Z. 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.