or the trouble of
acquiring the gratification would be greater than the gratification
itself. Their prevailing frame of mind then is at once ardent and
relaxed, violent and enervated. Death is often less dreaded than
perseverance in continuous efforts to one end.

The equality of conditions leads by a still straighter road to several
of the effects which I have here described. When all the privileges of
birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible
to all, and a man's own energies may place him at the top of any one of
them, an easy and unbounded career seems open to his ambition, and he
will readily persuade himself that he is born to no vulgar destinies.
But this is an erroneous notion, which is corrected by daily experience.
The same equality which allows every citizen to conceive these
lofty hopes, renders all the citizens less able to realize them: it
circumscribes their powers on every side, whilst it gives freer scope to
their desires. Not only are they themselves powerless, but they are
met at every step by immense obstacles, which they did not at first
perceive. They have swept away the privileges of some of their
fellow-creatures which stood in their way, but they have opened the door
to universal competition: the barrier has changed its shape rather than
its position. When men are nearly alike, and all follow the same track,
it is very difficult for any one individual to walk quick and cleave
a way through the dense throng which surrounds and presses him. This
constant strife between the propensities springing from the equality
of conditions and the means it supplies to satisfy them, harasses and
wearies the mind.

It is possible to conceive men arrived at a degree of freedom which
should completely content them; they would then enjoy their independence
without anxiety and without impatience. But men will never establish any
equality with which they can be contented. Whatever efforts a people may
make, they will never succeed in reducing all the conditions of society
to a perfect level; and even if they unhappily attained that absolute
and complete depression, the inequality of minds would still remain,
which, coming directly from the hand of God, will forever escape the
laws of man. However democratic then the social state and the political
constitution of a people may be, it is certain that every member of the
community will always find out several points about him which command
hi