Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Public Duties of Educated Men: An Address, Delivered by William F. Herrin, June the 14th, 1910, at Corvallis Oregon, During the Quarter Centennial Jubilee Exercises of Oregon Agricultural College
Therefore, though we find it difficult or even impossible adequately to define public opinion, that need not blind us to its importance nor to the tremendous part it plays and has always played in shaping our institutions and in determining the form of our government. Though we may not say pre cisely what public opinion is, I think we can say with some degree of positiveness what it is not. It is not, and never was, what is said or done by the frenzied mob, and whether the mob is a small isolated group of men acting under the stress of great excitement. Or is an entire community in the passing grip of the mob - spirit, our conclusion must be the same: that what is done or prompted by the mobspirit can in no proper sense of the term be said to be a manifestation of public opinion. We may then say that public opinion is the opposite of the spirit which controls the mob or goes with any excitable, passionateaction. I would say that the true public opinion of a people is and must be the result of their serious, deliberate thought. Therefore, public opinion, in the sense in which I use the term, is the deliberate and reasoned judgment of the community.
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