By fictions I do not mean lies. I mean a representation of the
environment which is in lesser or greater degree made by man himself.
The range of fiction extends all the way from complete hallucination
to the scientists' perfectly self-conscious use of a schematic model,
or his decision that for his particular problem accuracy beyond a
certain number of decimal places is not important. A work of fiction
may have almost any degree of fidelity, and so long as the degree of
fidelity can be taken into account, fiction is not misleading. In
fact, human culture is very largely the selection, the rearrangement,
the tracing of patterns upon, and the stylizing of, what William James
called "the random irradiations and resettlements of our
ideas." [Footnote: James, _Principles of Psychology_, Vol. II, p.
638] The alternative to the use of fictions is direct exposure to the
ebb and flow of sensation. That is not a real alternative, for however
refreshing it is to see at times with a perfectly innocent eye,
innocence itself is not wisdom, though a source and corrective of
wisdom. For the real environment is altogether too big, too complex,
and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal
with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and
combinations. And although we have to act in that environment, we have
to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it. To
traverse the world men must have maps of the world. Their persistent
difficulty is to secure maps on which their own need, or someone
else's need, has not sketched in the coast of Bohemia.

4

The analyst of public opinion must begin then, by recognizing the
triangular relationship between the scene of action, the human picture
of that scene, and the human response to that picture working itself