The fundamental contrast is not between public and private enterprises, between “crowd” psychology and individual, but between men doing specific things and men attempting to command general results. The work of the world is carried on by men in their executive capacity, by an infinite number of concrete acts, plowing and planting and reaping, building and destroying, fitting this to that, going from here to there, transforming A into B and moving B from X to Y. The relationships between the individuals doing these specific things are balanced by a most intricate mechanism of exchange, of contract, of custom and of implied promises. Where men are performing their work they must learn to understand the process and the substance of these obligations if they are to do it at all. But in governing the work of other men by votes or by the expression of opinion they can only reward or punish a result, accept or reject alternatives presented to them. They can say yes or no to something which has been done, yes or no to a proposal, but they cannot create, administer and actually perform the act they have in mind. Persons uttering public opinions may now and then be able to define the acts of men, but their opinions do not execute these acts. 4 To the realm of executive acts, each of us, as a member of the public, remains always external. Our public opinions are always and forever, by their very nature, an attempt to control the actions of others from the outside. If we can grasp the full significance of that conclusion we shall, I think, have found a way of fixing the rôle of public opinion in its true perspective; we shall know how to account for the disenchantment of democracy, and we shall begin to see the outline of an ideal of public opinion which, unlike that accepted in the dogma of democracy, may be really attainable. FOOTNOTES: [11] _Cf._ my _Public Opinion_, Chapters XXV and XXVI. [12] _Cf._ my _Public Opinion_, Chapters XIII and XIV. [13] Speech on the Reform Bill of 1832, quoted in the _Times_ (London), July 12, 1923. Chapter IV WHAT THE PUBLIC DOES 1 I do not mean to say that there is no other attainable ideal of public opinion but that severely practical one which this essay is meant to disclose. One might aim to enrich the minds of men with charming fantasies, animate nature and society with spirits, set up an Olympus in the skies and an Atlantis at the end of the world. And one might then assert that, so the quality of ideas be fine or give peace, it does not matter how or whether they eventuate in the government of affairs.