especially remark that they
are not only employed, but that they are passionately devoted to their
employments. They are always in action, and each of their actions
absorbs their faculties: the zeal which they display in business puts
out the enthusiasm they might otherwise entertain for idea. I think
that it is extremely difficult to excite the enthusiasm of a democratic
people for any theory which has not a palpable, direct, and immediate
connection with the daily occupations of life: therefore they will not
easily forsake their old opinions; for it is enthusiasm which flings the
minds of men out of the beaten track, and effects the great revolutions
of the intellect as well as the great revolutions of the political
world. Thus democratic nations have neither time nor taste to go in
search of novel opinions. Even when those they possess become doubtful,
they still retain them, because it would take too much time and inquiry
to change them--they retain them, not as certain, but as established.

There are yet other and more cogent reasons which prevent any great
change from being easily effected in the principles of a democratic
people. I have already adverted to them at the commencement of this
part of my work. If the influence of individuals is weak and hardly
perceptible amongst such a people, the power exercised by the mass upon
the mind of each individual is extremely great--I have already shown for
what reasons. I would now observe that it is wrong to suppose that this
depends solely upon the form of government, and that the majority would
lose its intellectual supremacy if it were to lose its political power.
In aristocracies men have often much greatness and strength of their
own: when they find themselves at variance with the greater number of
their fellow-countrymen, they withdraw to their own circle, where they
support and console themselves. Such is not the case in a democratic
country; there public favor seems as necessary as the air we breathe,
and to live at variance with the multitude is, as it were, not to
live. The multitude requires no laws to coerce those who think not like
itself: public disapprobation is enough; a sense of their loneliness and
impotence overtakes them and drives them to despair.

Whenever social conditions are equal, public opinion presses with
enormous weight upon the mind of each individual; it surrounds, directs,
and oppresses him; and this arises from the very constitution of