Of all the influences underlying human activities in the moral, social, economic, and political world, one of the most universal and most effective is beyond doubt, nowadays, Public Opinion.  We may well name it the “current” of Public Opinion.  In every sphere of life one can indeed feel the constant pressure of its tremendous power.  Like the waters of a mill-race constantly and irresistibly the stream of Public Opinion sweeps on.  It is very difficult to determine exactly where lies its strength; it is nowhere and everywhere.  Unconscious of its swollen powers it spends its energies for the welfare of the community, or, unfortunately too often, loses itself in an angry torrent of destruction.

You thwart its onward march:  it will bury your barrier under its laughing waters or . . . sweep it away.  You ride with it:  it will gladly carry you.  You check it:  its troubled waves will rise angry around you and engulf you.

Such is the “current” of Public Opinion.  To direct this great power, to harness its tremendous forces, to convert them into light, heat, and energy and set the wheels of moral, social, and political life running with greater smoothness, rapidity, and strength, should be the noble effort and the great task of every serious-minded man.

By no idle whim or sheer literary piquancy have we coupled Public Opinion and the Catholic Church.  The inevitable relations that exist between Public Opinion and the various predominating factors of a nation should necessarily interest every true Canadian.  Among these factors the Catholic Church stands pre-eminent.  Her beneficial influences and her ready solutions to the various social and moral problems that confront the world, cannot, even to the most prejudiced, be passed unnoticed.  So no matter what our spiritual allegiance may be, the relation of Public Opinion to the Catholic Church should be of the greatest interest to any one who has at heart the common welfare.  In Western Canada particularly, where Public Opinion has such a sway, this subject, we presume, must be of service both to those of the Catholic Faith and to those of a different persuasion.

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What is Public Opinion—­Its Power—­How is it Formed?

1. What is Public Opinion?

Ideas rule the world, but various are the effects ideas have on the minds of men.  On some minds they exercise only a passing influence; they are then what we call “Impressions”; variable as lights and shadows over a summer lake they come and go.  Impressions are indeed only on the surface of the mind, like foot-prints on the sand washed away by the next tide.

When ideas take a stronger footing in our intelligence and are accepted with a certain confidence, on their face-value or on the authority of some leader, they become “Opinions.”  Loosely entertained and readily exchanged, opinions are the ordinary mental pabulum of the masses.