Unless there are methods for detecting the energies which are at work and tracing them through an intricate network of interactions to their consequences, what passes as public opinion will be “opinion” in its derogatory sense rather than truly public, no matter how widespread the opinion is.
This statement warns that without proper methods to analyze public opinion, it risks being merely superficial and misleading.
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Publication is partial and the public which results is partially informed and formed until the meanings it purveys pass from mouth to mouth.
Ideas which are not communicated, shared, and reborn in expression are but soliloquy, and soliloquy is but broken and imperfect thought.
But the wingèd words of conversation in immediate intercourse have a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words of written speech.
Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator.