should be taken in bulk. They take it, some of them, a
solid hundred years of it or so, and gulp it down. The advantage of
prophecy is that it cannot be taken as a solid by people who would take
everything so if they could. Prophecy is protected. People have to
breathe it, assimilate it, and get it into their circulation and make a
solid out of it personally, and do it all themselves. It is this process
which is making our modern men spiritual, interpretative, and powerful
toward the present and toward the past, and which is giving a body and
soul to knowledge, and is making knowledge lively and human, the kind of
knowledge (when men get it) that makes things happen.

CHAPTER IX

THE CROWD'S IMAGINATION ABOUT PEOPLE

I would like to propose, as a basis for the judgment of men and events,
and as a basis for forecasting the next men and next events, and
arriving at a vision of action, a Theory of the World.

Every man has one.

Every man one knows can be seen doing his work in this world on a great
background, a kind of panorama or stage setting in his mind, made up of
history and books, newspapers, people, and experiences, which might be
called his Theory of the World.

It is his theory of the world which makes him what he is--his personal
judgment or personal interpretation of what the world is like, and what
works in it, and what does not work.

A man's theory as to why people do or do not do wrong is not a theory he
might in some brief disinterested moment, possibly at luncheon, take
time to discuss. His theory of what is wrong and of what is right, and
of how they work, touches the efficiency with which he works intimately
and permanently at every point every minute of his business day.

If he does not know, in the middle of his business day, what his theory
of the world--of human nature--is, let him stop and find out.

A man's theory of the world is the skylight or manhole over his work. It
becomes his hell or heaven--his day and night. He breathes his theory of
the world and breathes his idea of the people in it; and everything he
does may be made or may be marred by what, for instance, he thinks in
the long-run about what I am saying now on this next page. Whether he
is writing for people, or doing business with them over a counter, or
launching books at them, everything he does will be steeped in what he
believes about what I am saying now--it shall be the colour of the world
to him, the sound