quality penetrates on every side into men's hearts, expands there,
and fills them entirely. Tell them not that by this blind surrender of
themselves to an exclusive passion they risk their dearest interests:
they are deaf. Show them not freedom escaping from their grasp, whilst
they are looking another way: they are blind--or rather, they can
discern but one sole object to be desired in the universe.

What I have said is applicable to all democratic nations: what I am
about to say concerns the French alone. Amongst most modern nations, and
especially amongst all those of the Continent of Europe, the taste and
the idea of freedom only began to exist and to extend themselves at
the time when social conditions were tending to equality, and as
a consequence of that very equality. Absolute kings were the most
efficient levellers of ranks amongst their subjects. Amongst these
nations equality preceded freedom: equality was therefore a fact of some
standing when freedom was still a novelty: the one had already created
customs, opinions, and laws belonging to it, when the other, alone and
for the first time, came into actual existence. Thus the latter was
still only an affair of opinion and of taste, whilst the former had
already crept into the habits of the people, possessed itself of their
manners, and given a particular turn to the smallest actions of their
lives. Can it be wondered that the men of our own time prefer the one to
the other?

I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom:
left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any
privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent,
insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom;
and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.
They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism--but they will not endure
aristocracy. This is true at all times, and especially true in our own.
All men and all powers seeking to cope with this irresistible passion,
will be overthrown and destroyed by it. In our age, freedom cannot be
established without it, and despotism itself cannot reign without its
support.

Chapter II: Of Individualism In Democratic Countries

I have shown how it is that in ages of equality every man seeks for his
opinions within himself: I am now about to show how it is that, in
the same ages, all his feelings are turned towards himself alone.
Individualism *a is