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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Toqueville: is enlightened - here it is not. Every American will sacrifice a
portion of his private interests to preserve the rest; we would
fain preserve the whole, and oftentimes the whole is lost.
Everybody I see about me seems bent on teaching his
contemporaries, by precept and example, that what is useful is
never wrong. Will nobody undertake to make them understand how
what is right may be useful? No power upon earth can prevent the
increasing equality of conditions from inclining the human mind
to seek out what is useful, or from leading every member of the
community to be wrapped up in himself. It must therefore be
expected that personal interest will become more than ever the
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