Every profession requires an apprenticeship, which limits the time of instruction to the early years of life.

At fifteen they enter upon their calling, and thus their education ends at the age when ours begins.

Whatever is done afterwards is with a view to some special and lucrative object; a science is taken up as a matter of business, and the only branch of it which is attended to is such as admits of an immediate practical application.

In America most of the rich men were formerly poor; most of those who now enjoy leisure were absorbed in business during their youth; the consequence of which is, that when they might have had a taste for study they had no time for it, and when time is at their disposal they have no longer the inclination.
There is no class, then, in America, in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with hereditary fortune and leisure, and by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor.

Accordingly there is an equal want of the desire and the power of application to these objects.
A middle standard is fixed in America for human knowledge.