t a certain height far greater. From
hatred of privilege and from the embarrassment of choosing, all men are
at last constrained, whatever may be their standard, to pass the same
ordeal; all are indiscriminately subjected to a multitude of petty
preliminary exercises, in which their youth is wasted and their
imagination quenched, so that they despair of ever fully attaining
what is held out to them; and when at length they are in a condition to
perform any extraordinary acts, the taste for such things has forsaken
them.

In China, where the equality of conditions is exceedingly great and
very ancient, no man passes from one public office to another without
undergoing a probationary trial. This probation occurs afresh at every
stage of his career; and the notion is now so rooted in the manners of
the people that I remember to have read a Chinese novel, in which the
hero, after numberless crosses, succeeds at length in touching the
heart of his mistress by taking honors. A lofty ambition breathes with
difficulty in such an atmosphere.

The remark I apply to politics extends to everything; equality
everywhere produces the same effects; where the laws of a country do
not regulate and retard the advancement of men by positive enactment,
competition attains the same end. In a well-established democratic
community great and rapid elevation is therefore rare; it forms
an exception to the common rule; and it is the singularity of such
occurrences that makes men forget how rarely they happen. Men living in
democracies ultimately discover these things; they find out at last that
the laws of their country open a boundless field of action before them,
but that no one can hope to hasten across it. Between them and the final
object of their desires, they perceive a multitude of small intermediate
impediments, which must be slowly surmounted: this prospect wearies
and discourages their ambition at once. They therefore give up hopes so
doubtful and remote, to search nearer to themselves for less lofty
and more easy enjoyments. Their horizon is not bounded by the laws but
narrowed by themselves.

I have remarked that lofty ambitions are more rare in the ages of
democracy than in times of aristocracy: I may add that when, in spite of
these natural obstacles, they do spring into existence, their character
is different. In aristocracies the career of ambition is often wide, but
its boundaries are determined. In democracies ambition commo