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CHAPTER X.
OF THE TASTE FOR PHYSICAL WELL-BEING IN AMERICA.
In America the passion for physical well-being is not always
exclusive, but it is general; and if all do not feel it in the same
manner, yet it is felt by all. Carefully to satisfy all, even the
least wants of the body, and to provide the little conveniences of
life, is uppermost in every mind. Something of an analogous
character is more and more apparent in Europe. Among the
causes which produce these similar consequences in both
hemispheres, several are so connected with my subject as to deserve
notice.
When riches are hereditarily fixed in families, there are a great number of men who enjoy the comforts of life without feeling an exclusive taste for those comforts. The heart of man is not so much caught by the undisturbed possession of anything valuable, as by the desire, as yet imperfectly satisfied, of possessing it, and by the incessant dread of losing it.
In aristocratic communities, the wealthy, never having experienced a condition different from their own, entertain no fear of changing it; the existence of such conditions hardly occurs to them. The comforts of life are not to them the end of life, but simply a way of living; they regard them as existence itself;—enjoyed, but scarcely thought of.
As the natural and instinctive taste which all men feel for being well off is thus satisfied without trouble and without apprehension, their faculties are turned elsewhere, and cling to more arduous and more lofty undertakings, which excite and engross their minds.
Hence it is that, in the midst of physical gratifications, the members of an aristocracy often display a haughty contempt of these very enjoyments, and exhibit singular powers of endurance under the privation of them. All the revolutions which have ever shaken
