nly ranges
in a narrower field, but if once it gets beyond that, hardly any limits
can be assigned to it. As men are individually weak--as they live
asunder, and in constant motion--as precedents are of little authority
and laws but of short duration, resistance to novelty is languid,
and the fabric of society never appears perfectly erect or firmly
consolidated. So that, when once an ambitious man has the power in his
grasp, there is nothing he may noted are; and when it is gone from him,
he meditates the overthrow of the State to regain it. This gives to
great political ambition a character of revolutionary violence, which
it seldom exhibits to an equal degree in aristocratic communities. The
common aspect of democratic nations will present a great number of
small and very rational objects of ambition, from amongst which a few
ill-controlled desires of a larger growth will at intervals break out:
but no such a thing as ambition conceived and contrived on a vast scale
is to be met with there.

I have shown elsewhere by what secret influence the principle of
equality makes the passion for physical gratifications and the exclusive
love of the present predominate in the human heart: these different
propensities mingle with the sentiment of ambition, and tinge it, as it
were, with their hues. I believe that ambitious men in democracies are
less engrossed than any others with the interests and the judgment of
posterity; the present moment alone engages and absorbs them. They are
more apt to complete a number of undertakings with rapidity than to
raise lasting monuments of their achievements; and they care much more
for success than for fame. What they most ask of men is obedience--what
they most covet is empire. Their manners have in almost all cases
remained below the height of their station; the consequence is that they
frequently carry very low tastes into their extraordinary fortunes, and
that they seem to have acquired the supreme power only to minister to
their coarse or paltry pleasures.

I think that in our time it is very necessary to cleanse, to regulate,
and to adapt the feeling of ambition, but that it would be extremely
dangerous to seek to impoverish and to repress it over-much. We should
attempt to lay down certain extreme limits, which it should never be
allowed to outstep; but its range within those established limits
should not be too much checked. I confess that I apprehend much less
for democratic soci