What has more value as an index of somebody's thought: their private diaries and notes, the letters they write to their friends, speeches they make in debates, or articles they write in newspapers? Many historians suspect the 'private' notes and letters of prominent eighteenth-century Americans were written, and kept, with one eye on posterity. Anonymously (or pseudonymously) published articles may represent the truer feelings of the moment without fear for one's reputation; but how much faith would a writer have in his identity not being unmasked; or given that it has been unmasked, by us if not by contemporaries, was total secrecy the real intention?
These are problems that a supervisor put to me once, and I was impressed with the difficulty, but I didn't think about it very much. Now I have something to add: does having one eye on posterity make us write less what we really think, or more?
If we have felt the need to change what we put down because we know someone unknown will read it many years from now, why have we felt that need? We want them to think well of us. Perhaps what we are doing is predicting what the future readers will think, on whatever issue, and designing our words to appeal to them. Yet if the future person is not good and moral, is not better than us, then why do we want to appeal to him? We only care if we think they will be better. So we write what we think they will like; and that can only be what we think really is right.
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