in comprehensiveness. As social bodies advance in civilization, they
acquire the knowledge of new facts, and they daily lay hold almost
unconsciously of some particular truths. The more truths of this kind a
man apprehends, the more general ideas is he naturally led to conceive.
A multitude of particular facts cannot be seen separately, without at
last discovering the common tie which connects them. Several individuals
lead to the perception of the species; several species to that of the
genus. Hence the habit and the taste for general ideas will always
be greatest amongst a people of ancient cultivation and extensive
knowledge.

But there are other reasons which impel men to generalize their ideas,
or which restrain them from it.

The Americans are much more addicted to the use of general ideas than
the English, and entertain a much greater relish for them: this appears
very singular at first sight, when it is remembered that the two nations
have the same origin, that they lived for centuries under the same laws,
and that they still incessantly interchange their opinions and their
manners. This contrast becomes much more striking still, if we fix our
eyes on our own part of the world, and compare together the two most
enlightened nations which inhabit it. It would seem as if the mind of
the English could only tear itself reluctantly and painfully away from
the observation of particular facts, to rise from them to their causes;
and that it only generalizes in spite of itself. Amongst the French, on
the contrary, the taste for general ideas would seem to have grown to
so ardent a passion, that it must be satisfied on every occasion. I am
informed, every morning when I wake, that some general and eternal law
has just been discovered, which I never heard mentioned before. There is
not a mediocre scribbler who does not try his hand at discovering truths