I believe, moreover, in the high calling of scientific minds.

If the democratic principle does not, on the one hand, induce men to cultivate science for its own sake, on the other it enormously increases the number of those who do cultivate it.

Nor is it credible that, from amongst so great a multitude no speculative genius should from time to time arise, inflamed by the love of truth alone.

Such a one, we may be sure, would dive into the deepest mysteries of nature, whatever be the spirit of his country or his age.

He requires no assistance in his course--enough that he be not checked in it.
All that I mean to say is this:--permanent inequality of conditions leads men to confine themselves to the arrogant and sterile research of abstract truths; whilst the social condition and the institutions of democracy prepare them to seek the immediate and useful practical results of the sciences.