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Appendix i. Note on Valuations and Beliefs 1033
revolution. But the more evolutionary social changes, if they are dissected into their
elements, are not very different except in magnitude.
The history of every nation and of every community, in fact, of every group,
is, in one sense, the record of the successive waves of such opinion explosions. Even
societies have their catharses and, like individuals, they have them almost all the
time. It is the weakness, not only of the static and fatalistic traditions in social
science attached to the great names of Marx and Sumner, but of our common
tendency to look for explanations in terms only of natural forces and material trends,®
that we blind ourselves to the dynamics of opinion as it develops from day to day;
or, in any case, we become inclined to deal with human opinions more as the result
of social change than as part of the cause of it.
By stressing that opinions are not passive elements in the social process, we have,
of course, not meant to make them altogether independent of material forces. The
very fact that opinions to an extent are opportunistic implies that they will change as
a result of every other change in social environment. Changes in the technique of
production, of communication and of consumption force individual and group revalu-
ations. But so, also, does spread of knowledge, as well as moral discussion and political
propaganda. Ideas have a momentum of their own; they are partly primary causes
in the social process; or rather, they are integral factors in an interdependent system
of causation.
In an opinion catharsis—of an individual or a group—
a
new, temporary, and labile
equilibrium of conflicting valuations is established. The direction in a normal and
peaceful process of popular education is toward decreasing inconsistency. We said
that ordinarily the new balance gives greater weight to the more general valuations.
But our reason for the conclusion was that those valuations were generally agreed
to be morally “higher’’ and have supreme social sanction, and we added the reserva-
tion that our conclusion assumes that moral cynicism does not spread. If moral
cynicism should spread, however—that is, if people become willing to throw aside
even their most cherished general valuations, such as their faith in democratic liberty,
equality, and Christian brotherhood—^the situation permits almost any type of
reconstruction. Instead of a rebirth of democracy and Christianity such that those
terms acquire new personal meanings for every individual, there may be a revulsion
to fascism and pagan gods.
When a sudden and great opinion catharsis occurs in society, customs and social
trends seem to the participants to be suspended or radically changed, as they actually
are to a certain extent. In this sense history is undecided; it can take several courses.
Ideological forces take on a greater importance. Leaders—^whom we call either “states-
men,” “thinkers” and “prophets” or “demagogues” and “charlatans,” depending upon
our valuation of their aims and means—capture the attention of the masses and
manage to steer the upheaval in one direction or the other. On a smaller scale the
same occurs in every group at all times, and the “leaders” are legion; in a sense
we are all “leaders.” In the explanation of this type of process, where ideological
factors, together with all other factors, are active forces within an interdependent
system of causation, the materialistic conception of history breaks down. Indeed,
any mechanical philosophy of human dynamics is inadequate—except when looking
See Appendix 2, Section 3.
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