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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: that of aristocracies, and both seek to establish their joint
sway over the human mind. Such epochs are transient, but very
brilliant: they are fertile without exuberance, and animated
without confusion. The French literature of the eighteenth
century may serve as an example.
I should say more than I mean if I were to assert that the
literature of a nation is always subordinate to its social
condition and its political constitution. I am aware that,
independently of these causes, there are several others which
confer certain characteristics on literary productions; but these
appear to me to be the chief. The relations which exist between
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