Anonymity

    It seems paradoxical that an article should impress us more if it is unsigned than if it is signed. But if does, owing to the weakness of our psychology. Anonymous statements have, as we have seen, a universal air about them. Absolute trust, the collected wisdom of the universe, seems to be speaking, not the feeble voice of man. The modern newspaper has taken advantage of this. It is a pernicious caricature of literature. It has usurped the divine tendency towards anonymity. It has claimed for information what only belongs to creation. And it will claim it as long as we allow it to claim it, and to exploit the defects of our psychology.

E.M. Forster, Anonymity: An Enquiry (London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1925), pp. 20-21.