Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville
Chapter XVI: That Excessive Care Of Worldly Welfare May Impair That
344 words | Chapter 38
Welfare
There is a closer tie than is commonly supposed between the improvement
of the soul and the amelioration of what belongs to the body. Man may
leave these two things apart, and consider each of them alternately; but
he cannot sever them entirely without at last losing sight of one and of
the other. The beasts have the same senses as ourselves, and very nearly
the same appetites. We have no sensual passions which are not common
to our race and theirs, and which are not to be found, at least in the
germ, in a dog as well as in a man. Whence is it then that the animals
can only provide for their first and lowest wants, whereas we can
infinitely vary and endlessly increase our enjoyments?
We are superior to the beasts in this, that we use our souls to find out
those material benefits to which they are only led by instinct. In man,
the angel teaches the brute the art of contenting its desires. It is
because man is capable of rising above the things of the body, and of
contemning life itself, of which the beasts have not the least notion,
that he can multiply these same things of the body to a degree which
inferior races are equally unable to conceive. Whatever elevates,
enlarges, and expands the soul, renders it more capable of succeeding
in those very undertakings which concern it not. Whatever, on the other
hand, enervates or lowers it, weakens it for all purposes, the chiefest,
as well as the least, and threatens to render it almost equally impotent
for the one and for the other. Hence the soul must remain great and
strong, though it were only to devote its strength and greatness from
time to time to the service of the body. If men were ever to content
themselves with material objects, it is probable that they would lose by
degrees the art of producing them; and they would enjoy them in the end,
like the brutes, without discernment and without improvement.
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