ety from the boldness than from the mediocrity of
desires. What appears to me most to be dreaded is that, in the midst of
the small incessant occupations of private life, ambition should lose
its vigor and its greatness--that the passions of man should abate, but
at the same time be lowered, so that the march of society should every
day become more tranquil and less aspiring. I think then that the
leaders of modern society would be wrong to seek to lull the community
by a state of too uniform and too peaceful happiness; and that it is
well to expose it from time to time to matters of difficulty and danger,
in order to raise ambition and to give it a field of action. Moralists
are constantly complaining that the ruling vice of the present time is
pride. This is true in one sense, for indeed no one thinks that he is
not better than his neighbor, or consents to obey his superior: but
it is extremely false in another; for the same man who cannot endure
subordination or equality, has so contemptible an opinion of himself
that he thinks he is only born to indulge in vulgar pleasures. He
willingly takes up with low desires, without daring to embark in lofty
enterprises, of which he scarcely dreams. Thus, far from thinking
that humility ought to be preached to our contemporaries, I would have
endeavors made to give them a more enlarged idea of themselves and of
their kind. Humility is unwholesome to them; what they most want is,
in my opinion, pride. I would willingly exchange several of our small
virtues for this one vice.

Chapter XX: The Trade Of Place-Hunting In Certain Democratic Countries

In the United States as soon as a man has acquired some education and
pecuniary resources, he either endeavors to get rich by commerce or
industry, or he buys land in the bush and turns pioneer. All that he
asks of the State is not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be secure
of his earnings. Amongst the greater part of European nations, when a
man begins to feel his strength and to extend his desires, the first
thing that occurs to him is to get some public employment. These
opposite effects, originating in the same cause, deserve our passing
notice.

When public employments are few in number, ill-paid and precarious,
whilst the different lines of business are numerous and lucrative, it is
to business, and not to official duties, that the new and eager desires
engendered by the principle of equality turn from every side. But i