The public is an examiner, but an absent-minded one. According to Proust, it is a matter of chance whether an individual forms an image of himself, whether he can take hold of his experience. It is by no means inevitable to be dependent on chance in this matter. Man's inner concerns do not have their issueless private character by nature. They do so only when he is increasingly unable to assimilate the data of the world around him by way of experience.
Newspapers constitute one of the many evidences of such an inability.
If it were the intention of the press to have the reader assimilate the information it supplies as part of his own experience, it would not achieve its purpose. Newspapers appear in large editions. Few readers can boast of any information which another reader may require of him. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again. W.B. Architecture Context Centre Plaza, Cambridge St., Boston Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction.