the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed
that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their
strictly Puritanical origin--their exclusively commercial habits--even
the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the
pursuit of science, literature, and the arts--the proximity of Europe,
which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into
barbarism--a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to
point out the most important--have singularly concurred to fix the mind
of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants,
his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the
native of the United States earthward: his religion alone bids him turn,
from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us
cease then to view all democratic nations under the mask of the American
people, and let us attempt to survey them at length with their own
proper features.

It is possible to conceive a people not subdivided into any castes or
scale of ranks; in which the law, recognizing no privileges, should
divide inherited property into equal shares; but which, at the same
time, should be without knowledge and without freedom. Nor is this an
empty hypothesis: a despot may find that it is his interest to render
his subjects equal and to leave them ignorant, in order more easily to
keep them slaves. Not only would a democratic people of this kind show
neither aptitude nor taste for science, literature, or art, but it would
probably never arrive at the possession of them. The law of descent
would of itself provide for the destruction of fortunes at each
succeeding generation; and new fortunes would be acquired by none. The
poor man, without either knowledge or freedom, would not so much as
conceive the idea of raising himself to wealth; and the rich man
would allow himself to be degraded to poverty, without a notion of
self-defence. Between these two members of the community complete and
invincible equality would soon be established.

No one would then have time or taste to devote himself to the pursuits
or pleasures of the intellect; but all men would remain paralyzed by
a state of common ignorance and equal servitude. When I conceive a
democratic society of this kind, I fancy myself in one of those low,
close, and gloomy abodes, where the light which breaks in from without
soon faints and fades away.