The pollsters who failed to predict the presidential election results failed because their polls were founded on the premise that people are rational. But the human race is not rational. This is hardly a new observation. In Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726 after psychotic religious warfare had ravaged Europe for a century, Jonathan Swift portrayed the human race satirically as Yahoos, savage, superstitious, cruel beings whose intelligence only amplifies the effect of their viciousness. They are driven by herd mentality and incapable of civilization, having to be kept under control by the race of sane and rational horses known as the Houyhnhnms. Swift was an Anglican archbishop, and was drawing upon the Christian idea of the “natural man.” Humanity in the state of nature, without nurture, is a savage, a “primitive.”
Thanks for your responses, Doug and Tom. It's always gratifying when people engage with the newsletters. I think we should declare this National Errata Week, as you'll notice my own list of corrections after the newsletter. Editors in the Collected Works project learned to be careful about Frye's quotations. He often quoted from memory, and apparently a photographic memory is not the same as a perfect one, since he occasionally misquoted. In editing Words with Power for the CW project, I found another type of error in Frye's endnotes--there was a profusion of errors involving page numbers of sources, dates, and the like. I asked Jane Widdicombe why Norrie didn't ask me to check those notes, since I was still acting as long-distance research assistant, and she replied that Norrie didn't want to burden me since I'd started at BW by that time, an answer that still chagrins me. At least I got a chance to correct those notes by accidentally becoming the CW editor of the volume.
Five years after Swift finished "Gulliver's Travels," the young Alexis de Tocqueville was visiting the new republic in North America. He wrote "Democracy in America" -- in French, in 1735 and 1740, but the English translation appeared soon after (part 1 in 1738 and part 2 in 1740). De Tocqueville hated the new monarchy in France (1730–1748) and much perferred democracy as he saw it in the U.S.A. But he listed the dangers that democracy faced, including lack of education in newly established areas and lack of a free and independent press in areas where a few people controlled the flow of information. Without these, he saw the possibilities of demagoguery and what he called the tyranny of the majority, when minority opinions get suppressed. In other words, he foresaw what our Founding Fathers most feared. He warned us.
Quite correct, Doug. What was I thinking? There was no USA in 1735!, only a British colony. Nonetheless, de Toqueville's observations in the 1830s were remarkable by themselves and really impressive coming from a man in his late twenties and early thirties.
Thanks for your responses, Doug and Tom. It's always gratifying when people engage with the newsletters. I think we should declare this National Errata Week, as you'll notice my own list of corrections after the newsletter. Editors in the Collected Works project learned to be careful about Frye's quotations. He often quoted from memory, and apparently a photographic memory is not the same as a perfect one, since he occasionally misquoted. In editing Words with Power for the CW project, I found another type of error in Frye's endnotes--there was a profusion of errors involving page numbers of sources, dates, and the like. I asked Jane Widdicombe why Norrie didn't ask me to check those notes, since I was still acting as long-distance research assistant, and she replied that Norrie didn't want to burden me since I'd started at BW by that time, an answer that still chagrins me. At least I got a chance to correct those notes by accidentally becoming the CW editor of the volume.
Five years after Swift finished "Gulliver's Travels," the young Alexis de Tocqueville was visiting the new republic in North America. He wrote "Democracy in America" -- in French, in 1735 and 1740, but the English translation appeared soon after (part 1 in 1738 and part 2 in 1740). De Tocqueville hated the new monarchy in France (1730–1748) and much perferred democracy as he saw it in the U.S.A. But he listed the dangers that democracy faced, including lack of education in newly established areas and lack of a free and independent press in areas where a few people controlled the flow of information. Without these, he saw the possibilities of demagoguery and what he called the tyranny of the majority, when minority opinions get suppressed. In other words, he foresaw what our Founding Fathers most feared. He warned us.
? De Toqqueville visited the US in 1831-32. He was born in 1805.
Quite correct, Doug. What was I thinking? There was no USA in 1735!, only a British colony. Nonetheless, de Toqueville's observations in the 1830s were remarkable by themselves and really impressive coming from a man in his late twenties and early thirties.