Volume 2, Part 2: Chapter 10-20 Summary and Analysis

Comfort is defined as a state of mental ease akin to physical and mental numbness. However, comfort is a habit of the American people who has developed into a dominant passion across the nation. The reason is that people either thrive for an ever-greater comfort, or they live in fear of losing the comfort that they already have. Americans do not necessarily seek exclusive comfort, as the aristocrats do, but everyone in America seeks it one way or another.

The general desire for comfort and the little pleasures of life protects society from the great excesses that plague the aristocratic societies. Since people are only concerned with indulging their need for immediate and orderly comfort, they exercise moral self-restrain and will rarely allow themselves to sink into the disordered and immoral satisfaction of excessive pleasures...