s soon as the multitude begins to take an interest in the labors of the
mind, it finds out that to excel in some of them is a powerful method of
acquiring fame, power, or wealth. The restless ambition which equality
begets instantly takes this direction as it does all others. The number
of those who cultivate science, letters, and the arts, becomes immense.
The intellectual world starts into prodigious activity: everyone
endeavors to open for himself a path there, and to draw the eyes of the
public after him. Something analogous occurs to what happens in society
in the United States, politically considered. What is done is often
imperfect, but the attempts are innumerable; and, although the results
of individual effort are commonly very small, the total amount is always
very large.

It is therefore not true to assert that men living in democratic ages
are naturally indifferent to science, literature, and the arts: only it
must be acknowledged that they cultivate them after their own
fashion, and bring to the task their own peculiar qualifications and
deficiencies.

Chapter X: Why The Americans Are More Addicted To Practical Than To
Theoretical Science

If a democratic state of society and democratic institutions do not
stop the career of the human mind, they incontestably guide it in one
direction in preference to another. Their effects, thus circumscribed,
are still exceedingly great; and I trust I may be pardoned if I pause
for a moment to survey them. We had occasion, in speaking of the
philosophical method of the American people, to make several remarks
which must here be turned to account.

Equality begets in man the desire of judging of everything for himself:
it gives him, in all things, a taste for the tangible and the real,
a contempt for tradition and for forms. These general tendencies are
principally discernible in the peculiar subject of this chapter. Those
who cultivate the sciences amongst a democratic people are always afraid
of losing their way in visionary speculation. They mistrust systems;
they adhere closely to facts and the study of facts with their own
senses. As they do not easily defer to the mere name of any fellow-man,
they are never inclined to rest upon any man's authority; but, on the
contrary, they are unremitting in their efforts to point out the weaker
points of their neighbors' opinions. Scientific precedents have very
little weight with them; they are never long detained by t