what the
Public is!" And he began to look very closely at the faces around him,
hoping to find out from types what he had failed to ascertain from
classes. Two men were sitting near, one on each side of a woman. The
first, who was all crumpled in his arm-chair, had curly lips and wrinkles
round the eyes, cheeks at once rather fat and rather shadowy, and a
dimple in his chin. It seemed certain that he was humourous, and kind,
sympathetic, rather diffident, speculative, moderately intelligent, with
the rudiments perhaps of an imagination. And he looked at the second
man, who was sitting very upright, as if he had a particularly fine
backbone, of which he was not a little proud. He was extremely big and
handsome, with pronounced and regular nose and chin, firm, well-cut lips
beneath a smooth moustache, direct and rather insolent eyes, a some what
receding forehead, and an air of mastery over all around. It was obvious
that he possessed a complete knowledge of his own mind, some brutality,
much practical intelligence, great resolution, no imagination, and plenty
of conceit. And he looked at the woman. She was pretty, but her face was
vapid, and seemed to have no character at all. And from one to the other
he looked, and the more he looked the less resemblance he saw between
them, till the objects of his scrutiny grew restive.... Then, ceasing to
examine them, an idea came to him. "No! The Public is not this or that
class, this or that type; the Public is an hypothetical average human
being, endowed with average human qualities--a distillation, in fact, of
all the people in this hall, the people in the street outside, the people
of this country everywhere." And for a moment he was pleased; but soon
he began again to feel uneasy. "Since," he reflected, "it is necessary
for me to supply this hypothetical average human being with what he
wants, I shall have to find out how to distil him from all the
ingredients around me. Now how am I to do that? It will certainly take
me more than all my life to collect and boil the souls of all of them,
which is necessary if I am to extract the genuine article, and I should
then apparently have no time left to supply the precipitated spirit, when
I had obtained it, with what it wanted! Yet this hypothetical average
human being must be found, or I must stay for ever haunted by the thought
that I am not supplying him with what he wants!" And the writer became
more and more disco