THE MENTAL EFFECT OF EXTREME PUBLICITY.
ENGLISH statesmen have a practice, unknown, as far as we have observed, upon the Continent, of occasionally lecturing upon some subject of human interest unconnected, or but indirectly connected, with politics. We wish some one of them of the first rank—Mr. John Morley, for example, or Lord Randolph Churchill—would tell us, and tell us honestly, the precise effect upon the mind of living in an atmosphere of excessive publicity. Lord Randolph, perhaps, could tell us best, for he is the subject of constant praise and invective, and he is: said to read everything in print about himself. What does he find to be the effect upon his own mind after a year or two of that singular and unpleasing discipline ? Is he disciplined, or stung, or rendered more self-confident? It is the custom of journalists to assume that criticism must be beneficial—they must assume it, or they could hardly pursue their trade with any peace of mind—but though that may be tree of the whole body of public men, it can hardly be completely true of the individual. One would fancy that the effect of perpetual criticism, of being subjected always to an over-bright light, must differ with the temperament of the person criticised, and with the con- sequent degree of pain or pleasure. Lord Palmerston, it is said, never cared in the slightest degree for newspaper criticism, and Lord Russell said that publicly of himself, while the same was probably true of Lord Beaconsfield; but President Lincoln was obliged to give up reading news- papers, and Prince Bismarck is stung by them as if he were visited unexpectedly by a flight of mosquitoes. Still, apart from individual temperament, there must be some general effect produced, and one would like to know in the rough what it is. We should fancy it was, on the whole, and allowing for the exceptional goodness of certain natures, almost entirely bad. Extreme publicity must, to begin with, increase that idea so visible in Kings, and actors, and public singers, that they are the pivots of human affairs, the centres round which the thoughts: of the human race revolve. If not, why are they so constantly in men's months, or why are their acts, which they must know to be so ordinary and so like the acts of other people, such objects of interest and of comment ? If a King dines with a. friend, or an actress puts on an outré bonnet, newspapers, some- times even grave newspapers, are full of comments on the meaning and the consequences of that insignificant departure from custom. The internal vanity which exists in us all, though
in such different degrees, must be roused by so much attention, and must destroy in its subjects part of the mental sense of proportion, and part, too, of the power of self-control. How control anything so large that the entire human race is in- terested in its existence and its ways ? The effect of that cannot be good altogether, though we do not undervalue the strengthening power of self-confidence ; and there is another effect, besides. It must be very difficult for any one who is the subject of innumerable comments, to retain ordinary and useful respect for public opinion. Nine-tenths of the comments must contain some inaccuracy, born either of ignorance, or of malice, or of loyalty, of which the subject of those comments must not only be aware, but must, from his own knowledge of himself and his motives, be absolutely certain. How can he feel for those utterances anything but contempt, contempt humorous or wrathful according to his temperament, or how regard " opinion " as anything but a manufactured article, entirely without title to reverence, or even to regard ? A. scorn for it must be begotten in his mind, which speedily de- velops into a scorn for the humanity that is so easily beguiled. This sentiment must be especially strong with Kings, who shroud their private thoughts and motives in a secrecy but rarely broken through, and by statesmen charged with foreign affairs, who are, of all men holding office, most liable to journalists' misconception. Kings make a habit of secrecy, and are, besides, seen through a medium which makes all their acts, whether good or evil, assume an importance, in the midst of other and similar acts, which must to themselves -often seem perfectly preposterous. The King yawned because he was bored, and instantly there is a rumour afloat which in- fluences Bourses and dismays statesmen. The King knows that he only yawned because he could not help it, though he would have helped it if he could, and the public comment on his yawning must make him feel as if pigmies were applying opera-glasses to a giant. Frederick the Great had that feeling in the highest degree, and it inspired him with a sardonic scorn of opinion as something too ridiculous, too utterly without validity, or even meaning, to be considered for a moment. He was perfectly good-natured about it, and even willing to circulate pasquinades on himself ; but it was the good-nature of Gulliver in Lilliput,—that is, of one watching lesser creatures playing their not uninteresting but unimportant antics. Foreign Secretaries, too, are in this respect just like Kings. The journalists usually perceive what they are doing two or three days too late, and almost necessarily mistake the meaning of acts, and even speeches, which are intended to have a calculated effect, not where the journalists live, but in invisible Courts, and on minds entirely beyond or outside newspaper ken. Lord Salisbury gave, the other day, a hint that this ignorance of his commentators struck him painfully ; and Prince Bismarck, if he ever mentions such creatures as pressmen, does it with an angry scorn which can scarcely be affected, and hardly produced except by familiarity with their errors. The scorn which he betrays must be the result of over-publicity, and that scorn must be injurious, if only because it conceals from him the guiding wisdom which lies hidden in the consentaneous thought of great multitudes of interested men.
We all know, in this country all painfully know, the other side of the bad effect of publicity, the hold it takes upon those whose temperament or whose history leads them to reverence it. It becomes a master whose influence it is impossible to shake off. Statesmen so influenced study " opinion" as an oracle, watch for its changes in advance as courtiers watch for a Sovereign's moods, and gradually arrive at an inexplicable yet common state of mind, in which they try themselves to induce or foster it, and yet, when it is visible, obey it as if it were independent of them, and in some sort semi-divine. There are men, we believe, certainly there is one, who having by speeches of their own elicited a vast mass of comments, a roar as of ten thousand throats, accept that mass, that roar, as something self-developed and possessing inherent authority,—as a guide, in fact, sent them to make their course plain to themselves. They find "the fierce light" which beats on them fascinating and cheering, and rather than be out of its rays, will steer any course, however dreary it may look to their own inner sight, which will once again bring them within its vivifying radiance. Their minds do not harden, but soften under it ; and the evil produced in them is not scorn of the human race, but distrust of self, and desire for the help of an opinion which all the while they know to be mainly ignorant, or only half-free from interested motive. Kings, we do not quite know why, have been singularly free from this temptation,—it may be that Court flattery dulls the desire for popular approval, as constant good feeding dulls epicurism ; but it is, next to the impulse towards scorn, the greatest temptation of modern statesmen, and with orators is, for the moment, almost irresistible.
So serious do we hold these consequences of extreme publicity to be, that we have some difficulty in perceiving where the countervailing good can be found ; but we suppose it exists in these two results. Most men forced to live under fierce light, try in some degree to live up to the requirements of that situation. They know what the watchers expect, and except when carried away by passion, try to realise expectation. Kings, for example, are rarely undignified, and still more rarely exhibit personal fear. They feel it probably as often as other men, but they do not show it, the eyes of the multitude having upon them precisely the effect which discipline has upon ordinary soldiers. That is, the "fierce light" enables them to conquer that selfishness which in all men not cursed with exceptionally feeble nerves, is the true root and cause of cowardice. States- men in our day dread assassins very much, and have good reason to dread them ; but they face the risk, on the whole, exceedingly well,—better decidedly than did the great men of the Middle Ages, who were exposed to the same danger. They, in fact, fear comment from the universal throat as much as the soldier fears his comrades' contempt and his Colonel's sentence of punishment. Then it is probable, more than pro- bable, though only the sufferers can know the exact truth, that incessant comment, much of it hostile and more inaccurate, acts as a training, and develops in the victim a partly un- conscious fortitude. It operates as clothes are believed to do upon the human body. One would fancy that a man habituated to live without clothes must ; p stronger than a man who lives habitually in uniform ; but Only doctors say this is not the case. The dressed man has learned unconsciously to carry weight, and his muscles develop under that unnoticed training a hardness to which his undressed rival never attains. The effect of perpetual criticism on many minds—perhaps on the minds of all Kings, and those few others who possess no method of escape, who must submit while they live to the "fierce light "—is a development of fortitude, sometimes taking bad forms, sometimes good, which strengthens the inner fibres of the character. If that is so, the compensation is adequate ; and there is one bit of evidence that it is so. Fallen Kings bear their misfortunes singularly well. They do not take to drink (the Young Pretender never was a King) ; they do not whine, and they do not lose their capacity for reigning. They put up with the decree of Fate, and wait on steadily. Their characteristic has been endurance ; and that quality, one of the best, after all, that men can possess, may be developed by the extreme publicity of their lives. The Emperor Frederick is doubtless an unusually brave man, but the serenity with which he bears his unpre- cedented position—whenever before did an Emperor live and reign with the capital sentence recorded before his eyes in letters that cannot lie ?—may be due in part to that discipline under which most men wince, some men fly, and a few grow feeble, the discipline of extreme publicity which the heir to a great throne must suffer almost from his birth.
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