In the final analysis, James and a cohort of literary modernists fractured the abstraction known as “the public” by showing that it is composed of individuals, each with their distinctive mental lives and social roles. The modernist ethic of radical empiricism holds that everyone has a responsibility to test their beliefs against reality and to seek multiple perspectives from sources that are accountable to the truth. James’s life’s work, along with that of later modernists who dramatized the productive varieties of dissociative experience, helped provide a scaffolding for democratic thought by exhorting readers to fortify their minds against the persuasive energy of powerful institutions and charismatic leaders. The book closes with a reflection upon our contemporary media ecology, drawing on philosopher Catherine Malabou’s concept of the brain’s “plasticity,” a term that in French encompasses both its regenerative and destructive capabilities. If we better understood these divergent mental processes and their complex neuroanatomy, we humans may be better equipped to take responsibility for our minds, and more rigorous stock of the limitations of our beliefs, our choices, and our actions.