attainments, I recognize the general and systematic idea upon which a
great people directs all its concerns.

Aristocratic nations are naturally too apt to narrow the scope of human
perfectibility; democratic nations to expand it beyond compass.




Chapter IX: The Example Of The Americans Does Not Prove That A
Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude And No Taste For Science,
Literature, Or Art

It must be acknowledged that amongst few of the civilized nations of
our time have the higher sciences made less progress than in the United
States; and in few have great artists, fine poets, or celebrated writers
been more rare. Many Europeans, struck by this fact, have looked upon it
as a natural and inevitable result of equality; and they have supposed
that if a democratic state of society and democratic institutions were
ever to prevail over the whole earth, the human mind would gradually
find its beacon-lights grow dim, and men would relapse into a period of
darkness. To reason thus is, I think, to confound several ideas which
it is important to divide and to examine separately: it is to mingle,
unintentionally, what is democratic with what is only American.

The religion professed by the first emigrants, and bequeathed by them
to their descendants, simple in its form of worship, austere and
almost harsh in its principles, and hostile to external symbols and to
ceremonial pomp, is naturally unfavorable to the fine arts, and only
yields a reluctant sufferance to the pleasures of literature. The