Theoretical Science If a democratic state of society and democratic institutions do not stop the career of the human mind, they incontestably guide it in one direction in preference to another.

Their effects, thus circumscribed, are still exceedingly great; and I trust I may be pardoned if I pause for a moment to survey them.

We had occasion, in speaking of the philosophical method of the American people, to make several remarks which must here be turned to account.
Equality begets in man the desire of judging of everything for himself: it gives him, in all things, a taste for the tangible and the real, a contempt for tradition and for forms.

These general tendencies are principally discernible in the peculiar subject of this chapter.

Those who cultivate the sciences amongst a democratic people are always afraid of losing their way in visionary speculation.