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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 among 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 unfavourable to the fine arts, and only yields a reluctant sufferance to the pleasures of literature. The Americans are a very old and a very enlightened people, who have fallen upon a new and unbounded country, where they may extend themselves at pleasure, and which they may fertilize without difficulty. This state of things is without a parallel in the history of the world. In America then every one finds facilities, unknown elsewhere, for making or increasing his fortune. The spirit of gain is always on the stretch, and the human mind, constantly diverted from the pleasures of imagination and the labours of the intellect, is there swayed by no impulse but the pursuit of wealth. Not only are manufacturing and commercial classes to be found in
