always exclusive,
but it is general; and if all do not feel it in the same manner, yet it
is felt by all. Carefully to satisfy all, even the least wants of the
body, and to provide the little conveniences of life, is uppermost
in every mind. Something of an analogous character is more and more
apparent in Europe. Amongst the causes which produce these similar
consequences in both hemispheres, several are so connected with my
subject as to deserve notice.

When riches are hereditarily fixed in families, there are a great number
of men who enjoy the comforts of life without feeling an exclusive
taste for those comforts. The heart of man is not so much caught by the
undisturbed possession of anything valuable as by the desire, as yet
imperfectly satisfied, of possessing it, and by the incessant dread
of losing it. In aristocratic communities, the wealthy, never having
experienced a condition different from their own, entertain no fear of
changing it; the existence of such conditions hardly occurs to them. The
comforts of life are not to them the end of life, but simply a way of
living; they regard them as existence itself--enjoyed, but scarcely
thought of. As the natural and instinctive taste which all men feel
for being well off is thus satisfied without trouble and without
apprehension, their faculties are turned elsewhere, and cling to more
arduous and more lofty undertakings, which excite and engross their
minds. Hence it is that, in the midst of physical gratifications, the
members of an aristocracy often display a haughty contempt of these very
enjoyments, and exhibit singular powers of endurance under the privation
of them. All the revolutions which have ever shaken or destroyed
aristocracies, have shown how easily men accustomed to superfluous
luxuries can do without the necessaries of life; whereas men who have
toiled to acquire a competency can hardly live after they have lost it.

If I turn my observation from the upper to the lower classes, I find
analogous effects produced by opposite causes. Amongst a nation where
aristocracy predominates in society, and keeps it stationary, the
people in the end get as much accustomed to poverty as the rich to
their opulence. The latter bestow no anxiety on their physical comforts,
because they enjoy them without an effort; the former do not think
of things which they despair of obtaining, and which they hardly know
enough of to desire them. In communities of this kind, the