Congress should regard himself as representing the interests of his constituents alone, or as concerned primarily and chiefly with the interests of the whole people; and he rightly inclines to the latter view. This is not quite the same distinction as that which is insisted upon in these pages. Even if each representative were concerned only for the welfare of the nation as a whole, yet so long as he regarded it as his sole function to vote as he believes the majority of the citizens would vote in any process of direct legislation, he would fall short of the highest duty which is laid upon him by his position—namely, not merely that of recording the opinion of the majority, but that of taking part in the organised deliberative activities of the national mind by which it arrives at judgments and decisions of a higher order than any purely individual, or algebraic sum of individual, judgments and decisions[104]. Public opinion, in the sense in which I have used the words in this chapter (which seems to me the only proper use of them) is, then, not a mere sum of individual opinions upon any particular question; it is rather the expression of that tone or attitude of mind which prevails throughout the nation and owes its quality far more to the influence of the dead than of the living, being the expression of the moral sentiments that are firmly and traditionally established in the mind of the people, and established more effectively and in more refined forms in the minds of the leaders of public opinion than in the average citizen. This tone of the national mind enables it to arrive at just judgments on questions of right and wrong, of duty and honour and public desert; though it may have little bearing upon such practical questions as bimetallism, tariff reform, or railway legislation. The current use of the term, in this country at least, does, I think, recognise that public opinion properly applies only to the sphere of moral judgments and can and should have no bearing upon the practical details of legislation. Public opinion is, both in its development and in its operations, essentially collective; it is essentially the work of the group mind. Its accepted standards of value are slowly built up under the influence of the moral leaders of past ages; and, in the application of those standards to any particular question, the influence of the moral leaders of the time makes itself felt. I have kept in mind in the foregoing pages the public opinion of the nation; but every community, every association, every enduring group has its own public opinion, which, though it is influenced by, and indeed is, as it were, a branch of, the main stem of national public opinion and is therefore of the same fibre and texture, has nevertheless its own peculiar tone and quality, especially in regard to the moral questions with which each group is specially concerned. PART III THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER CHAPTER XIV INTRODUCTORY