Graham Wallas, a founder of the Fabian Society, was another predecessor to Lippmann’s work (Steel, 1999). Wallas is perhaps best known for his work Human Nature in Politics (1981). The political views expressed in this book helped to shape Lippmann’s later thoughts about the relationship between the public and its environment.
Wallas (1981) expresses his thoughts on the public’s understanding of their surroundings. He states that the universe presents the public with, an unending stream of sensations and
memories, every one of which is different from every other, and before which, unless we can select and recognize and simplify, we must stand helpless and unable to either act or think. Man has
therefore to create entities that shall be the material of his reasoning
(p. 134). In this way, Wallas was showing that the public is incapable of understanding their environment; the
stimuli that they are presented with are too numerous to gain a well-versed understanding. Steel (1999) claims that this idea was one of Wallas’ greatest influences on the future work of
Lippmann, particularly in Public Opinion (1922). In this work, Lippmann (1922) expanded upon Wallas’ original ideas about the relationship between the public and their environment, and was able
to show that the public was not able to take in all of the knowledge from their environment that would truly be needed to affect their governance.
Aside from inspiring Lippmann to examine the relationship between the public and the environment, Wallas can also be credited with influencing Lippmann to break his ties with the Socialist school of thought (Steel, 1999). Until his interactions with Wallas, Lippmann had held strong socialist beliefs, based not only upon his experiences at school, but also upon the writings of Karl Marx.
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