‘Indeed they find it so, yet they must do it with care, for in many matters they do not have the power of making the Americans think absolutely anything they please, but only the power of making one out of several opinions prevail. For they see the American soul like a ship with full-bellied sails, going to one of several harbours, according as the winds and currents drive it, and these manufacturers and these preachers can decide on the harbour and drive that ship before their mighty blasts and blowings, scattering away all contrary winds.’ At this Lysis looked very thoughtful, and then said slowly: ‘If they have indeed so much power it must be that there is some correspondence in the American soul, and that the manufacturers and the preachers are strong in the national life because the manufacturing part of the soul and the preaching part of the soul is strong inside the ordinary American. For so you have explained to me that the constitution of a State is reflected in the constitution of the souls of its citizens.’ ‘My excellent Lysis,’ I said, ‘you have well stated a difficult truth, and much of the power of these people comes from the fact that an American thinks he ought to listen to a manufacturer because he himself, in his own soul, thinks highly of manufacturing, and will not listen to a philosopher, thinking meanly of philosophy. So also he admires a preacher, though such are seldom humble and many, indeed, go about bursting with presumption and acting as though they were wiser and better than all other men. But there is a further explanation of their power. These manufacturers and preachers are organized and have the use of money, so that they can pay men to write and repeat the same things over and over again, till the Americans, from seeing and hearing them so often, assume that they are true.’ Then Lysis said: ‘Has the strengthening of this power, Socrates, been the worst of the evils that resulted from the Civil War?’ ‘Many and heavy have been the ills,’ said I, ‘resulting from that contest and the views dictated by the North.’ ‘There are those,’ Agathon said, ‘who say that all that has happened would have happened without the Civil War.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but we cannot pretend to know that. And so I am content to look at what has taken place and to trace how events have helped each other without following such writers into the marshes and bogs of hypothetical imaginings. Now it seems to me that the Civil War gave the death stroke to their political life, for it made the central government supreme over the states at the same time as it made the interests of commerce predominant over the central government.’ ‘Explain to us, Socrates,’ they said, as I was expecting they would.