tual obligations to her that I
have derived from her a wise scepticism, which, while it has not
hindered me from following out the honest exercise of my thinking
faculties to whatever conclusions might result from it, has put me on my
guard against holding or announcing these conclusions with a degree of
confidence which the nature of such speculations does not warrant, and
has kept my mind not only open to admit, but prompt to welcome and eager
to seek, even on the questions on which I have most meditated, any
prospect of clearer perceptions and better evidence. I have often
received praise, which in my own right I only partially deserve, for the
greater practicality which is supposed to be found in my writings,
compared with those of most thinkers who have been equally addicted to
large generalizations. The writings in which this quality has been
observed, were not the work of one mind, but of the fusion of two, one
of them as pre-eminently practical in its judgments and perceptions of
things present, as it was high and bold in its anticipations for a
remote futurity. At the present period, however, this influence was only
one among many which were helping to shape the character of my future
development: and even after it became, I may truly say, the presiding
principle of my mental progress, it did not alter the path, but only
made me move forward more boldly, and, at the same time, more
cautiously, in the same course. The only actual revolution which has
ever taken place in my modes of thinking, was already complete. My new
tendencies had to be confirmed in some respects, moderated in others:
but the only substantial changes of opinion that were yet to come,
related to politics, and consisted, on one hand, in a greater
approximation, so far as regards the ultimate prospects of humanity, to
a qualified Socialism, and on the other, a shifting of my political
ideal from pure democracy, as commonly understood by its partisans, to
the modified form of it, which is set forth in my _Considerations on
Representative Government_.

This last change, which took place very gradually, dates its
commencement from my reading, or rather study, of M. de Tocqueville's
_Democracy in America_, which fell into my hands immediately after its
first appearance. In that remarkable work, the excellences of democracy
were pointed out in a more conclusive, because a more specific manner
than I had ever known them to be, even by the most enthus