“ It commonly happens that in the ages of privilege the practice of almost all the arts becomes a privilege ”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1840). copy citation
| Author | Alexis de Tocqueville |
|---|---|
| Source | Democracy in America |
| Topic | age art |
| Date | 1840 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by Henry Reeve |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm |
Context
“They will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful should be useful. But I propose to go further; and after having pointed out this first feature, to sketch several others.
It commonly happens that in the ages of privilege the practice of almost all the arts becomes a privilege; and that every profession is a separate walk, upon which it is not allowable for everyone to enter. Even when productive industry is free, the fixed character which belongs to aristocratic nations gradually segregates all the persons who practise the same art, till they form a distinct class, always composed of the same families, whose members are all known to each other, and amongst whom a public opinion of their own and a species of corporate pride soon spring up.”
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