Lastly, I could explain why in American society, to borrow a rather quaint philosophical expression, the category of quantity prevails over that of quality. During my first few weeks in America, I used to smile when I heard some Americans go into ecstasies at the thought that everything in America was big, from the country to the cities, the factories, and the statistics of population; when they gloated over comparisons between their own country and the little countries of Europe, and statements of the comparative superiority in size of things in their own country. I no longer smiled, however, when I realised what American progress represented. A civilisation, whose principal instrument for the accomplishment of its work and for establishing itself in the world is machinery, must necessarily consider the quantitative criterion the supreme criterion of perfection. In what respect, indeed, is machinery, regarded as an instrument of production, superior to the human hand? Everybody knows that its superiority consists not in quality, but in the quantity, of its output. Machinery produces much and quickly. The hand produces little and slowly. The hand, however, can attain a standard of perfection which is denied machinery. Man will never succeed in constructing a machine capable of sculpturing the Venus of Milo or of weaving the marvellous tapestries which we admire in the museums of Europe. Everything of a high degree of perfection is exclusively handmade; _vice versa_, the hand, however, it may strive and labour and practise, will never succeed in attaining in its work the giddy rapidity of which steam- and electricity-driven machines are capable, or in producing in so short a time so many good things. Consequently, in a civilisation in which machinery predominates, men will be continually making fresh efforts to live faster and faster, and to produce and consume more and more rapidly. They will not be, on the other hand, too exacting on the score of quality. They will be content with things which look nice, without demanding extraordinary excellence or finish in details. They will be better pleased to consume many examples of products of inferior durability than one single example of products of great perfection. Consequently, vagaries of taste, continual movement, ready forgetfulness of traditions, and abundance of mediocrity, will be salient characteristics of machine-ruled civilisation. The great works of art which were the glory of past régimes will disappear for the present, which will see them replaced by objects of medium quality offered in greater quantity.