id and more easy means for satisfying the fresh
desires which I might have awakened; and, directing the most strenuous
efforts of the human mind to physical pursuits, I should endeavor to
stimulate it to promote the well-being of man. If it happened that some
men were immoderately incited to the pursuit of riches, and displayed an
excessive liking for physical gratifications, I should not be alarmed;
these peculiar symptoms would soon be absorbed in the general aspect of
the people.

The attention of the legislators of democracies is called to other
cares. Give democratic nations education and freedom, and leave them
alone. They will soon learn to draw from this world all the benefits
which it can afford; they will improve each of the useful arts, and will
day by day render life more comfortable, more convenient, and more easy.
Their social condition naturally urges them in this direction; I do not
fear that they will slacken their course.

But whilst man takes delight in this honest and lawful pursuit of his
wellbeing, it is to be apprehended that he may in the end lose the use
of his sublimest faculties; and that whilst he is busied in improving
all around him, he may at length degrade himself. Here, and here only,
does the peril lie. It should therefore be the unceasing object of the
legislators of democracies, and of all the virtuous and enlightened men
who live there, to raise the souls of their fellow-citizens, and keep
them lifted up towards heaven. It is necessary that all who feel an
interest in the future destinies of democratic society should unite, and
that all should make joint and continual efforts to diffuse the love
of the infinite, a sense of greatness, and a love of pleasures not
of earth. If amongst the opinions of a democratic people any of those
pernicious theories exist which tend to inculcate that all perishes with
the body, let men by whom such theories are professed be marked as the
natural foes of such a people.

The materialists are offensive to me in many respects; their doctrines
I hold to be pernicious, and I am disgusted at their arrogance. If their
system could be of any utility to man, it would seem to be by giving him
a modest opinion of himself. But these reasoners show that it is not
so; and when they think they have said enough to establish that they are
brutes, they show themselves as proud as if they had demonstrated that
they are gods. Materialism is, amongst all nations, a dang