free scope

Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s foresaw the differences between the two nations that he believed would dominate the future: “The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude.”

Giving the natural risk-takers such a free scope led soon to embedding an admiration for risk-taking in American culture.

In the first place, all the restrictions upon enfranchisement which had accumulated under the Pagan legislation were abolished; the legislator proclaimed in emphatic language, and by the provisions of many laws, his desire to encourage manumission, and free scope was thus given to the action of the Church.

But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me.

It is in this endless, and to us inconceivable, variety of human souls that the deepest purpose of human life is to be realized; and the more society fulfils that purpose, the more it allows free scope for the development of every individual germ, the richer will be the harvest in no distant future.