But at the very time when the Americans were naturally inclined to require nothing of science but its special applications to the useful arts and the means of rendering life comfortable, learned and literary Europe was engaged in exploring the common sources of truth, and in improving at the same time all that can minister to the pleasures or satisfy the wants of man.
At the head of the enlightened nations of the Old World the inhabitants of the United States more particularly distinguished one, to which they were closely united by a common origin and by kindred habits.

Amongst this people they found distinguished men of science, artists of skill, writers of eminence, and they were enabled to enjoy the treasures of the intellect without requiring to labor in amassing them.

I cannot consent to separate America from Europe, in spite of the ocean which intervenes.
I consider the people of the United States as that portion of the English people which is commissioned to explore the wilds of the New World; whilst the rest of the nation, enjoying more leisure and less harassed by the drudgery of life, may devote its energies to thought, and enlarge in all directions the empire of the mind.

The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.

Their strictly Puritanical origin--their exclusively commercial habits--even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the arts--the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism--a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most important--have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely practical objects.