interested, and in America, at least, it has exercised only a
fluctuating control over the national government. But its power in
foreign affairs is always very great, and in war time its prestige is
enormously enhanced. That is natural enough because these
cosmopolitans have a contact with the outer world that most people do
not possess. They have dined with each other in the capitals, and
their sense of national honor is no mere abstraction; it is a concrete
experience of being snubbed or approved by their friends. To Dr.
Kennicott of Gopher Prairie it matters mighty little what Winston
thinks and a great deal what Ezra Stowbody thinks, but to Mrs. Mingott
with a daughter married to the Earl of Swithin it matters a lot when
she visits her daughter, or entertains Winston himself. Dr. Kennicott
and Mrs. Mingott are both socially sensitive, but Mrs. Mingott is
sensitive to a social set that governs the world, while Dr.
Kennicott's social set governs only in Gopher Prairie. But in matters
that effect the larger relationships of the Great Society, Dr.
Kennicott will often be found holding what he thinks is purely his own
opinion, though, as a matter of fact, it has trickled down to Gopher
Prairie from High Society, transmuted on its passage through the
provincial social sets.

4

It is no part of our inquiry to attempt an account of the social
tissue. We need only fix in mind how big is the part played by the
social set in our spiritual contact with the world, how it tends to
fix what is admissible, and to determine how it shall be judged.
Affairs within its immediate competence each set more or less
determines for itself. Above all it determines the detailed
administration of the judgment. But the judgment itself is formed on