one,
men are therefore generally led to attach an excessive value to the
rapid bursts and superficial conceptions of the intellect; and, on
the other hand, to depreciate below their true standard its slower and
deeper labors. This opinion of the public influences the judgment of the
men who cultivate the sciences; they are persuaded that they may succeed
in those pursuits without meditation, or deterred from such pursuits as
demand it.

There are several methods of studying the sciences. Amongst a multitude
of men you will find a selfish, mercantile, and trading taste for
the discoveries of the mind, which must not be confounded with that
disinterested passion which is kindled in the heart of the few. A desire
to utilize knowledge is one thing; the pure desire to know is another.
I do not doubt that in a few minds and far between, an ardent,
inexhaustible love of truth springs up, self-supported, and living in
ceaseless fruition without ever attaining the satisfaction which it
seeks. This ardent love it is--this proud, disinterested love of what is
true--which raises men to the abstract sources of truth, to draw their
mother-knowledge thence. If Pascal had had nothing in view but some
large gain, or even if he had been stimulated by the love of fame alone,
I cannot conceive that he would ever have been able to rally all the
powers of his mind, as he did, for the better discovery of the most
hidden things of the Creator. When I see him, as it were, tear his soul
from the midst of all the cares of life to devote it wholly to these
researches, and, prematurely snapping the links which bind the frame to
life, die of old age before forty, I stand amazed, and I perceive that
no ordinary cause is at work to produce efforts so extra-ordinary.

The future will prove whether these passions, at once so rare and so
productive, come into being and into growth as easily in the midst of
democratic as in aristocratic communities. For myself, I confess that
I am slow to believe it. In aristocratic society, the class which gives
the tone to opinion, and has the supreme guidance of affairs, being
permanently and hereditarily placed above the multitude, naturally
conceives a lofty idea of itself and of man. It loves to invent for
him noble pleasures, to carve out splendid objects for his ambition.
Aristocracies often commit very tyrannical and very inhuman actions;
but they rarely entertain grovelling thoughts; and they show a kind of
ha