Causes of the Collapse
problem of the day goes back almost wholly to external influence exerted by others. This may be of advantage if their enlightenment be undertaken in serious and truth-loving quarters, but is disastrous if attended to by scoundrels and liars.
In number the second group is considerably smaller. It is made up partly of elements which once belonged to the first group, who after continued disappointments have gone to the opposite extreme, and now believe nothing that is presented to them in print. They hate all newspapers, and either do not read them at all, or fly into a rage over the entire contents, which they believe to be compounded wholly of lies and untruths. Such people are very hard to deal with, because they will always be suspicious, even of the truth. They are thus lost to any positive work.
The third group, finally, is by far the smallest; it consists of those really fine minds which have been taught by training and natural bent to think independently, which try to form their own judgments on everything, and which subject everything they read to a repeated, thorough scrutiny and further development of the implications for themselves. They never look at a newspaper without mentally taking part, and Mr. writer’s position is then no easy one. Journalists have in fact only a limited fondness for such readers.
To the members of this third group the nonsense which a newspaper may choose to scribble is, however, scarcely dangerous or even significant. They have usually become accustomed anyway, in the course of a lifetime, to regard every journalist on principle as a rogue who happens sometimes to tell the truth.
But unluckily the importance of these splendid figures is only in their intelligence, and not in their number—a misfortune for an age in which wisdom is nothing, and majority everything! Today, when the ballots of the masses are final, the decisive factor is with the most numerous group, and this is the first class: the crowd of the simple-minded or credulous.
State and people have a prime interest in preventing these people from falling into the hands of bad, ignorant, or actually
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