that he owes it to public
opinion to devote his leisure to some kind of industrial or commercial
pursuit, or to public business. He would think himself in bad repute if
he employed his life solely in living. It is for the purpose of escaping
this obligation to work, that so many rich Americans come to Europe,
where they find some scattered remains of aristocratic society, amongst
which idleness is still held in honor.

Equality of conditions not only ennobles the notion of labor in men's
estimation, but it raises the notion of labor as a source of profit. In
aristocracies it is not exactly labor that is despised, but labor with
a view to profit. Labor is honorific in itself, when it is undertaken at
the sole bidding of ambition or of virtue. Yet in aristocratic society
it constantly happens that he who works for honor is not insensible to
the attractions of profit. But these two desires only intermingle in
the innermost depths of his soul: he carefully hides from every eye
the point at which they join; he would fain conceal it from himself. In
aristocratic countries there are few public officers who do not affect
to serve their country without interested motives. Their salary is an
incident of which they think but little, and of which they always affect
not to think at all. Thus the notion of profit is kept distinct from
that of labor; however they may be united in point of fact, they are not
thought of together.

In democratic communities these two notions are, on the contrary, always
palpably united. As the desire of well-being is universal--as fortunes
are slender or fluctuating--as everyone wants either to increase his
own resources, or to provide fresh ones for his progeny, men clearly see
that it is profit which, if not wholly, at least partially, leads them
to work. Even those who are principally actuated by the love of fame are
necessarily made familiar with the thought that they are not exclusively
actuated by that motive; and they discover that the desire of getting
a living is mingled in their minds with the desire of making life
illustrious.

As soon as, on the one hand, labor is held by the whole community to be
an honorable necessity of man's condition, and, on the other, as soon as
labor is always ostensibly performed, wholly or in part, for the purpose
of earning remuneration, the immense interval which separated different
callings in aristocratic societies disappears. If all are not alike, all
at lea