will not be strictly
confined to the cares of practical life, and they will still be able,
though in different degrees, to indulge in the pursuits and pleasures of
the intellect. In those pleasures they will indulge; for if it be true
that the human mind leans on one side to the narrow, the practical,
and the useful, it naturally rises on the other to the infinite, the
spiritual, and the beautiful. Physical wants confine it to the earth;
but, as soon as the tie is loosened, it will unbend itself again.

Not only will the number of those who can take an interest in the
productions of the mind be enlarged, but the taste for intellectual
enjoyment will descend, step by step, even to those who, in aristocratic
societies, seem to have neither time nor ability to in indulge in them.
When hereditary wealth, the privileges of rank, and the prerogatives of
birth have ceased to be, and when every man derives his strength from
himself alone, it becomes evident that the chief cause of disparity
between the fortunes of men is the mind. Whatever tends to invigorate,
to extend, or to adorn the mind, instantly rises to great value. The
utility of knowledge becomes singularly conspicuous even to the eyes of
the multitude: those who have no taste for its charms set store upon its
results, and make some efforts to acquire it. In free and enlightened
democratic ages, there is nothing to separate men from each other or
to retain them in their peculiar sphere; they rise or sink with extreme
rapidity. All classes live in perpetual intercourse from their great
proximity to each other. They communicate and intermingle every
day--they imitate and envy one other: this suggests to the people many
ideas, notions, and desires which it would never have entertained if the
distinctions of rank had been fixed and society at rest. In such
nations the servant never considers himself as an entire stranger to
the pleasures and toils of his master, nor the poor man to those of the
rich; the rural population assimilates itself to that of the towns, and
the provinces to the capital. No one easily allows himself to be reduced
to the mere material cares of life; and the humblest artisan casts
at times an eager and a furtive glance into the higher regions of the
intellect. People do not read with the same notions or in the same
manner as they do in an aristocratic community; but the circle of
readers is unceasingly expanded, till it includes all the citizens.

A