We may note in passing an interesting difference in respect to organisation of the national mind between the English and the American peoples, a difference which illustrates this relative independence of the formal and informal organisations.
In England both the formal and informal organisations have achieved a pretty good level; in both cases the best minds are enabled to exert and have long exerted a dominant influence; and the interaction between the two organisations is very intimate. But in America, while the informal organisation expressed in public opinion seems to be very highly developed, the formal organisation is much inferior; it has not yet such traditions as give the greatest influence to the best minds and embody the effects of their influence. And the better Americans tend to value lightly the formal organisation, to take no part in the working of it, deliberately to ignore it, and to rely rather upon public opinion to repress any evils when they are in danger of reaching an intolerable development.
Both in the formal organisation of the national mind, which is the parliamentary or other national assembly, and in the informal organisation which is public opinion, we see, then, that (in the nation of higher civilisation at least) organisation results in a raising of the collective mental process above the level of the average minds, because it gives a predominant influence to the best minds who form and maintain the traditions, especially the moral traditions; and these press upon the minds of all members of the community from their earliest years, moulding them more or less into conformity with themselves, fostering the better, repressing the purely egoistic, tendencies.
And the ideal organisation after which we ought to strive, is that which would give the greatest possible influence of this sort to the best minds, an influence which consists not in merely organising and directing the energies of the people in the manner most effective for material or even scientific progress, as in modern Germany; but one which, by moulding the sentiments and guiding the reasoning of the people in all matters, public and private alike, secures their consent and agreement and the co-operation of their wills in all affairs of national importance.
