Appendix Z
It cannot be absolutely or generally affirmed that the greatest danger
of the present age is license or tyranny, anarchy or despotism. Both
are equally to be feared; and the one may as easily proceed as the other
from the selfsame cause, namely, that "general apathy," which is the
consequence of what I have termed "individualism": it is because this
apathy exists, that the executive government, having mustered a few
troops, is able to commit acts of oppression one day, and the next day a
party, which has mustered some thirty men in its ranks, can also commit
acts of oppression. Neither one nor the other can found anything to
last; and the causes which enable them to succeed easily, prevent them
from succeeding long: they rise because nothing opposes them, and they
sink because nothing supports them. The proper object therefore of our
most strenuous resistance, is far less either anarchy or despotism than
the apathy which may almost indifferently beget either the one or the
other.