ds upon and is measured by
the mere number of persons to be found on each side of a question; but
this is far from accurate. If 49 per cent of a community feel very
strongly on one side, and 51 per cent are lukewarmly on the other, the
former opinion has the greater public force behind it and is certain to
prevail ultimately, if it does not at once.

One man who holds his belief tenaciously counts for as much as several
men who hold theirs weakly, because he is more aggressive and thereby
compels and overawes others into apparent agreement with him, or at
least into silence and inaction. This is, perhaps, especially true of
moral questions. It is not improbable that a large part of the accepted
moral code is maintained by the earnestness of a minority, while more
than half of the community is indifferent or unconvinced. In short,
public opinion is not strictly the opinion of the numerical majority,
and no form of its expression measures the mere majority, for individual
views are always to some extent weighed as well as counted.

Without attempting to consider how the weight attaching to intensity and
intelligence can be accurately gauged, it is enough for our purpose to
point out that when we speak of the opinion of a majority we mean, not
the numerical, but the effective, majority.

5. Public Opinion and the Mores[270]

We are interested in public opinion, I suppose, because public opinion
is, in the long run, the sovereign power in the state. There is not now,
and probably there never has been a government that did not rest on
public opinion. The best evidence of this is the fact that all
governments have invariably sought either to _control_ or, at least, to
inspire and direct it.

The Kaiser had his "official" and his "semiofficial" organs. The
communists in Russia have taken possession of the schools. It is in the
schoolroom that the bolshevists propose to complete the revolution.
Hume, the English historian, who was also the greatest of English
philosophers, said:

As force is always on the side of the governed, the governors
have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore on
opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends
to the most despotic and the most military governments as well
as to the most free and popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the
emperor of Rome, might drive their helpless subjects, like
brute beasts, against their sentiments and