the world as it was. Men werewriting books describing that world. They trusted the picture in thei

7、r heads. And thenover four years later, on a Thursday morning, came the news of an armistice, andpeople gave vent to their unutterable relief that the slaughter was over. Yet in the fivedays before the real armistice came, though the end of the war had been celebrated,several thousand young men died

8、 on the battlefields.Looking back we can see how indirectly we know the environment in whichnevertheless 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 theenvironment itself. It is harder to remember

9、that about the beliefs upon which we arenow acting, but in respect to other peoples and other ages we flatter ourselves that itis easy to see when they were in deadly earnest about ludicrous pictures of the world.We insist, because of our superior hin dsight, that the world as they n eeded to know i

10、t,and the world as they did know it, were ofte n two quite con tradictory thin gs. We cansee, too, that while they gover ned and fought, traded and reformed in the world asthey imag ined it to be, they produced results, or failed to produce any, in the world asit was. They started for the In dies an

11、d found America. They diag no sed evil and han2ged old wome n. They thought they could grow rich by always selli ng and n everbuying. A caliph, obey ing what he con ceived to be the Will of Allah, burned thelibrary at Alexa ndria.Writi ng about the year 389, St. Ambrose stated the case for the pris

12、oner inPlatos cave who resolutely decli nes to turn his head. To discuss the n ature andpositi on of the earth does not help us in our hope of the life to come. It is eno ugh toknow what Scripture states. That He hung up the earth upon no thi ng (Job xxvi. 7).Why the n argue whether He hung it up in

13、 air or upon the water, and raise acontroversy as to how the thin air could sustain the earth; or why, if upon the waters,the earth does not go crashi ng dow n to the bottom?. Not because the earth is in themiddle, as if suspended on eve n bala nee, but because the majesty of God con stra insit by t

14、he law of His will, does it en dure stable upon the un stable and the void. (1)It does not help us in our hope of the life to come. It is eno ugh to know whatScripture states. Why the n argue? But a cen tury and a half after St. Ambrose, opinionwas still troubled, on this occasi on by the problem of

15、 the an tipodes. A monk n amedCosmas, famous for his scie ntific atta inmen ts, was therefore deputed to write aChristian Topography, or Christian Opinion concerning the World.(2) It is clear thathe knew exactly what was expected of him, for he based all his con clusi ons on theScriptures as he read

16、 them. It appears, the n, 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 theearth surro un ded by ocea n, which is in turn surro un ded by ano ther earth, wheremen lived before the deluge. This other earth was Noahs port o

17、f embarkati on. In thenorth is a high coni cal moun tain around which revolve the sun and moon. Whe n thesun is beh ind the mountain it is ni ght. The sky is glued to the edges of the outer earth.It con sists of four high walls which meet in a con cave roof, so that the earth is thefloor of the uni

18、verse. There is an ocea n on the other side of the sky, con stitut ing thewaters that are above the firmame nt. The space betwee n the celestial ocea n andthe ultimate roof of the uni verse bel ongs to the blest. The space betwee n the earthand sky is in habited by the an gels. Fin ally, since St. P

19、aul said that all men are made tolive upon the face of the earth how could they live on the back where the An tipodesare supposed to be? With such a passage before his eyes, a Christia n, we are told,should no t eve n speak of the An tipodes.學(xué))Far less should he go to the Antipodes; nor should any C

20、hristian prince give hima ship to try; nor would any pious mari ner wish to try. For Cosmas there was no thi ngin the least absurd about his map. Only by rememberi ng his absolute con victi on thatthis was the map of the uni verse can we begi n to un dersta nd how he would havedreaded Magella n or P

21、eary or the aviator who risked a collisi on with the an gels andthe vault of heave n by flying seve n miles up in the air. In the same way we can best understa nd the furies of war and politics by rememberi ng that almost the whole of eachparty believes absolutely in its picture of the oppositi on,

22、that it takes as fact, not whatis, but what it supposes to be the fact. And that therefore, like Hamlet, it will stabPolonius behind the rustling curtain, thinking him the king, and perhaps like Hamlet3add:Thou wretched, rash, in trudi ng fool, farewell!I took thee for thy better; take thy fortun e.

23、2Great men, eve n duri ng their lifetime, are usually known to the public onlythrough a fictitious pers on ality. Hence the modicum of truth in the old say ing thatno man is a hero to his valet. There is only a modicum of truth, for the valet, and theprivate secretary, are often immersed in the fict

24、ion themselves. Royal pers on ages are,of course, con structed pers on alities. Whether they themselves believe in their publiccharacter, or whether they merely permit the chamberlain to stage-manage it, thereare at least two disti net selves, the public and regal self, the private and huma n. Thebi

25、ographies of great people fall more or less readily into the histories of these twoselves. The official biographer reproduces the public life, the revealing memoir theother. The Charnwood Lincoln, for example, is a n oble portrait, not of an actual human being, but of an epic figure, replete with si

26、g nifica nee, who moves on much thesame level of reality as Aen eas or St. George. Olivers Hamilt on is a majestic abstraction, the sculpture of an idea, an essay as Mr. Oliver himself calls it, on Americanunion. It is a formal monument to the state-craft of federalism, hardly the biographyof a pers

27、 on. Sometimes people create their own facade whe n they thi nk they arereveali ng the in terior sce ne. The Repington diaries and Margot Asquiths are aspecies of self-portraiture in which the intimate detail is most revealing as an in dex ofhow the authors like to think about themselves.But the mos

28、t in teresti ng kind of portraiture is that which arises spontan eouslyin peoples min ds. Whe n Victoria came to the thro ne, says Mr. Strachey,(4) am ongthe outside public there was a great wave of en thusiasm. Sen time nt and roma neewere coming into fashi on; and the spectacle of the little girl-

29、quee n, innocent, modest,with fair hair and pinkcheeks, driving through her capital, filled the hearts of the beholders with raptures ofaffecti on ate loyalty. What, above all, struck everybody with overwhel ming force wasthe con trast betwee n Quee n Victoria and her un cles. The n asty old men, de

30、bauchedand selfish, pigheaded and ridiculous, with their perpetual burde n of debts, con fusions, and disreputabilities-they had vani shed like the snows of win ter and here at last,crow ned and radia nt, was the spri ng.M. Jean de Pierrefeu(5) saw hero-worship at first hand, for he was an officer o

31、nJoffres staff at the mome nt of that soldiers greatest fame:For two years, the entire world paid an almost divine homage to the victor of4the Maine. The baggage-master literally bent un der the weight of the boxes, of thepackages and letters which unknown people sent him with a fran tic testim onia

32、l oftheir admirati on. I thi nk that outside of Gen eral Joffre, no comma nder in the war hasbee n able to realize a comparable idea of what glory is. They sent him boxes of candyfrom all the great con fecti oners of the world, boxes of champag ne, fine wines ofevery vin tage, fruits, game, orn ame

33、nts and ute nsils, clothes, smoki ng materials, inksta nds, paperweights. Every territory sent its specialty. The pain ter sent his picture,the sculptor his statuette, the dear old lady a comforter or socks, the shepherd in hishut carved a pipe for his sake. All the manu facturers of the world who w

34、ere hostile toGerma ny shipped their products, Hava na its cigars, Portugal its port win e. I haveknown a hairdresser who had nothing better to do tha n to make a portrait of the General out of hair bel onging to pers ons who were dear to him; a professi onal penmanhad the same idea, but the feature

35、s were composed of thousands of little phrases intiny characters which sang the praise of the Gen eral. As to letters, he had them in allscripts, from all coun tries, writte n in every dialect, affecti on ate letters, grateful,overflow ing with love, filled with adorati on. They called him Savior of

36、 the World,Father of his Coun try, Age nt of God, Ben efactor of Huma ni ty, etc. And not onlyFren chme n, but America ns, Arge nti nians, Australia ns, etc. etc. Thousa nds of littlechildre n, without their pare nts kno wledge, took pen in hand and wrote to tell himtheir love: most of them called h

37、im Our Father. And there was poig nancy about theireffusi ons, their adorati on, these sighs of delivera nee that escaped from thousa ndsof hearts at the defeat of barbarism. To all these n aif little souls, Joffre seemed like St.George crushi ng the drago n. Certainly he incarn ated for the con sci

38、e nee of mankindthe victory of good over evil, of light over dark ness.Lun atics, simplet ons, the half-crazy and the crazy turned their darkened brainstoward him as toward reason itself. I have read the letter of a pers on livi ng in Sydn ey,who begged the Gen eral to save him from his enemies; another, a New Zealander,requested him t