|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: classes, and contracts certain peculiar wants, which give rise in
their turn to special opinions. The honor of this caste,
composed of a medley of the peculiar notions of the nation, and
the still more peculiar notions of the caste, will be as remote
as it is possible to conceive from the simple and general
opinions of men.
Having reached this extreme point of the argument, I now
return. When ranks are commingled and privileges abolished, the
men of whom a nation is composed being once more equal and alike,
their interests and wants become identical, and all the peculiar
notions which each caste styled honor successively disappear: the
|
