We lie, as Emerson said, in the lap of an immense intelligence.
John Dewey
The Public Record
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
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That and that only gives reality to public opinion.
Publication is partial and the public which results is partially informed and formed until the meanings it purveys pass from mouth to mouth.
Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator.
Ideas which are not communicated, shared, and reborn in expression are but soliloquy, and soliloquy is but broken and imperfect thought.
Systematic and continuous inquiry into all the conditions which affect association and their dissemination in print is a precondition of the creation of a true public.
But the wingèd words of conversation in immediate intercourse have a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words of written speech.
Signs and symbols, language, are the means of communication by which a fraternally shared experience is ushered in and sustained.
The problem of securing diffused and seminal intelligence can be solved only in the degree in which local communal life becomes a reality.
If the technological age can provide mankind with a firm and general basis of material security, it will be absorbed in a humane age.
Competition will continue, but it will be less rivalry for acquisition of material goods, and more an emulation of local groups to enrich direct experience with appreciatively enjoyed intellectual and artistic wealth.