hey are hastily arranged under one formulary, in order to pass
to another subject.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a democratic period is the
taste all men have at such ties for easy success and present enjoyment.
This occurs in the pursuits of the intellect as well as in all others.
Most of those who live at a time of equality are full of an ambition at
once aspiring and relaxed: they would fain succeed brilliantly and at
once, but they would be dispensed from great efforts to obtain success.
These conflicting tendencies lead straight to the research of general
ideas, by aid of which they flatter themselves that they can figure very
importantly at a small expense, and draw the attention of the public
with very little trouble. And I know not whether they be wrong in
thinking thus. For their readers are as much averse to investigating
anything to the bottom as they can be themselves; and what is generally
sought in the productions of the mind is easy pleasure and information
without labor.

If aristocratic nations do not make sufficient use of general ideas,
and frequently treat them with inconsiderate disdain, it is true, on
the other hand, that a democratic people is ever ready to carry ideas of
this kind to excess, and to espouse the with injudicious warmth.

Chapter IV: Why The Americans Have Never Been So Eager As The French For
General Ideas In Political Matters

I observed in the last chapter, that the Americans show a less decided
taste for general ideas than the French; this is more especially true in
political matters. Although the Americans infuse into their legislation
infinitely more general ideas than the English, and although they pay
much more attention than the latter people to the adjustment of the
practice of affairs to theory, no political bodies in the United
States have ever shown so warm an attachment to general ideas as the
Constituent Assembly and the Convention in France. At no time has the
American people laid hold on ideas of this kind with the passionate
energy of the French people in the eighteenth century, or displayed the
same blind confidence in the value and absolute truth of any theory.
This difference between the Americans and the French originates in
several causes, but principally in the following one. The Americans form
a democratic people, which has always itself directed public affairs.
The French are a democratic people, who, for a long time, could only
sp