Mein Kampf
tivity, the more pitiful became the full panorama of parliamentary life. Because of course, we must be objective in considering an institution whose members think it necessary in every second sentence to refer to “objectivity” as the only just basis for any judgment or attitude. Anyone who examines these gentlemen themselves and the laws of their bitter existence can only be astonished at the result.
There is no principle which, objectively considered, is so wrong as the parliamentary principle.
We can say this without reference to the way the election of the honorable deputies takes place, the way they reach their office and their new dignity. Only in a tiny fraction of cases is this the fulfilment of a widespread desire, let alone of a need,—as anyone can see who realizes that the political understanding of the masses has not reached the point where they can arrive at general political views of their own and pick out the person to suit them.
What we always call “public opinion” is based to only a minute degree on individual experience or knowledge; it rests mostly on notions produced by a kind of so-called “enlightenment” often infinitely penetrating and persistent.
Just as religious attitudes are the result of education, and only the religious urge itself slumbers within mankind, so the political opinion of the masses is but the result of an often incredibly thorough and determined drive upon mind and soul.
By far the greater part of political “education,” in this case very aptly characterized as propaganda, is the work of the press. It is the press which chiefly takes care of the “work of enlightenment,” thus acting as a sort of school for adults. The instruction is, however, not in the hands of the state, but in the clutches or forces of extremely mean characters. Vienna gave me as a young man the best of opportunities to make intimate acquaintance with the owners and intellectual manufacturers of this mass-education machine. At first I was astonished to see how quickly this most evil power in the state succeeded in producing a given opinion among the public even though it might be a complete transformation and falsification of public wishes and views that un-
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