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press of our own time, and at all times, most particularly, to those private conversations which we
shall soon be discussing.
We say Opinion, but for every problem there are always two opinions. One of the two, however,
manages to eclipse the other fairly quickly by its more rapid and striking brilliance or else because,
even though less widespread, it is the more clamorous of the two. 2
Every age, even the most barbaric, has had an opinion, but it has differed profoundly from what we
call by that name. In the clan, in the tribe, even in the classical or medieval city everyone knew
everyone else personally, and when, in private discussion or the speeches of orators, a common idea
was established, it did not appear like a stone fallen from heaven, of impersonal and hence so much
more prestigious origin; for each person the idea was linked to the tone of voice, the face, of the
person from whom it had come, a person who lent it a living visage. For the same reason it served as
a link only between people who, seeing and speaking to each other every day, were never deceived
about each other.
For as long as the state did not extend beyond the ramparts of the city or, at most, the borders of a
small canton, opinion thus formed, original, and strong, strong sometimes against tradition itself but
especially against individual judgments, played in men’s government the preponderant role of the
chorus in Greek tragedy, a role often assumed by modern opinion, which is of quite another origin, in
our large states or in our immense and growing federations. But in the enormously long interval
separating these two historical phases, the importance of opinion underwent an enormous depression,
which can be explained by its disintegration into local opinions unaware of each other and without
liaison.
In a feudal state, such as medieval England or France, each village, each town had its internal
dissentions, its own politics. And the currents of ideas, or rather the eddies of ideas which whirled
around inside these enclaves, were as different from one place to another as they were alien and
indifferent to one another, at least in normal times. Not only were local politics absorbing in these
places, but to the extent, the small extent, that there was interest in national politics, it was only
among acquaintances, and there was only the vaguest notion of the way in which the same questions
were resolved in neighboring villages. It was not Opinion that existed but thousands of separate
opinions with no continuous link between them.
This link was not provided until the advent, first, of books, and then (and with greater efficacy)
newspapers. The periodical press enabled these primary groups of similar individuals to form a
secondary and far superior aggregate, whose units were closely bound without personal contact.
From this situation arose important differences—among others, this one: in the primary groups the
voices ponderantur rather than numerantur, while in the secondary and much larger group, adhered
to blindly by individuals who cannot see one another, voices can only be counted and not weighed.
Unconsciously the press thus worked to create the strength of numbers and to reduce that of character,
if not of intelligence.
At the same time it suppressed the conditions which made possible the absolute power of the
governing group. This power was greatly favored, in actuality, by the local splitting of opinion: even
more, it found here its raison d’être and justification. What kind of a country is it whose various
regions, cities, towns are not linked by a collective consciousness of their unity of views? Is it really
a nation? Is it anything more than a geographical or, at most, political expression? Yes, it is a nation
but only in the sense that political submission of these various factions of a realm to the same chief is
already nationalism. In the France of Philip the Fair, *2 for example, with the exception of a few rare
occasions when a common danger preoccupied all the cities and fiefs, there was no public mind