command. The plaudits and favour of the public will, for a long time
to come, be at the service of what is false. But the true has great
power, when it is free; the true endures; the false is ever changing
and decays. Thus it is that the true, though only understood by a
select few, always rises to the surface, and in the end prevails.

In short, it is very possible that the American-like social condition
towards which we are advancing, independently of any particular
form of government, will not be more intolerable for persons of
intelligence than the better guaranteed social conditions which we
have already been subject to. In such a world as this will be, it
will be no difficult matter to create very quiet and snug retreats
for oneself. "The era of mediocrity in all things is about to begin,"
remarked a short time ago that distinguished thinker, M. Arniel of
Geneva. "Equality begets uniformity, and it is by the sacrifice of the
excellent, the remarkable, the extraordinary that we extirpate what
is bad. The whole becomes less coarse; but the whole becomes more
vulgar." We may at least hope that vulgarity will not yet a while
persecute freedom of mind. Descartes, living in the brilliant
seventeenth century, was nowhere so well off as at Amsterdam, because,
as "every one was engaged in trade there," no one paid any heed to
him. It may be that general vulgarity will one day be the condition
of happiness, for the worst American vulgarity would not send Giordano
Bruno to the stake or persecute Galileo. We have no right to be
very fastidious. In the past we were never more than tolerated.
This tolerance, if nothing more, we are assured of in the future.
A narrow-minded, democratic _régime_ is often, as we know, very
troublesome. But for all that men of intelligence find that they
can live in America, as long as they are not too exacting. _Noli me
tangere is_ the most one can ask for from democracy. We shall pass