ly
pointed out. I shall therefore make one more attempt to illustrate it
satisfactorily. Suppose a nation stands apart from the rest of mankind:
independently of certain general wants inherent in the human race, it
will also have wants and interests peculiar to itself: certain opinions
of censure or approbation forthwith arise in the community, which are
peculiar to itself, and which are styled honor by the members of that
community. Now suppose that in this same nation a caste arises, which,
in its turn, stands apart from all the other classes, and contracts
certain peculiar wants, which give rise in their turn to special
opinions. The honor of this caste, composed of a medley of the peculiar
notions of the nation, and the still more peculiar notions of the caste,
will be as remote as it is possible to conceive from the simple and
general opinions of men.

Having reached this extreme point of the argument, I now return. When
ranks are commingled and privileges abolished, the men of whom a nation
is composed being once more equal and alike, their interests and wants
become identical, and all the peculiar notions which each caste styled
honor successively disappear: the notion of honor no longer proceeds
from any other source than the wants peculiar to the nation at large,
and it denotes the individual character of that nation to the world.
Lastly, if it be allowable to suppose that all the races of mankind
should be commingled, and that all the peoples of earth should
ultimately come to have the same interests, the same wants,
undistinguished from each other by any characteristic peculiarities,
no conventional value whatever would then be attached to men's actions;
they would all be regarded by all in the same light; the general
necessities of mankind, revealed by conscience to every man, would
become the common standard. The simple and general notions of right and
wrong only would then be recognized in the world, to which, by a natural
and necessary tie, the idea of censure or approbation would be
attached. Thus, to comprise all my meaning in a single proposition,
the dissimilarities and inequalities of men gave rise to the notion of
honor; that notion is weakened in proportion as these differences are
obliterated, and with them it would disappear.

Chapter XIX: Why So Many Ambitious Men And So Little Lofty Ambition Are
To Be Found In The United States

The first thing which strikes a traveller in the United S