,
vanity, fashion, or the genius of an actor may sustain or resuscitate
for a time the aristocratic drama amongst a democracy; but it will
speedily fall away of itself--not overthrown, but abandoned.

Chapter XX: Characteristics Of Historians In Democratic Ages

Historians who write in aristocratic ages are wont to refer all
occurrences to the particular will or temper of certain individuals; and
they are apt to attribute the most important revolutions to very
slight accidents. They trace out the smallest causes with sagacity,
and frequently leave the greatest unperceived. Historians who live in
democratic ages exhibit precisely opposite characteristics. Most of them
attribute hardly any influence to the individual over the destiny of the
race, nor to citizens over the fate of a people; but, on the other hand,
they assign great general causes to all petty incidents. These contrary
tendencies explain each other.

When the historian of aristocratic ages surveys the theatre of the
world, he at once perceives a very small number of prominent actors, who
manage the whole piece. These great personages, who occupy the front of
the stage, arrest the observation, and fix it on themselves; and whilst
the historian is bent on penetrating the secret motives which make them
speak and act, the rest escape his memory. The importance of the things
which some men are seen to do, gives him an exaggerated estimate of the
influence which one man may possess; and naturally leads him to think,
that in order to explain the impulses of the multitude, it is necessary
to refer them to the particular influence of some one individual.

When, on the contrary, all the citizens are independent of one another,
and each of them is individually weak, no one is seen to exert a great,
or still less a lasting power, over the community. At first sight,
individuals appear to be absolutely devoid of any influence over it;
and society would seem to advance alone by the free and voluntary
concurrence of all the men who compose it. This naturally prompts the
mind to search for that general reason which operates upon so many men's
faculties at the same time, and turns them simultaneously in the same
direction.

I am very well convinced that even amongst democratic nations, the
genius, the vices, or the virtues of certain individuals retard or
accelerate the natural current of a people's history: but causes of
this secondary and fortuitous nature are in