‘And you were not angry with him at all, O excellent Socrates,’ exclaimed Lysis. ‘Pity,’ I answered, ‘and not anger, was what I felt, for I knew that he had not a free mind of his own, but was, like most things in that country, the result of what they proudly call “mass production manufacture.”’ BOOK III ‘Then tell me, Socrates, do you consider the Americans to be free?’ ‘Why, no,’ I said, ‘they are the least free of all the peoples of the earth. For they live under a tyrant, and one not a whit more merciful than was Procrustes. For Procrustes forced all over whom he could obtain power to become standardized, fitting them to that bed of his and lopping off the feet of those that were too long, but racking and stretching the limbs of those that were too short, so that the bodies of all should conform to the same mould. But the tyrant who rules the Americans――or all whom he can master――is worse than Procrustes, for he seeks to fashion and control not the body, as is the way of ordinary tyrants, but the soul itself. He standardizes their souls wherever he is strong.’ ‘Truly a terrible tyrant,’ said Lysis; ‘who and what is he?’ ‘His title,’ I said, ‘is Public Opinion, or the Opinion of the Majority, and he is the offspring of Propaganda.’ ‘And why,’ said Lysis, ‘do you call that opinion by so harsh a name? For it seems to me that it is more sensible to be ruled by the opinion of the majority than by the whim of a single tyrant like most barbarians, or the opinion of the minority like the English.’ ‘Come,’ I replied, ‘and let us examine this question together. For does it not seem to you probable that men can be ruled by opinion in many ways and that some ways may well be good but others bad?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And that there will be a great difference between opinions, since some will really belong to the people who hold them and be indeed a part of themselves, while others will be forced upon them from outside and will be repeated and acted upon through fear, and so far from being an expression of the soul of him who utters them, they will act as a great blanket stifling the breath of the soul and killing it and making the man an automaton and a slave and not a reasonable being at all.’ ‘Certainly,’ said Lysis.