![]() ![]() A sense of instability remains in the midst of re-established order: a notion of easy success survives the strange vicissitudes which gave it birth desires still remain extremely enlarged, when the means of satisfying them are diminished day by day. ![]() The passions which a revolution has roused do not disappear at its close. The reminiscence of the extraordinary events which men have witnessed is not obliterated from their memory in a day. Ambition is therefore always extremely great as long as a democratic revolution lasts, and it will remain so for some time after the revolution is consummated. Thus at the moment when an aristocracy is dissolved, its spirit still pervades the mass of the community, and its tendencies are retained long after it has been defeated. It must be recollected, moreover, that the people who destroy an aristocracy have lived under its laws they have witnessed its splendor, and they have unconsciously imbibed the feelings and notions which it entertained. Amidst the general and sudden renewal of laws and customs, in this vast confusion of all men and all ordinances, the various members of the community rise and sink again with excessive rapidity and power passes so quickly from hand to hand that none need despair of catching it in turn. In this first burst of triumph nothing seems impossible to anyone: not only are desires boundless, but the power of satisfying them seems almost boundless, too. When the former barriers which kept back the multitude from fame and power are suddenly thrown down, a violent and universal rise takes place towards that eminence so long coveted and at length to be enjoyed. ![]() ![]() Nevertheless, I think that the principal cause which may be assigned to this fact is to be found in the social condition and democratic manners of the Americans.Īll revolutions enlarge the ambition of men: this proposition is more peculiarly true of those revolutions which overthrow an aristocracy. It seems difficult to attribute this singular state of things to the equality of social conditions for at the instant when that same equality was established in France, the flight of ambition became unbounded. All are constantly seeking to acquire property, power, and reputation – few contemplate these things upon a great scale and this is the more surprising, as nothing is to be discerned in the manners or laws of America to limit desire, or to prevent it from spreading its impulses in every direction. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude, or to drive at very lofty aims. The first thing which strikes a traveller in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to throw off their original condition and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the universally ambitious stir of society. Democracy In America Alexis De Tocquevilleĭemocracy In America Alexis De Tocqueville Book Three – Chapters XIX-XXI Chapter XIX: Why So Many Ambitious Men And So Little Lofty Ambition Are To Be Found In The United States ![]()
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