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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: long, if it be absolutely cut off from the two others.
In America the purely practical part of science is admirably
understood, and careful attention is paid to the theoretical
portion which is immediately requisite to application. On this
head the Americans always display a clear, free, original, and
inventive power of mind. But hardly anyone in the United States
devotes himself to the essentially theoretical and abstract
portion of human knowledge. In this respect the Americans carry
to excess a tendency which is, I think, discernible, though in a
less degree, amongst all democratic nations.
Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher
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