Europe has given us the most recent important study of public opinion and its social and historical effects. It is interesting because it indicates the sweep of the development of an international realization of what a momentous factor in the world’s life public opinion is becoming. I feel that this paragraph from a recent work of Professor Von Ferdinand Tonnies is of particular significance to all who would feel that the conscious moulding of public opinion is a task embodying high ideals.
“The future of public opinion,” says Professor Tonnies, “is the future of civilization. It is certain that the power of public opinion is constantly increasing and will keep on increasing. It is equally certain that it is more and more being influenced, changed, stirred by impulses from below. The danger which this development contains for a progressive ennobling of human society and a progressive heightening of human culture is apparent. The duty of the higher strata of society—the cultivated, the learned, the expert, the intellectual—is therefore clear. They must inject moral and spiritual motives into public opinion. Public opinion must become public conscience.”
It is in the creation of a public conscience that the counsel on public relations is destined, I believe, to fulfill his highest usefulness to the society in which he lives.
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