Produced by David Reed and David Widger
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
By Alexis De Tocqueville
Translated by Henry Reeve
Book Two: Influence Of Democracy On Progress Of Opinion In
the United States.
De Tocqueville's Preface To The Second Part
The Americans live in a democratic state of society, which has naturally
suggested to them certain laws and a certain political character. This
same state of society has, moreover, engendered amongst them a
multitude of feelings and opinions which were unknown amongst the elder
aristocratic communities of Europe: it has destroyed or modified all the
relations which before existed, and established others of a novel kind.
The--aspect of civil society has been no less affected by these changes
than that of the political world. The former subject has been treated
of in the work on the Democracy of America, which I published five years
ago; to examine the latter is the object of the present book; but these
two parts complete each other, and form one and the same work.
I must at once warn the reader against an error which would be extremely
prejudicial to me. When he finds that I attribute so many different
consequences to the principle of equality, he may thence infer that I
consider that principle to be the sole cause of all that takes place in
the present age: but this would be to impute to me a very narrow view. A
multitude of opinions, feelings, and propensities are now in existence,
which owe their origin to circumstances unconnected with or even
contrary to the principle of equality. Thus if I were to select the
United States as an example, I could easily prove that the nature of the
country, the origin of its inhabitants, the religion of its founders,
their acquired knowledge, and their former habits, have exercised, and
still exercise, independently of democracy, a vast influence upon the
thoughts and feelings of that people. Different causes, but no less
distinct from the circumstance of the equality of conditions, might be
traced in Europe, and would explain a great portion of the occurrences
taking place amongst us.
I acknowledge the existence of all these different causes, and their
power, but my subject does not lead me to treat of them. I have not
undertaken to unfold the reason of all our inclinations and all our
notions: my only object is to show in what respects the principle of
equality has modified both the former and the latter.
Some readers may perhaps be astonished that--firmly persuaded as I
am that the democratic revolution which we are witnessing is an
irresistible fact against which it would be neither desirable nor wise
to struggle--I should often have had occasion in this book to address
language of such severity to those democratic communities which this
revolution has brought into being. My answer is simply, that it is
because I am not an adversary of democracy, that I have sought to speak
of democracy in all sincerity.
Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is
seldom offered to them by their friends: for this reason I have spoken
it. I was persuaded that many would take upon themselves to announce the
new blessings which the principle of equality promises to mankind, but
that few would dare to point out from afar the dangers with which
it threatens them. To those perils therefore I have turned my chief
attention, and believing that I had discovered them clearly, I have not
had the cowardice to leave them untold.
I trust that my readers will find in this Second Part that impartiality
which seems to have been remarked in the former work. Placed as I am in
the midst of the conflicting opinions between which we are divided,
I have endeavored to suppress within me for a time the favorable
sympathies or the adverse emotions with which each of them inspires
me. If those who read this book can find a single sentence intended to
flatter any of the great parties which have agitated my country, or any
of those petty factions which now harass and weaken it, let such readers
raise their voices to accuse me.
The subject I have sought to embrace is immense, for it includes the
greater part of the feelings and opinions to which the new state of
society has given birth. Such a subject is doubtless above my strength,
and in treating it I have not succeeded in satisfying myself. But, if
I have not been able to reach the goal which I had in view, my readers
will at least do me the justice to acknowledge that I have conceived and
followed up my undertaking in a spirit not unworthy of success.
A. De T.
March, 1840
Section I: Influence of Democracy on the Action of Intellect in The
United States.
Chapter I: Philosophical Method Among the Americans
I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention
paid to philosophy than in the United States. The Americans have no
philosophical school of their own; and they care but little for all
the schools into which Europe is divided, the very names of which are
scarcely known to them. Nevertheless it is easy to perceive that almost
all the inhabitants of the United States conduct their understanding in
the same manner, and govern it by the same rules; that is to say,
that without ever having taken the trouble to define the rules of a
philosophical method, they are in possession of one, common to the whole
people. To evade the bondage of system and habit, of family maxims,
class opinions, and, in some degree, of national prejudices; to accept
tradition only as a means of information, and existing facts only as a
lesson used in doing otherwise, and doing better; to seek the reason
of things for one's self, and in one's self alone; to tend to results
without being bound to means, and to aim at the substance through the
form;--such are the principal characteristics of what I shall call the
philosophical method of the Americans. But if I go further, and if I
seek amongst these characteristics that which predominates over and
includes almost all the rest, I discover that in most of the operations
of the mind, each American appeals to the individual exercise of his own
understanding alone. America is therefore one of the countries in the
world where philosophy is least studied, and where the precepts of
Descartes are best applied. Nor is this surprising. The Americans do not
read the works of Descartes, because their social condition deters them
from speculative studies; but they follow his maxims because this very
social condition naturally disposes their understanding to adopt them.
In the midst of the continual movement which agitates a democratic
community, the tie which unites one generation to another is relaxed
or broken; every man readily loses the trace of the ideas of his
forefathers or takes no care about them. Nor can men living in this
state of society derive their belief from the opinions of the class to
which they belong, for, so to speak, there are no longer any classes, or
those which still exist are composed of such mobile elements, that
their body can never exercise a real control over its members. As to the
influence which the intelligence of one man has on that of another, it
must necessarily be very limited in a country where the citizens, placed
on the footing of a general similitude, are all closely seen by each
other; and where, as no signs of incontestable greatness or superiority
are perceived in any one of them, they are constantly brought back to
their own reason as the most obvious and proximate source of truth. It
is not only confidence in this or that man which is then destroyed, but
the taste for trusting the ipse dixit of any man whatsoever. Everyone
shuts himself up in his own breast, and affects from that point to judge
the world.
The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standard
of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of
mind. As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance
all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they
readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained, and that
nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding. Thus they fall
to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little
faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable
distaste for whatever is supernatural. As it is on their own testimony
that they are accustomed to rely, they like to discern the object which
engages their attention with extreme clearness; they therefore strip off
as much as possible all that covers it, they rid themselves of whatever
separates them from it, they remove whatever conceals it from sight,
in order to view it more closely and in the broad light of day. This
disposition of the mind soon leads them to contemn forms, which they
regard as useless and inconvenient veils placed between them and the
truth.
The Americans then have not required to extract their philosophical
method from books; they have found it in themselves. The same thing may
be remarked in what has taken place in Europe. This same method has
only been established and made popular in Europe in proportion as the
condition of society has become more equal, and men have grown more like
each other. Let us consider for a moment the connection of the periods
in which this change may be traced. In the sixteenth century the
Reformers subjected some of the dogmas of the ancient faith to the
scrutiny of private judgment; but they still withheld from it the
judgment of all the rest. In the seventeenth century, Bacon in the
natural sciences, and Descartes in the study of philosophy in the strict
sense of the term, abolished recognized formulas, destroyed the
empire of tradition, and overthrew the authority of the schools. The
philosophers of the eighteenth century, generalizing at length the same
principle, undertook to submit to the private judgment of each man all
the objects of his belief.
Who does not perceive that Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire employed
the same method, and that they differed only in the greater or less use
which they professed should be made of it? Why did the Reformers confine
themselves so closely within the circle of religious ideas? Why did
Descartes, choosing only to apply his method to certain matters, though
he had made it fit to be applied to all, declare that men might judge
for themselves in matters philosophical but not in matters political?
How happened it that in the eighteenth century those general
applications were all at once drawn from this same method, which
Descartes and his predecessors had either not perceived or had rejected?
To what, lastly, is the fact to be attributed, that at this period
the method we are speaking of suddenly emerged from the schools, to
penetrate into society and become the common standard of intelligence;
and that, after it had become popular among the French, it has been
ostensibly adopted or secretly followed by all the nations of Europe?
The philosophical method here designated may have been engendered in
the sixteenth century--it may have been more accurately defined and more
extensively applied in the seventeenth; but neither in the one nor in
the other could it be commonly adopted. Political laws, the condition
of society, and the habits of mind which are derived from these causes,
were as yet opposed to it. It was discovered at a time when men were
beginning to equalize and assimilate their conditions. It could only be
generally followed in ages when those conditions had at length become
nearly equal, and men nearly alike.
The philosophical method of the eighteenth century is then not only
French, but it is democratic; and this explains why it was so readily
admitted throughout Europe, where it has contributed so powerfully to
change the face of society. It is not because the French have changed
their former opinions, and altered their former manners, that they have
convulsed the world; but because they were the first to generalize and
bring to light a philosophical method, by the assistance of which it
became easy to attack all that was old, and to open a path to all that
was new.
If it be asked why, at the present day, this same method is more
rigorously followed and more frequently applied by the French than by
the Americans, although the principle of equality be no less complete,
and of more ancient date, amongst the latter people, the fact may be
attributed to two circumstances, which it is essential to have clearly
understood in the first instance. It must never be forgotten that
religion gave birth to Anglo-American society. In the United States
religion is therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation and
all the feelings of patriotism; whence it derives a peculiar force.
To this powerful reason another of no less intensity may be added: in
American religion has, as it were, laid down its own limits. Religious
institutions have remained wholly distinct from political institutions,
so that former laws have been easily changed whilst former belief has
remained unshaken. Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on
the public mind in America; and, I would more particularly remark, that
its sway is not only that of a philosophical doctrine which has been
adopted upon inquiry, but of a religion which is believed without
discussion. In the United States Christian sects are infinitely
diversified and perpetually modified; but Christianity itself is a fact
so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or
to defend it. The Americans, having admitted the principal doctrines of
the Christian religion without inquiry, are obliged to accept in like
manner a great number of moral truths originating in it and connected
with it. Hence the activity of individual analysis is restrained within
narrow limits, and many of the most important of human opinions are
removed from the range of its influence.
The second circumstance to which I have alluded is the following: the
social condition and the constitution of the Americans are democratic,
but they have not had a democratic revolution. They arrived upon the
soil they occupy in nearly the condition in which we see them at the
present day; and this is of very considerable importance.
There are no revolutions which do not shake existing belief, enervate
authority, and throw doubts over commonly received ideas. The effect of
all revolutions is therefore, more or less, to surrender men to their
own guidance, and to open to the mind of every man a void and almost
unlimited range of speculation. When equality of conditions succeeds
a protracted conflict between the different classes of which the elder
society was composed, envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, pride, and
exaggerated self-confidence are apt to seize upon the human heart,
and plant their sway there for a time. This, independently of equality
itself, tends powerfully to divide men--to lead them to mistrust the
judgment of others, and to seek the light of truth nowhere but in their
own understandings. Everyone then attempts to be his own sufficient
guide, and makes it his boast to form his own opinions on all subjects.
Men are no longer bound together by ideas, but by interests; and it
would seem as if human opinions were reduced to a sort of intellectual
dust, scattered on every side, unable to collect, unable to cohere.
Thus, that independence of mind which equality supposes to exist, is
never so great, nor ever appears so excessive, as at the time when
equality is beginning to establish itself, and in the course of that
painful labor by which it is established. That sort of intellectual
freedom which equality may give ought, therefore, to be very carefully
distinguished from the anarchy which revolution brings. Each of these
two things must be severally considered, in order not to conceive
exaggerated hopes or fears of the future.
I believe that the men who will live under the new forms of society will
make frequent use of their private judgment; but I am far from thinking
that they will often abuse it. This is attributable to a cause of more
general application to all democratic countries, and which, in the
long run, must needs restrain in them the independence of individual
speculation within fixed, and sometimes narrow, limits. I shall proceed
to point out this cause in the next chapter.
Chapter II: Of The Principal Source Of Belief Among Democratic Nations
At different periods dogmatical belief is more or less abundant. It
arises in different ways, and it may change its object or its form; but
under no circumstances will dogmatical belief cease to exist, or, in
other words, men will never cease to entertain some implicit opinions
without trying them by actual discussion. If everyone undertook to form
his own opinions and to seek for truth by isolated paths struck out by
himself alone, it is not to be supposed that any considerable number of
men would ever unite in any common belief. But obviously without such
common belief no society can prosper--say rather no society can subsist;
for without ideas held in common, there is no common action, and without
common action, there may still be men, but there is no social body. In
order that society should exist, and, a fortiori, that a society should
prosper, it is required that all the minds of the citizens should be
rallied and held together by certain predominant ideas; and this cannot
be the case, unless each of them sometimes draws his opinions from the
common source, and consents to accept certain matters of belief at the
hands of the community.
If I now consider man in his isolated capacity, I find that dogmatical
belief is not less indispensable to him in order to live alone, than it
is to enable him to co-operate with his fellow-creatures. If man were
forced to demonstrate to himself all the truths of which he makes
daily use, his task would never end. He would exhaust his strength
in preparatory exercises, without advancing beyond them. As, from the
shortness of his life, he has not the time, nor, from the limits of his
intelligence, the capacity, to accomplish this, he is reduced to take
upon trust a number of facts and opinions which he has not had either
the time or the power to verify himself, but which men of greater
ability have sought out, or which the world adopts. On this groundwork
he raises for himself the structure of his own thoughts; nor is he led
to proceed in this manner by choice so much as he is constrained by the
inflexible law of his condition. There is no philosopher of such great
parts in the world, but that he believes a million of things on the
faith of other people, and supposes a great many more truths than he
demonstrates. This is not only necessary but desirable. A man who should
undertake to inquire into everything for himself, could devote to each
thing but little time and attention. His task would keep his mind in
perpetual unrest, which would prevent him from penetrating to the depth
of any truth, or of grappling his mind indissolubly to any conviction.
His intellect would be at once independent and powerless. He must
therefore make his choice from amongst the various objects of human
belief, and he must adopt many opinions without discussion, in order
to search the better into that smaller number which he sets apart for
investigation. It is true that whoever receives an opinion on the word
of another, does so far enslave his mind; but it is a salutary servitude
which allows him to make a good use of freedom.
A principle of authority must then always occur, under all
circumstances, in some part or other of the moral and intellectual
world. Its place is variable, but a place it necessarily has. The
independence of individual minds may be greater, or it may be less:
unbounded it cannot be. Thus the question is, not to know whether any
intellectual authority exists in the ages of democracy, but simply where
it resides and by what standard it is to be measured.
I have shown in the preceding chapter how the equality of conditions
leads men to entertain a sort of instinctive incredulity of the
supernatural, and a very lofty and often exaggerated opinion of the
human understanding. The men who live at a period of social equality are
not therefore easily led to place that intellectual authority to which
they bow either beyond or above humanity. They commonly seek for the
sources of truth in themselves, or in those who are like themselves.
This would be enough to prove that at such periods no new religion could
be established, and that all schemes for such a purpose would be not
only impious but absurd and irrational. It may be foreseen that a
democratic people will not easily give credence to divine missions; that
they will turn modern prophets to a ready jest; and they that will seek
to discover the chief arbiter of their belief within, and not beyond,
the limits of their kind.
When the ranks of society are unequal, and men unlike each other in
condition, there are some individuals invested with all the power of
superior intelligence, learning, and enlightenment, whilst the multitude
is sunk in ignorance and prejudice. Men living at these aristocratic
periods are therefore naturally induced to shape their opinions by the
superior standard of a person or a class of persons, whilst they are
averse to recognize the infallibility of the mass of the people.
The contrary takes place in ages of equality. The nearer the citizens
are drawn to the common level of an equal and similar condition, the
less prone does each man become to place implicit faith in a certain man
or a certain class of men. But his readiness to believe the multitude
increases, and opinion is more than ever mistress of the world. Not only
is common opinion the only guide which private judgment retains amongst
a democratic people, but amongst such a people it possesses a power
infinitely beyond what it has elsewhere. At periods of equality men have
no faith in one another, by reason of their common resemblance; but this
very resemblance gives them almost unbounded confidence in the judgment
of the public; for it would not seem probable, as they are all endowed
with equal means of judging, but that the greater truth should go with
the greater number.
When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself
individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is
the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality
of his fellows, and to place himself in contrast to so huge a body,
he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and
weakness. The same equality which renders him independent of each of his
fellow-citizens taken severally, exposes him alone and unprotected to
the influence of the greater number. The public has therefore among a
democratic people a singular power, of which aristocratic nations could
never so much as conceive an idea; for it does not persuade to certain
opinions, but it enforces them, and infuses them into the faculties by a
sort of enormous pressure of the minds of all upon the reason of each.
In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of
ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved
from the necessity of forming opinions of their own. Everybody there
adopts great numbers of theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics,
without inquiry, upon public trust; and if we look to it very narrowly,
it will be perceived that religion herself holds her sway there, much
less as a doctrine of revelation than as a commonly received opinion.
The fact that the political laws of the Americans are such that the
majority rules the community with sovereign sway, materially increases
the power which that majority naturally exercises over the mind. For
nothing is more customary in man than to recognize superior wisdom in
the person of his oppressor. This political omnipotence of the majority
in the United States doubtless augments the influence which public
opinion would obtain without it over the mind of each member of the
community; but the foundations of that influence do not rest upon it.
They must be sought for in the principle of equality itself, not in the
more or less popular institutions which men living under that condition
may give themselves. The intellectual dominion of the greater number
would probably be less absolute amongst a democratic people governed
by a king than in the sphere of a pure democracy, but it will always be
extremely absolute; and by whatever political laws men are governed in
the ages of equality, it may be foreseen that faith in public
opinion will become a species of religion there, and the majority its
ministering prophet.
Thus intellectual authority will be different, but it will not be
diminished; and far from thinking that it will disappear, I augur that
it may readily acquire too much preponderance, and confine the action
of private judgment within narrower limits than are suited either to
the greatness or the happiness of the human race. In the principle of
equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; the one leading the mind
of every man to untried thoughts, the other inclined to prohibit him
from thinking at all. And I perceive how, under the dominion of certain
laws, democracy would extinguish that liberty of the mind to which a
democratic social condition is favorable; so that, after having broken
all the bondage once imposed on it by ranks or by men, the human mind
would be closely fettered to the general will of the greatest number.
If the absolute power of the majority were to be substituted by
democratic nations, for all the different powers which checked or
retarded overmuch the energy of individual minds, the evil would
only have changed its symptoms. Men would not have found the means of
independent life; they would simply have invented (no easy task) a new
dress for servitude. There is--and I cannot repeat it too often--there
is in this matter for profound reflection for those who look on freedom
as a holy thing, and who hate not only the despot, but despotism. For
myself, when I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but
little to know who oppresses me; and I am not the more disposed to pass
beneath the yoke, because it is held out to me by the arms of a million
of men.
Chapter III: Why The Americans Display More Readiness And More Taste For
General Ideas Than Their Forefathers, The English.
The Deity does not regard the human race collectively. He surveys at one
glance and severally all the beings of whom mankind is composed, and he
discerns in each man the resemblances which assimilate him to all his
fellows, and the differences which distinguish him from them. God,
therefore, stands in no need of general ideas; that is to say, he is
never sensible of the necessity of collecting a considerable number
of analogous objects under the same form for greater convenience in
thinking. Such is, however, not the case with man. If the human mind
were to attempt to examine and pass a judgment on all the individual
cases before it, the immensity of detail would soon lead it astray
and bewilder its discernment: in this strait, man has recourse to
an imperfect but necessary expedient, which at once assists and
demonstrates his weakness. Having superficially considered a certain
number of objects, and remarked their resemblance, he assigns to them a
common name, sets them apart, and proceeds onwards.
General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the
insufficiency of the human intellect; for there are in nature no
beings exactly alike, no things precisely identical, nor any rules
indiscriminately and alike applicable to several objects at once. The
chief merit of general ideas is, that they enable the human mind to
pass a rapid judgment on a great many objects at once; but, on the other
hand, the notions they convey are never otherwise than incomplete, and
they always cause the mind to lose as much in accuracy as it gains
in comprehensiveness. As social bodies advance in civilization, they
acquire the knowledge of new facts, and they daily lay hold almost
unconsciously of some particular truths. The more truths of this kind a
man apprehends, the more general ideas is he naturally led to conceive.
A multitude of particular facts cannot be seen separately, without at
last discovering the common tie which connects them. Several individuals
lead to the perception of the species; several species to that of the
genus. Hence the habit and the taste for general ideas will always
be greatest amongst a people of ancient cultivation and extensive
knowledge.
But there are other reasons which impel men to generalize their ideas,
or which restrain them from it.
The Americans are much more addicted to the use of general ideas than
the English, and entertain a much greater relish for them: this appears
very singular at first sight, when it is remembered that the two nations
have the same origin, that they lived for centuries under the same laws,
and that they still incessantly interchange their opinions and their
manners. This contrast becomes much more striking still, if we fix our
eyes on our own part of the world, and compare together the two most
enlightened nations which inhabit it. It would seem as if the mind of
the English could only tear itself reluctantly and painfully away from
the observation of particular facts, to rise from them to their causes;
and that it only generalizes in spite of itself. Amongst the French, on
the contrary, the taste for general ideas would seem to have grown to
so ardent a passion, that it must be satisfied on every occasion. I am
informed, every morning when I wake, that some general and eternal law
has just been discovered, which I never heard mentioned before. There is
not a mediocre scribbler who does not try his hand at discovering truths
applicable to a great kingdom, and who is very ill pleased with himself
if he does not succeed in compressing the human race into the compass
of an article. So great a dissimilarity between two very enlightened
nations surprises me. If I again turn my attention to England, and
observe the events which have occurred there in the last half-century,
I think I may affirm that a taste for general ideas increases in that
country in proportion as its ancient constitution is weakened.
The state of civilization is therefore insufficient by itself to explain
what suggests to the human mind the love of general ideas, or diverts it
from them. When the conditions of men are very unequal, and inequality
itself is the permanent state of society, individual men gradually
become so dissimilar that each class assumes the aspect of a distinct
race: only one of these classes is ever in view at the same instant; and
losing sight of that general tie which binds them all within the vast
bosom of mankind, the observation invariably rests not on man, but on
certain men. Those who live in this aristocratic state of society never,
therefore, conceive very general ideas respecting themselves, and that
is enough to imbue them with an habitual distrust of such ideas, and
an instinctive aversion of them. He, on the contrary, who inhabits a
democratic country, sees around him, one very hand, men differing but
little from each other; he cannot turn his mind to any one portion of
mankind, without expanding and dilating his thought till it embrace the
whole. All the truths which are applicable to himself, appear to him
equally and similarly applicable to each of his fellow-citizens and
fellow-men. Having contracted the habit of generalizing his ideas in
the study which engages him most, and interests him more than others,
he transfers the same habit to all his pursuits; and thus it is that
the craving to discover general laws in everything, to include a great
number of objects under the same formula, and to explain a mass of facts
by a single cause, becomes an ardent, and sometimes an undiscerning,
passion in the human mind.
Nothing shows the truth of this proposition more clearly than the
opinions of the ancients respecting their slaves. The most profound and
capacious minds of Rome and Greece were never able to reach the idea, at
once so general and so simple, of the common likeness of men, and of the
common birthright of each to freedom: they strove to prove that slavery
was in the order of nature, and that it would always exist. Nay, more,
everything shows that those of the ancients who had passed from the
servile to the free condition, many of whom have left us excellent
writings, did themselves regard servitude in no other light.
All the great writers of antiquity belonged to the aristocracy
of masters, or at least they saw that aristocracy established and
uncontested before their eyes. Their mind, after it had expanded itself
in several directions, was barred from further progress in this one; and
the advent of Jesus Christ upon earth was required to teach that all the
members of the human race are by nature equal and alike.
In the ages of equality all men are independent of each other, isolated
and weak. The movements of the multitude are not permanently guided
by the will of any individuals; at such times humanity seems always to
advance of itself. In order, therefore, to explain what is passing in
the world, man is driven to seek for some great causes, which, acting
in the same manner on all our fellow-creatures, thus impel them all
involuntarily to pursue the same track. This again naturally leads the
human mind to conceive general ideas, and superinduces a taste for them.
I have already shown in what way the equality of conditions leads every
man to investigate truths for himself. It may readily be perceived that
a method of this kind must insensibly beget a tendency to general ideas
in the human mind. When I repudiate the traditions of rank, profession,
and birth; when I escape from the authority of example, to seek out, by
the single effort of my reason, the path to be followed, I am inclined
to derive the motives of my opinions from human nature itself; which
leads me necessarily, and almost unconsciously, to adopt a great number
of very general notions.
All that I have here said explains the reasons for which the English
display much less readiness and taste or the generalization of ideas
than their American progeny, and still less again than their French
neighbors; and likewise the reason for which the English of the present
day display more of these qualities than their forefathers did. The
English have long been a very enlightened and a very aristocratic
nation; their enlightened condition urged them constantly to generalize,
and their aristocratic habits confined them to particularize. Hence
arose that philosophy, at once bold and timid, broad and narrow,
which has hitherto prevailed in England, and which still obstructs and
stagnates in so many minds in that country.
Independently of the causes I have pointed out in what goes before,
others may be discerned less apparent, but no less efficacious, which
engender amongst almost every democratic people a taste, and frequently
a passion, for general ideas. An accurate distinction must be taken
between ideas of this kind. Some are the result of slow, minute, and
conscientious labor of the mind, and these extend the sphere of human
knowledge; others spring up at once from the first rapid exercise of the
wits, and beget none but very superficial and very uncertain notions.
Men who live in ages of equality have a great deal of curiosity and very
little leisure; their life is so practical, so confused, so excited, so
active, that but little time remains to them for thought. Such men are
prone to general ideas because they spare them the trouble of studying
particulars; they contain, if I may so speak, a great deal in a little
compass, and give, in a little time, a great return. If then, upon a
brief and inattentive investigation, a common relation is thought to be
detected between certain obtects, inquiry is not pushed any further; and
without examining in detail how far these different objects differ or
agree, they are hastily arranged under one formulary, in order to pass
to another subject.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of a democratic period is the
taste all men have at such ties for easy success and present enjoyment.
This occurs in the pursuits of the intellect as well as in all others.
Most of those who live at a time of equality are full of an ambition at
once aspiring and relaxed: they would fain succeed brilliantly and at
once, but they would be dispensed from great efforts to obtain success.
These conflicting tendencies lead straight to the research of general
ideas, by aid of which they flatter themselves that they can figure very
importantly at a small expense, and draw the attention of the public
with very little trouble. And I know not whether they be wrong in
thinking thus. For their readers are as much averse to investigating
anything to the bottom as they can be themselves; and what is generally
sought in the productions of the mind is easy pleasure and information
without labor.
If aristocratic nations do not make sufficient use of general ideas,
and frequently treat them with inconsiderate disdain, it is true, on
the other hand, that a democratic people is ever ready to carry ideas of
this kind to excess, and to espouse the with injudicious warmth.
Chapter IV: Why The Americans Have Never Been So Eager As The French For
General Ideas In Political Matters
I observed in the last chapter, that the Americans show a less decided
taste for general ideas than the French; this is more especially true in
political matters. Although the Americans infuse into their legislation
infinitely more general ideas than the English, and although they pay
much more attention than the latter people to the adjustment of the
practice of affairs to theory, no political bodies in the United
States have ever shown so warm an attachment to general ideas as the
Constituent Assembly and the Convention in France. At no time has the
American people laid hold on ideas of this kind with the passionate
energy of the French people in the eighteenth century, or displayed the
same blind confidence in the value and absolute truth of any theory.
This difference between the Americans and the French originates in
several causes, but principally in the following one. The Americans form
a democratic people, which has always itself directed public affairs.
The French are a democratic people, who, for a long time, could only
speculate on the best manner of conducting them. The social condition of
France led that people to conceive very general ideas on the subject
of government, whilst its political constitution prevented it from
correcting those ideas by experiment, and from gradually detecting their
insufficiency; whereas in America the two things constantly balance and
correct each other.
It may seem, at first sight, that this is very much opposed to what I
have said before, that democratic nations derive their love of theory
from the excitement of their active life. A more attentive examination
will show that there is nothing contradictory in the proposition. Men
living in democratic countries eagerly lay hold of general ideas because
they have but little leisure, and because these ideas spare them the
trouble of studying particulars. This is true; but it is only to be
understood to apply to those matters which are not the necessary and
habitual subjects of their thoughts. Mercantile men will take up very
eagerly, and without any very close scrutiny, all the general ideas on
philosophy, politics, science, or the arts, which may be presented to
them; but for such as relate to commerce, they will not receive them
without inquiry, or adopt them without reserve. The same thing applies
to statesmen with regard to general ideas in politics. If, then, there
be a subject upon which a democratic people is peculiarly liable to
abandon itself, blindly and extravagantly, to general ideas, the best
corrective that can be used will be to make that subject a part of
the daily practical occupation of that people. The people will then be
compelled to enter upon its details, and the details will teach them the
weak points of the theory. This remedy may frequently be a painful one,
but its effect is certain.
Thus it happens, that the democratic institutions which compel every
citizen to take a practical part in the government, moderate that
excessive taste for general theories in politics which the principle of
equality suggests.
Chapter V: Of The Manner In Which Religion In The United States Avails
Itself Of Democratic Tendencies
I have laid it down in a preceding chapter that men cannot do without
dogmatical belief; and even that it is very much to be desired that such
belief should exist amongst them. I now add, that of all the kinds of
dogmatical belief the most desirable appears to me to be dogmatical
belief in matters of religion; and this is a very clear inference, even
from no higher consideration than the interests of this world. There is
hardly any human action, however particular a character be assigned
to it, which does not originate in some very general idea men have
conceived of the Deity, of his relation to mankind, of the nature of
their own souls, and of their duties to their fellow-creatures. Nor can
anything prevent these ideas from being the common spring from which
everything else emanates. Men are therefore immeasurably interested in
acquiring fixed ideas of God, of the soul, and of their common duties
to their Creator and to their fellow-men; for doubt on these first
principles would abandon all their actions to the impulse of chance,
and would condemn them to live, to a certain extent, powerless and
undisciplined.
This is then the subject on which it is most important for each of us to
entertain fixed ideas; and unhappily it is also the subject on which
it is most difficult for each of us, left to himself, to settle his
opinions by the sole force of his reason. None but minds singularly free
from the ordinary anxieties of life--minds at once penetrating, subtle,
and trained by thinking--can even with the assistance of much time and
care, sound the depth of these most necessary truths. And, indeed, we
see that these philosophers are themselves almost always enshrouded in
uncertainties; that at every step the natural light which illuminates
their path grows dimmer and less secure; and that, in spite of all their
efforts, they have as yet only discovered a small number of conflicting
notions, on which the mind of man has been tossed about for thousands of
years, without either laying a firmer grasp on truth, or finding novelty
even in its errors. Studies of this nature are far above the average
capacity of men; and even if the majority of mankind were capable of
such pursuits, it is evident that leisure to cultivate them would still
be wanting. Fixed ideas of God and human nature are indispensable to the
daily practice of men's lives; but the practice of their lives prevents
them from acquiring such ideas.
The difficulty appears to me to be without a parallel. Amongst the
sciences there are some which are useful to the mass of mankind, and
which are within its reach; others can only be approached by the few,
and are not cultivated by the many, who require nothing beyond their
more remote applications: but the daily practice of the science I speak
of is indispensable to all, although the study of it is inaccessible to
the far greater number.
General ideas respecting God and human nature are therefore the ideas
above all others which it is most suitable to withdraw from the habitual
action of private judgment, and in which there is most to gain and least
to lose by recognizing a principle of authority. The first object and
one of the principal advantages of religions, is to furnish to each of
these fundamental questions a solution which is at once clear, precise,
intelligible to the mass of mankind, and lasting. There are religions
which are very false and very absurd; but it may be affirmed, that any
religion which remains within the circle I have just traced, without
aspiring to go beyond it (as many religions have attempted to do, for
the purpose of enclosing on every side the free progress of the human
mind), imposes a salutary restraint on the intellect; and it must be
admitted that, if it do not save men in another world, such religion is
at least very conducive to their happiness and their greatness in this.
This is more especially true of men living in free countries. When
the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the highest
portions of the intellect, and half paralyzes all the rest of its
powers. Every man accustoms himself to entertain none but confused
and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his
fellow-creatures and himself. His opinions are ill-defended and easily
abandoned: and, despairing of ever resolving by himself the hardest
problems of the destiny of man, he ignobly submits to think no more
about them. Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the
springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude. Nor does it
only happen, in such a case, that they allow their freedom to be wrested
from them; they frequently themselves surrender it. When there is no
longer any principle of authority in religion any more than in
politics, men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded
independence. The constant agitation of all surrounding things alarms
and exhausts them. As everything is at sea in the sphere of the
intellect, they determine at least that the mechanism of society should
be firm and fixed; and as they cannot resume their ancient belief, they
assume a master.
For my own part, I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time
complete religious independence and entire public freedom. And I am
inclined to think, that if faith be wanting in him, he must serve; and
if he be free, he must believe.
Perhaps, however, this great utility of religions is still more obvious
amongst nations where equality of conditions prevails than amongst
others. It must be acknowledged that equality, which brings great
benefits into the world, nevertheless suggests to men (as will be shown
hereafter) some very dangerous propensities. It tends to isolate them
from each other, to concentrate every man's attention upon himself; and
it lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification.
The greatest advantage of religion is to inspire diametrically contrary
principles. There is no religion which does not place the object of
man's desires above and beyond the treasures of earth, and which does
not naturally raise his soul to regions far above those of the senses.
Nor is there any which does not impose on man some sort of duties to
his kind, and thus draws him at times from the contemplation of himself.
This occurs in religions the most false and dangerous. Religious nations
are therefore naturally strong on the very point on which democratic
nations are weak; which shows of what importance it is for men to
preserve their religion as their conditions become more equal.
I have neither the right nor the intention of examining the supernatural
means which God employs to infuse religious belief into the heart of
man. I am at this moment considering religions in a purely human point
of view: my object is to inquire by what means they may most easily
retain their sway in the democratic ages upon which we are entering. It
has been shown that, at times of general cultivation and equality,
the human mind does not consent to adopt dogmatical opinions without
reluctance, and feels their necessity acutely in spiritual matters only.
This proves, in the first place, that at such times religions ought,
more cautiously than at any other, to confine themselves within their
own precincts; for in seeking to extend their power beyond religious
matters, they incur a risk of not being believed at all. The circle
within which they seek to bound the human intellect ought therefore to
be carefully traced, and beyond its verge the mind should be left in
entire freedom to its own guidance. Mahommed professed to derive from
Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious
doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories
of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general
relations of men to God and to each other--beyond which it inculcates
and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other
reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will
never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the
latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.
But in continuation of this branch of the subject, I find that in
order for religions to maintain their authority, humanly speaking, in
democratic ages, they must not only confine themselves strictly within
the circle of spiritual matters: their power also depends very much
on the nature of the belief they inculcate, on the external forms they
assume, and on the obligations they impose. The preceding observation,
that equality leads men to very general and very extensive notions, is
principally to be understood as applied to the question of religion. Men
living in a similar and equal condition in the world readily conceive
the idea of the one God, governing every man by the same laws, and
granting to every man future happiness on the same conditions. The idea
of the unity of mankind constantly leads them back to the idea of the
unity of the Creator; whilst, on the contrary, in a state of society
where men are broken up into very unequal ranks, they are apt to devise
as many deities as there are nations, castes, classes, or families, and
to trace a thousand private roads to heaven.
It cannot be denied that Christianity itself has felt, to a certain
extent, the influence which social and political conditions exercise
on religious opinions. At the epoch at which the Christian religion
appeared upon earth, Providence, by whom the world was doubtless
prepared for its coming, had gathered a large portion of the human race,
like an immense flock, under the sceptre of the Caesars. The men of whom
this multitude was composed were distinguished by numerous differences;
but they had thus much in common, that they all obeyed the same laws,
and that every subject was so weak and insignificant in relation to the
imperial potentate, that all appeared equal when their condition
was contrasted with his. This novel and peculiar state of mankind
necessarily predisposed men to listen to the general truths which
Christianity teaches, and may serve to explain the facility and rapidity
with which they then penetrated into the human mind. The counterpart of
this state of things was exhibited after the destruction of the
empire. The Roman world being then as it were shattered into a thousand
fragments, each nation resumed its pristine individuality. An infinite
scale of ranks very soon grew up in the bosom of these nations; the
different races were more sharply defined, and each nation was divided
by castes into several peoples. In the midst of this common effort,
which seemed to be urging human society to the greatest conceivable
amount of voluntary subdivision, Christianity did not lose sight of
the leading general ideas which it had brought into the world. But it
appeared, nevertheless, to lend itself, as much as was possible, to
those new tendencies to which the fractional distribution of mankind
had given birth. Men continued to worship an only God, the Creator and
Preserver of all things; but every people, every city, and, so to speak,
every man, thought to obtain some distinct privilege, and win the favor
of an especial patron at the foot of the Throne of Grace. Unable
to subdivide the Deity, they multiplied and improperly enhanced the
importance of the divine agents. The homage due to saints and angels
became an almost idolatrous worship amongst the majority of the
Christian world; and apprehensions might be entertained for a moment
lest the religion of Christ should retrograde towards the superstitions
which it had subdued. It seems evident, that the more the barriers are
removed which separate nation from nation amongst mankind, and citizen
from citizen amongst a people, the stronger is the bent of the human
mind, as if by its own impulse, towards the idea of an only and
all-powerful Being, dispensing equal laws in the same manner to every
man. In democratic ages, then, it is more particularly important not
to allow the homage paid to secondary agents to be confounded with the
worship due to the Creator alone.
Another truth is no less clear--that religions ought to assume fewer
external observances in democratic periods than at any others. In
speaking of philosophical method among the Americans, I have shown that
nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than
the idea of subjection to forms. Men living at such times are impatient
of figures; to their eyes symbols appear to be the puerile artifice
which is used to conceal or to set off truths, which should more
naturally be bared to the light of open day: they are unmoved by
ceremonial observances, and they are predisposed to attach a secondary
importance to the details of public worship. Those whose care it is to
regulate the external forms of religion in a democratic age should pay
a close attention to these natural propensities of the human mind, in
order not unnecessarily to run counter to them. I firmly believe in the
necessity of forms, which fix the human mind in the contemplation of
abstract truths, and stimulate its ardor in the pursuit of them, whilst
they invigorate its powers of retaining them steadfastly. Nor do I
suppose that it is possible to maintain a religion without external
observances; but, on the other hand, I am persuaded that, in the ages
upon which we are entering, it would be peculiarly dangerous to multiply
them beyond measure; and that they ought rather to be limited to as much
as is absolutely necessary to perpetuate the doctrine itself, which is
the substance of religions of which the ritual is only the form. *a
A religion which should become more minute, more peremptory, and more
surcharged with small observances at a time in which men are becoming
more equal, would soon find itself reduced to a band of fanatical
zealots in the midst of an infidel people.
[Footnote a: In all religions there are some ceremonies which are
inherent in the substance of the faith itself, and in these nothing
should, on any account, be changed. This is especially the case with
Roman Catholicism, in which the doctrine and the form are frequently so
closely united as to form one point of belief.]
I anticipate the objection, that as all religions have general and
eternal truths for their object, they cannot thus shape themselves
to the shifting spirit of every age without forfeiting their claim
to certainty in the eyes of mankind. To this I reply again, that the
principal opinions which constitute belief, and which theologians
call articles of faith, must be very carefully distinguished from the
accessories connected with them. Religions are obliged to hold fast to
the former, whatever be the peculiar spirit of the age; but they should
take good care not to bind themselves in the same manner to the
latter at a time when everything is in transition, and when the mind,
accustomed to the moving pageant of human affairs, reluctantly endures
the attempt to fix it to any given point. The fixity of external and
secondary things can only afford a chance of duration when civil society
is itself fixed; under any other circumstances I hold it to be perilous.
We shall have occasion to see that, of all the passions which originate
in, or are fostered by, equality, there is one which it renders
peculiarly intense, and which it infuses at the same time into the heart
of every man: I mean the love of well-being. The taste for well-being
is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic ages. It may be
believed that a religion which should undertake to destroy so deep
seated a passion, would meet its own destruction thence in the end; and
if it attempted to wean men entirely from the contemplation of the good
things of this world, in order to devote their faculties exclusively to
the thought of another, it may be foreseen that the soul would at length
escape from its grasp, to plunge into the exclusive enjoyment of present
and material pleasures. The chief concern of religions is to purify,
to regulate, and to restrain the excessive and exclusive taste for
well-being which men feel at periods of equality; but they would err in
attempting to control it completely or to eradicate it. They will not
succeed in curing men of the love of riches: but they may still persuade
men to enrich themselves by none but honest means.
This brings me to a final consideration, which comprises, as it were,
all the others. The more the conditions of men are equalized and
assimilated to each other, the more important is it for religions,
whilst they carefully abstain from the daily turmoil of secular affairs,
not needlessly to run counter to the ideas which generally prevail, and
the permanent interests which exist in the mass of the people. For as
public opinion grows to be more and more evidently the first and most
irresistible of existing powers, the religious principle has no external
support strong enough to enable it long to resist its attacks. This
is not less true of a democratic people, ruled by a despot, than in a
republic. In ages of equality, kings may often command obedience,
but the majority always commands belief: to the majority, therefore,
deference is to be paid in whatsoever is not contrary to the faith.
I showed in my former volumes how the American clergy stand aloof from
secular affairs. This is the most obvious, but it is not the only,
example of their self-restraint. In America religion is a distinct
sphere, in which the priest is sovereign, but out of which he takes
care never to go. Within its limits he is the master of the mind;
beyond them, he leaves men to themselves, and surrenders them to the
independence and instability which belong to their nature and their
age. I have seen no country in which Christianity is clothed with fewer
forms, figures, and observances than in the United States; or where
it presents more distinct, more simple, or more general notions to the
mind. Although the Christians of America are divided into a multitude of
sects, they all look upon their religion in the same light. This applies
to Roman Catholicism as well as to the other forms of belief. There
are no Romish priests who show less taste for the minute individual
observances for extraordinary or peculiar means of salvation, or who
cling more to the spirit, and less to the letter of the law, than the
Roman Catholic priests of the United States. Nowhere is that doctrine of
the Church, which prohibits the worship reserved to God alone from
being offered to the saints, more clearly inculcated or more generally
followed. Yet the Roman Catholics of America are very submissive and
very sincere.
Another remark is applicable to the clergy of every communion. The
American ministers of the gospel do not attempt to draw or to fix all
the thoughts of man upon the life to come; they are willing to surrender
a portion of his heart to the cares of the present; seeming to consider
the goods of this world as important, although as secondary, objects.
If they take no part themselves in productive labor, they are at least
interested in its progression, and ready to applaud its results; and
whilst they never cease to point to the other world as the great object
of the hopes and fears of the believer, they do not forbid him honestly
to court prosperity in this. Far from attempting to show that these
things are distinct and contrary to one another, they study rather to
find out on what point they are most nearly and closely connected.
All the American clergy know and respect the intellectual supremacy
exercised by the majority; they never sustain any but necessary
conflicts with it. They take no share in the altercations of parties,
but they readily adopt the general opinions of their country and their
age; and they allow themselves to be borne away without opposition in
the current of feeling and opinion by which everything around them is
carried along. They endeavor to amend their contemporaries, but they do
not quit fellowship with them. Public opinion is therefore never hostile
to them; it rather supports and protects them; and their belief owes its
authority at the same time to the strength which is its own, and to that
which they borrow from the opinions of the majority. Thus it is that, by
respecting all democratic tendencies not absolutely contrary to herself,
and by making use of several of them for her own purposes, religion
sustains an advantageous struggle with that spirit of individual
independence which is her most dangerous antagonist.
Chapter VI: Of The Progress Of Roman Catholicism In The United States
America is the most democratic country in the world, and it is at the
same time (according to reports worthy of belief) the country in which
the Roman Catholic religion makes most progress. At first sight this is
surprising. Two things must here be accurately distinguished: equality
inclines men to wish to form their own opinions; but, on the other hand,
it imbues them with the taste and the idea of unity, simplicity,
and impartiality in the power which governs society. Men living in
democratic ages are therefore very prone to shake off all religious
authority; but if they consent to subject themselves to any authority
of this kind, they choose at least that it should be single and uniform.
Religious powers not radiating from a common centre are naturally
repugnant to their minds; and they almost as readily conceive that there
should be no religion, as that there should be several. At the present
time, more than in any preceding one, Roman Catholics are seen to lapse
into infidelity, and Protestants to be converted to Roman Catholicism.
If the Roman Catholic faith be considered within the pale of the church,
it would seem to be losing ground; without that pale, to be gaining it.
Nor is this circumstance difficult of explanation. The men of our
days are naturally disposed to believe; but, as soon as they have any
religion, they immediately find in themselves a latent propensity which
urges them unconsciously towards Catholicism. Many of the doctrines and
the practices of the Romish Church astonish them; but they feel a secret
admiration for its discipline, and its great unity attracts them.
If Catholicism could at length withdraw itself from the political
animosities to which it has given rise, I have hardly any doubt but that
the same spirit of the age, which appears to be so opposed to it, would
become so favorable as to admit of its great and sudden advancement.
One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to
reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense
of logic. Thus there have ever been, and will ever be, men who, after
having submitted some portion of their religious belief to the principle
of authority, will seek to exempt several other parts of their faith
from its influence, and to keep their minds floating at random between
liberty and obedience. But I am inclined to believe that the number of
these thinkers will be less in democratic than in other ages; and that
our posterity will tend more and more to a single division into two
parts--some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others returning to
the bosom of the Church of Rome.
Chapter VII: Of The Cause Of A Leaning To Pantheism Amongst Democratic
Nations
I shall take occasion hereafter to show under what form the
preponderating taste of a democratic people for very general ideas
manifests itself in politics; but I would point out, at the present
stage of my work, its principal effect on philosophy. It cannot be
denied that pantheism has made great progress in our age. The writings
of a part of Europe bear visible marks of it: the Germans introduce it
into philosophy, and the French into literature. Most of the works of
imagination published in France contain some opinions or some tinge
caught from pantheistical doctrines, or they disclose some tendency to
such doctrines in their authors. This appears to me not only to proceed
from an accidental, but from a permanent cause.
When the conditions of society are becoming more equal, and each
individual man becomes more like all the rest, more weak and more
insignificant, a habit grows up of ceasing to notice the citizens to
consider only the people, and of overlooking individuals to think only
of their kind. At such times the human mind seeks to embrace a multitude
of different objects at once; and it constantly strives to succeed in
connecting a variety of consequences with a single cause. The idea
of unity so possesses itself of man, and is sought for by him so
universally, that if he thinks he has found it, he readily yields
himself up to repose in that belief. Nor does he content himself with
the discovery that nothing is in the world but a creation and a Creator;
still embarrassed by this primary division of things, he seeks to expand
and to simplify his conception by including God and the universe in one
great whole. If there be a philosophical system which teaches that all
things material and immaterial, visible and invisible, which the world
contains, are only to be considered as the several parts of an immense
Being, which alone remains unchanged amidst the continual change and
ceaseless transformation of all that constitutes it, we may readily
infer that such a system, although it destroy the individuality of
man--nay, rather because it destroys that individuality--will have
secret charms for men living in democracies. All their habits of
thought prepare them to conceive it, and predispose them to adopt it.
It naturally attracts and fixes their imagination; it fosters the pride,
whilst it soothes the indolence, of their minds. Amongst the different
systems by whose aid philosophy endeavors to explain the universe, I
believe pantheism to be one of those most fitted to seduce the human
mind in democratic ages. Against it all who abide in their attachment to
the true greatness of man should struggle and combine.
Chapter VIII: The Principle Of Equality Suggests To The Americans The
Idea Of The Indefinite Perfectibility Of Man
Equality suggests to the human mind several ideas which would not have
originated from any other source, and it modifies almost all those
previously entertained. I take as an example the idea of human
perfectibility, because it is one of the principal notions that the
intellect can conceive, and because it constitutes of itself a great
philosophical theory, which is every instant to be traced by its
consequences in the practice of human affairs. Although man has many
points of resemblance with the brute creation, one characteristic is
peculiar to himself--he improves: they are incapable of improvement.
Mankind could not fail to discover this difference from its earliest
period. The idea of perfectibility is therefore as old as the world;
equality did not give birth to it, although it has imparted to it a
novel character.
When the citizens of a community are classed according to their rank,
their profession, or their birth, and when all men are constrained to
follow the career which happens to open before them, everyone thinks
that the utmost limits of human power are to be discerned in proximity
to himself, and none seeks any longer to resist the inevitable law of
his destiny. Not indeed that an aristocratic people absolutely contests
man's faculty of self-improvement, but they do not hold it to be
indefinite; amelioration they conceive, but not change: they imagine
that the future condition of society may be better, but not essentially
different; and whilst they admit that mankind has made vast strides
in improvement, and may still have some to make, they assign to it
beforehand certain impassable limits. Thus they do not presume that they
have arrived at the supreme good or at absolute truth (what people
or what man was ever wild enough to imagine it?) but they cherish a
persuasion that they have pretty nearly reached that degree of greatness
and knowledge which our imperfect nature admits of; and as nothing
moves about them they are willing to fancy that everything is in its fit
place. Then it is that the legislator affects to lay down eternal laws;
that kings and nations will raise none but imperishable monuments; and
that the present generation undertakes to spare generations to come the
care of regulating their destinies.
In proportion as castes disappear and the classes of society
approximate--as manners, customs, and laws vary, from the tumultuous
intercourse of men--as new facts arise--as new truths are brought
to light--as ancient opinions are dissipated, and others take their
place--the image of an ideal perfection, forever on the wing, presents
itself to the human mind. Continual changes are then every instant
occurring under the observation of every man: the position of some
is rendered worse; and he learns but too well, that no people and
no individual, how enlightened soever they may be, can lay claim to
infallibility;--the condition of others is improved; whence he infers
that man is endowed with an indefinite faculty of improvement. His
reverses teach him that none may hope to have discovered absolute
good--his success stimulates him to the never-ending pursuit of
it. Thus, forever seeking--forever falling, to rise again--often
disappointed, but not discouraged--he tends unceasingly towards that
unmeasured greatness so indistinctly visible at the end of the long
track which humanity has yet to tread. It can hardly be believed
how many facts naturally flow from the philosophical theory of the
indefinite perfectibility of man, or how strong an influence it
exercises even on men who, living entirely for the purposes of action
and not of thought, seem to conform their actions to it, without knowing
anything about it. I accost an American sailor, and I inquire why the
ships of his country are built so as to last but for a short time;
he answers without hesitation that the art of navigation is every day
making such rapid progress, that the finest vessel would become almost
useless if it lasted beyond a certain number of years. In these words,
which fell accidentally and on a particular subject from a man of rude
attainments, I recognize the general and systematic idea upon which a
great people directs all its concerns.
Aristocratic nations are naturally too apt to narrow the scope of human
perfectibility; democratic nations to expand it beyond compass.
Chapter IX: The Example Of The Americans Does Not Prove That A
Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude And No Taste For Science,
Literature, Or Art
It must be acknowledged that amongst few of the civilized nations of
our time have the higher sciences made less progress than in the United
States; and in few have great artists, fine poets, or celebrated writers
been more rare. Many Europeans, struck by this fact, have looked upon it
as a natural and inevitable result of equality; and they have supposed
that if a democratic state of society and democratic institutions were
ever to prevail over the whole earth, the human mind would gradually
find its beacon-lights grow dim, and men would relapse into a period of
darkness. To reason thus is, I think, to confound several ideas which
it is important to divide and to examine separately: it is to mingle,
unintentionally, what is democratic with what is only American.
The religion professed by the first emigrants, and bequeathed by them
to their descendants, simple in its form of worship, austere and
almost harsh in its principles, and hostile to external symbols and to
ceremonial pomp, is naturally unfavorable to the fine arts, and only
yields a reluctant sufferance to the pleasures of literature. The
Americans are a very old and a very enlightened people, who have fallen
upon a new and unbounded country, where they may extend themselves at
pleasure, and which they may fertilize without difficulty. This state
of things is without a parallel in the history of the world. In America,
then, every one finds facilities, unknown elsewhere, for making or
increasing his fortune. The spirit of gain is always on the stretch, and
the human mind, constantly diverted from the pleasures of imagination
and the labors of the intellect, is there swayed by no impulse but the
pursuit of wealth. Not only are manufacturing and commercial classes to
be found in the United States, as they are in all other countries; but
what never occurred elsewhere, the whole community is simultaneously
engaged in productive industry and commerce. I am convinced that, if
the Americans had been alone in the world, with the freedom and the
knowledge acquired by their forefathers, and the passions which are
their own, they would not have been slow to discover that progress
cannot long be made in the application of the sciences without
cultivating the theory of them; that all the arts are perfected by one
another: and, however absorbed they might have been by the pursuit
of the principal object of their desires, they would speedily have
admitted, that it is necessary to turn aside from it occasionally, in
order the better to attain it in the end.
The taste for the pleasures of the mind is moreover so natural to the
heart of civilized man, that amongst the polite nations, which are least
disposed to give themselves up to these pursuits, a certain number of
citizens are always to be found who take part in them. This intellectual
craving, when once felt, would very soon have been satisfied. But at the
very time when the Americans were naturally inclined to require nothing
of science but its special applications to the useful arts and the means
of rendering life comfortable, learned and literary Europe was engaged
in exploring the common sources of truth, and in improving at the same
time all that can minister to the pleasures or satisfy the wants of man.
At the head of the enlightened nations of the Old World the inhabitants
of the United States more particularly distinguished one, to which they
were closely united by a common origin and by kindred habits. Amongst
this people they found distinguished men of science, artists of skill,
writers of eminence, and they were enabled to enjoy the treasures of the
intellect without requiring to labor in amassing them. I cannot consent
to separate America from Europe, in spite of the ocean which intervenes.
I consider the people of the United States as that portion of the
English people which is commissioned to explore the wilds of the New
World; whilst the rest of the nation, enjoying more leisure and less
harassed by the drudgery of life, may devote its energies to thought,
and enlarge in all directions the empire of the mind. The position of
the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed
that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their
strictly Puritanical origin--their exclusively commercial habits--even
the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the
pursuit of science, literature, and the arts--the proximity of Europe,
which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into
barbarism--a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to
point out the most important--have singularly concurred to fix the mind
of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants,
his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the
native of the United States earthward: his religion alone bids him turn,
from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us
cease then to view all democratic nations under the mask of the American
people, and let us attempt to survey them at length with their own
proper features.
It is possible to conceive a people not subdivided into any castes or
scale of ranks; in which the law, recognizing no privileges, should
divide inherited property into equal shares; but which, at the same
time, should be without knowledge and without freedom. Nor is this an
empty hypothesis: a despot may find that it is his interest to render
his subjects equal and to leave them ignorant, in order more easily to
keep them slaves. Not only would a democratic people of this kind show
neither aptitude nor taste for science, literature, or art, but it would
probably never arrive at the possession of them. The law of descent
would of itself provide for the destruction of fortunes at each
succeeding generation; and new fortunes would be acquired by none. The
poor man, without either knowledge or freedom, would not so much as
conceive the idea of raising himself to wealth; and the rich man
would allow himself to be degraded to poverty, without a notion of
self-defence. Between these two members of the community complete and
invincible equality would soon be established.
No one would then have time or taste to devote himself to the pursuits
or pleasures of the intellect; but all men would remain paralyzed by
a state of common ignorance and equal servitude. When I conceive a
democratic society of this kind, I fancy myself in one of those low,
close, and gloomy abodes, where the light which breaks in from without
soon faints and fades away. A sudden heaviness overpowers me, and I
grope through the surrounding darkness, to find the aperture which will
restore me to daylight and the air.
But all this is not applicable to men already enlightened who retain
their freedom, after having abolished from amongst them those peculiar
and hereditary rights which perpetuated the tenure of property in the
hands of certain individuals or certain bodies. When men living in a
democratic state of society are enlightened, they readily discover that
they are confined and fixed within no limits which constrain them to
take up with their present fortune. They all therefore conceive the idea
of increasing it; if they are free, they all attempt it, but all do
not succeed in the same manner. The legislature, it is true, no
longer grants privileges, but they are bestowed by nature. As natural
inequality is very great, fortunes become unequal as soon as every man
exerts all his faculties to get rich. The law of descent prevents the
establishment of wealthy families; but it does not prevent the existence
of wealthy individuals. It constantly brings back the members of the
community to a common level, from which they as constantly escape:
and the inequality of fortunes augments in proportion as knowledge is
diffused and liberty increased.
A sect which arose in our time, and was celebrated for its talents and
its extravagance, proposed to concentrate all property into the hands of
a central power, whose function it should afterwards be to parcel it
out to individuals, according to their capacity. This would have been a
method of escaping from that complete and eternal equality which seems
to threaten democratic society. But it would be a simpler and less
dangerous remedy to grant no privilege to any, giving to all equal
cultivation and equal independence, and leaving everyone to determine
his own position. Natural inequality will very soon make way for itself,
and wealth will spontaneously pass into the hands of the most capable.
Free and democratic communities, then, will always contain a
considerable number of people enjoying opulence or competency. The
wealthy will not be so closely linked to each other as the members of
the former aristocratic class of society: their propensities will be
different, and they will scarcely ever enjoy leisure as secure or as
complete: but they will be far more numerous than those who belonged to
that class of society could ever be. These persons will not be strictly
confined to the cares of practical life, and they will still be able,
though in different degrees, to indulge in the pursuits and pleasures of
the intellect. In those pleasures they will indulge; for if it be true
that the human mind leans on one side to the narrow, the practical,
and the useful, it naturally rises on the other to the infinite, the
spiritual, and the beautiful. Physical wants confine it to the earth;
but, as soon as the tie is loosened, it will unbend itself again.
Not only will the number of those who can take an interest in the
productions of the mind be enlarged, but the taste for intellectual
enjoyment will descend, step by step, even to those who, in aristocratic
societies, seem to have neither time nor ability to in indulge in them.
When hereditary wealth, the privileges of rank, and the prerogatives of
birth have ceased to be, and when every man derives his strength from
himself alone, it becomes evident that the chief cause of disparity
between the fortunes of men is the mind. Whatever tends to invigorate,
to extend, or to adorn the mind, instantly rises to great value. The
utility of knowledge becomes singularly conspicuous even to the eyes of
the multitude: those who have no taste for its charms set store upon its
results, and make some efforts to acquire it. In free and enlightened
democratic ages, there is nothing to separate men from each other or
to retain them in their peculiar sphere; they rise or sink with extreme
rapidity. All classes live in perpetual intercourse from their great
proximity to each other. They communicate and intermingle every
day--they imitate and envy one other: this suggests to the people many
ideas, notions, and desires which it would never have entertained if the
distinctions of rank had been fixed and society at rest. In such
nations the servant never considers himself as an entire stranger to
the pleasures and toils of his master, nor the poor man to those of the
rich; the rural population assimilates itself to that of the towns, and
the provinces to the capital. No one easily allows himself to be reduced
to the mere material cares of life; and the humblest artisan casts
at times an eager and a furtive glance into the higher regions of the
intellect. People do not read with the same notions or in the same
manner as they do in an aristocratic community; but the circle of
readers is unceasingly expanded, till it includes all the citizens.
As soon as the multitude begins to take an interest in the labors of the
mind, it finds out that to excel in some of them is a powerful method of
acquiring fame, power, or wealth. The restless ambition which equality
begets instantly takes this direction as it does all others. The number
of those who cultivate science, letters, and the arts, becomes immense.
The intellectual world starts into prodigious activity: everyone
endeavors to open for himself a path there, and to draw the eyes of the
public after him. Something analogous occurs to what happens in society
in the United States, politically considered. What is done is often
imperfect, but the attempts are innumerable; and, although the results
of individual effort are commonly very small, the total amount is always
very large.
It is therefore not true to assert that men living in democratic ages
are naturally indifferent to science, literature, and the arts: only it
must be acknowledged that they cultivate them after their own
fashion, and bring to the task their own peculiar qualifications and
deficiencies.
Chapter X: Why The Americans Are More Addicted To Practical Than To
Theoretical Science
If a democratic state of society and democratic institutions do not
stop the career of the human mind, they incontestably guide it in one
direction in preference to another. Their effects, thus circumscribed,
are still exceedingly great; and I trust I may be pardoned if I pause
for a moment to survey them. We had occasion, in speaking of the
philosophical method of the American people, to make several remarks
which must here be turned to account.
Equality begets in man the desire of judging of everything for himself:
it gives him, in all things, a taste for the tangible and the real,
a contempt for tradition and for forms. These general tendencies are
principally discernible in the peculiar subject of this chapter. Those
who cultivate the sciences amongst a democratic people are always afraid
of losing their way in visionary speculation. They mistrust systems;
they adhere closely to facts and the study of facts with their own
senses. As they do not easily defer to the mere name of any fellow-man,
they are never inclined to rest upon any man's authority; but, on the
contrary, they are unremitting in their efforts to point out the weaker
points of their neighbors' opinions. Scientific precedents have very
little weight with them; they are never long detained by the subtilty
of the schools, nor ready to accept big words for sterling coin; they
penetrate, as far as they can, into the principal parts of the subject
which engages them, and they expound them in the vernacular tongue.
Scientific pursuits then follow a freer and a safer course, but a less
lofty one.
The mind may, as it appears to me, divide science into three parts. The
first comprises the most theoretical principles, and those more abstract
notions whose application is either unknown or very remote. The second
is composed of those general truths which still belong to pure theory,
but lead, nevertheless, by a straight and short road to practical
results. Methods of application and means of execution make up the
third. Each of these different portions of science may be separately
cultivated, although reason and experience show that none of them can
prosper long, if it be absolutely cut off from the two others.
In America the purely practical part of science is admirably understood,
and careful attention is paid to the theoretical portion which is
immediately requisite to application. On this head the Americans always
display a clear, free, original, and inventive power of mind. But
hardly anyone in the United States devotes himself to the essentially
theoretical and abstract portion of human knowledge. In this respect
the Americans carry to excess a tendency which is, I think, discernible,
though in a less degree, amongst all democratic nations.
Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of
the more elevated departments of science, than meditation; and nothing
is less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society.
We do not find there, as amongst an aristocratic people, one class which
clings to a state of repose because it is well off; and another which
does not venture to stir because it despairs of improving its condition.
Everyone is actively in motion: some in quest of power, others of
gain. In the midst of this universal tumult--this incessant conflict of
jarring interests--this continual stride of men after fortune--where is
that calm to be found which is necessary for the deeper combinations
of the intellect? How can the mind dwell upon any single point, when
everything whirls around it, and man himself is swept and beaten onwards
by the heady current which rolls all things in its course? But the
permanent agitation which subsists in the bosom of a peaceable and
established democracy, must be distinguished from the tumultuous and
revolutionary movements which almost always attend the birth and growth
of democratic society. When a violent revolution occurs amongst a highly
civilized people, it cannot fail to give a sudden impulse to their
feelings and their opinions. This is more particularly true of
democratic revolutions, which stir up all the classes of which a people
is composed, and beget, at the same time, inordinate ambition in the
breast of every member of the community. The French made most surprising
advances in the exact sciences at the very time at which they were
finishing the destruction of the remains of their former feudal society;
yet this sudden fecundity is not to be attributed to democracy, but to
the unexampled revolution which attended its growth. What happened at
that period was a special incident, and it would be unwise to regard
it as the test of a general principle. Great revolutions are not
more common amongst democratic nations than amongst others: I am even
inclined to believe that they are less so. But there prevails amongst
those populations a small distressing motion--a sort of incessant
jostling of men--which annoys and disturbs the mind, without exciting
or elevating it. Men who live in democratic communities not only seldom
indulge in meditation, but they naturally entertain very little esteem
for it. A democratic state of society and democratic institutions plunge
the greater part of men in constant active life; and the habits of
mind which are suited to an active life, are not always suited to a
contemplative one. The man of action is frequently obliged to content
himself with the best he can get, because he would never accomplish
his purpose if he chose to carry every detail to perfection. He has
perpetually occasion to rely on ideas which he has not had leisure
to search to the bottom; for he is much more frequently aided by the
opportunity of an idea than by its strict accuracy; and, in the long
run, he risks less in making use of some false principles, than in
spending his time in establishing all his principles on the basis of
truth. The world is not led by long or learned demonstrations; a rapid
glance at particular incidents, the daily study of the fleeting passions
of the multitude, the accidents of the time, and the art of turning them
to account, decide all its affairs.
In the ages in which active life is the condition of almost everyone,
men are therefore generally led to attach an excessive value to the
rapid bursts and superficial conceptions of the intellect; and, on
the other hand, to depreciate below their true standard its slower and
deeper labors. This opinion of the public influences the judgment of the
men who cultivate the sciences; they are persuaded that they may succeed
in those pursuits without meditation, or deterred from such pursuits as
demand it.
There are several methods of studying the sciences. Amongst a multitude
of men you will find a selfish, mercantile, and trading taste for
the discoveries of the mind, which must not be confounded with that
disinterested passion which is kindled in the heart of the few. A desire
to utilize knowledge is one thing; the pure desire to know is another.
I do not doubt that in a few minds and far between, an ardent,
inexhaustible love of truth springs up, self-supported, and living in
ceaseless fruition without ever attaining the satisfaction which it
seeks. This ardent love it is--this proud, disinterested love of what is
true--which raises men to the abstract sources of truth, to draw their
mother-knowledge thence. If Pascal had had nothing in view but some
large gain, or even if he had been stimulated by the love of fame alone,
I cannot conceive that he would ever have been able to rally all the
powers of his mind, as he did, for the better discovery of the most
hidden things of the Creator. When I see him, as it were, tear his soul
from the midst of all the cares of life to devote it wholly to these
researches, and, prematurely snapping the links which bind the frame to
life, die of old age before forty, I stand amazed, and I perceive that
no ordinary cause is at work to produce efforts so extra-ordinary.
The future will prove whether these passions, at once so rare and so
productive, come into being and into growth as easily in the midst of
democratic as in aristocratic communities. For myself, I confess that
I am slow to believe it. In aristocratic society, the class which gives
the tone to opinion, and has the supreme guidance of affairs, being
permanently and hereditarily placed above the multitude, naturally
conceives a lofty idea of itself and of man. It loves to invent for
him noble pleasures, to carve out splendid objects for his ambition.
Aristocracies often commit very tyrannical and very inhuman actions;
but they rarely entertain grovelling thoughts; and they show a kind of
haughty contempt of little pleasures, even whilst they indulge in
them. The effect is greatly to raise the general pitch of society. In
aristocratic ages vast ideas are commonly entertained of the dignity,
the power, and the greatness of man. These opinions exert their
influence on those who cultivate the sciences, as well as on the rest
of the community. They facilitate the natural impulse of the mind to the
highest regions of thought, and they naturally prepare it to conceive
a sublime--nay, almost a divine--love of truth. Men of science at such
periods are consequently carried away by theory; and it even happens
that they frequently conceive an inconsiderate contempt for the
practical part of learning. "Archimedes," says Plutarch, "was of so
lofty a spirit, that he never condescended to write any treatise on the
manner of constructing all these engines of offence and defence. And as
he held this science of inventing and putting together engines, and all
arts generally speaking which tended to any useful end in practice, to
be vile, low, and mercenary, he spent his talents and his studious hours
in writing of those things only whose beauty and subtilty had in them
no admixture of necessity." Such is the aristocratic aim of science; in
democratic nations it cannot be the same.
The greater part of the men who constitute these nations are extremely
eager in the pursuit of actual and physical gratification. As they are
always dissatisfied with the position which they occupy, and are always
free to leave it, they think of nothing but the means of changing their
fortune, or of increasing it. To minds thus predisposed, every new
method which leads by a shorter road to wealth, every machine which
spares labor, every instrument which diminishes the cost of production,
every discovery which facilitates pleasures or augments them, seems to
be the grandest effort of the human intellect. It is chiefly from
these motives that a democratic people addicts itself to scientific
pursuits--that it understands, and that it respects them. In
aristocratic ages, science is more particularly called upon to furnish
gratification to the mind; in democracies, to the body. You may be sure
that the more a nation is democratic, enlightened, and free, the greater
will be the number of these interested promoters of scientific genius,
and the more will discoveries immediately applicable to productive
industry confer gain, fame, and even power on their authors. For in
democracies the working class takes a part in public affairs; and public
honors, as well as pecuniary remuneration, may be awarded to those who
deserve them. In a community thus organized it may easily be conceived
that the human mind may be led insensibly to the neglect of theory; and
that it is urged, on the contrary, with unparalleled vehemence to the
applications of science, or at least to that portion of theoretical
science which is necessary to those who make such applications. In vain
will some innate propensity raise the mind towards the loftier spheres
of the intellect; interest draws it down to the middle zone. There it
may develop all its energy and restless activity, there it may engender
all its wonders. These very Americans, who have not discovered one of
the general laws of mechanics, have introduced into navigation an engine
which changes the aspect of the world.
Assuredly I do not content that the democratic nations of our time are
destined to witness the extinction of the transcendent luminaries of
man's intelligence, nor even that no new lights will ever start into
existence. At the age at which the world has now arrived, and amongst so
many cultivated nations, perpetually excited by the fever of productive
industry, the bonds which connect the different parts of science
together cannot fail to strike the observation; and the taste for
practical science itself, if it be enlightened, ought to lead men not to
neglect theory. In the midst of such numberless attempted applications
of so many experiments, repeated every day, it is almost impossible that
general laws should not frequently be brought to light; so that great
discoveries would be frequent, though great inventors be rare. I
believe, moreover, in the high calling of scientific minds. If the
democratic principle does not, on the one hand, induce men to cultivate
science for its own sake, on the other it enormously increases the
number of those who do cultivate it. Nor is it credible that, from
amongst so great a multitude no speculative genius should from time to
time arise, inflamed by the love of truth alone. Such a one, we may be
sure, would dive into the deepest mysteries of nature, whatever be
the spirit of his country or his age. He requires no assistance in his
course--enough that he be not checked in it.
All that I mean to say is this:--permanent inequality of conditions
leads men to confine themselves to the arrogant and sterile research
of abstract truths; whilst the social condition and the institutions
of democracy prepare them to seek the immediate and useful practical
results of the sciences. This tendency is natural and inevitable: it is
curious to be acquainted with it, and it may be necessary to point
it out. If those who are called upon to guide the nations of our time
clearly discerned from afar off these new tendencies, which will soon
be irresistible, they would understand that, possessing education
and freedom, men living in democratic ages cannot fail to improve the
industrial part of science; and that henceforward all the efforts of
the constituted authorities ought to be directed to support the highest
branches of learning, and to foster the nobler passion for science
itself. In the present age the human mind must be coerced into
theoretical studies; it runs of its own accord to practical
applications; and, instead of perpetually referring it to the minute
examination of secondary effects, it is well to divert it from them
sometimes, in order to raise it up to the contemplation of primary
causes. Because the civilization of ancient Rome perished in consequence
of the invasion of the barbarians, we are perhaps too apt to think that
civilization cannot perish in any other manner. If the light by which we
are guided is ever extinguished, it will dwindle by degrees, and expire
of itself. By dint of close adherence to mere applications, principles
would be lost sight of; and when the principles were wholly forgotten,
the methods derived from them would be ill-pursued. New methods could
no longer be invented, and men would continue to apply, without
intelligence, and without art, scientific processes no longer
understood.
When Europeans first arrived in China, three hundred years ago,
they found that almost all the arts had reached a certain degree of
perfection there; and they were surprised that a people which had
attained this point should not have gone beyond it. At a later period
they discovered some traces of the higher branches of science which were
lost. The nation was absorbed in productive industry: the greater part
of its scientific processes had been preserved, but science itself no
longer existed there. This served to explain the strangely motionless
state in which they found the minds of this people. The Chinese, in
following the track of their forefathers, had forgotten the reasons by
which the latter had been guided. They still used the formula, without
asking for its meaning: they retained the instrument, but they no longer
possessed the art of altering or renewing it. The Chinese, then, had
lost the power of change; for them to improve was impossible. They
were compelled, at all times and in all points, to imitate their
predecessors, lest they should stray into utter darkness, by deviating
for an instant from the path already laid down for them. The source of
human knowledge was all but dry; and though the stream still ran on, it
could neither swell its waters nor alter its channel. Notwithstanding
this, China had subsisted peaceably for centuries. The invaders who had
conquered the country assumed the manners of the inhabitants, and
order prevailed there. A sort of physical prosperity was everywhere
discernible: revolutions were rare, and war was, so to speak, unknown.
It is then a fallacy to flatter ourselves with the reflection that the
barbarians are still far from us; for if there be some nations which
allow civilization to be torn from their grasp, there are others who
trample it themselves under their feet.
Chapter XI: Of The Spirit In Which The Americans Cultivate The Arts
It would be to waste the time of my readers and my own if I strove
to demonstrate how the general mediocrity of fortunes, the absence of
superfluous wealth, the universal desire of comfort, and the constant
efforts by which everyone attempts to procure it, make the taste for the
useful predominate over the love of the beautiful in the heart of man.
Democratic nations, amongst which all these things exist, will therefore
cultivate the arts which serve to render life easy, in preference to
those whose object is to adorn it. They will habitually prefer the
useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful should
be useful. But I propose to go further; and after having pointed out
this first feature, to sketch several others.
It commonly happens that in the ages of privilege the practice of
almost all the arts becomes a privilege; and that every profession is
a separate walk, upon which it is not allowable for everyone to enter.
Even when productive industry is free, the fixed character which
belongs to aristocratic nations gradually segregates all the persons who
practise the same art, till they form a distinct class, always composed
of the same families, whose members are all known to each other, and
amongst whom a public opinion of their own and a species of corporate
pride soon spring up. In a class or guild of this kind, each artisan has
not only his fortune to make, but his reputation to preserve. He is not
exclusively swayed by his own interest, or even by that of his customer,
but by that of the body to which he belongs; and the interest of that
body is, that each artisan should produce the best possible workmanship.
In aristocratic ages, the object of the arts is therefore to manufacture
as well as possible--not with the greatest despatch, or at the lowest
rate.
When, on the contrary, every profession is open to all--when a multitude
of persons are constantly embracing and abandoning it--and when its
several members are strangers to each other, indifferent, and from their
numbers hardly seen amongst themselves; the social tie is destroyed,
and each workman, standing alone, endeavors simply to gain the greatest
possible quantity of money at the least possible cost. The will of the
customer is then his only limit. But at the same time a corresponding
revolution takes place in the customer also. In countries in which
riches as well as power are concentrated and retained in the hands of
the few, the use of the greater part of this world's goods belongs to a
small number of individuals, who are always the same. Necessity, public
opinion, or moderate desires exclude all others from the enjoyment
of them. As this aristocratic class remains fixed at the pinnacle of
greatness on which it stands, without diminution or increase, it is
always acted upon by the same wants and affected by them in the same
manner. The men of whom it is composed naturally derive from their
superior and hereditary position a taste for what is extremely well made
and lasting. This affects the general way of thinking of the nation in
relation to the arts. It often occurs, among such a people, that even
the peasant will rather go without the object he covets, than procure it
in a state of imperfection. In aristocracies, then, the handicraftsmen
work for only a limited number of very fastidious customers: the
profit they hope to make depends principally on the perfection of their
workmanship.
Such is no longer the case when, all privileges being abolished, ranks
are intermingled, and men are forever rising or sinking upon the ladder
of society. Amongst a democratic people a number of citizens always
exist whose patrimony is divided and decreasing. They have contracted,
under more prosperous circumstances, certain wants, which remain after
the means of satisfying such wants are gone; and they are anxiously
looking out for some surreptitious method of providing for them. On the
other hand, there are always in democracies a large number of men whose
fortune is upon the increase, but whose desires grow much faster than
their fortunes: and who gloat upon the gifts of wealth in anticipation,
long before they have means to command them. Such men eager to find some
short cut to these gratifications, already almost within their reach.
From the combination of these causes the result is, that in democracies
there are always a multitude of individuals whose wants are above their
means, and who are very willing to take up with imperfect satisfaction
rather than abandon the object of their desires.
The artisan readily understands these passions, for he himself partakes
in them: in an aristocracy he would seek to sell his workmanship at a
high price to the few; he now conceives that the more expeditious way of
getting rich is to sell them at a low price to all. But there are only
two ways of lowering the price of commodities. The first is to discover
some better, shorter, and more ingenious method of producing them: the
second is to manufacture a larger quantity of goods, nearly similar,
but of less value. Amongst a democratic population, all the intellectual
faculties of the workman are directed to these two objects: he strives
to invent methods which may enable him not only to work better, but
quicker and cheaper; or, if he cannot succeed in that, to diminish the
intrinsic qualities of the thing he makes, without rendering it wholly
unfit for the use for which it is intended. When none but the wealthy
had watches, they were almost all very good ones: few are now made which
are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket. Thus the democratic
principle not only tends to direct the human mind to the useful arts,
but it induces the artisan to produce with greater rapidity a quantity
of imperfect commodities, and the consumer to content himself with these
commodities.
Not that in democracies the arts are incapable of producing very
commendable works, if such be required. This may occasionally be the
case, if customers appear who are ready to pay for time and trouble.
In this rivalry of every kind of industry--in the midst of this immense
competition and these countless experiments, some excellent workmen are
formed who reach the utmost limits of their craft. But they have rarely
an opportunity of displaying what they can do; they are scrupulously
sparing of their powers; they remain in a state of accomplished
mediocrity, which condemns itself, and, though it be very well able
to shoot beyond the mark before it, aims only at what it hits. In
aristocracies, on the contrary, workmen always do all they can; and
when they stop, it is because they have reached the limit of their
attainments.
When I arrive in a country where I find some of the finest productions
of the arts, I learn from this fact nothing of the social condition or
of the political constitution of the country. But if I perceive that
the productions of the arts are generally of an inferior quality, very
abundant and very cheap, I am convinced that, amongst the people where
this occurs, privilege is on the decline, and that ranks are beginning
to intermingle, and will soon be confounded together.
The handicraftsmen of democratic ages endeavor not only to bring their
useful productions within the reach of the whole community, but they
strive to give to all their commodities attractive qualities which they
do not in reality possess. In the confusion of all ranks everyone hopes
to appear what he is not, and makes great exertions to succeed in this
object. This sentiment indeed, which is but too natural to the heart of
man, does not originate in the democratic principle; but that principle
applies it to material objects. To mimic virtue is of every age; but the
hypocrisy of luxury belongs more particularly to the ages of democracy.
To satisfy these new cravings of human vanity the arts have recourse to
every species of imposture: and these devices sometimes go so far as to
defeat their own purpose. Imitation diamonds are now made which may be
easily mistaken for real ones; as soon as the art of fabricating false
diamonds shall have reached so high a degree of perfection that they
cannot be distinguished from real ones, it is probable that both one and
the other will be abandoned, and become mere pebbles again.
This leads me to speak of those arts which are called the fine arts, by
way of distinction. I do not believe that it is a necessary effect of a
democratic social condition and of democratic institutions to diminish
the number of men who cultivate the fine arts; but these causes exert
a very powerful influence on the manner in which these arts are
cultivated. Many of those who had already contracted a taste for the
fine arts are impoverished: on the other hand, many of those who are not
yet rich begin to conceive that taste, at least by imitation; and the
number of consumers increases, but opulent and fastidious consumers
become more scarce. Something analogous to what I have already
pointed out in the useful arts then takes place in the fine arts;
the productions of artists are more numerous, but the merit of each
production is diminished. No longer able to soar to what is great, they
cultivate what is pretty and elegant; and appearance is more attended
to than reality. In aristocracies a few great pictures are produced;
in democratic countries, a vast number of insignificant ones. In the
former, statues are raised of bronze; in the latter, they are modelled
in plaster.
When I arrived for the first time at New York, by that part of the
Atlantic Ocean which is called the Narrows, I was surprised to perceive
along the shore, at some distance from the city, a considerable number
of little palaces of white marble, several of which were built after the
models of ancient architecture. When I went the next day to inspect more
closely the building which had particularly attracted my notice, I found
that its walls were of whitewashed brick, and its columns of painted
wood. All the edifices which I had admired the night before were of the
same kind.
The social condition and the institutions of democracy impart, moreover,
certain peculiar tendencies to all the imitative arts, which it is easy
to point out. They frequently withdraw them from the delineation of the
soul to fix them exclusively on that of the body: and they substitute
the representation of motion and sensation for that of sentiment and
thought: in a word, they put the real in the place of the ideal. I doubt
whether Raphael studied the minutest intricacies of the mechanism of the
human body as thoroughly as the draughtsmen of our own time. He did not
attach the same importance to rigorous accuracy on this point as they
do, because he aspired to surpass nature. He sought to make of man
something which should be superior to man, and to embellish beauty's
self. David and his scholars were, on the contrary, as good anatomists
as they were good painters. They wonderfully depicted the models which
they had before their eyes, but they rarely imagined anything beyond
them: they followed nature with fidelity: whilst Raphael sought for
something better than nature. They have left us an exact portraiture
of man; but he discloses in his works a glimpse of the Divinity. This
remark as to the manner of treating a subject is no less applicable to
the choice of it. The painters of the Middle Ages generally sought far
above themselves, and away from their own time, for mighty subjects,
which left to their imagination an unbounded range. Our painters
frequently employ their talents in the exact imitation of the details
of private life, which they have always before their eyes; and they are
forever copying trivial objects, the originals of which are only too
abundant in nature.
Chapter XII: Why The Americans Raise Some Monuments So Insignificant,
And Others So Important
I have just observed, that in democratic ages monuments of the arts tend
to become more numerous and less important. I now hasten to point out
the exception to this rule. In a democratic community individuals are
very powerless; but the State which represents them all, and contains
them all in its grasp, is very powerful. Nowhere do citizens appear so
insignificant as in a democratic nation; nowhere does the nation itself
appear greater, or does the mind more easily take in a wide general
survey of it. In democratic communities the imagination is compressed
when men consider themselves; it expands indefinitely when they think
of the State. Hence it is that the same men who live on a small scale in
narrow dwellings, frequently aspire to gigantic splendor in the erection
of their public monuments.
The Americans traced out the circuit of an immense city on the site
which they intended to make their capital, but which, up to the present
time, is hardly more densely peopled than Pontoise, though, according
to them, it will one day contain a million of inhabitants. They have
already rooted up trees for ten miles round, lest they should interfere
with the future citizens of this imaginary metropolis. They have erected
a magnificent palace for Congress in the centre of the city, and have
given it the pompous name of the Capitol. The several States of the
Union are every day planning and erecting for themselves prodigious
undertakings, which would astonish the engineers of the great European
nations. Thus democracy not only leads men to a vast number of
inconsiderable productions; it also leads them to raise some monuments
on the largest scale: but between these two extremes there is a blank.
A few scattered remains of enormous buildings can therefore teach us
nothing of the social condition and the institutions of the people by
whom they were raised. I may add, though the remark leads me to step
out of my subject, that they do not make us better acquainted with its
greatness, its civilization, and its real prosperity. Whensoever a power
of any kind shall be able to make a whole people co-operate in a single
undertaking, that power, with a little knowledge and a great deal of
time, will succeed in obtaining something enormous from the co-operation
of efforts so multiplied. But this does not lead to the conclusion that
the people was very happy, very enlightened, or even very strong.
The Spaniards found the City of Mexico full of magnificent temples
and vast palaces; but that did not prevent Cortes from conquering the
Mexican Empire with 600 foot soldiers and sixteen horses. If the Romans
had been better acquainted with the laws of hydraulics, they would not
have constructed all the aqueducts which surround the ruins of their
cities--they would have made a better use of their power and their
wealth. If they had invented the steam-engine, perhaps they would not
have extended to the extremities of their empire those long artificial
roads which are called Roman roads. These things are at once the
splendid memorials of their ignorance and of their greatness. A people
which should leave no other vestige of its track than a few leaden pipes
in the earth and a few iron rods upon its surface, might have been more
the master of nature than the Romans.
Chapter XIII: Literary Characteristics Of Democratic Ages
When a traveller goes into a bookseller's shop in the United States,
and examines the American books upon the shelves, the number of works
appears extremely great; whilst that of known authors appears, on the
contrary, to be extremely small. He will first meet with a number
of elementary treatises, destined to teach the rudiments of human
knowledge. Most of these books are written in Europe; the Americans
reprint them, adapting them to their own country. Next comes an enormous
quantity of religious works, Bibles, sermons, edifying anecdotes,
controversial divinity, and reports of charitable societies; lastly,
appears the long catalogue of political pamphlets. In America, parties
do not write books to combat each others' opinions, but pamphlets which
are circulated for a day with incredible rapidity, and then expire. In
the midst of all these obscure productions of the human brain are to be
found the more remarkable works of that small number of authors, whose
names are, or ought to be, known to Europeans.
Although America is perhaps in our days the civilized country in
which literature is least attended to, a large number of persons are
nevertheless to be found there who take an interest in the productions
of the mind, and who make them, if not the study of their lives, at
least the charm of their leisure hours. But England supplies these
readers with the larger portion of the books which they require. Almost
all important English books are republished in the United States. The
literary genius of Great Britain still darts its rays into the recesses
of the forests of the New World. There is hardly a pioneer's hut which
does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember that I
read the feudal play of Henry V for the first time in a loghouse.
Not only do the Americans constantly draw upon the treasures of English
literature, but it may be said with truth that they find the literature
of England growing on their own soil. The larger part of that small
number of men in the United States who are engaged in the composition of
literary works are English in substance, and still more so in form.
Thus they transport into the midst of democracy the ideas and literary
fashions which are current amongst the aristocratic nation they have
taken for their model. They paint with colors borrowed from foreign
manners; and as they hardly ever represent the country they were born
in as it really is, they are seldom popular there. The citizens of the
United States are themselves so convinced that it is not for them that
books are published, that before they can make up their minds upon the
merit of one of their authors, they generally wait till his fame has
been ratified in England, just as in pictures the author of an original
is held to be entitled to judge of the merit of a copy. The inhabitants
of the United States have then at present, properly speaking, no
literature. The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the
journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the
language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. Other
authors are aliens; they are to the Americans what the imitators of the
Greeks and Romans were to us at the revival of learning--an object of
curiosity, not of general sympathy. They amuse the mind, but they do not
act upon the manners of the people.
I have already said that this state of things is very far from
originating in democracy alone, and that the causes of it must be sought
for in several peculiar circumstances independent of the democratic
principle. If the Americans, retaining the same laws and social
condition, had had a different origin, and had been transported
into another country, I do not question that they would have had
a literature. Even as they now are, I am convinced that they will
ultimately have one; but its character will be different from that which
marks the American literary productions of our time, and that character
will be peculiarly its own. Nor is it impossible to trace this character
beforehand.
I suppose an aristocratic people amongst whom letters are cultivated;
the labors of the mind, as well as the affairs of state, are conducted
by a ruling class in society. The literary as well as the political
career is almost entirely confined to this class, or to those nearest
to it in rank. These premises suffice to give me a key to all the rest.
When a small number of the same men are engaged at the same time upon
the same objects, they easily concert with one another, and agree upon
certain leading rules which are to govern them each and all. If the
object which attracts the attention of these men is literature, the
productions of the mind will soon be subjected by them to precise
canons, from which it will no longer be allowable to depart. If these
men occupy a hereditary position in the country, they will be naturally
inclined, not only to adopt a certain number of fixed rules for
themselves, but to follow those which their forefathers laid down for
their own guidance; their code will be at once strict and traditional.
As they are not necessarily engrossed by the cares of daily life--as
they have never been so, any more than their fathers were before
them--they have learned to take an interest, for several generations
back, in the labors of the mind. They have learned to understand
literature as an art, to love it in the end for its own sake, and to
feel a scholar-like satisfaction in seeing men conform to its rules. Nor
is this all: the men of whom I speak began and will end their lives in
easy or in affluent circumstances; hence they have naturally conceived
a taste for choice gratifications, and a love of refined and delicate
pleasures. Nay more, a kind of indolence of mind and heart, which they
frequently contract in the midst of this long and peaceful enjoyment
of so much welfare, leads them to put aside, even from their pleasures,
whatever might be too startling or too acute. They had rather be amused
than intensely excited; they wish to be interested, but not to be
carried away.
Now let us fancy a great number of literary performances executed by the
men, or for the men, whom I have just described, and we shall readily
conceive a style of literature in which everything will be regular and
prearranged. The slightest work will be carefully touched in its least
details; art and labor will be conspicuous in everything; each kind of
writing will have rules of its own, from which it will not be allowed to
swerve, and which distinguish it from all others. Style will be thought
of almost as much importance as thought; and the form will be no less
considered than the matter: the diction will be polished, measured,
and uniform. The tone of the mind will be always dignified, seldom very
animated; and writers will care more to perfect what they produce than
to multiply their productions. It will sometimes happen that the members
of the literary class, always living amongst themselves and writing for
themselves alone, will lose sight of the rest of the world, which will
infect them with a false and labored style; they will lay down minute
literary rules for their exclusive use, which will insensibly lead them
to deviate from common-sense, and finally to transgress the bounds of
nature. By dint of striving after a mode of parlance different from
the vulgar, they will arrive at a sort of aristocratic jargon, which is
hardly less remote from pure language than is the coarse dialect of the
people. Such are the natural perils of literature amongst aristocracies.
Every aristocracy which keeps itself entirely aloof from the people
becomes impotent--a fact which is as true in literature as it is in
politics. *a
[Footnote a: All this is especially true of the aristocratic countries
which have been long and peacefully subject to a monarchical government.
When liberty prevails in an aristocracy, the higher ranks are constantly
obliged to make use of the lower classes; and when they use, they
approach them. This frequently introduces something of a democratic
spirit into an aristocratic community. There springs up, moreover, in a
privileged body, governing with energy and an habitually bold policy, a
taste for stir and excitement which must infallibly affect all literary
performances.]
Let us now turn the picture and consider the other side of it; let us
transport ourselves into the midst of a democracy, not unprepared by
ancient traditions and present culture to partake in the pleasures of
the mind. Ranks are there intermingled and confounded; knowledge and
power are both infinitely subdivided, and, if I may use the expression,
scattered on every side. Here then is a motley multitude, whose
intellectual wants are to be supplied. These new votaries of the
pleasures of the mind have not all received the same education; they
do not possess the same degree of culture as their fathers, nor any
resemblance to them--nay, they perpetually differ from themselves,
for they live in a state of incessant change of place, feelings,
and fortunes. The mind of each member of the community is therefore
unattached to that of his fellow-citizens by tradition or by common
habits; and they have never had the power, the inclination, nor the
time to concert together. It is, however, from the bosom of this
heterogeneous and agitated mass that authors spring; and from the same
source their profits and their fame are distributed. I can without
difficulty understand that, under these circumstances, I must expect
to meet in the literature of such a people with but few of those strict
conventional rules which are admitted by readers and by writers in
aristocratic ages. If it should happen that the men of some one period
were agreed upon any such rules, that would prove nothing for the
following period; for amongst democratic nations each new generation is
a new people. Amongst such nations, then, literature will not easily
be subjected to strict rules, and it is impossible that any such rules
should ever be permanent.
In democracies it is by no means the case that all the men who cultivate
literature have received a literary education; and most of those who
have some tinge of belles-lettres are either engaged in politics, or in
a profession which only allows them to taste occasionally and by stealth
the pleasures of the mind. These pleasures, therefore, do not constitute
the principal charm of their lives; but they are considered as a
transient and necessary recreation amidst the serious labors of life.
Such man can never acquire a sufficiently intimate knowledge of the art
of literature to appreciate its more delicate beauties; and the minor
shades of expression must escape them. As the time they can devote to
letters is very short, they seek to make the best use of the whole of
it. They prefer books which may be easily procured, quickly read, and
which require no learned researches to be understood. They ask for
beauties, self-proffered and easily enjoyed; above all, they must have
what is unexpected and new. Accustomed to the struggle, the crosses, and
the monotony of practical life, they require rapid emotions, startling
passages--truths or errors brilliant enough to rouse them up, and to
plunge them at once, as if by violence, into the midst of a subject.
Why should I say more? or who does not understand what is about to
follow, before I have expressed it? Taken as a whole, literature
in democratic ages can never present, as it does in the periods of
aristocracy, an aspect of order, regularity, science, and art; its form
will, on the contrary, ordinarily be slighted, sometimes despised. Style
will frequently be fantastic, incorrect, overburdened, and loose--almost
always vehement and bold. Authors will aim at rapidity of execution,
more than at perfection of detail. Small productions will be more
common than bulky books; there will be more wit than erudition, more
imagination than profundity; and literary performances will bear marks
of an untutored and rude vigor of thought--frequently of great variety
and singular fecundity. The object of authors will be to astonish rather
than to please, and to stir the passions more than to charm the taste.
Here and there, indeed, writers will doubtless occur who will choose
a different track, and who will, if they are gifted with superior
abilities, succeed in finding readers, in spite of their defects or
their better qualities; but these exceptions will be rare, and even
the authors who shall so depart from the received practice in the main
subject of their works, will always relapse into it in some lesser
details.
I have just depicted two extreme conditions: the transition by which a
nation passes from the former to the latter is not sudden but gradual,
and marked with shades of very various intensity. In the passage which
conducts a lettered people from the one to the other, there is almost
always a moment at which the literary genius of democratic nations has
its confluence with that of aristocracies, and both seek to establish
their joint sway over the human mind. Such epochs are transient, but
very brilliant: they are fertile without exuberance, and animated
without confusion. The French literature of the eighteenth century may
serve as an example.
I should say more than I mean if I were to assert that the literature of
a nation is always subordinate to its social condition and its political
constitution. I am aware that, independently of these causes, there
are several others which confer certain characteristics on literary
productions; but these appear to me to be the chief. The relations which
exist between the social and political condition of a people and the
genius of its authors are always very numerous: whoever knows the one is
never completely ignorant of the other.
Chapter XIV: The Trade Of Literature
Democracy not only infuses a taste for letters among the trading
classes, but introduces a trading spirit into literature. In
aristocracies, readers are fastidious and few in number; in democracies,
they are far more numerous and far less difficult to please. The
consequence is, that among aristocratic nations, no one can hope to
succeed without immense exertions, and that these exertions may bestow
a great deal of fame, but can never earn much money; whilst among
democratic nations, a writer may flatter himself that he will obtain at
a cheap rate a meagre reputation and a large fortune. For this
purpose he need not be admired; it is enough that he is liked. The
ever-increasing crowd of readers, and their continual craving for
something new, insure the sale of books which nobody much esteems.
In democratic periods the public frequently treat authors as kings do
their courtiers; they enrich, and they despise them. What more is needed
by the venal souls which are born in courts, or which are worthy to live
there? Democratic literature is always infested with a tribe of writers
who look upon letters as a mere trade: and for some few great authors
who adorn it you may reckon thousands of idea-mongers.
Chapter XV: The Study Of Greek And Latin Literature Peculiarly Useful In
Democratic Communities
What was called the People in the most democratic republics of
antiquity, was very unlike what we designate by that term. In Athens,
all the citizens took part in public affairs; but there were only 20,000
citizens to more than 350,000 inhabitants. All the rest were slaves, and
discharged the greater part of those duties which belong at the present
day to the lower or even to the middle classes. Athens, then, with her
universal suffrage, was after all merely an aristocratic republic in
which all the nobles had an equal right to the government. The struggle
between the patricians and plebeians of Rome must be considered in
the same light: it was simply an intestine feud between the elder and
younger branches of the same family. All the citizens belonged, in fact,
to the aristocracy, and partook of its character.
It is moreover to be remarked, that amongst the ancients books were
always scarce and dear; and that very great difficulties impeded their
publication and circulation. These circumstances concentrated literary
tastes and habits amongst a small number of men, who formed a small
literary aristocracy out of the choicer spirits of the great political
aristocracy. Accordingly nothing goes to prove that literature was ever
treated as a trade amongst the Greeks and Romans.
These peoples, which not only constituted aristocracies, but very
polished and free nations, of course imparted to their literary
productions the defects and the merits which characterize the literature
of aristocratic ages. And indeed a very superficial survey of the
literary remains of the ancients will suffice to convince us, that if
those writers were sometimes deficient in variety, or fertility in their
subjects, or in boldness, vivacity, or power of generalization in
their thoughts, they always displayed exquisite care and skill in their
details. Nothing in their works seems to be done hastily or at random:
every line is written for the eye of the connoisseur, and is shaped
after some conception of ideal beauty. No literature places those fine
qualities, in which the writers of democracies are naturally deficient,
in bolder relief than that of the ancients; no literature, therefore,
ought to be more studied in democratic ages. This study is better suited
than any other to combat the literary defects inherent in those ages; as
for their more praiseworthy literary qualities, they will spring up of
their own accord, without its being necessary to learn to acquire them.
It is important that this point should be clearly understood. A
particular study may be useful to the literature of a people, without
being appropriate to its social and political wants. If men were to
persist in teaching nothing but the literature of the dead languages in
a community where everyone is habitually led to make vehement exertions
to augment or to maintain his fortune, the result would be a very
polished, but a very dangerous, race of citizens. For as their social
and political condition would give them every day a sense of wants which
their education would never teach them to supply, they would perturb the
State, in the name of the Greeks and Romans, instead of enriching it by
their productive industry.
It is evident that in democratic communities the interest of
individuals, as well as the security of the commonwealth, demands that
the education of the greater number should be scientific, commercial,
and industrial, rather than literary. Greek and Latin should not be
taught in all schools; but it is important that those who by their
natural disposition or their fortune are destined to cultivate letters
or prepared to relish them, should find schools where a complete
knowledge of ancient literature may be acquired, and where the true
scholar may be formed. A few excellent universities would do more
towards the attainment of this object than a vast number of bad grammar
schools, where superfluous matters, badly learned, stand in the way of
sound instruction in necessary studies.
All who aspire to literary excellence in democratic nations, ought
frequently to refresh themselves at the springs of ancient literature:
there is no more wholesome course for the mind. Not that I hold the
literary productions of the ancients to be irreproachable; but I
think that they have some especial merits, admirably calculated to
counterbalance our peculiar defects. They are a prop on the side on
which we are in most danger of falling.
Chapter XVI: The Effect Of Democracy On Language
If the reader has rightly understood what I have already said on
the subject of literature in general, he will have no difficulty in
comprehending that species of influence which a democratic social
condition and democratic institutions may exercise over language itself,
which is the chief instrument of thought.
American authors may truly be said to live more in England than in their
own country; since they constantly study the English writers, and take
them every day for their models. But such is not the case with the bulk
of the population, which is more immediately subjected to the peculiar
causes acting upon the United States. It is not then to the written, but
to the spoken language that attention must be paid, if we would detect
the modifications which the idiom of an aristocratic people may undergo
when it becomes the language of a democracy.
Englishmen of education, and more competent judges than I can be myself
of the nicer shades of expression, have frequently assured me that
the language of the educated classes in the United States is notably
different from that of the educated classes in Great Britain. They
complain not only that the Americans have brought into use a number of
new words--the difference and the distance between the two countries
might suffice to explain that much--but that these new words are more
especially taken from the jargon of parties, the mechanical arts, or the
language of trade. They assert, in addition to this, that old English
words are often used by the Americans in new acceptations; and lastly,
that the inhabitants of the United States frequently intermingle their
phraseology in the strangest manner, and sometimes place words together
which are always kept apart in the language of the mother-country. These
remarks, which were made to me at various times by persons who appeared
to be worthy of credit, led me to reflect upon the subject; and my
reflections brought me, by theoretical reasoning, to the same point at
which my informants had arrived by practical observation.
In aristocracies, language must naturally partake of that state of
repose in which everything remains. Few new words are coined, because
few new things are made; and even if new things were made, they would
be designated by known words, whose meaning has been determined by
tradition. If it happens that the human mind bestirs itself at length,
or is roused by light breaking in from without, the novel expressions
which are introduced are characterized by a degree of learning,
intelligence, and philosophy, which shows that they do not originate
in a democracy. After the fall of Constantinople had turned the tide of
science and literature towards the west, the French language was almost
immediately invaded by a multitude of new words, which had all Greek
or Latin roots. An erudite neologism then sprang up in France which was
confined to the educated classes, and which produced no sensible effect,
or at least a very gradual one, upon the people. All the nations of
Europe successively exhibited the same change. Milton alone introduced
more than six hundred words into the English language, almost all
derived from the Latin, the Greek, or the Hebrew. The constant agitation
which prevails in a democratic community tends unceasingly, on the
contrary, to change the character of the language, as it does the aspect
of affairs. In the midst of this general stir and competition of minds,
a great number of new ideas are formed, old ideas are lost, or reappear,
or are subdivided into an infinite variety of minor shades. The
consequence is, that many words must fall into desuetude, and others
must be brought into use.
Democratic nations love change for its own sake; and this is seen in
their language as much as in their politics. Even when they do not
need to change words, they sometimes feel a wish to transform them. The
genius of a democratic people is not only shown by the great number of
words they bring into use, but also by the nature of the ideas these new
words represent. Amongst such a people the majority lays down the law
in language as well as in everything else; its prevailing spirit is as
manifest in that as in other respects. But the majority is more engaged
in business than in study--in political and commercial interests than in
philosophical speculation or literary pursuits. Most of the words coined
or adopted for its use will therefore bear the mark of these habits;
they will mainly serve to express the wants of business, the passions of
party, or the details of the public administration. In these departments
the language will constantly spread, whilst on the other hand it will
gradually lose ground in metaphysics and theology.
As to the source from which democratic nations are wont to derive their
new expressions, and the manner in which they go to work to coin them,
both may easily be described. Men living in democratic countries know
but little of the language which was spoken at Athens and at Rome,
and they do not care to dive into the lore of antiquity to find the
expression they happen to want. If they have sometimes recourse to
learned etymologies, vanity will induce them to search at the roots of
the dead languages; but erudition does not naturally furnish them with
its resources. The most ignorant, it sometimes happens, will use them
most. The eminently democratic desire to get above their own sphere will
often lead them to seek to dignify a vulgar profession by a Greek or
Latin name. The lower the calling is, and the more remote from learning,
the more pompous and erudite is its appellation. Thus the French
rope-dancers have transformed themselves into acrobates and funambules.
In the absence of knowledge of the dead languages, democratic
nations are apt to borrow words from living tongues; for their mutual
intercourse becomes perpetual, and the inhabitants of different
countries imitate each other the more readily as they grow more like
each other every day.
But it is principally upon their own languages that democratic nations
attempt to perpetrate innovations. From time to time they resume
forgotten expressions in their vocabulary, which they restore to use; or
they borrow from some particular class of the community a term peculiar
to it, which they introduce with a figurative meaning into the language
of daily life. Many expressions which originally belonged to the
technical language of a profession or a party, are thus drawn into
general circulation.
The most common expedient employed by democratic nations to make an
innovation in language consists in giving some unwonted meaning to
an expression already in use. This method is very simple, prompt, and
convenient; no learning is required to use it aright, and ignorance
itself rather facilitates the practice; but that practice is most
dangerous to the language. When a democratic people doubles the meaning
of a word in this way, they sometimes render the signification which it
retains as ambiguous as that which it acquires. An author begins by a
slight deflection of a known expression from its primitive meaning, and
he adapts it, thus modified, as well as he can to his subject. A second
writer twists the sense of the expression in another way; a third takes
possession of it for another purpose; and as there is no common appeal
to the sentence of a permanent tribunal which may definitely settle the
signification of the word, it remains in an ambiguous condition. The
consequence is that writers hardly ever appear to dwell upon a single
thought, but they always seem to point their aim at a knot of ideas,
leaving the reader to judge which of them has been hit. This is a
deplorable consequence of democracy. I had rather that the language
should be made hideous with words imported from the Chinese, the
Tartars, or the Hurons, than that the meaning of a word in our own
language should become indeterminate. Harmony and uniformity are
only secondary beauties in composition; many of these things are
conventional, and, strictly speaking, it is possible to forego them; but
without clear phraseology there is no good language.
The principle of equality necessarily introduces several other changes
into language. In aristocratic ages, when each nation tends to stand
aloof from all others and likes to have distinct characteristics of its
own, it often happens that several peoples which have a common origin
become nevertheless estranged from each other, so that, without ceasing
to understand the same language, they no longer all speak it in the same
manner. In these ages each nation is divided into a certain number of
classes, which see but little of each other, and do not intermingle.
Each of these classes contracts, and invariably retains, habits of
mind peculiar to itself, and adopts by choice certain words and certain
terms, which afterwards pass from generation to generation, like their
estates. The same idiom then comprises a language of the poor and a
language of the rich--a language of the citizen and a language of the
nobility--a learned language and a vulgar one. The deeper the divisions,
and the more impassable the barriers of society become, the more must
this be the case. I would lay a wager, that amongst the castes of India
there are amazing variations of language, and that there is almost
as much difference between the language of the pariah and that of the
Brahmin as there is in their dress. When, on the contrary, men, being no
longer restrained by ranks, meet on terms of constant intercourse--when
castes are destroyed, and the classes of society are recruited and
intermixed with each other, all the words of a language are mingled.
Those which are unsuitable to the greater number perish; the remainder
form a common store, whence everyone chooses pretty nearly at random.
Almost all the different dialects which divided the idioms of European
nations are manifestly declining; there is no patois in the New World,
and it is disappearing every day from the old countries.
The influence of this revolution in social conditions is as much felt
in style as it is in phraseology. Not only does everyone use the same
words, but a habit springs up of using them without discrimination. The
rules which style had set up are almost abolished: the line ceases to
be drawn between expressions which seem by their very nature vulgar, and
other which appear to be refined. Persons springing from different ranks
of society carry the terms and expressions they are accustomed to use
with them, into whatever circumstances they may pass; thus the origin
of words is lost like the origin of individuals, and there is as much
confusion in language as there is in society.
I am aware that in the classification of words there are rules which do
not belong to one form of society any more than to another, but which
are derived from the nature of things. Some expressions and phrases
are vulgar, because the ideas they are meant to express are low in
themselves; others are of a higher character, because the objects they
are intended to designate are naturally elevated. No intermixture of
ranks will ever efface these differences. But the principle of equality
cannot fail to root out whatever is merely conventional and arbitrary
in the forms of thought. Perhaps the necessary classification which
I pointed out in the last sentence will always be less respected by a
democratic people than by any other, because amongst such a people
there are no men who are permanently disposed by education, culture, and
leisure to study the natural laws of language, and who cause those laws
to be respected by their own observance of them.
I shall not quit this topic without touching on a feature of democratic
languages, which is perhaps more characteristic of them than any other.
It has already been shown that democratic nations have a taste, and
sometimes a passion, for general ideas, and that this arises from their
peculiar merits and defects. This liking for general ideas is displayed
in democratic languages by the continual use of generic terms or
abstract expressions, and by the manner in which they are employed.
This is the great merit and the great imperfection of these languages.
Democratic nations are passionately addicted to generic terms or
abstract expressions, because these modes of speech enlarge thought,
and assist the operations of the mind by enabling it to include several
objects in a small compass. A French democratic writer will be apt
to say capacites in the abstract for men of capacity, and without
particularizing the objects to which their capacity is applied: he will
talk about actualities to designate in one word the things passing
before his eyes at the instant; and he will comprehend under the term
eventualities whatever may happen in the universe, dating from the moment
at which he speaks. Democratic writers are perpetually coining words of
this kind, in which they sublimate into further abstraction the abstract
terms of the language. Nay, more, to render their mode of speech more
succinct, they personify the subject of these abstract terms, and make
it act like a real entity. Thus they would say in French, "La force des
choses veut que les capacites gouvernent."
I cannot better illustrate what I mean than by my own example. I have
frequently used the word "equality" in an absolute sense--nay, I have
personified equality in several places; thus I have said that equality
does such and such things, or refrains from doing others. It may be
affirmed that the writers of the age of Louis XIV would not have used
these expressions: they would never have thought of using the word
"equality" without applying it to some particular object; and they would
rather have renounced the term altogether than have consented to make a
living personage of it.
These abstract terms which abound in democratic languages, and which are
used on every occasion without attaching them to any particular fact,
enlarge and obscure the thoughts they are intended to convey; they
render the mode of speech more succinct, and the idea contained in
it less clear. But with regard to language, democratic nations prefer
obscurity to labor. I know not indeed whether this loose style has not
some secret charm for those who speak and write amongst these nations.
As the men who live there are frequently left to the efforts of their
individual powers of mind, they are almost always a prey to doubt; and
as their situation in life is forever changing, they are never held fast
to any of their opinions by the certain tenure of their fortunes. Men
living in democratic countries are, then, apt to entertain unsettled
ideas, and they require loose expressions to convey them. As they never
know whether the idea they express to-day will be appropriate to the new
position they may occupy to-morrow, they naturally acquire a liking for
abstract terms. An abstract term is like a box with a false bottom: you
may put in it what ideas you please, and take them out again without
being observed.
Amongst all nations, generic and abstract terms form the basis of
language. I do not, therefore, affect to expel these terms from
democratic languages; I simply remark that men have an especial
tendency, in the ages of democracy, to multiply words of this kind--to
take them always by themselves in their most abstract acceptation, and
to use them on all occasions, even when the nature of the discourse does
not require them.
Chapter XVII: Of Some Of The Sources Of Poetry Amongst Democratic
Nations
Various different significations have been given to the word "poetry."
It would weary my readers if I were to lead them into a discussion as to
which of these definitions ought to be selected: I prefer telling them
at once that which I have chosen. In my opinion, poetry is the search
and the delineation of the ideal. The poet is he who, by suppressing a
part of what exists, by adding some imaginary touches to the picture,
and by combining certain real circumstances, but which do not in fact
concurrently happen, completes and extends the work of nature. Thus the
object of poetry is not to represent what is true, but to adorn it,
and to present to the mind some loftier imagery. Verse, regarded as the
ideal beauty of language, may be eminently poetical; but verse does not,
of itself, constitute poetry.
I now proceed to inquire whether, amongst the actions, the sentiments,
and the opinions of democratic nations, there are any which lead to a
conception of ideal beauty, and which may for this reason be
considered as natural sources of poetry. It must in the first place, be
acknowledged that the taste for ideal beauty, and the pleasure derived
from the expression of it, are never so intense or so diffused amongst a
democratic as amongst an aristocratic people. In aristocratic nations it
sometimes happens that the body goes on to act as it were spontaneously,
whilst the higher faculties are bound and burdened by repose. Amongst
these nations the people will very often display poetic tastes, and
sometimes allow their fancy to range beyond and above what surrounds
them. But in democracies the love of physical gratification, the notion
of bettering one's condition, the excitement of competition, the charm
of anticipated success, are so many spurs to urge men onwards in the
active professions they have embraced, without allowing them to deviate
for an instant from the track. The main stress of the faculties is to
this point. The imagination is not extinct; but its chief function is to
devise what may be useful, and to represent what is real.
The principle of equality not only diverts men from the description of
ideal beauty--it also diminishes the number of objects to be described.
Aristocracy, by maintaining society in a fixed position, is favorable
to the solidity and duration of positive religions, as well as to the
stability of political institutions. It not only keeps the human mind
within a certain sphere of belief, but it predisposes the mind to adopt
one faith rather than another. An aristocratic people will always be
prone to place intermediate powers between God and man. In this respect
it may be said that the aristocratic element is favorable to poetry.
When the universe is peopled with supernatural creatures, not palpable
to the senses but discovered by the mind, the imagination ranges
freely, and poets, finding a thousand subjects to delineate, also find
a countless audience to take an interest in their productions. In
democratic ages it sometimes happens, on the contrary, that men are as
much afloat in matters of belief as they are in their laws. Scepticism
then draws the imagination of poets back to earth, and confines them to
the real and visible world. Even when the principle of equality does
not disturb religious belief, it tends to simplify it, and to divert
attention from secondary agents, to fix it principally on the Supreme
Power. Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation
of the past, and fixes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men
a sort of instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In this respect
aristocracy is far more favorable to poetry; for things commonly grow
larger and more obscure as they are more remote; and for this twofold
reason they are better suited to the delineation of the ideal.
After having deprived poetry of the past, the principle of equality
robs it in part of the present. Amongst aristocratic nations there are a
certain number of privileged personages, whose situation is, as it were,
without and above the condition of man; to these, power, wealth, fame,
wit, refinement, and distinction in all things appear peculiarly to
belong. The crowd never sees them very closely, or does not watch them
in minute details; and little is needed to make the description of such
men poetical. On the other hand, amongst the same people, you will meet
with classes so ignorant, low, and enslaved, that they are no less fit
objects for poetry from the excess of their rudeness and wretchedness,
than the former are from their greatness and refinement. Besides, as
the different classes of which an aristocratic community is composed
are widely separated, and imperfectly acquainted with each other, the
imagination may always represent them with some addition to, or some
subtraction from, what they really are. In democratic communities, where
men are all insignificant and very much alike, each man instantly sees
all his fellows when he surveys himself. The poets of democratic ages
can never, therefore, take any man in particular as the subject of a
piece; for an object of slender importance, which is distinctly seen
on all sides, will never lend itself to an ideal conception. Thus the
principle of equality; in proportion as it has established itself in
the world, has dried up most of the old springs of poetry. Let us now
attempt to show what new ones it may disclose.
When scepticism had depopulated heaven, and the progress of equality
had reduced each individual to smaller and better known proportions, the
poets, not yet aware of what they could substitute for the great themes
which were departing together with the aristocracy, turned their eyes
to inanimate nature. As they lost sight of gods and heroes, they set
themselves to describe streams and mountains. Thence originated in
the last century, that kind of poetry which has been called, by way
of distinction, the descriptive. Some have thought that this sort of
delineation, embellished with all the physical and inanimate objects
which cover the earth, was the kind of poetry peculiar to democratic
ages; but I believe this to be an error, and that it only belongs to a
period of transition.
I am persuaded that in the end democracy diverts the imagination from
all that is external to man, and fixes it on man alone. Democratic
nations may amuse themselves for a while with considering the
productions of nature; but they are only excited in reality by a survey
of themselves. Here, and here alone, the true sources of poetry amongst
such nations are to be found; and it may be believed that the poets who
shall neglect to draw their inspirations hence, will lose all sway over
the minds which they would enchant, and will be left in the end with
none but unimpassioned spectators of their transports. I have shown how
the ideas of progression and of the indefinite perfectibility of the
human race belong to democratic ages. Democratic nations care but little
for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in
this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all
measure. Here then is the wildest range open to the genius of poets,
which allows them to remove their performances to a sufficient distance
from the eye. Democracy shuts the past against the poet, but opens
the future before him. As all the citizens who compose a democratic
community are nearly equal and alike, the poet cannot dwell upon any one
of them; but the nation itself invites the exercise of his powers. The
general similitude of individuals, which renders any one of them taken
separately an improper subject of poetry, allows poets to include them
all in the same imagery, and to take a general survey of the people
itself. Democractic nations have a clearer perception than any others of
their own aspect; and an aspect so imposing is admirably fitted to the
delineation of the ideal.
I readily admit that the Americans have no poets; I cannot allow that
they have no poetic ideas. In Europe people talk a great deal of the
wilds of America, but the Americans themselves never think about them:
they are insensible to the wonders of inanimate nature, and they may be
said not to perceive the mighty forests which surround them till they
fall beneath the hatchet. Their eyes are fixed upon another sight: the
American people views its own march across these wilds--drying swamps,
turning the course of rivers, peopling solitudes, and subduing nature.
This magnificent image of themselves does not meet the gaze of the
Americans at intervals only; it may be said to haunt every one of them
in his least as well as in his most important actions, and to be always
flitting before his mind. Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid,
so crowded with paltry interests, in one word so anti-poetic, as the
life of a man in the United States. But amongst the thoughts which it
suggests there is always one which is full of poetry, and that is the
hidden nerve which gives vigor to the frame.
In aristocratic ages each people, as well as each individual, is prone
to stand separate and aloof from all others. In democratic ages, the
extreme fluctuations of men and the impatience of their desires keep
them perpetually on the move; so that the inhabitants of different
countries intermingle, see, listen to, and borrow from each other's
stores. It is not only then the members of the same community who grow
more alike; communities are themselves assimilated to one another,
and the whole assemblage presents to the eye of the spectator one vast
democracy, each citizen of which is a people. This displays the aspect
of mankind for the first time in the broadest light. All that belongs
to the existence of the human race taken as a whole, to its vicissitudes
and to its future, becomes an abundant mine of poetry. The poets who
lived in aristocratic ages have been eminently successful in their
delineations of certain incidents in the life of a people or a man;
but none of them ever ventured to include within his performances the
destinies of mankind--a task which poets writing in democratic ages may
attempt. At that same time at which every man, raising his eyes above
his country, begins at length to discern mankind at large, the Divinity
is more and more manifest to the human mind in full and entire majesty.
If in democratic ages faith in positive religions be often shaken, and
the belief in intermediate agents, by whatever name they are called, be
overcast; on the other hand men are disposed to conceive a far broader
idea of Providence itself, and its interference in human affairs assumes
a new and more imposing appearance to their eyes. Looking at the human
race as one great whole, they easily conceive that its destinies are
regulated by the same design; and in the actions of every individual
they are led to acknowledge a trace of that universal and eternal plan
on which God rules our race. This consideration may be taken as another
prolific source of poetry which is opened in democratic ages. Democratic
poets will always appear trivial and frigid if they seek to invest gods,
demons, or angels, with corporeal forms, and if they attempt to draw
them down from heaven to dispute the supremacy of earth. But if they
strive to connect the great events they commemorate with the general
providential designs which govern the universe, and, without showing the
finger of the Supreme Governor, reveal the thoughts of the Supreme Mind,
their works will be admired and understood, for the imagination of their
contemporaries takes this direction of its own accord.
It may be foreseen in the like manner that poets living in democratic
ages will prefer the delineation of passions and ideas to that of
persons and achievements. The language, the dress, and the daily actions
of men in democracies are repugnant to ideal conceptions. These things
are not poetical in themselves; and, if it were otherwise, they would
cease to be so, because they are too familiar to all those to whom the
poet would speak of them. This forces the poet constantly to search
below the external surface which is palpable to the senses, in order to
read the inner soul: and nothing lends itself more to the delineation
of the ideal than the scrutiny of the hidden depths in the immaterial
nature of man. I need not to ramble over earth and sky to discover
a wondrous object woven of contrasts, of greatness and littleness
infinite, of intense gloom and of amazing brightness--capable at once
of exciting pity, admiration, terror, contempt. I find that object in
myself. Man springs out of nothing, crosses time, and disappears forever
in the bosom of God; he is seen but for a moment, staggering on the
verge of the two abysses, and there he is lost. If man were wholly
ignorant of himself, he would have no poetry in him; for it is
impossible to describe what the mind does not conceive. If man clearly
discerned his own nature, his imagination would remain idle, and
would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is
sufficiently disclosed for him to apprehend something of himself; and
sufficiently obscure for all the rest to be plunged in thick darkness,
in which he gropes forever--and forever in vain--to lay hold on some
completer notion of his being.
Amongst a democratic people poetry will not be fed with legendary lays
or the memorials of old traditions. The poet will not attempt to people
the universe with supernatural beings in whom his readers and his own
fancy have ceased to believe; nor will he present virtues and vices
in the mask of frigid personification, which are better received under
their own features. All these resources fail him; but Man remains, and
the poet needs no more. The destinies of mankind--man himself, taken
aloof from his age and his country, and standing in the presence of
Nature and of God, with his passions, his doubts, his rare prosperities,
and inconceivable wretchedness--will become the chief, if not the sole
theme of poetry amongst these nations. Experience may confirm this
assertion, if we consider the productions of the greatest poets who have
appeared since the world has been turned to democracy. The authors of
our age who have so admirably delineated the features of Faust, Childe
Harold, Rene, and Jocelyn, did not seek to record the actions of an
individual, but to enlarge and to throw light on some of the obscurer
recesses of the human heart. Such are the poems of democracy. The
principle of equality does not then destroy all the subjects of poetry:
it renders them less numerous, but more vast.
Chapter XVIII: Of The Inflated Style Of American Writers And Orators
I have frequently remarked that the Americans, who generally treat
of business in clear, plain language, devoid of all ornament, and so
extremely simple as to be often coarse, are apt to become inflated
as soon as they attempt a more poetical diction. They then vent their
pomposity from one end of a harangue to the other; and to hear them
lavish imagery on every occasion, one might fancy that they never spoke
of anything with simplicity. The English are more rarely given to a
similar failing. The cause of this may be pointed out without much
difficulty. In democratic communities each citizen is habitually engaged
in the contemplation of a very puny object, namely himself. If he ever
raises his looks higher, he then perceives nothing but the immense form
of society at large, or the still more imposing aspect of mankind. His
ideas are all either extremely minute and clear, or extremely general
and vague: what lies between is an open void. When he has been drawn out
of his own sphere, therefore, he always expects that some amazing object
will be offered to his attention; and it is on these terms alone that he
consents to tear himself for an instant from the petty complicated cares
which form the charm and the excitement of his life. This appears to me
sufficiently to explain why men in democracies, whose concerns are in
general so paltry, call upon their poets for conceptions so vast and
descriptions so unlimited.
The authors, on their part, do not fail to obey a propensity of which
they themselves partake; they perpetually inflate their imaginations,
and expanding them beyond all bounds, they not unfrequently abandon
the great in order to reach the gigantic. By these means they hope to
attract the observation of the multitude, and to fix it easily upon
themselves: nor are their hopes disappointed; for as the multitude
seeks for nothing in poetry but subjects of very vast dimensions, it
has neither the time to measure with accuracy the proportions of all the
subjects set before it, nor a taste sufficiently correct to perceive
at once in what respect they are out of proportion. The author and the
public at once vitiate one another.
We have just seen that amongst democratic nations, the sources of poetry
are grand, but not abundant. They are soon exhausted: and poets, not
finding the elements of the ideal in what is real and true, abandon
them entirely and create monsters. I do not fear that the poetry of
democratic nations will prove too insipid, or that it will fly too near
the ground; I rather apprehend that it will be forever losing itself in
the clouds, and that it will range at last to purely imaginary regions.
I fear that the productions of democratic poets may often be surcharged
with immense and incoherent imagery, with exaggerated descriptions and
strange creations; and that the fantastic beings of their brain may
sometimes make us regret the world of reality.
Chapter XIX: Some Observations On The Drama Amongst Democratic Nations
When the revolution which subverts the social and political state of an
aristocratic people begins to penetrate into literature, it generally
first manifests itself in the drama, and it always remains conspicuous
there. The spectator of a dramatic piece is, to a certain extent, taken
by surprise by the impression it conveys. He has no time to refer to his
memory, or to consult those more able to judge than himself. It does
not occur to him to resist the new literary tendencies which begin to
be felt by him; he yields to them before he knows what they are. Authors
are very prompt in discovering which way the taste of the public is thus
secretly inclined. They shape their productions accordingly; and the
literature of the stage, after having served to indicate the approaching
literary revolution, speedily completes its accomplishment. If you would
judge beforehand of the literature of a people which is lapsing into
democracy, study its dramatic productions.
The literature of the stage, moreover, even amongst aristocratic
nations, constitutes the most democratic part of their literature.
No kind of literary gratification is so much within the reach of the
multitude as that which is derived from theatrical representations.
Neither preparation nor study is required to enjoy them: they lay hold
on you in the midst of your prejudices and your ignorance. When the yet
untutored love of the pleasures of the mind begins to affect a class
of the community, it instantly draws them to the stage. The theatres
of aristocratic nations have always been filled with spectators not
belonging to the aristocracy. At the theatre alone the higher ranks mix
with the middle and the lower classes; there alone do the former consent
to listen to the opinion of the latter, or at least to allow them
to give an opinion at all. At the theatre, men of cultivation and of
literary attainments have always had more difficulty than elsewhere in
making their taste prevail over that of the people, and in preventing
themselves from being carried away by the latter. The pit has frequently
made laws for the boxes.
If it be difficult for an aristocracy to prevent the people from getting
the upper hand in the theatre, it will readily be understood that the
people will be supreme there when democratic principles have crept into
the laws and manners--when ranks are intermixed--when minds, as well as
fortunes, are brought more nearly together--and when the upper class
has lost, with its hereditary wealth, its power, its precedents, and its
leisure. The tastes and propensities natural to democratic nations, in
respect to literature, will therefore first be discernible in the drama,
and it may be foreseen that they will break out there with vehemence. In
written productions, the literary canons of aristocracy will be gently,
gradually, and, so to speak, legally modified; at the theatre they
will be riotously overthrown. The drama brings out most of the
good qualities, and almost all the defects, inherent in democratic
literature. Democratic peoples hold erudition very cheap, and care but
little for what occurred at Rome and Athens; they want to hear something
which concerns themselves, and the delineation of the present age is
what they demand.
When the heroes and the manners of antiquity are frequently brought
upon the stage, and dramatic authors faithfully observe the rules of
antiquated precedent, that is enough to warrant a conclusion that the
democratic classes have not yet got the upper hand of the theatres.
Racine makes a very humble apology in the preface to the "Britannicus"
for having disposed of Junia amongst the Vestals, who, according to
Aulus Gellius, he says, "admitted no one below six years of age nor
above ten." We may be sure that he would neither have accused himself
of the offence, nor defended himself from censure, if he had written for
our contemporaries. A fact of this kind not only illustrates the state
of literature at the time when it occurred, but also that of society
itself. A democratic stage does not prove that the nation is in a state
of democracy, for, as we have just seen, even in aristocracies it may
happen that democratic tastes affect the drama; but when the spirit
of aristocracy reigns exclusively on the stage, the fact irrefragably
demonstrates that the whole of society is aristocratic; and it may be
boldly inferred that the same lettered and learned class which sways the
dramatic writers commands the people and governs the country.
The refined tastes and the arrogant bearing of an aristocracy will
rarely fail to lead it, when it manages the stage, to make a kind of
selection in human nature. Some of the conditions of society claim
its chief interest; and the scenes which delineate their manners are
preferred upon the stage. Certain virtues, and even certain vices,
are thought more particularly to deserve to figure there; and they are
applauded whilst all others are excluded. Upon the stage, as well
as elsewhere, an aristocratic audience will only meet personages of
quality, and share the emotions of kings. The same thing applies to
style: an aristocracy is apt to impose upon dramatic authors certain
modes of expression which give the key in which everything is to be
delivered. By these means the stage frequently comes to delineate only
one side of man, or sometimes even to represent what is not to be met
with in human nature at all--to rise above nature and to go beyond it.
In democratic communities the spectators have no such partialities,
and they rarely display any such antipathies: they like to see upon the
stage that medley of conditions, of feelings, and of opinions, which
occurs before their eyes. The drama becomes more striking, more common,
and more true. Sometimes, however, those who write for the stage in
democracies also transgress the bounds of human nature--but it is on
a different side from their predecessors. By seeking to represent in
minute detail the little singularities of the moment and the peculiar
characteristics of certain personages, they forget to portray the
general features of the race.
When the democratic classes rule the stage, they introduce as much
license in the manner of treating subjects as in the choice of them.
As the love of the drama is, of all literary tastes, that which is most
natural to democratic nations, the number of authors and of spectators,
as well as of theatrical representations, is constantly increasing
amongst these communities. A multitude composed of elements so
different, and scattered in so many different places, cannot acknowledge
the same rules or submit to the same laws. No concurrence is possible
amongst judges so numerous, who know not when they may meet again; and
therefore each pronounces his own sentence on the piece. If the effect
of democracy is generally to question the authority of all literary
rules and conventions, on the stage it abolishes them altogether, and
puts in their place nothing but the whim of each author and of each
public.
The drama also displays in an especial manner the truth of what I have
said before in speaking more generally of style and art in democratic
literature. In reading the criticisms which were occasioned by the
dramatic productions of the age of Louis XIV, one is surprised to remark
the great stress which the public laid on the probability of the plot,
and the importance which was attached to the perfect consistency of
the characters, and to their doing nothing which could not be easily
explained and understood. The value which was set upon the forms of
language at that period, and the paltry strife about words with which
dramatic authors were assailed, are no less surprising. It would
seem that the men of the age of Louis XIV attached very exaggerated
importance to those details, which may be perceived in the study, but
which escape attention on the stage. For, after all, the principal
object of a dramatic piece is to be performed, and its chief merit is to
affect the audience. But the audience and the readers in that age were
the same: on quitting the theatre they called up the author for judgment
to their own firesides. In democracies, dramatic pieces are listened to,
but not read. Most of those who frequent the amusements of the stage do
not go there to seek the pleasures of the mind, but the keen emotions of
the heart. They do not expect to hear a fine literary work, but to see
a play; and provided the author writes the language of his country
correctly enough to be understood, and that his characters excite
curiosity and awaken sympathy, the audience are satisfied. They ask no
more of fiction, and immediately return to real life. Accuracy of style
is therefore less required, because the attentive observance of its
rules is less perceptible on the stage. As for the probability of the
plot, it is incompatible with perpetual novelty, surprise, and rapidity
of invention. It is therefore neglected, and the public excuses the
neglect. You may be sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience
into the presence of something that affects them, they will not care by
what road you brought them there; and they will never reproach you for
having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.
The Americans very broadly display all the different propensities which
I have here described when they go to the theatres; but it must be
acknowledged that as yet a very small number of them go to theatres at
all. Although playgoers and plays have prodigiously increased in the
United States in the last forty years, the population indulges in this
kind of amusement with the greatest reserve. This is attributable to
peculiar causes, which the reader is already acquainted with, and of
which a few words will suffice to remind him. The Puritans who founded
the American republics were not only enemies to amusements, but they
professed an especial abhorrence for the stage. They considered it as
an abominable pastime; and as long as their principles prevailed with
undivided sway, scenic performances were wholly unknown amongst them.
These opinions of the first fathers of the colony have left very deep
marks on the minds of their descendants. The extreme regularity of
habits and the great strictness of manners which are observable in the
United States, have as yet opposed additional obstacles to the growth
of dramatic art. There are no dramatic subjects in a country which has
witnessed no great political catastrophes, and in which love invariably
leads by a straight and easy road to matrimony. People who spend every
day in the week in making money, and the Sunday in going to church, have
nothing to invite the muse of Comedy.
A single fact suffices to show that the stage is not very popular in the
United States. The Americans, whose laws allow of the utmost freedom
and even license of language in all other respects, have nevertheless
subjected their dramatic authors to a sort of censorship. Theatrical
performances can only take place by permission of the municipal
authorities. This may serve to show how much communities are like
individuals; they surrender themselves unscrupulously to their ruling
passions, and afterwards take the greatest care not to yield too much to
the vehemence of tastes which they do not possess.
No portion of literature is connected by closer or more numerous ties
with the present condition of society than the drama. The drama of one
period can never be suited to the following age, if in the interval an
important revolution has changed the manners and the laws of the nation.
The great authors of a preceding age may be read; but pieces written
for a different public will not be followed. The dramatic authors of the
past live only in books. The traditional taste of certain individuals,
vanity, fashion, or the genius of an actor may sustain or resuscitate
for a time the aristocratic drama amongst a democracy; but it will
speedily fall away of itself--not overthrown, but abandoned.
Chapter XX: Characteristics Of Historians In Democratic Ages
Historians who write in aristocratic ages are wont to refer all
occurrences to the particular will or temper of certain individuals; and
they are apt to attribute the most important revolutions to very
slight accidents. They trace out the smallest causes with sagacity,
and frequently leave the greatest unperceived. Historians who live in
democratic ages exhibit precisely opposite characteristics. Most of them
attribute hardly any influence to the individual over the destiny of the
race, nor to citizens over the fate of a people; but, on the other hand,
they assign great general causes to all petty incidents. These contrary
tendencies explain each other.
When the historian of aristocratic ages surveys the theatre of the
world, he at once perceives a very small number of prominent actors, who
manage the whole piece. These great personages, who occupy the front of
the stage, arrest the observation, and fix it on themselves; and whilst
the historian is bent on penetrating the secret motives which make them
speak and act, the rest escape his memory. The importance of the things
which some men are seen to do, gives him an exaggerated estimate of the
influence which one man may possess; and naturally leads him to think,
that in order to explain the impulses of the multitude, it is necessary
to refer them to the particular influence of some one individual.
When, on the contrary, all the citizens are independent of one another,
and each of them is individually weak, no one is seen to exert a great,
or still less a lasting power, over the community. At first sight,
individuals appear to be absolutely devoid of any influence over it;
and society would seem to advance alone by the free and voluntary
concurrence of all the men who compose it. This naturally prompts the
mind to search for that general reason which operates upon so many men's
faculties at the same time, and turns them simultaneously in the same
direction.
I am very well convinced that even amongst democratic nations, the
genius, the vices, or the virtues of certain individuals retard or
accelerate the natural current of a people's history: but causes of
this secondary and fortuitous nature are infinitely more various, more
concealed, more complex, less powerful, and consequently less easy to
trace in periods of equality than in ages of aristocracy, when the task
of the historian is simply to detach from the mass of general events the
particular influences of one man or of a few men. In the former case
the historian is soon wearied by the toil; his mind loses itself in this
labyrinth; and, in his inability clearly to discern or conspicuously to
point out the influence of individuals, he denies their existence.
He prefers talking about the characteristics of race, the physical
conformation of the country, or the genius of civilization, which
abridges his own labors, and satisfies his reader far better at less
cost.
M. de Lafayette says somewhere in his "Memoirs" that the exaggerated
system of general causes affords surprising consolations to second-rate
statesmen. I will add, that its effects are not less consolatory to
second-rate historians; it can always furnish a few mighty reasons
to extricate them from the most difficult part of their work, and it
indulges the indolence or incapacity of their minds, whilst it confers
upon them the honors of deep thinking.
For myself, I am of opinion that at all times one great portion of the
events of this world are attributable to general facts, and another to
special influences. These two kinds of cause are always in operation:
their proportion only varies. General facts serve to explain more things
in democratic than in aristocratic ages, and fewer things are then
assignable to special influences. At periods of aristocracy the
reverse takes place: special influences are stronger, general causes
weaker--unless indeed we consider as a general cause the fact itself of
the inequality of conditions, which allows some individuals to baffle
the natural tendencies of all the rest. The historians who seek to
describe what occurs in democratic societies are right, therefore, in
assigning much to general causes, and in devoting their chief attention
to discover them; but they are wrong in wholly denying the special
influence of individuals, because they cannot easily trace or follow it.
The historians who live in democratic ages are not only prone to assign
a great cause to every incident, but they are also given to connect
incidents together, so as to deduce a system from them. In aristocratic
ages, as the attention of historians is constantly drawn to individuals,
the connection of events escapes them; or rather, they do not believe
in any such connection. To them the clew of history seems every instant
crossed and broken by the step of man. In democratic ages, on the
contrary, as the historian sees much more of actions than of actors, he
may easily establish some kind of sequency and methodical order amongst
the former. Ancient literature, which is so rich in fine historical
compositions, does not contain a single great historical system, whilst
the poorest of modern literatures abound with them. It would appear
that the ancient historians did not make sufficient use of those general
theories which our historical writers are ever ready to carry to excess.
Those who write in democratic ages have another more dangerous tendency.
When the traces of individual action upon nations are lost, it often
happens that the world goes on to move, though the moving agent is no
longer discoverable. As it becomes extremely difficult to discern and
to analyze the reasons which, acting separately on the volition of each
member of the community, concur in the end to produce movement in the
old mass, men are led to believe that this movement is involuntary, and
that societies unconsciously obey some superior force ruling over them.
But even when the general fact which governs the private volition of all
individuals is supposed to be discovered upon the earth, the principle
of human free-will is not secure. A cause sufficiently extensive to
affect millions of men at once, and sufficiently strong to bend them all
together in the same direction, may well seem irresistible: having seen
that mankind do yield to it, the mind is close upon the inference that
mankind cannot resist it.
Historians who live in democratic ages, then, not only deny that the few
have any power of acting upon the destiny of a people, but they deprive
the people themselves of the power of modifying their own condition, and
they subject them either to an inflexible Providence, or to some blind
necessity. According to them, each nation is indissolubly bound by its
position, its origin, its precedents, and its character, to a certain
lot which no efforts can ever change. They involve generation in
generation, and thus, going back from age to age, and from necessity
to necessity, up to the origin of the world, they forge a close and
enormous chain, which girds and binds the human race. To their minds it
is not enough to show what events have occurred: they would fain show
that events could not have occurred otherwise. They take a nation
arrived at a certain stage of its history, and they affirm that it could
not but follow the track which brought it thither. It is easier to
make such an assertion than to show by what means the nation might have
adopted a better course.
In reading the historians of aristocratic ages, and especially those of
antiquity, it would seem that, to be master of his lot, and to govern
his fellow-creatures, man requires only to be master of himself. In
perusing the historical volumes which our age has produced, it would
seem that man is utterly powerless over himself and over all around him.
The historians of antiquity taught how to command: those of our time
teach only how to obey; in their writings the author often appears
great, but humanity is always diminutive. If this doctrine of necessity,
which is so attractive to those who write history in democratic ages,
passes from authors to their readers, till it infects the whole mass
of the community and gets possession of the public mind, it will soon
paralyze the activity of modern society, and reduce Christians to the
level of the Turks. I would moreover observe, that such principles
are peculiarly dangerous at the period at which we are arrived. Our
contemporaries are but too prone to doubt of the human free-will,
because each of them feels himself confined on every side by his own
weakness; but they are still willing to acknowledge the strength and
independence of men united in society. Let not this principle be lost
sight of; for the great object in our time is to raise the faculties of
men, not to complete their prostration.
Chapter XXI: Of Parliamentary Eloquence In The United States
Amongst aristocratic nations all the members of the community are
connected with and dependent upon each other; the graduated scale of
different ranks acts as a tie, which keeps everyone in his proper place
and the whole body in subordination. Something of the same kind always
occurs in the political assemblies of these nations. Parties naturally
range themselves under certain leaders, whom they obey by a sort of
instinct, which is only the result of habits contracted elsewhere. They
carry the manners of general society into the lesser assemblage.
In democratic countries it often happens that a great number of citizens
are tending to the same point; but each one only moves thither, or at
least flatters himself that he moves, of his own accord. Accustomed to
regulate his doings by personal impulse alone, he does not willingly
submit to dictation from without. This taste and habit of independence
accompany him into the councils of the nation. If he consents to connect
himself with other men in the prosecution of the same purpose, at least
he chooses to remain free to contribute to the common success after his
own fashion. Hence it is that in democratic countries parties are so
impatient of control, and are never manageable except in moments of
great public danger. Even then, the authority of leaders, which under
such circumstances may be able to make men act or speak, hardly ever
reaches the extent of making them keep silence.
Amongst aristocratic nations the members of political assemblies are
at the same time members of the aristocracy. Each of them enjoys high
established rank in his own right, and the position which he occupies
in the assembly is often less important in his eyes than that which
he fills in the country. This consoles him for playing no part in
the discussion of public affairs, and restrains him from too eagerly
attempting to play an insignificant one.
In America, it generally happens that a Representative only becomes
somebody from his position in the Assembly. He is therefore perpetually
haunted by a craving to acquire importance there, and he feels a
petulant desire to be constantly obtruding his opinions upon the House.
His own vanity is not the only stimulant which urges him on in this
course, but that of his constituents, and the continual necessity
of propitiating them. Amongst aristocratic nations a member of the
legislature is rarely in strict dependence upon his constituents: he is
frequently to them a sort of unavoidable representative; sometimes they
are themselves strictly dependent upon him; and if at length they reject
him, he may easily get elected elsewhere, or, retiring from public life,
he may still enjoy the pleasures of splendid idleness. In a democratic
country like the United States a Representative has hardly ever
a lasting hold on the minds of his constituents. However small an
electoral body may be, the fluctuations of democracy are constantly
changing its aspect; it must, therefore, be courted unceasingly. He
is never sure of his supporters, and, if they forsake him, he is
left without a resource; for his natural position is not sufficiently
elevated for him to be easily known to those not close to him; and,
with the complete state of independence prevailing among the people, he
cannot hope that his friends or the government will send him down to be
returned by an electoral body unacquainted with him. The seeds of his
fortune are, therefore, sown in his own neighborhood; from that nook of
earth he must start, to raise himself to the command of a people and
to influence the destinies of the world. Thus it is natural that in
democratic countries the members of political assemblies think more of
their constituents than of their party, whilst in aristocracies they
think more of their party than of their constituents.
But what ought to be said to gratify constituents is not always what
ought to be said in order to serve the party to which Representatives
profess to belong. The general interest of a party frequently demands
that members belonging to it should not speak on great questions which
they understand imperfectly; that they should speak but little on those
minor questions which impede the great ones; lastly, and for the most
part, that they should not speak at all. To keep silence is the
most useful service that an indifferent spokesman can render to the
commonwealth. Constituents, however, do not think so. The population of
a district sends a representative to take a part in the government of
a country, because they entertain a very lofty notion of his merits.
As men appear greater in proportion to the littleness of the objects
by which they are surrounded, it may be assumed that the opinion
entertained of the delegate will be so much the higher as talents are
more rare among his constituents. It will therefore frequently happen
that the less constituents have to expect from their representative, the
more they will anticipate from him; and, however incompetent he may be,
they will not fail to call upon him for signal exertions, corresponding
to the rank they have conferred upon him.
Independently of his position as a legislator of the State, electors
also regard their Representative as the natural patron of the
constituency in the Legislature; they almost consider him as the proxy
of each of his supporters, and they flatter themselves that he will not
be less zealous in defense of their private interests than of those
of the country. Thus electors are well assured beforehand that the
Representative of their choice will be an orator; that he will speak
often if he can, and that in case he is forced to refrain, he will
strive at any rate to compress into his less frequent orations an
inquiry into all the great questions of state, combined with a statement
of all the petty grievances they have themselves to complain to; so
that, though he be not able to come forward frequently, he should on
each occasion prove what he is capable of doing; and that, instead of
perpetually lavishing his powers, he should occasionally condense them
in a small compass, so as to furnish a sort of complete and brilliant
epitome of his constituents and of himself. On these terms they will
vote for him at the next election. These conditions drive worthy men of
humble abilities to despair, who, knowing their own powers, would never
voluntarily have come forward. But thus urged on, the Representative
begins to speak, to the great alarm of his friends; and rushing
imprudently into the midst of the most celebrated orators, he perplexes
the debate and wearies the House.
All laws which tend to make the Representative more dependent on the
elector, not only affect the conduct of the legislators, as I
have remarked elsewhere, but also their language. They exercise a
simultaneous influence on affairs themselves, and on the manner in which
affairs are discussed.
There is hardly a member of Congress who can make up his mind to go home
without having despatched at least one speech to his constituents;
nor who will endure any interruption until he has introduced into
his harangue whatever useful suggestions may be made touching the
four-and-twenty States of which the Union is composed, and especially
the district which he represents. He therefore presents to the mind of
his auditors a succession of great general truths (which he himself only
comprehends, and expresses, confusedly), and of petty minutia, which he
is but too able to discover and to point out. The consequence is that
the debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed,
and that they seem rather to drag their slow length along than to
advance towards a distinct object. Some such state of things will, I
believe, always arise in the public assemblies of democracies.
Propitious circumstances and good laws might succeed in drawing to the
legislature of a democratic people men very superior to those who are
returned by the Americans to Congress; but nothing will ever prevent the
men of slender abilities who sit there from obtruding themselves with
complacency, and in all ways, upon the public. The evil does not appear
to me to be susceptible of entire cure, because it not only originates
in the tactics of that assembly, but in its constitution and in that
of the country. The inhabitants of the United States seem themselves to
consider the matter in this light; and they show their long experience
of parliamentary life not by abstaining from making bad speeches, but by
courageously submitting to hear them made. They are resigned to it, as
to an evil which they know to be inevitable.
We have shown the petty side of political debates in democratic
assemblies--let us now exhibit the more imposing one. The proceedings
within the Parliament of England for the last one hundred and fifty
years have never occasioned any great sensation out of that country; the
opinions and feelings expressed by the speakers have never awakened much
sympathy, even amongst the nations placed nearest to the great arena of
British liberty; whereas Europe was excited by the very first debates
which took place in the small colonial assemblies of America at the
time of the Revolution. This was attributable not only to particular
and fortuitous circumstances, but to general and lasting causes. I can
conceive nothing more admirable or more powerful than a great orator
debating on great questions of state in a democratic assembly. As no
particular class is ever represented there by men commissioned to defend
its own interests, it is always to the whole nation, and in the name of
the whole nation, that the orator speaks. This expands his thoughts,
and heightens his power of language. As precedents have there but
little weight-as there are no longer any privileges attached to certain
property, nor any rights inherent in certain bodies or in certain
individuals, the mind must have recourse to general truths derived from
human nature to resolve the particular question under discussion. Hence
the political debates of a democratic people, however small it may be,
have a degree of breadth which frequently renders them attractive to
mankind. All men are interested by them, because they treat of man, who
is everywhere the same. Amongst the greatest aristocratic nations, on
the contrary, the most general questions are almost always argued on
some special grounds derived from the practice of a particular time, or
the rights of a particular class; which interest that class alone, or at
most the people amongst whom that class happens to exist. It is owing
to this, as much as to the greatness of the French people, and the
favorable disposition of the nations who listen to them, that the great
effect which the French political debates sometimes produce in the
world, must be attributed. The orators of France frequently speak to
mankind, even when they are addressing their countrymen only.
Section 2: Influence of Democracy on the Feelings of Americans
Chapter I: Why Democratic Nations Show A More Ardent And Enduring Love
Of Equality Than Of Liberty
The first and most intense passion which is engendered by the equality
of conditions is, I need hardly say, the love of that same equality. My
readers will therefore not be surprised that I speak of its before
all others. Everybody has remarked that in our time, and especially in
France, this passion for equality is every day gaining ground in the
human heart. It has been said a hundred times that our contemporaries
are far more ardently and tenaciously attached to equality than to
freedom; but as I do not find that the causes of the fact have been
sufficiently analyzed, I shall endeavor to point them out.
It is possible to imagine an extreme point at which freedom and equality
would meet and be confounded together. Let us suppose that all the
members of the community take a part in the government, and that each of
them has an equal right to take a part in it. As none is different from
his fellows, none can exercise a tyrannical power: men will be perfectly
free, because they will all be entirely equal; and they will all be
perfectly equal, because they will be entirely free. To this ideal state
democratic nations tend. Such is the completest form that equality can
assume upon earth; but there are a thousand others which, without being
equally perfect, are not less cherished by those nations.
The principle of equality may be established in civil society, without
prevailing in the political world. Equal rights may exist of indulging
in the same pleasures, of entering the same professions, of frequenting
the same places--in a word, of living in the same manner and seeking
wealth by the same means, although all men do not take an equal share
in the government. A kind of equality may even be established in the
political world, though there should be no political freedom there. A
man may be the equal of all his countrymen save one, who is the master
of all without distinction, and who selects equally from among them
all the agents of his power. Several other combinations might be easily
imagined, by which very great equality would be united to institutions
more or less free, or even to institutions wholly without freedom.
Although men cannot become absolutely equal unless they be entirely
free, and consequently equality, pushed to its furthest extent, may be
confounded with freedom, yet there is good reason for distinguishing the
one from the other. The taste which men have for liberty, and that which
they feel for equality, are, in fact, two different things; and I am
not afraid to add that, amongst democratic nations, they are two unequal
things.
Upon close inspection, it will be seen that there is in every age some
peculiar and preponderating fact with which all others are connected;
this fact almost always gives birth to some pregnant idea or some ruling
passion, which attracts to itself, and bears away in its course, all the
feelings and opinions of the time: it is like a great stream, towards
which each of the surrounding rivulets seems to flow. Freedom has
appeared in the world at different times and under various forms; it
has not been exclusively bound to any social condition, and it is
not confined to democracies. Freedom cannot, therefore, form the
distinguishing characteristic of democratic ages. The peculiar and
preponderating fact which marks those ages as its own is the equality
of conditions; the ruling passion of men in those periods is the love
of this equality. Ask not what singular charm the men of democratic ages
find in being equal, or what special reasons they may have for clinging
so tenaciously to equality rather than to the other advantages which
society holds out to them: equality is the distinguishing characteristic
of the age they live in; that, of itself, is enough to explain that they
prefer it to all the rest.
But independently of this reason there are several others, which will at
all times habitually lead men to prefer equality to freedom. If a people
could ever succeed in destroying, or even in diminishing, the equality
which prevails in its own body, this could only be accomplished by long
and laborious efforts. Its social condition must be modified, its laws
abolished, its opinions superseded, its habits changed, its manners
corrupted. But political liberty is more easily lost; to neglect to
hold it fast is to allow it to escape. Men therefore not only cling to
equality because it is dear to them; they also adhere to it because they
think it will last forever.
That political freedom may compromise in its excesses the tranquillity,
the property, the lives of individuals, is obvious to the narrowest
and most unthinking minds. But, on the contrary, none but attentive and
clear-sighted men perceive the perils with which equality threatens us,
and they commonly avoid pointing them out. They know that the calamities
they apprehend are remote, and flatter themselves that they will only
fall upon future generations, for which the present generation takes
but little thought. The evils which freedom sometimes brings with it are
immediate; they are apparent to all, and all are more or less affected
by them. The evils which extreme equality may produce are slowly
disclosed; they creep gradually into the social frame; they are only
seen at intervals, and at the moment at which they become most violent
habit already causes them to be no longer felt. The advantages which
freedom brings are only shown by length of time; and it is always easy
to mistake the cause in which they originate. The advantages of equality
are instantaneous, and they may constantly be traced from their source.
Political liberty bestows exalted pleasures, from time to time, upon a
certain number of citizens. Equality every day confers a number of small
enjoyments on every man. The charms of equality are every instant felt,
and are within the reach of all; the noblest hearts are not insensible
to them, and the most vulgar souls exult in them. The passion which
equality engenders must therefore be at once strong and general. Men
cannot enjoy political liberty unpurchased by some sacrifices, and they
never obtain it without great exertions. But the pleasures of equality
are self-proffered: each of the petty incidents of life seems to
occasion them, and in order to taste them nothing is required but to
live.
Democratic nations are at all times fond of equality, but there are
certain epochs at which the passion they entertain for it swells to the
height of fury. This occurs at the moment when the old social system,
long menaced, completes its own destruction after a last intestine
struggle, and when the barriers of rank are at length thrown down. At
such times men pounce upon equality as their booty, and they cling to
it as to some precious treasure which they fear to lose. The passion for
equality penetrates on every side into men's hearts, expands there,
and fills them entirely. Tell them not that by this blind surrender of
themselves to an exclusive passion they risk their dearest interests:
they are deaf. Show them not freedom escaping from their grasp, whilst
they are looking another way: they are blind--or rather, they can
discern but one sole object to be desired in the universe.
What I have said is applicable to all democratic nations: what I am
about to say concerns the French alone. Amongst most modern nations, and
especially amongst all those of the Continent of Europe, the taste and
the idea of freedom only began to exist and to extend themselves at
the time when social conditions were tending to equality, and as
a consequence of that very equality. Absolute kings were the most
efficient levellers of ranks amongst their subjects. Amongst these
nations equality preceded freedom: equality was therefore a fact of some
standing when freedom was still a novelty: the one had already created
customs, opinions, and laws belonging to it, when the other, alone and
for the first time, came into actual existence. Thus the latter was
still only an affair of opinion and of taste, whilst the former had
already crept into the habits of the people, possessed itself of their
manners, and given a particular turn to the smallest actions of their
lives. Can it be wondered that the men of our own time prefer the one to
the other?
I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom:
left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any
privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent,
insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom;
and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.
They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism--but they will not endure
aristocracy. This is true at all times, and especially true in our own.
All men and all powers seeking to cope with this irresistible passion,
will be overthrown and destroyed by it. In our age, freedom cannot be
established without it, and despotism itself cannot reign without its
support.
Chapter II: Of Individualism In Democratic Countries
I have shown how it is that in ages of equality every man seeks for his
opinions within himself: I am now about to show how it is that, in
the same ages, all his feelings are turned towards himself alone.
Individualism *a is a novel expression, to which a novel idea has given
birth. Our fathers were only acquainted with egotism. Egotism is a
passionate and exaggerated love of self, which leads a man to connect
everything with his own person, and to prefer himself to everything in
the world. Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes
each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his
fellow-creatures; and to draw apart with his family and his friends; so
that, after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly
leaves society at large to itself. Egotism originates in blind instinct:
individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved
feelings; it originates as much in the deficiencies of the mind as in
the perversity of the heart. Egotism blights the germ of all virtue;
individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but,
in the long run, it attacks and destroys all others, and is at length
absorbed in downright egotism. Egotism is a vice as old as the world,
which does not belong to one form of society more than to another:
individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the
same ratio as the equality of conditions.
[Footnote a: [I adopt the expression of the original, however strange it
may seem to the English ear, partly because it illustrates the remark
on the introduction of general terms into democratic language which was
made in a preceding chapter, and partly because I know of no English
word exactly equivalent to the expression. The chapter itself defines
the meaning attached to it by the author.--Translator's Note.]]
Amongst aristocratic nations, as families remain for centuries in the
same condition, often on the same spot, all generations become as it
were contemporaneous. A man almost always knows his forefathers, and
respects them: he thinks he already sees his remote descendants, and he
loves them. He willingly imposes duties on himself towards the
former and the latter; and he will frequently sacrifice his personal
gratifications to those who went before and to those who will come after
him. Aristocratic institutions have, moreover, the effect of closely
binding every man to several of his fellow-citizens. As the classes of
an aristocratic people are strongly marked and permanent, each of
them is regarded by its own members as a sort of lesser country,
more tangible and more cherished than the country at large. As in
aristocratic communities all the citizens occupy fixed positions, one
above the other, the result is that each of them always sees a man above
himself whose patronage is necessary to him, and below himself another
man whose co-operation he may claim. Men living in aristocratic ages
are therefore almost always closely attached to something placed out of
their own sphere, and they are often disposed to forget themselves. It
is true that in those ages the notion of human fellowship is faint, and
that men seldom think of sacrificing themselves for mankind; but they
often sacrifice themselves for other men. In democratic ages, on the
contrary, when the duties of each individual to the race are much more
clear, devoted service to any one man becomes more rare; the bond of
human affection is extended, but it is relaxed.
Amongst democratic nations new families are constantly springing up,
others are constantly falling away, and all that remain change their
condition; the woof of time is every instant broken, and the track of
generations effaced. Those who went before are soon forgotten; of those
who will come after no one has any idea: the interest of man is confined
to those in close propinquity to himself. As each class approximates
to other classes, and intermingles with them, its members become
indifferent and as strangers to one another. Aristocracy had made a
chain of all the members of the community, from the peasant to the king:
democracy breaks that chain, and severs every link of it. As social
conditions become more equal, the number of persons increases who,
although they are neither rich enough nor powerful enough to exercise
any great influence over their fellow-creatures, have nevertheless
acquired or retained sufficient education and fortune to satisfy their
own wants. They owe nothing to any man, they expect nothing from any
man; they acquire the habit of always considering themselves as standing
alone, and they are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in
their own hands. Thus not only does democracy make every man forget
his ancestors, but it hides his descendants, and separates his
contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone,
and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of
his own heart.
Chapter III: Individualism Stronger At The Close Of A Democratic
Revolution Than At Other Periods
The period when the construction of democratic society upon the ruins of
an aristocracy has just been completed, is especially that at which this
separation of men from one another, and the egotism resulting from it,
most forcibly strike the observation. Democratic communities not only
contain a large number of independent citizens, but they are constantly
filled with men who, having entered but yesterday upon their independent
condition, are intoxicated with their new power. They entertain a
presumptuous confidence in their strength, and as they do not suppose
that they can henceforward ever have occasion to claim the assistance of
their fellow-creatures, they do not scruple to show that they care for
nobody but themselves.
An aristocracy seldom yields without a protracted struggle, in the
course of which implacable animosities are kindled between the different
classes of society. These passions survive the victory, and traces of
them may be observed in the midst of the democratic confusion which
ensues. Those members of the community who were at the top of the late
gradations of rank cannot immediately forget their former greatness;
they will long regard themselves as aliens in the midst of the newly
composed society. They look upon all those whom this state of society
has made their equals as oppressors, whose destiny can excite no
sympathy; they have lost sight of their former equals, and feel no
longer bound by a common interest to their fate: each of them, standing
aloof, thinks that he is reduced to care for himself alone. Those, on
the contrary, who were formerly at the foot of the social scale, and who
have been brought up to the common level by a sudden revolution, cannot
enjoy their newly acquired independence without secret uneasiness; and
if they meet with some of their former superiors on the same footing as
themselves, they stand aloof from them with an expression of triumph and
of fear. It is, then, commonly at the outset of democratic society that
citizens are most disposed to live apart. Democracy leads men not to
draw near to their fellow-creatures; but democratic revolutions lead
them to shun each other, and perpetuate in a state of equality the
animosities which the state of inequality engendered. The great
advantage of the Americans is that they have arrived at a state of
democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution; and that
they are born equal, instead of becoming so.
Chapter IV: That The Americans Combat The Effects Of Individualism By
Free Institutions
Despotism, which is of a very timorous nature, is never more secure of
continuance than when it can keep men asunder; and all is influence
is commonly exerted for that purpose. No vice of the human heart is so
acceptable to it as egotism: a despot easily forgives his subjects for
not loving him, provided they do not love each other. He does not ask
them to assist him in governing the State; it is enough that they do not
aspire to govern it themselves. He stigmatizes as turbulent and
unruly spirits those who would combine their exertions to promote the
prosperity of the community, and, perverting the natural meaning of
words, he applauds as good citizens those who have no sympathy for any
but themselves. Thus the vices which despotism engenders are precisely
those which equality fosters. These two things mutually and perniciously
complete and assist each other. Equality places men side by side,
unconnected by any common tie; despotism raises barriers to keep
them asunder; the former predisposes them not to consider their
fellow-creatures, the latter makes general indifference a sort of public
virtue.
Despotism then, which is at all times dangerous, is more particularly to
be feared in democratic ages. It is easy to see that in those same ages
men stand most in need of freedom. When the members of a community are
forced to attend to public affairs, they are necessarily drawn from
the circle of their own interests, and snatched at times from
self-observation. As soon as a man begins to treat of public affairs
in public, he begins to perceive that he is not so independent of his
fellow-men as he had at first imagined, and that, in order to obtain
their support, he must often lend them his co-operation.
When the public is supreme, there is no man who does not feel the value
of public goodwill, or who does not endeavor to court it by drawing to
himself the esteem and affection of those amongst whom he is to live.
Many of the passions which congeal and keep asunder human hearts,
are then obliged to retire and hide below the surface. Pride must be
dissembled; disdain dares not break out; egotism fears its own self.
Under a free government, as most public offices are elective, the men
whose elevated minds or aspiring hopes are too closely circumscribed in
private life, constantly feel that they cannot do without the population
which surrounds them. Men learn at such times to think of their
fellow-men from ambitious motives; and they frequently find it, in a
manner, their interest to forget themselves.
I may here be met by an objection derived from electioneering intrigues,
the meannesses of candidates, and the calumnies of their opponents.
These are opportunities for animosity which occur the oftener the more
frequent elections become. Such evils are doubtless great, but they are
transient; whereas the benefits which attend them remain. The desire
of being elected may lead some men for a time to violent hostility; but
this same desire leads all men in the long run mutually to support
each other; and if it happens that an election accidentally severs two
friends, the electoral system brings a multitude of citizens permanently
together, who would always have remained unknown to each other. Freedom
engenders private animosities, but despotism gives birth to general
indifference.
The Americans have combated by free institutions the tendency of
equality to keep men asunder, and they have subdued it. The legislators
of America did not suppose that a general representation of the whole
nation would suffice to ward off a disorder at once so natural to the
frame of democratic society, and so fatal: they also thought that
it would be well to infuse political life into each portion of the
territory, in order to multiply to an infinite extent opportunities of
acting in concert for all the members of the community, and to make them
constantly feel their mutual dependence on each other. The plan was a
wise one. The general affairs of a country only engage the attention of
leading politicians, who assemble from time to time in the same places;
and as they often lose sight of each other afterwards, no lasting ties
are established between them. But if the object be to have the local
affairs of a district conducted by the men who reside there, the same
persons are always in contact, and they are, in a manner, forced to be
acquainted, and to adapt themselves to one another.
It is difficult to draw a man out of his own circle to interest him in
the destiny of the State, because he does not clearly understand what
influence the destiny of the State can have upon his own lot. But if it
be proposed to make a road cross the end of his estate, he will see at
a glance that there is a connection between this small public affair and
his greatest private affairs; and he will discover, without its being
shown to him, the close tie which unites private to general interest.
Thus, far more may be done by intrusting to the citizens the
administration of minor affairs than by surrendering to them the control
of important ones, towards interesting them in the public welfare, and
convincing them that they constantly stand in need one of the other in
order to provide for it. A brilliant achievement may win for you the
favor of a people at one stroke; but to earn the love and respect of
the population which surrounds you, a long succession of little services
rendered and of obscure good deeds--a constant habit of kindness, and
an established reputation for disinterestedness--will be required.
Local freedom, then, which leads a great number of citizens to value the
affection of their neighbors and of their kindred, perpetually brings
men together, and forces them to help one another, in spite of the
propensities which sever them.
In the United States the more opulent citizens take great care not to
stand aloof from the people; on the contrary, they constantly keep on
easy terms with the lower classes: they listen to them, they speak to
them every day. They know that the rich in democracies always stand in
need of the poor; and that in democratic ages you attach a poor man to
you more by your manner than by benefits conferred. The magnitude of
such benefits, which sets off the difference of conditions, causes a
secret irritation to those who reap advantage from them; but the charm
of simplicity of manners is almost irresistible: their affability
carries men away, and even their want of polish is not always
displeasing. This truth does not take root at once in the minds of the
rich. They generally resist it as long as the democratic revolution
lasts, and they do not acknowledge it immediately after that revolution
is accomplished. They are very ready to do good to the people, but
they still choose to keep them at arm's length; they think that is
sufficient, but they are mistaken. They might spend fortunes thus
without warming the hearts of the population around them;--that
population does not ask them for the sacrifice of their money, but of
their pride.
It would seem as if every imagination in the United States were upon
the stretch to invent means of increasing the wealth and satisfying
the wants of the public. The best-informed inhabitants of each district
constantly use their information to discover new truths which may
augment the general prosperity; and if they have made any such
discoveries, they eagerly surrender them to the mass of the people.
When the vices and weaknesses, frequently exhibited by those who
govern in America, are closely examined, the prosperity of the people
occasions--but improperly occasions--surprise. Elected magistrates do
not make the American democracy flourish; it flourishes because the
magistrates are elective.
It would be unjust to suppose that the patriotism and the zeal which
every American displays for the welfare of his fellow-citizens are
wholly insincere. Although private interest directs the greater part
of human actions in the United States as well as elsewhere, it does
not regulate them all. I must say that I have often seen Americans make
great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and I have remarked
a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful
support to each other. The free institutions which the inhabitants of
the United States possess, and the political rights of which they make
so much use, remind every citizen, and in a thousand ways, that he lives
in society. They every instant impress upon his mind the notion that it
is the duty, as well as the interest of men, to make themselves useful
to their fellow-creatures; and as he sees no particular ground of
animosity to them, since he is never either their master or their slave,
his heart readily leans to the side of kindness. Men attend to the
interests of the public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice: what
was intentional becomes an instinct; and by dint of working for the good
of one's fellow citizens, the habit and the taste for serving them is at
length acquired.
Many people in France consider equality of conditions as one evil, and
political freedom as a second. When they are obliged to yield to the
former, they strive at least to escape from the latter. But I contend
that in order to combat the evils which equality may produce, there is
only one effectual remedy--namely, political freedom.
Chapter V: Of The Use Which The Americans Make Of Public Associations In
Civil Life
I do not propose to speak of those political associations--by the aid of
which men endeavor to defend themselves against the despotic influence
of a majority--or against the aggressions of regal power. That subject I
have already treated. If each citizen did not learn, in proportion as
he individually becomes more feeble, and consequently more incapable
of preserving his freedom single-handed, to combine with his
fellow-citizens for the purpose of defending it, it is clear that
tyranny would unavoidably increase together with equality.
Those associations only which are formed in civil life, without
reference to political objects, are here adverted to. The political
associations which exist in the United States are only a single feature
in the midst of the immense assemblage of associations in that country.
Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions, constantly
form associations. They have not only commercial and manufacturing
companies, in which all take part, but associations of a thousand other
kinds--religious, moral, serious, futile, extensive, or restricted,
enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give
entertainments, to found establishments for education, to build inns,
to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to
the antipodes; and in this manner they found hospitals, prisons, and
schools. If it be proposed to advance some truth, or to foster some
feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form a society.
Wherever, at the head of some new undertaking, you see the government
in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States you will be
sure to find an association. I met with several kinds of associations in
America, of which I confess I had no previous notion; and I have often
admired the extreme skill with which the inhabitants of the United
States succeed in proposing a common object to the exertions of a great
many men, and in getting them voluntarily to pursue it. I have since
travelled over England, whence the Americans have taken some of their
laws and many of their customs; and it seemed to me that the principle
of association was by no means so constantly or so adroitly used in
that country. The English often perform great things singly; whereas the
Americans form associations for the smallest undertakings. It is evident
that the former people consider association as a powerful means of
action, but the latter seem to regard it as the only means they have of
acting.
Thus the most democratic country on the face of the earth is that in
which men have in our time carried to the highest perfection the art of
pursuing in common the object of their common desires, and have applied
this new science to the greatest number of purposes. Is this the result
of accident? or is there in reality any necessary connection between the
principle of association and that of equality? Aristocratic communities
always contain, amongst a multitude of persons who by themselves are
powerless, a small number of powerful and wealthy citizens, each of whom
can achieve great undertakings single-handed. In aristocratic societies
men do not need to combine in order to act, because they are strongly
held together. Every wealthy and powerful citizen constitutes the head
of a permanent and compulsory association, composed of all those who are
dependent upon him, or whom he makes subservient to the execution of his
designs. Amongst democratic nations, on the contrary, all the citizens
are independent and feeble; they can do hardly anything by themselves,
and none of them can oblige his fellow-men to lend him their assistance.
They all, therefore, fall into a state of incapacity, if they do not
learn voluntarily to help each other. If men living in democratic
countries had no right and no inclination to associate for political
purposes, their independence would be in great jeopardy; but they might
long preserve their wealth and their cultivation: whereas if they
never acquired the habit of forming associations in ordinary life,
civilization itself would be endangered. A people amongst which
individuals should lose the power of achieving great things
single-handed, without acquiring the means of producing them by united
exertions, would soon relapse into barbarism.
Unhappily, the same social condition which renders associations so
necessary to democratic nations, renders their formation more difficult
amongst those nations than amongst all others. When several members of
an aristocracy agree to combine, they easily succeed in doing so; as
each of them brings great strength to the partnership, the number of its
members may be very limited; and when the members of an association
are limited in number, they may easily become mutually acquainted,
understand each other, and establish fixed regulations. The same
opportunities do not occur amongst democratic nations, where the
associated members must always be very numerous for their association to
have any power.
I am aware that many of my countrymen are not in the least embarrassed
by this difficulty. They contend that the more enfeebled and incompetent
the citizens become, the more able and active the government ought to
be rendered, in order that society at large may execute what individuals
can no longer accomplish. They believe this answers the whole
difficulty, but I think they are mistaken. A government might perform
the part of some of the largest American companies; and several States,
members of the Union, have already attempted it; but what political
power could ever carry on the vast multitude of lesser undertakings
which the American citizens perform every day, with the assistance of
the principle of association? It is easy to foresee that the time is
drawing near when man will be less and less able to produce, of himself
alone, the commonest necessaries of life. The task of the governing
power will therefore perpetually increase, and its very efforts will
extend it every day. The more it stands in the place of associations,
the more will individuals, losing the notion of combining together,
require its assistance: these are causes and effects which unceasingly
engender each other. Will the administration of the country ultimately
assume the management of all the manufacturers, which no single
citizen is able to carry on? And if a time at length arrives, when, in
consequence of the extreme subdivision of landed property, the soil
is split into an infinite number of parcels, so that it can only be
cultivated by companies of husbandmen, will it be necessary that the
head of the government should leave the helm of state to follow the
plough? The morals and the intelligence of a democratic people would be
as much endangered as its business and manufactures, if the government
ever wholly usurped the place of private companies.
Feelings and opinions are recruited, the heart is enlarged, and the
human mind is developed by no other means than by the reciprocal
influence of men upon each other. I have shown that these influences are
almost null in democratic countries; they must therefore be artificially
created, and this can only be accomplished by associations.
When the members of an aristocratic community adopt a new opinion, or
conceive a new sentiment, they give it a station, as it were, beside
themselves, upon the lofty platform where they stand; and opinions
or sentiments so conspicuous to the eyes of the multitude are easily
introduced into the minds or hearts of all around. In democratic
countries the governing power alone is naturally in a condition to
act in this manner; but it is easy to see that its action is always
inadequate, and often dangerous. A government can no more be competent
to keep alive and to renew the circulation of opinions and feelings
amongst a great people, than to manage all the speculations of
productive industry. No sooner does a government attempt to go
beyond its political sphere and to enter upon this new track, than
it exercises, even unintentionally, an insupportable tyranny; for a
government can only dictate strict rules, the opinions which it favors
are rigidly enforced, and it is never easy to discriminate between its
advice and its commands. Worse still will be the case if the government
really believes itself interested in preventing all circulation of
ideas; it will then stand motionless, and oppressed by the heaviness of
voluntary torpor. Governments therefore should not be the only active
powers: associations ought, in democratic nations, to stand in lieu of
those powerful private individuals whom the equality of conditions has
swept away.
As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have taken
up an opinion or a feeling which they wish to promote in the world,
they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have found each
other out, they combine. From that moment they are no longer isolated
men, but a power seen from afar, whose actions serve for an example,
and whose language is listened to. The first time I heard in the United
States that 100,000 men had bound themselves publicly to abstain from
spirituous liquors, it appeared to me more like a joke than a serious
engagement; and I did not at once perceive why these temperate citizens
could not content themselves with drinking water by their own firesides.
I at last understood that 300,000 Americans, alarmed by the progress
of drunkenness around them, had made up their minds to patronize
temperance. They acted just in the same way as a man of high rank who
should dress very plainly, in order to inspire the humbler orders with
a contempt of luxury. It is probable that if these 100,000 men had lived
in France, each of them would singly have memorialized the government to
watch the public-houses all over the kingdom.
Nothing, in my opinion, is more deserving of our attention than the
intellectual and moral associations of America. The political and
industrial associations of that country strike us forcibly; but the
others elude our observation, or if we discover them, we understand them
imperfectly, because we have hardly ever seen anything of the kind.
It must, however, be acknowledged that they are as necessary to the
American people as the former, and perhaps more so. In democratic
countries the science of association is the mother of science; the
progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it has made. Amongst
the laws which rule human societies there is one which seems to be more
precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized, or to
become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the
same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.
Chapter VI: Of The Relation Between Public Associations And Newspapers
When men are no longer united amongst themselves by firm and lasting
ties, it is impossible to obtain the cooperation of any great number of
them, unless you can persuade every man whose concurrence you require
that this private interest obliges him voluntarily to unite his
exertions to the exertions of all the rest. This can only be habitually
and conveniently effected by means of a newspaper; nothing but a
newspaper can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same
moment. A newspaper is an adviser who does not require to be sought, but
who comes of his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the
common weal, without distracting you from your private affairs.
Newspapers therefore become more necessary in proportion as men become
more equal, and individualism more to be feared. To suppose that they
only serve to protect freedom would be to diminish their importance:
they maintain civilization. I shall not deny that in democratic
countries newspapers frequently lead the citizens to launch together in
very ill-digested schemes; but if there were no newspapers there would
be no common activity. The evil which they produce is therefore much
less than that which they cure.
The effect of a newspaper is not only to suggest the same purpose to
a great number of persons, but also to furnish means for executing in
common the designs which they may have singly conceived. The principal
citizens who inhabit an aristocratic country discern each other from
afar; and if they wish to unite their forces, they move towards each
other, drawing a multitude of men after them. It frequently happens, on
the contrary, in democratic countries, that a great number of men who
wish or who want to combine cannot accomplish it, because as they are
very insignificant and lost amidst the crowd, they cannot see, and know
not where to find, one another. A newspaper then takes up the notion or
the feeling which had occurred simultaneously, but singly, to each of
them. All are then immediately guided towards this beacon; and these
wandering minds, which had long sought each other in darkness, at length
meet and unite.
The newspaper brought them together, and the newspaper is still
necessary to keep them united. In order that an association amongst a
democratic people should have any power, it must be a numerous body.
The persons of whom it is composed are therefore scattered over a wide
extent, and each of them is detained in the place of his domicile by the
narrowness of his income, or by the small unremitting exertions by which
he earns it. Means then must be found to converse every day without
seeing each other, and to take steps in common without having met. Thus
hardly any democratic association can do without newspapers. There is
consequently a necessary connection between public associations
and newspapers: newspapers make associations, and associations make
newspapers; and if it has been correctly advanced that associations will
increase in number as the conditions of men become more equal, it is not
less certain that the number of newspapers increases in proportion to
that of associations. Thus it is in America that we find at the same
time the greatest number of associations and of newspapers.
This connection between the number of newspapers and that of
associations leads us to the discovery of a further connection between
the state of the periodical press and the form of the administration
in a country; and shows that the number of newspapers must diminish
or increase amongst a democratic people, in proportion as its
administration is more or less centralized. For amongst democratic
nations the exercise of local powers cannot be intrusted to the
principal members of the community as in aristocracies. Those powers
must either be abolished, or placed in the hands of very large
numbers of men, who then in fact constitute an association permanently
established by law for the purpose of administering the affairs of a
certain extent of territory; and they require a journal, to bring
to them every day, in the midst of their own minor concerns, some
intelligence of the state of their public weal. The more numerous local
powers are, the greater is the number of men in whom they are vested by
law; and as this want is hourly felt, the more profusely do newspapers
abound.
The extraordinary subdivision of administrative power has much more
to do with the enormous number of American newspapers than the great
political freedom of the country and the absolute liberty of the press.
If all the inhabitants of the Union had the suffrage--but a suffrage
which should only extend to the choice of their legislators in
Congress--they would require but few newspapers, because they would only
have to act together on a few very important but very rare occasions.
But within the pale of the great association of the nation, lesser
associations have been established by law in every country, every city,
and indeed in every village, for the purposes of local administration.
The laws of the country thus compel every American to co-operate every
day of his life with some of his fellow-citizens for a common purpose,
and each one of them requires a newspaper to inform him what all the
others are doing.
I am of opinion that a democratic people, *a without any national
representative assemblies, but with a great number of small local
powers, would have in the end more newspapers than another people
governed by a centralized administration and an elective legislation.
What best explains to me the enormous circulation of the daily press
in the United States, is that amongst the Americans I find the utmost
national freedom combined with local freedom of every kind. There is
a prevailing opinion in France and England that the circulation of
newspapers would be indefinitely increased by removing the taxes which
have been laid upon the press. This is a very exaggerated estimate
of the effects of such a reform. Newspapers increase in numbers, not
according to their cheapness, but according to the more or less frequent
want which a great number of men may feel for intercommunication and
combination.
[Footnote a: I say a democratic people: the administration of an
aristocratic people may be the reverse of centralized, and yet the want
of newspapers be little felt, because local powers are then vested in
the hands of a very small number of men, who either act apart, or who
know each other and can easily meet and come to an understanding.]
In like manner I should attribute the increasing influence of the
daily press to causes more general than those by which it is commonly
explained. A newspaper can only subsist on the condition of publishing
sentiments or principles common to a large number of men. A newspaper
therefore always represents an association which is composed of its
habitual readers. This association may be more or less defined, more or
less restricted, more or less numerous; but the fact that the newspaper
keeps alive, is a proof that at least the germ of such an association
exists in the minds of its readers.
This leads me to a last reflection, with which I shall conclude this
chapter. The more equal the conditions of men become, and the less
strong men individually are, the more easily do they give way to the
current of the multitude, and the more difficult is it for them to
adhere by themselves to an opinion which the multitude discard. A
newspaper represents an association; it may be said to address each of
its readers in the name of all the others, and to exert its influence
over them in proportion to their individual weakness. The power of the
newspaper press must therefore increase as the social conditions of men
become more equal.
Chapter VII: Connection Of Civil And Political Associations
There is only one country on the face of the earth where the citizens
enjoy unlimited freedom of association for political purposes. This same
country is the only one in the world where the continual exercise of the
right of association has been introduced into civil life, and where all
the advantages which civilization can confer are procured by means of
it. In all the countries where political associations are prohibited,
civil associations are rare. It is hardly probable that this is the
result of accident; but the inference should rather be, that there is a
natural, and perhaps a necessary, connection between these two kinds
of associations. Certain men happen to have a common interest in some
concern--either a commercial undertaking is to be managed, or some
speculation in manufactures to be tried; they meet, they combine, and
thus by degrees they become familiar with the principle of association.
The greater is the multiplicity of small affairs, the more do men, even
without knowing it, acquire facility in prosecuting great undertakings
in common. Civil associations, therefore, facilitate political
association: but, on the other hand, political association singularly
strengthens and improves associations for civil purposes. In civil life
every man may, strictly speaking, fancy that he can provide for his own
wants; in politics, he can fancy no such thing. When a people, then,
have any knowledge of public life, the notion of association, and the
wish to coalesce, present themselves every day to the minds of the whole
community: whatever natural repugnance may restrain men from acting in
concert, they will always be ready to combine for the sake of a party.
Thus political life makes the love and practice of association more
general; it imparts a desire of union, and teaches the means of
combination to numbers of men who would have always lived apart.
Politics not only give birth to numerous associations, but to
associations of great extent. In civil life it seldom happens that any
one interest draws a very large number of men to act in concert; much
skill is required to bring such an interest into existence: but in
politics opportunities present themselves every day. Now it is solely
in great associations that the general value of the principle of
association is displayed. Citizens who are individually powerless,
do not very clearly anticipate the strength which they may acquire by
uniting together; it must be shown to them in order to be understood.
Hence it is often easier to collect a multitude for a public purpose
than a few persons; a thousand citizens do not see what interest they
have in combining together--ten thousand will be perfectly aware of it.
In politics men combine for great undertakings; and the use they make
of the principle of association in important affairs practically teaches
them that it is their interest to help each other in those of less
moment. A political association draws a number of individuals at the
same time out of their own circle: however they may be naturally kept
asunder by age, mind, and fortune, it places them nearer together and
brings them into contact. Once met, they can always meet again.
Men can embark in few civil partnerships without risking a portion of
their possessions; this is the case with all manufacturing and
trading companies. When men are as yet but little versed in the art of
association, and are unacquainted with its principal rules, they
are afraid, when first they combine in this manner, of buying their
experience dear. They therefore prefer depriving themselves of a
powerful instrument of success to running the risks which attend the use
of it. They are, however, less reluctant to join political associations,
which appear to them to be without danger, because they adventure no
money in them. But they cannot belong to these associations for any
length of time without finding out how order is maintained amongst a
large number of men, and by what contrivance they are made to advance,
harmoniously and methodically, to the same object. Thus they learn to
surrender their own will to that of all the rest, and to make their own
exertions subordinate to the common impulse--things which it is not less
necessary to know in civil than in political associations. Political
associations may therefore be considered as large free schools, where
all the members of the community go to learn the general theory of
association.
But even if political association did not directly contribute to the
progress of civil association, to destroy the former would be to impair
the latter. When citizens can only meet in public for certain purposes,
they regard such meetings as a strange proceeding of rare occurrence,
and they rarely think at all about it. When they are allowed to meet
freely for all purposes, they ultimately look upon public association
as the universal, or in a manner the sole means, which men can employ to
accomplish the different purposes they may have in view. Every new want
instantly revives the notion. The art of association then becomes, as I
have said before, the mother of action, studied and applied by all.
When some kinds of associations are prohibited and others allowed, it is
difficult to distinguish the former from the latter, beforehand. In this
state of doubt men abstain from them altogether, and a sort of public
opinion passes current which tends to cause any association whatsoever
to be regarded as a bold and almost an illicit enterprise. *a
[Footnote a: This is more especially true when the executive government
has a discretionary power of allowing or prohibiting associations. When
certain associations are simply prohibited by law, and the courts of
justice have to punish infringements of that law, the evil is far less
considerable. Then every citizen knows beforehand pretty nearly what he
has to expect. He judges himself before he is judged by the law, and,
abstaining from prohibited associations, he embarks in those which are
legally sanctioned. It is by these restrictions that all free nations
have always admitted that the right of association might be limited.
But if the legislature should invest a man with a power of ascertaining
beforehand which associations are dangerous and which are useful, and
should authorize him to destroy all associations in the bud or allow
them to be formed, as nobody would be able to foresee in what cases
associations might be established and in what cases they would be put
down, the spirit of association would be entirely paralyzed. The former
of these laws would only assail certain associations; the latter would
apply to society itself, and inflict an injury upon it. I can conceive
that a regular government may have recourse to the former, but I do not
concede that any government has the right of enacting the latter.]
It is therefore chimerical to suppose that the spirit of association,
when it is repressed on some one point, will nevertheless display
the same vigor on all others; and that if men be allowed to prosecute
certain undertakings in common, that is quite enough for them eagerly
to set about them. When the members of a community are allowed and
accustomed to combine for all purposes, they will combine as readily for
the lesser as for the more important ones; but if they are only allowed
to combine for small affairs, they will be neither inclined nor able
to effect it. It is in vain that you will leave them entirely free to
prosecute their business on joint-stock account: they will hardly care
to avail themselves of the rights you have granted to them; and, after
having exhausted your strength in vain efforts to put down prohibited
associations, you will be surprised that you cannot persuade men to form
the associations you encourage.
I do not say that there can be no civil associations in a country where
political association is prohibited; for men can never live in society
without embarking in some common undertakings: but I maintain that in
such a country civil associations will always be few in number, feebly
planned, unskillfully managed, that they will never form any vast
designs, or that they will fail in the execution of them.
This naturally leads me to think that freedom of association in
political matters is not so dangerous to public tranquillity as is
supposed; and that possibly, after having agitated society for some
time, it may strengthen the State in the end. In democratic countries
political associations are, so to speak, the only powerful persons who
aspire to rule the State. Accordingly, the governments of our time look
upon associations of this kind just as sovereigns in the Middle Ages
regarded the great vassals of the Crown: they entertain a sort of
instinctive abhorrence of them, and they combat them on all occasions.
They bear, on the contrary, a natural goodwill to civil associations,
because they readily discover that, instead of directing the minds of
the community to public affairs, these institutions serve to divert them
from such reflections; and that, by engaging them more and more in the
pursuit of objects which cannot be attained without public tranquillity,
they deter them from revolutions. But these governments do not attend
to the fact that political associations tend amazingly to multiply and
facilitate those of a civil character, and that in avoiding a dangerous
evil they deprive themselves of an efficacious remedy.
When you see the Americans freely and constantly forming associations
for the purpose of promoting some political principle, of raising one
man to the head of affairs, or of wresting power from another, you
have some difficulty in understanding that men so independent do not
constantly fall into the abuse of freedom. If, on the other hand, you
survey the infinite number of trading companies which are in operation
in the United States, and perceive that the Americans are on every side
unceasingly engaged in the execution of important and difficult plans,
which the slightest revolution would throw into confusion, you will
readily comprehend why people so well employed are by no means tempted
to perturb the State, nor to destroy that public tranquillity by which
they all profit.
Is it enough to observe these things separately, or should we not
discover the hidden tie which connects them? In their political
associations, the Americans of all conditions, minds, and ages, daily
acquire a general taste for association, and grow accustomed to the use
of it. There they meet together in large numbers, they converse, they
listen to each other, and they are mutually stimulated to all sorts of
undertakings. They afterwards transfer to civil life the notions they
have thus acquired, and make them subservient to a thousand purposes.
Thus it is by the enjoyment of a dangerous freedom that the Americans
learn the art of rendering the dangers of freedom less formidable.
If a certain moment in the existence of a nation be selected, it is easy
to prove that political associations perturb the State, and paralyze
productive industry; but take the whole life of a people, and it may
perhaps be easy to demonstrate that freedom of association in political
matters is favorable to the prosperity and even to the tranquillity of
the community.
I said in the former part of this work, "The unrestrained liberty of
political association cannot be entirely assimilated to the liberty of
the press. The one is at the same time less necessary and more dangerous
than the other. A nation may confine it within certain limits without
ceasing to be mistress of itself; and it may sometimes be obliged to do
so in order to maintain its own authority." And further on I added:
"It cannot be denied that the unrestrained liberty of association for
political purposes is the last degree of liberty which a people is fit
for. If it does not throw them into anarchy, it perpetually brings them,
as it were, to the verge of it." Thus I do not think that a nation
is always at liberty to invest its citizens with an absolute right of
association for political purposes; and I doubt whether, in any country
or in any age, it be wise to set no limits to freedom of association.
A certain nation, it is said, could not maintain tranquillity in the
community, cause the laws to be respected, or establish a lasting
government, if the right of association were not confined within narrow
limits. These blessings are doubtless invaluable, and I can imagine
that, to acquire or to preserve them, a nation may impose upon itself
severe temporary restrictions: but still it is well that the nation
should know at what price these blessings are purchased. I can
understand that it may be advisable to cut off a man's arm in order to
save his life; but it would be ridiculous to assert that he will be as
dexterous as he was before he lost it.
Chapter VIII: The Americans Combat Individualism By The Principle Of
Interest Rightly Understood
When the world was managed by a few rich and powerful individuals, these
persons loved to entertain a lofty idea of the duties of man. They were
fond of professing that it is praiseworthy to forget one's self, and
that good should be done without hope of reward, as it is by the Deity
himself. Such were the standard opinions of that time in morals. I doubt
whether men were more virtuous in aristocratic ages than in others; but
they were incessantly talking of the beauties of virtue, and its utility
was only studied in secret. But since the imagination takes less lofty
flights and every man's thoughts are centred in himself, moralists are
alarmed by this idea of self-sacrifice, and they no longer venture to
present it to the human mind. They therefore content themselves with
inquiring whether the personal advantage of each member of the community
does not consist in working for the good of all; and when they have hit
upon some point on which private interest and public interest meet and
amalgamate, they are eager to bring it into notice. Observations of this
kind are gradually multiplied: what was only a single remark becomes a
general principle; and it is held as a truth that man serves himself
in serving his fellow-creatures, and that his private interest is to do
good.
I have already shown, in several parts of this work, by what means the
inhabitants of the United States almost always manage to combine their
own advantage with that of their fellow-citizens: my present purpose is
to point out the general rule which enables them to do so. In the United
States hardly anybody talks of the beauty of virtue; but they maintain
that virtue is useful, and prove it every day. The American moralists
do not profess that men ought to sacrifice themselves for their
fellow-creatures because it is noble to make such sacrifices; but they
boldly aver that such sacrifices are as necessary to him who imposes
them upon himself as to him for whose sake they are made. They have
found out that in their country and their age man is brought home to
himself by an irresistible force; and losing all hope of stopping
that force, they turn all their thoughts to the direction of it. They
therefore do not deny that every man may follow his own interest;
but they endeavor to prove that it is the interest of every man to be
virtuous. I shall not here enter into the reasons they allege, which
would divert me from my subject: suffice it to say that they have
convinced their fellow-countrymen.
Montaigne said long ago: "Were I not to follow the straight road for its
straightness, I should follow it for having found by experience that in
the end it is commonly the happiest and most useful track." The doctrine
of interest rightly understood is not, then, new, but amongst the
Americans of our time it finds universal acceptance: it has become
popular there; you may trace it at the bottom of all their actions, you
will remark it in all they say. It is as often to be met with on the
lips of the poor man as of the rich. In Europe the principle of interest
is much grosser than it is in America, but at the same time it is
less common, and especially it is less avowed; amongst us, men still
constantly feign great abnegation which they no longer feel. The
Americans, on the contrary, are fond of explaining almost all the
actions of their lives by the principle of interest rightly understood;
they show with complacency how an enlightened regard for themselves
constantly prompts them to assist each other, and inclines them
willingly to sacrifice a portion of their time and property to the
welfare of the State. In this respect I think they frequently fail to
do themselves justice; for in the United States, as well as elsewhere,
people are sometimes seen to give way to those disinterested and
spontaneous impulses which are natural to man; but the Americans seldom
allow that they yield to emotions of this kind; they are more anxious to
do honor to their philosophy than to themselves.
I might here pause, without attempting to pass a judgment on what I have
described. The extreme difficulty of the subject would be my excuse,
but I shall not avail myself of it; and I had rather that my readers,
clearly perceiving my object, should refuse to follow me than that
I should leave them in suspense. The principle of interest rightly
understood is not a lofty one, but it is clear and sure. It does not aim
at mighty objects, but it attains without excessive exertion all
those at which it aims. As it lies within the reach of all capacities,
everyone can without difficulty apprehend and retain it. By its
admirable conformity to human weaknesses, it easily obtains great
dominion; nor is that dominion precarious, since the principle checks
one personal interest by another, and uses, to direct the passions,
the very same instrument which excites them. The principle of interest
rightly understood produces no great acts of self-sacrifice, but it
suggests daily small acts of self-denial. By itself it cannot suffice to
make a man virtuous, but it disciplines a number of citizens in habits
of regularity, temperance, moderation, foresight, self-command; and, if
it does not lead men straight to virtue by the will, it gradually draws
them in that direction by their habits. If the principle of interest
rightly understood were to sway the whole moral world, extraordinary
virtues would doubtless be more rare; but I think that gross depravity
would then also be less common. The principle of interest rightly
understood perhaps prevents some men from rising far above the level of
mankind; but a great number of other men, who were falling far below it,
are caught and restrained by it. Observe some few individuals, they are
lowered by it; survey mankind, it is raised. I am not afraid to say that
the principle of interest, rightly understood, appears to me the best
suited of all philosophical theories to the wants of the men of our
time, and that I regard it as their chief remaining security against
themselves. Towards it, therefore, the minds of the moralists of our
age should turn; even should they judge it to be incomplete, it must
nevertheless be adopted as necessary.
I do not think upon the whole that there is more egotism amongst us than
in America; the only difference is, that there it is enlightened--here
it is not. Every American will sacrifice a portion of his private
interests to preserve the rest; we would fain preserve the whole, and
oftentimes the whole is lost. Everybody I see about me seems bent on
teaching his contemporaries, by precept and example, that what is useful
is never wrong. Will nobody undertake to make them understand how what
is right may be useful? No power upon earth can prevent the increasing
equality of conditions from inclining the human mind to seek out what is
useful, or from leading every member of the community to be wrapped up
in himself. It must therefore be expected that personal interest will
become more than ever the principal, if not the sole, spring of men's
actions; but it remains to be seen how each man will understand his
personal interest. If the members of a community, as they become more
equal, become more ignorant and coarse, it is difficult to foresee to
what pitch of stupid excesses their egotism may lead them; and no one
can foretell into what disgrace and wretchedness they would plunge
themselves, lest they should have to sacrifice something of their own
well-being to the prosperity of their fellow-creatures. I do not think
that the system of interest, as it is professed in America, is, in all
its parts, self-evident; but it contains a great number of truths so
evident that men, if they are but educated, cannot fail to see them.
Educate, then, at any rate; for the age of implicit self-sacrifice and
instinctive virtues is already flitting far away from us, and the time
is fast approaching when freedom, public peace, and social order itself
will not be able to exist without education.
Chapter IX: That The Americans Apply The Principle Of Interest Rightly
Understood To Religious Matters
If the principle of interest rightly understood had nothing but the
present world in view, it would be very insufficient; for there are many
sacrifices which can only find their recompense in another; and whatever
ingenuity may be put forth to demonstrate the utility of virtue, it will
never be an easy task to make that man live aright who has no thoughts
of dying. It is therefore necessary to ascertain whether the principle
of interest rightly understood is easily compatible with religious
belief. The philosophers who inculcate this system of morals tell men,
that to be happy in this life they must watch their own passions and
steadily control their excess; that lasting happiness can only be
secured by renouncing a thousand transient gratifications; and that a
man must perpetually triumph over himself, in order to secure his own
advantage. The founders of almost all religions have held the same
language. The track they point out to man is the same, only that the
goal is more remote; instead of placing in this world the reward of the
sacrifices they impose, they transport it to another. Nevertheless I
cannot believe that all those who practise virtue from religious motives
are only actuated by the hope of a recompense. I have known zealous
Christians who constantly forgot themselves, to work with greater ardor
for the happiness of their fellow-men; and I have heard them declare
that all they did was only to earn the blessings of a future state. I
cannot but think that they deceive themselves; I respect them too much
to believe them.
Christianity indeed teaches that a man must prefer his neighbor to
himself, in order to gain eternal life; but Christianity also teaches
that men ought to benefit their fellow-creatures for the love of God.
A sublime expression! Man, searching by his intellect into the divine
conception, and seeing that order is the purpose of God, freely combines
to prosecute the great design; and whilst he sacrifices his personal
interests to this consummate order of all created things, expects no
other recompense than the pleasure of contemplating it. I do not believe
that interest is the sole motive of religious men: but I believe that
interest is the principal means which religions themselves employ to
govern men, and I do not question that this way they strike into the
multitude and become popular. It is not easy clearly to perceive why
the principle of interest rightly understood should keep aloof from
religious opinions; and it seems to me more easy to show why it should
draw men to them. Let it be supposed that, in order to obtain happiness
in this world, a man combats his instinct on all occasions and
deliberately calculates every action of his life; that, instead of
yielding blindly to the impetuosity of first desires, he has learned the
art of resisting them, and that he has accustomed himself to sacrifice
without an effort the pleasure of a moment to the lasting interest
of his whole life. If such a man believes in the religion which he
professes, it will cost him but little to submit to the restrictions it
may impose. Reason herself counsels him to obey, and habit has prepared
him to endure them. If he should have conceived any doubts as to the
object of his hopes, still he will not easily allow himself to be
stopped by them; and he will decide that it is wise to risk some of the
advantages of this world, in order to preserve his rights to the great
inheritance promised him in another. "To be mistaken in believing that
the Christian religion is true," says Pascal, "is no great loss to
anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false!"
The Americans do not affect a brutal indifference to a future state;
they affect no puerile pride in despising perils which they hope to
escape from. They therefore profess their religion without shame and
without weakness; but there generally is, even in their zeal, something
so indescribably tranquil, methodical, and deliberate, that it would
seem as if the head, far more than the heart, brought them to the
foot of the altar. The Americans not only follow their religion from
interest, but they often place in this world the interest which makes
them follow it. In the Middle Ages the clergy spoke of nothing but a
future state; they hardly cared to prove that a sincere Christian may
be a happy man here below. But the American preachers are constantly
referring to the earth; and it is only with great difficulty that they
can divert their attention from it. To touch their congregations, they
always show them how favorable religious opinions are to freedom and
public tranquillity; and it is often difficult to ascertain from their
discourses whether the principal object of religion is to procure
eternal felicity in the other world, or prosperity in this.
Chapter X: Of The Taste For Physical Well-Being In America
In America the passion for physical well-being is not always exclusive,
but it is general; and if all do not feel it in the same manner, yet it
is felt by all. Carefully to satisfy all, even the least wants of the
body, and to provide the little conveniences of life, is uppermost
in every mind. Something of an analogous character is more and more
apparent in Europe. Amongst the causes which produce these similar
consequences in both hemispheres, several are so connected with my
subject as to deserve notice.
When riches are hereditarily fixed in families, there are a great number
of men who enjoy the comforts of life without feeling an exclusive
taste for those comforts. The heart of man is not so much caught by the
undisturbed possession of anything valuable as by the desire, as yet
imperfectly satisfied, of possessing it, and by the incessant dread
of losing it. In aristocratic communities, the wealthy, never having
experienced a condition different from their own, entertain no fear of
changing it; the existence of such conditions hardly occurs to them. The
comforts of life are not to them the end of life, but simply a way of
living; they regard them as existence itself--enjoyed, but scarcely
thought of. As the natural and instinctive taste which all men feel
for being well off is thus satisfied without trouble and without
apprehension, their faculties are turned elsewhere, and cling to more
arduous and more lofty undertakings, which excite and engross their
minds. Hence it is that, in the midst of physical gratifications, the
members of an aristocracy often display a haughty contempt of these very
enjoyments, and exhibit singular powers of endurance under the privation
of them. All the revolutions which have ever shaken or destroyed
aristocracies, have shown how easily men accustomed to superfluous
luxuries can do without the necessaries of life; whereas men who have
toiled to acquire a competency can hardly live after they have lost it.
If I turn my observation from the upper to the lower classes, I find
analogous effects produced by opposite causes. Amongst a nation where
aristocracy predominates in society, and keeps it stationary, the
people in the end get as much accustomed to poverty as the rich to
their opulence. The latter bestow no anxiety on their physical comforts,
because they enjoy them without an effort; the former do not think
of things which they despair of obtaining, and which they hardly know
enough of to desire them. In communities of this kind, the imagination
of the poor is driven to seek another world; the miseries of real life
inclose it around, but it escapes from their control, and flies to seek
its pleasures far beyond. When, on the contrary, the distinctions
of ranks are confounded together and privileges are destroyed--when
hereditary property is subdivided, and education and freedom widely
diffused, the desire of acquiring the comforts of the world haunts the
imagination of the poor, and the dread of losing them that of the rich.
Many scanty fortunes spring up; those who possess them have a sufficient
share of physical gratifications to conceive a taste for these
pleasures--not enough to satisfy it. They never procure them without
exertion, and they never indulge in them without apprehension. They
are therefore always straining to pursue or to retain gratifications so
delightful, so imperfect, so fugitive.
If I were to inquire what passion is most natural to men who are
stimulated and circumscribed by the obscurity of their birth or the
mediocrity of their fortune, I could discover none more peculiarly
appropriate to their condition than this love of physical prosperity.
The passion for physical comforts is essentially a passion of the
middle classes: with those classes it grows and spreads, with them it
preponderates. From them it mounts into the higher orders of society,
and descends into the mass of the people. I never met in America with
any citizen so poor as not to cast a glance of hope and envy on the
enjoyments of the rich, or whose imagination did not possess itself by
anticipation of those good things which fate still obstinately withheld
from him. On the other hand, I never perceived amongst the wealthier
inhabitants of the United States that proud contempt of physical
gratifications which is sometimes to be met with even in the most
opulent and dissolute aristocracies. Most of these wealthy persons were
once poor; they have felt the sting of want; they were long a prey to
adverse fortunes; and now that the victory is won, the passions which
accompanied the contest have survived it: their minds are, as it were,
intoxicated by the small enjoyments which they have pursued for forty
years. Not but that in the United States, as elsewhere, there are a
certain number of wealthy persons who, having come into their property
by inheritance, possess, without exertion, an opulence they have not
earned. But even these men are not less devotedly attached to the
pleasures of material life. The love of well-being is now become the
predominant taste of the nation; the great current of man's passions
runs in that channel, and sweeps everything along in its course.
Chapter XI: Peculiar Effects Of The Love Of Physical Gratifications In
Democratic Ages
It may be supposed, from what has just been said, that the love
of physical gratifications must constantly urge the Americans to
irregularities in morals, disturb the peace of families, and threaten
the security of society at large. Such is not the case: the passion for
physical gratifications produces in democracies effects very different
from those which it occasions in aristocratic nations. It sometimes
happens that, wearied with public affairs and sated with opulence,
amidst the ruin of religious belief and the decline of the State, the
heart of an aristocracy may by degrees be seduced to the pursuit of
sensual enjoyments only. At other times the power of the monarch or the
weakness of the people, without stripping the nobility of their fortune,
compels them to stand aloof from the administration of affairs, and
whilst the road to mighty enterprise is closed, abandons them to the
inquietude of their own desires; they then fall back heavily upon
themselves, and seek in the pleasures of the body oblivion of their
former greatness. When the members of an aristocratic body are thus
exclusively devoted to the pursuit of physical gratifications, they
commonly concentrate in that direction all the energy which they derive
from their long experience of power. Such men are not satisfied with
the pursuit of comfort; they require sumptuous depravity and splendid
corruption. The worship they pay the senses is a gorgeous one; and they
seem to vie with each other in the art of degrading their own natures.
The stronger, the more famous, and the more free an aristocracy has
been, the more depraved will it then become; and however brilliant
may have been the lustre of its virtues, I dare predict that they will
always be surpassed by the splendor of its vices.
The taste for physical gratifications leads a democratic people into no
such excesses. The love of well-being is there displayed as a tenacious,
exclusive, universal passion; but its range is confined. To build
enormous palaces, to conquer or to mimic nature, to ransack the world in
order to gratify the passions of a man, is not thought of: but to add
a few roods of land to your field, to plant an orchard, to enlarge a
dwelling, to be always making life more comfortable and convenient,
to avoid trouble, and to satisfy the smallest wants without effort and
almost without cost. These are small objects, but the soul clings to
them; it dwells upon them closely and day by day, till they at last shut
out the rest of the world, and sometimes intervene between itself and
heaven.
This, it may be said, can only be applicable to those members of the
community who are in humble circumstances; wealthier individuals will
display tastes akin to those which belonged to them in aristocratic
ages. I contest the proposition: in point of physical gratifications,
the most opulent members of a democracy will not display tastes very
different from those of the people; whether it be that, springing from
the people, they really share those tastes, or that they esteem it a
duty to submit to them. In democratic society the sensuality of the
public has taken a moderate and tranquil course, to which all are bound
to conform: it is as difficult to depart from the common rule by one's
vices as by one's virtues. Rich men who live amidst democratic nations
are therefore more intent on providing for their smallest wants than for
their extraordinary enjoyments; they gratify a number of petty desires,
without indulging in any great irregularities of passion: thus they are
more apt to become enervated than debauched. The especial taste which
the men of democratic ages entertain for physical enjoyments is not
naturally opposed to the principles of public order; nay, it often
stands in need of order that it may be gratified. Nor is it adverse to
regularity of morals, for good morals contribute to public tranquillity
and are favorable to industry. It may even be frequently combined with a
species of religious morality: men wish to be as well off as they can
in this world, without foregoing their chance of another. Some physical
gratifications cannot be indulged in without crime; from such they
strictly abstain. The enjoyment of others is sanctioned by religion
and morality; to these the heart, the imagination, and life itself are
unreservedly given up; till, in snatching at these lesser gifts, men
lose sight of those more precious possessions which constitute the glory
and the greatness of mankind. The reproach I address to the principle
of equality, is not that it leads men away in the pursuit of forbidden
enjoyments, but that it absorbs them wholly in quest of those which are
allowed. By these means, a kind of virtuous materialism may ultimately
be established in the world, which would not corrupt, but enervate the
soul, and noiselessly unbend its springs of action.
Chapter XII: Causes Of Fanatical Enthusiasm In Some Americans
Although the desire of acquiring the good things of this world is the
prevailing passion of the American people, certain momentary outbreaks
occur, when their souls seem suddenly to burst the bonds of matter by
which they are restrained, and to soar impetuously towards heaven. In
all the States of the Union, but especially in the half-peopled country
of the Far West, wandering preachers may be met with who hawk about the
word of God from place to place. Whole families--old men, women, and
children--cross rough passes and untrodden wilds, coming from a great
distance, to join a camp-meeting, where they totally forget for several
days and nights, in listening to these discourses, the cares of business
and even the most urgent wants of the body. Here and there, in the midst
of American society, you meet with men, full of a fanatical and almost
wild enthusiasm, which hardly exists in Europe. From time to time
strange sects arise, which endeavor to strike out extraordinary paths
to eternal happiness. Religious insanity is very common in the United
States.
Nor ought these facts to surprise us. It was not man who implanted in
himself the taste for what is infinite and the love of what is immortal:
those lofty instincts are not the offspring of his capricious will;
their steadfast foundation is fixed in human nature, and they exist in
spite of his efforts. He may cross and distort them--destroy them he
cannot. The soul has wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains
be taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and
disquieted amidst the enjoyments of sense. If ever the faculties of
the great majority of mankind were exclusively bent upon the pursuit of
material objects, it might be anticipated that an amazing reaction would
take place in the souls of some men. They would drift at large in the
world of spirits, for fear of remaining shackled by the close bondage of
the body.
It is not then wonderful if, in the midst of a community whose thoughts
tend earthward, a small number of individuals are to be found who turn
their looks to heaven. I should be surprised if mysticism did not soon
make some advance amongst a people solely engaged in promoting its own
worldly welfare. It is said that the deserts of the Thebaid were peopled
by the persecutions of the emperors and the massacres of the Circus; I
should rather say that it was by the luxuries of Rome and the Epicurean
philosophy of Greece. If their social condition, their present
circumstances, and their laws did not confine the minds of the Americans
so closely to the pursuit of worldly welfare, it is probable that they
would display more reserve and more experience whenever their attention
is turned to things immaterial, and that they would check themselves
without difficulty. But they feel imprisoned within bounds which they
will apparently never be allowed to pass. As soon as they have passed
these bounds, their minds know not where to fix themselves, and they
often rush unrestrained beyond the range of common-sense.
Chapter XIII: Causes Of The Restless Spirit Of Americans In The Midst Of
Their Prosperity
In certain remote corners of the Old World you may still sometimes
stumble upon a small district which seems to have been forgotten amidst
the general tumult, and to have remained stationary whilst everything
around it was in motion. The inhabitants are for the most part extremely
ignorant and poor; they take no part in the business of the country, and
they are frequently oppressed by the government; yet their countenances
are generally placid, and their spirits light. In America I saw the
freest and most enlightened men, placed in the happiest circumstances
which the world affords: it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung
upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad even in their
pleasures. The chief reason of this contrast is that the former do not
think of the ills they endure--the latter are forever brooding over
advantages they do not possess. It is strange to see with what feverish
ardor the Americans pursue their own welfare; and to watch the vague
dread that constantly torments them lest they should not have chosen the
shortest path which may lead to it. A native of the United States clings
to this world's goods as if he were certain never to die; and he is so
hasty in grasping at all within his reach, that one would suppose he was
constantly afraid of not living long enough to enjoy them. He clutches
everything, he holds nothing fast, but soon loosens his grasp to pursue
fresh gratifications.
In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in
it, and he sells it before the roof is on: he plants a garden, and lets
it just as the trees are coming into bearing: he brings a field into
tillage, and leaves other men to gather the crops: he embraces a
profession, and gives it up: he settles in a place, which he soon
afterwards leaves, to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his
private affairs leave him any leisure, he instantly plunges into the
vortex of politics; and if at the end of a year of unremitting labor he
finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over
the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen
hundred miles in a few days, to shake off his happiness. Death at length
overtakes him, but it is before he is weary of his bootless chase of
that complete felicity which is forever on the wing.
At first sight there is something surprising in this strange unrest of
so many happy men, restless in the midst of abundance. The spectacle
itself is however as old as the world; the novelty is to see a whole
people furnish an exemplification of it. Their taste for physical
gratifications must be regarded as the original source of that secret
inquietude which the actions of the Americans betray, and of that
inconstancy of which they afford fresh examples every day. He who has
set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always
in a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach it,
to grasp it, and to enjoy it. The recollection of the brevity of life is
a constant spur to him. Besides the good things which he possesses, he
every instant fancies a thousand others which death will prevent him
from trying if he does not try them soon. This thought fills him with
anxiety, fear, and regret, and keeps his mind in ceaseless trepidation,
which leads him perpetually to change his plans and his abode. If in
addition to the taste for physical well-being a social condition be
superadded, in which the laws and customs make no condition permanent,
here is a great additional stimulant to this restlessness of temper. Men
will then be seen continually to change their track, for fear of missing
the shortest cut to happiness. It may readily be conceived that if men,
passionately bent upon physical gratifications, desire eagerly, they are
also easily discouraged: as their ultimate object is to enjoy, the
means to reach that object must be prompt and easy, or the trouble of
acquiring the gratification would be greater than the gratification
itself. Their prevailing frame of mind then is at once ardent and
relaxed, violent and enervated. Death is often less dreaded than
perseverance in continuous efforts to one end.
The equality of conditions leads by a still straighter road to several
of the effects which I have here described. When all the privileges of
birth and fortune are abolished, when all professions are accessible
to all, and a man's own energies may place him at the top of any one of
them, an easy and unbounded career seems open to his ambition, and he
will readily persuade himself that he is born to no vulgar destinies.
But this is an erroneous notion, which is corrected by daily experience.
The same equality which allows every citizen to conceive these
lofty hopes, renders all the citizens less able to realize them: it
circumscribes their powers on every side, whilst it gives freer scope to
their desires. Not only are they themselves powerless, but they are
met at every step by immense obstacles, which they did not at first
perceive. They have swept away the privileges of some of their
fellow-creatures which stood in their way, but they have opened the door
to universal competition: the barrier has changed its shape rather than
its position. When men are nearly alike, and all follow the same track,
it is very difficult for any one individual to walk quick and cleave
a way through the dense throng which surrounds and presses him. This
constant strife between the propensities springing from the equality
of conditions and the means it supplies to satisfy them, harasses and
wearies the mind.
It is possible to conceive men arrived at a degree of freedom which
should completely content them; they would then enjoy their independence
without anxiety and without impatience. But men will never establish any
equality with which they can be contented. Whatever efforts a people may
make, they will never succeed in reducing all the conditions of society
to a perfect level; and even if they unhappily attained that absolute
and complete depression, the inequality of minds would still remain,
which, coming directly from the hand of God, will forever escape the
laws of man. However democratic then the social state and the political
constitution of a people may be, it is certain that every member of the
community will always find out several points about him which command
his own position; and we may foresee that his looks will be doggedly
fixed in that direction. When inequality of conditions is the common
law of society, the most marked inequalities do not strike the eye: when
everything is nearly on the same level, the slightest are marked enough
to hurt it. Hence the desire of equality always becomes more insatiable
in proportion as equality is more complete.
Amongst democratic nations men easily attain a certain equality
of conditions: they can never attain the equality they desire. It
perpetually retires from before them, yet without hiding itself from
their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At every moment they think
they are about to grasp it; it escapes at every moment from their hold.
They are near enough to see its charms, but too far off to enjoy them;
and before they have fully tasted its delights they die. To these causes
must be attributed that strange melancholy which oftentimes will haunt
the inhabitants of democratic countries in the midst of their abundance,
and that disgust at life which sometimes seizes upon them in the midst
of calm and easy circumstances. Complaints are made in France that the
number of suicides increases; in America suicide is rare, but insanity
is said to be more common than anywhere else. These are all different
symptoms of the same disease. The Americans do not put an end to their
lives, however disquieted they may be, because their religion
forbids it; and amongst them materialism may be said hardly to exist,
notwithstanding the general passion for physical gratification. The will
resists--reason frequently gives way. In democratic ages enjoyments are
more intense than in the ages of aristocracy, and especially the number
of those who partake in them is larger: but, on the other hand, it must
be admitted that man's hopes and his desires are oftener blasted, the
soul is more stricken and perturbed, and care itself more keen.
Chapter XIV: Taste For Physical Gratifications United In America To Love
Of Freedom And Attention To Public Affairs
When a democratic state turns to absolute monarchy, the activity which
was before directed to public and to private affairs is all at once
centred upon the latter: the immediate consequence is, for some time,
great physical prosperity; but this impulse soon slackens, and the
amount of productive industry is checked. I know not if a single trading
or manufacturing people can be cited, from the Tyrians down to the
Florentines and the English, who were not a free people also. There
is therefore a close bond and necessary relation between these two
elements--freedom and productive industry. This proposition is generally
true of all nations, but especially of democratic nations. I have
already shown that men who live in ages of equality continually require
to form associations in order to procure the things they covet; and, on
the other hand, I have shown how great political freedom improves and
diffuses the art of association. Freedom, in these ages, is therefore
especially favorable to the production of wealth; nor is it difficult
to perceive that despotism is especially adverse to the same result.
The nature of despotic power in democratic ages is not to be fierce or
cruel, but minute and meddling. Despotism of this kind, though it does
not trample on humanity, is directly opposed to the genius of commerce
and the pursuits of industry.
Thus the men of democratic ages require to be free in order more readily
to procure those physical enjoyments for which they are always longing.
It sometimes happens, however, that the excessive taste they conceive
for these same enjoyments abandons them to the first master who appears.
The passion for worldly welfare then defeats itself, and, without
perceiving it, throws the object of their desires to a greater distance.
There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a
democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications amongst
such a people has grown more rapidly than their education and their
experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried
away, and lose all self-restraint, at the sight of the new possessions
they are about to lay hold upon. In their intense and exclusive anxiety
to make a fortune, they lose sight of the close connection which exists
between the private fortune of each of them and the prosperity of all.
It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip
them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen
their hold. The discharge of political duties appears to them to be a
troublesome annoyance, which diverts them from their occupations and
business. If they be required to elect representatives, to support the
Government by personal service, to meet on public business, they have no
time--they cannot waste their precious time in useless engagements: such
idle amusements are unsuited to serious men who are engaged with the
more important interests of life. These people think they are following
the principle of self-interest, but the idea they entertain of that
principle is a very rude one; and the better to look after what they
call their business, they neglect their chief business, which is to
remain their own masters.
As the citizens who work do not care to attend to public business, and
as the class which might devote its leisure to these duties has ceased
to exist, the place of the Government is, as it were, unfilled. If at
that critical moment some able and ambitious man grasps the supreme
power, he will find the road to every kind of usurpation open before
him. If he does but attend for some time to the material prosperity of
the country, no more will be demanded of him. Above all he must insure
public tranquillity: men who are possessed by the passion of physical
gratification generally find out that the turmoil of freedom disturbs
their welfare, before they discover how freedom itself serves to promote
it. If the slightest rumor of public commotion intrudes into the petty
pleasures of private life, they are aroused and alarmed by it. The fear
of anarchy perpetually haunts them, and they are always ready to fling
away their freedom at the first disturbance.
I readily admit that public tranquillity is a great good; but at the
same time I cannot forget that all nations have been enslaved by being
kept in good order. Certainly it is not to be inferred that nations
ought to despise public tranquillity; but that state ought not to
content them. A nation which asks nothing of its government but the
maintenance of order is already a slave at heart--the slave of its own
well-being, awaiting but the hand that will bind it. By such a nation
the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism
of an individual. When the bulk of the community is engrossed by private
concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of getting the upper
hand in public affairs. At such times it is not rare to see upon
the great stage of the world, as we see at our theatres, a multitude
represented by a few players, who alone speak in the name of an
absent or inattentive crowd: they alone are in action whilst all are
stationary; they regulate everything by their own caprice; they change
the laws, and tyrannize at will over the manners of the country; and
then men wonder to see into how small a number of weak and worthless
hands a great people may fall.
Hitherto the Americans have fortunately escaped all the perils which I
have just pointed out; and in this respect they are really deserving of
admiration. Perhaps there is no country in the world where fewer idle
men are to be met with than in America, or where all who work are more
eager to promote their own welfare. But if the passion of the
Americans for physical gratifications is vehement, at least it is
not indiscriminating; and reason, though unable to restrain it, still
directs its course. An American attends to his private concerns as if he
were alone in the world, and the next minute he gives himself up to the
common weal as if he had forgotten them. At one time he seems animated
by the most selfish cupidity, at another by the most lively patriotism.
The human heart cannot be thus divided. The inhabitants of the United
States alternately display so strong and so similar a passion for their
own welfare and for their freedom, that it may be supposed that these
passions are united and mingled in some part of their character. And
indeed the Americans believe their freedom to be the best instrument and
surest safeguard of their welfare: they are attached to the one by the
other. They by no means think that they are not called upon to take a
part in the public weal; they believe, on the contrary, that their chief
business is to secure for themselves a government which will allow them
to acquire the things they covet, and which will not debar them from the
peaceful enjoyment of those possessions which they have acquired.
Chapter XV: That Religious Belief Sometimes Turns The Thoughts Of The
Americans To Immaterial Pleasures
In the United States, on the seventh day of every week, the trading and
working life of the nation seems suspended; all noises cease; a deep
tranquillity, say rather the solemn calm of meditation, succeeds the
turmoil of the week, and the soul resumes possession and contemplation
of itself. Upon this day the marts of traffic are deserted; every member
of the community, accompanied by his children, goes to church, where he
listens to strange language which would seem unsuited to his ear. He
is told of the countless evils caused by pride and covetousness: he
is reminded of the necessity of checking his desires, of the finer
pleasures which belong to virtue alone, and of the true happiness which
attends it. On his return home, he does not turn to the ledgers of his
calling, but he opens the book of Holy Scripture; there he meets with
sublime or affecting descriptions of the greatness and goodness of the
Creator, of the infinite magnificence of the handiwork of God, of the
lofty destinies of man, of his duties, and of his immortal privileges.
Thus it is that the American at times steals an hour from himself; and
laying aside for a while the petty passions which agitate his life,
and the ephemeral interests which engross it, he strays at once into an
ideal world, where all is great, eternal, and pure.
I have endeavored to point out in another part of this work the causes
to which the maintenance of the political institutions of the Americans
is attributable; and religion appeared to be one of the most prominent
amongst them. I am now treating of the Americans in an individual
capacity, and I again observe that religion is not less useful to each
citizen than to the whole State. The Americans show, by their practice,
that they feel the high necessity of imparting morality to democratic
communities by means of religion. What they think of themselves in
this respect is a truth of which every democratic nation ought to be
thoroughly persuaded.
I do not doubt that the social and political constitution of a people
predisposes them to adopt a certain belief and certain tastes, which
afterwards flourish without difficulty amongst them; whilst the same
causes may divert a people from certain opinions and propensities,
without any voluntary effort, and, as it were, without any distinct
consciousness, on their part. The whole art of the legislator
is correctly to discern beforehand these natural inclinations of
communities of men, in order to know whether they should be assisted, or
whether it may not be necessary to check them. For the duties incumbent
on the legislator differ at different times; the goal towards which the
human race ought ever to be tending is alone stationary; the means of
reaching it are perpetually to be varied.
If I had been born in an aristocratic age, in the midst of a nation
where the hereditary wealth of some, and the irremediable penury of
others, should equally divert men from the idea of bettering their
condition, and hold the soul as it were in a state of torpor fixed on
the contemplation of another world, I should then wish that it were
possible for me to rouse that people to a sense of their wants; I should
seek to discover more rapid and more easy means for satisfying the fresh
desires which I might have awakened; and, directing the most strenuous
efforts of the human mind to physical pursuits, I should endeavor to
stimulate it to promote the well-being of man. If it happened that some
men were immoderately incited to the pursuit of riches, and displayed an
excessive liking for physical gratifications, I should not be alarmed;
these peculiar symptoms would soon be absorbed in the general aspect of
the people.
The attention of the legislators of democracies is called to other
cares. Give democratic nations education and freedom, and leave them
alone. They will soon learn to draw from this world all the benefits
which it can afford; they will improve each of the useful arts, and will
day by day render life more comfortable, more convenient, and more easy.
Their social condition naturally urges them in this direction; I do not
fear that they will slacken their course.
But whilst man takes delight in this honest and lawful pursuit of his
wellbeing, it is to be apprehended that he may in the end lose the use
of his sublimest faculties; and that whilst he is busied in improving
all around him, he may at length degrade himself. Here, and here only,
does the peril lie. It should therefore be the unceasing object of the
legislators of democracies, and of all the virtuous and enlightened men
who live there, to raise the souls of their fellow-citizens, and keep
them lifted up towards heaven. It is necessary that all who feel an
interest in the future destinies of democratic society should unite, and
that all should make joint and continual efforts to diffuse the love
of the infinite, a sense of greatness, and a love of pleasures not
of earth. If amongst the opinions of a democratic people any of those
pernicious theories exist which tend to inculcate that all perishes with
the body, let men by whom such theories are professed be marked as the
natural foes of such a people.
The materialists are offensive to me in many respects; their doctrines
I hold to be pernicious, and I am disgusted at their arrogance. If their
system could be of any utility to man, it would seem to be by giving him
a modest opinion of himself. But these reasoners show that it is not
so; and when they think they have said enough to establish that they are
brutes, they show themselves as proud as if they had demonstrated that
they are gods. Materialism is, amongst all nations, a dangerous disease
of the human mind; but it is more especially to be dreaded amongst a
democratic people, because it readily amalgamates with that vice which
is most familiar to the heart under such circumstances. Democracy
encourages a taste for physical gratification: this taste, if it become
excessive, soon disposes men to believe that all is matter only; and
materialism, in turn, hurries them back with mad impatience to these
same delights: such is the fatal circle within which democratic nations
are driven round. It were well that they should see the danger and hold
back.
Most religions are only general, simple, and practical means of teaching
men the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. That is the greatest
benefit which a democratic people derives, from its belief, and hence
belief is more necessary to such a people than to all others. When
therefore any religion has struck its roots deep into a democracy,
beware lest you disturb them; but rather watch it carefully, as the most
precious bequest of aristocratic ages. Seek not to supersede the old
religious opinions of men by new ones; lest in the passage from one
faith to another, the soul being left for a while stripped of all
belief, the love of physical gratifications should grow upon it and fill
it wholly.
The doctrine of metempsychosis is assuredly not more rational than that
of materialism; nevertheless if it were absolutely necessary that a
democracy should choose one of the two, I should not hesitate to decide
that the community would run less risk of being brutalized by believing
that the soul of man will pass into the carcass of a hog, than by
believing that the soul of man is nothing at all. The belief in a
supersensual and immortal principle, united for a time to matter, is
so indispensable to man's greatness, that its effects are striking even
when it is not united to the doctrine of future reward and punishment;
and when it holds no more than that after death the divine principle
contained in man is absorbed in the Deity, or transferred to animate
the frame of some other creature. Men holding so imperfect a belief will
still consider the body as the secondary and inferior portion of
their nature, and they will despise it even whilst they yield to its
influence; whereas they have a natural esteem and secret admiration for
the immaterial part of man, even though they sometimes refuse to submit
to its dominion. That is enough to give a lofty cast to their opinions
and their tastes, and to bid them tend with no interested motive, and as
it were by impulse, to pure feelings and elevated thoughts.
It is not certain that Socrates and his followers had very fixed
opinions as to what would befall man hereafter; but the sole point
of belief on which they were determined--that the soul has nothing in
common with the body, and survives it--was enough to give the Platonic
philosophy that sublime aspiration by which it is distinguished. It
is clear from the works of Plato, that many philosophical writers, his
predecessors or contemporaries, professed materialism. These writers
have not reached us, or have reached us in mere fragments. The same
thing has happened in almost all ages; the greater part of the most
famous minds in literature adhere to the doctrines of a supersensual
philosophy. The instinct and the taste of the human race maintain those
doctrines; they save them oftentimes in spite of men themselves, and
raise the names of their defenders above the tide of time. It must not
then be supposed that at any period or under any political condition,
the passion for physical gratifications, and the opinions which are
superinduced by that passion, can ever content a whole people. The heart
of man is of a larger mould: it can at once comprise a taste for the
possessions of earth and the love of those of heaven: at times it may
seem to cling devotedly to the one, but it will never be long without
thinking of the other.
If it be easy to see that it is more particularly important in
democratic ages that spiritual opinions should prevail, it is not easy
to say by what means those who govern democratic nations may make them
predominate. I am no believer in the prosperity, any more than in the
durability, of official philosophies; and as to state religions, I
have always held, that if they be sometimes of momentary service to the
interests of political power, they always, sooner or later, become
fatal to the Church. Nor do I think with those who assert, that to raise
religion in the eyes of the people, and to make them do honor to her
spiritual doctrines, it is desirable indirectly to give her ministers a
political influence which the laws deny them. I am so much alive to
the almost inevitable dangers which beset religious belief whenever
the clergy take part in public affairs, and I am so convinced that
Christianity must be maintained at any cost in the bosom of modern
democracies, that I had rather shut up the priesthood within the
sanctuary than allow them to step beyond it.
What means then remain in the hands of constituted authorities to bring
men back to spiritual opinions, or to hold them fast to the religion
by which those opinions are suggested? My answer will do me harm in
the eyes of politicians. I believe that the sole effectual means which
governments can employ in order to have the doctrine of the immortality
of the soul duly respected, is ever to act as if they believed in it
themselves; and I think that it is only by scrupulous conformity to
religious morality in great affairs that they can hope to teach the
community at large to know, to love, and to observe it in the lesser
concerns of life.
Chapter XVI: That Excessive Care Of Worldly Welfare May Impair That
Welfare
There is a closer tie than is commonly supposed between the improvement
of the soul and the amelioration of what belongs to the body. Man may
leave these two things apart, and consider each of them alternately; but
he cannot sever them entirely without at last losing sight of one and of
the other. The beasts have the same senses as ourselves, and very nearly
the same appetites. We have no sensual passions which are not common
to our race and theirs, and which are not to be found, at least in the
germ, in a dog as well as in a man. Whence is it then that the animals
can only provide for their first and lowest wants, whereas we can
infinitely vary and endlessly increase our enjoyments?
We are superior to the beasts in this, that we use our souls to find out
those material benefits to which they are only led by instinct. In man,
the angel teaches the brute the art of contenting its desires. It is
because man is capable of rising above the things of the body, and of
contemning life itself, of which the beasts have not the least notion,
that he can multiply these same things of the body to a degree which
inferior races are equally unable to conceive. Whatever elevates,
enlarges, and expands the soul, renders it more capable of succeeding
in those very undertakings which concern it not. Whatever, on the other
hand, enervates or lowers it, weakens it for all purposes, the chiefest,
as well as the least, and threatens to render it almost equally impotent
for the one and for the other. Hence the soul must remain great and
strong, though it were only to devote its strength and greatness from
time to time to the service of the body. If men were ever to content
themselves with material objects, it is probable that they would lose by
degrees the art of producing them; and they would enjoy them in the end,
like the brutes, without discernment and without improvement.
Chapter XVII: That In Times Marked By Equality Of Conditions And
Sceptical Opinions, It Is Important To Remove To A Distance The Objects
Of Human Actions
In the ages of faith the final end of life is placed beyond life. The
men of those ages therefore naturally, and in a manner involuntarily,
accustom themselves to fix their gaze for a long course of years on some
immovable object, towards which they are constantly tending; and they
learn by insensible degrees to repress a multitude of petty passing
desires, in order to be the better able to content that great and
lasting desire which possesses them. When these same men engage in the
affairs of this world, the same habits may be traced in their conduct.
They are apt to set up some general and certain aim and end to their
actions here below, towards which all their efforts are directed: they
do not turn from day to day to chase some novel object of desire, but
they have settled designs which they are never weary of pursuing. This
explains why religious nations have so often achieved such lasting
results: for whilst they were thinking only of the other world, they
had found out the great secret of success in this. Religions give men a
general habit of conducting themselves with a view to futurity: in
this respect they are not less useful to happiness in this life than
to felicity hereafter; and this is one of their chief political
characteristics.
But in proportion as the light of faith grows dim, the range of man's
sight is circumscribed, as if the end and aim of human actions appeared
every day to be more within his reach. When men have once allowed
themselves to think no more of what is to befall them after life, they
readily lapse into that complete and brutal indifference to futurity,
which is but too conformable to some propensities of mankind. As soon
as they have lost the habit of placing their chief hopes upon remote
events, they naturally seek to gratify without delay their smallest
desires; and no sooner do they despair of living forever, than they
are disposed to act as if they were to exist but for a single day.
In sceptical ages it is always therefore to be feared that men may
perpetually give way to their daily casual desires; and that, wholly
renouncing whatever cannot be acquired without protracted effort, they
may establish nothing great, permanent, and calm.
If the social condition of a people, under these circumstances, becomes
democratic, the danger which I here point out is thereby increased. When
everyone is constantly striving to change his position--when an immense
field for competition is thrown open to all--when wealth is amassed or
dissipated in the shortest possible space of time amidst the turmoil
of democracy, visions of sudden and easy fortunes--of great possessions
easily won and lost--of chance, under all its forms--haunt the mind. The
instability of society itself fosters the natural instability of man's
desires. In the midst of these perpetual fluctuations of his lot, the
present grows upon his mind, until it conceals futurity from his sight,
and his looks go no further than the morrow.
In those countries in which unhappily irreligion and democracy coexist,
the most important duty of philosophers and of those in power is to be
always striving to place the objects of human actions far beyond man's
immediate range. Circumscribed by the character of his country and
his age, the moralist must learn to vindicate his principles in that
position. He must constantly endeavor to show his contemporaries, that,
even in the midst of the perpetual commotion around them, it is easier
than they think to conceive and to execute protracted undertakings. He
must teach them that, although the aspect of mankind may have changed,
the methods by which men may provide for their prosperity in this world
are still the same; and that amongst democratic nations, as well as
elsewhere, it is only by resisting a thousand petty selfish passions of
the hour that the general and unquenchable passion for happiness can be
satisfied.
The task of those in power is not less clearly marked out. At all times
it is important that those who govern nations should act with a view to
the future: but this is even more necessary in democratic and sceptical
ages than in any others. By acting thus, the leading men of democracies
not only make public affairs prosperous, but they also teach private
individuals, by their example, the art of managing private concerns.
Above all they must strive as much as possible to banish chance from the
sphere of politics. The sudden and undeserved promotion of a courtier
produces only a transient impression in an aristocratic country, because
the aggregate institutions and opinions of the nation habitually compel
men to advance slowly in tracks which they cannot get out of. But
nothing is more pernicious than similar instances of favor exhibited
to the eyes of a democratic people: they give the last impulse to the
public mind in a direction where everything hurries it onwards. At times
of scepticism and equality more especially, the favor of the people or
of the prince, which chance may confer or chance withhold, ought never
to stand in lieu of attainments or services. It is desirable that every
advancement should there appear to be the result of some effort; so that
no greatness should be of too easy acquirement, and that ambition should
be obliged to fix its gaze long upon an object before it is gratified.
Governments must apply themselves to restore to men that love of the
future with which religion and the state of society no longer inspire
them; and, without saying so, they must practically teach the community
day by day that wealth, fame, and power are the rewards of labor--that
great success stands at the utmost range of long desires, and that
nothing lasting is obtained but what is obtained by toil. When men have
accustomed themselves to foresee from afar what is likely to befall in
the world and to feed upon hopes, they can hardly confine their minds
within the precise circumference of life, and they are ready to break
the boundary and cast their looks beyond. I do not doubt that, by
training the members of a community to think of their future condition
in this world, they would be gradually and unconsciously brought nearer
to religious convictions. Thus the means which allow men, up to a
certain point, to go without religion, are perhaps after all the
only means we still possess for bringing mankind back by a long and
roundabout path to a state of faith.
Chapter XVIII: That Amongst The Americans All Honest Callings Are
Honorable
Amongst a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every
man works to earn a living, or has worked, or is born of parents who
have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind
on every side as the necessary, natural, and honest condition of human
existence. Not only is labor not dishonorable amongst such a people, but
it is held in honor: the prejudice is not against it, but in its favor.
In the United States a wealthy man thinks that he owes it to public
opinion to devote his leisure to some kind of industrial or commercial
pursuit, or to public business. He would think himself in bad repute if
he employed his life solely in living. It is for the purpose of escaping
this obligation to work, that so many rich Americans come to Europe,
where they find some scattered remains of aristocratic society, amongst
which idleness is still held in honor.
Equality of conditions not only ennobles the notion of labor in men's
estimation, but it raises the notion of labor as a source of profit. In
aristocracies it is not exactly labor that is despised, but labor with
a view to profit. Labor is honorific in itself, when it is undertaken at
the sole bidding of ambition or of virtue. Yet in aristocratic society
it constantly happens that he who works for honor is not insensible to
the attractions of profit. But these two desires only intermingle in
the innermost depths of his soul: he carefully hides from every eye
the point at which they join; he would fain conceal it from himself. In
aristocratic countries there are few public officers who do not affect
to serve their country without interested motives. Their salary is an
incident of which they think but little, and of which they always affect
not to think at all. Thus the notion of profit is kept distinct from
that of labor; however they may be united in point of fact, they are not
thought of together.
In democratic communities these two notions are, on the contrary, always
palpably united. As the desire of well-being is universal--as fortunes
are slender or fluctuating--as everyone wants either to increase his
own resources, or to provide fresh ones for his progeny, men clearly see
that it is profit which, if not wholly, at least partially, leads them
to work. Even those who are principally actuated by the love of fame are
necessarily made familiar with the thought that they are not exclusively
actuated by that motive; and they discover that the desire of getting
a living is mingled in their minds with the desire of making life
illustrious.
As soon as, on the one hand, labor is held by the whole community to be
an honorable necessity of man's condition, and, on the other, as soon as
labor is always ostensibly performed, wholly or in part, for the purpose
of earning remuneration, the immense interval which separated different
callings in aristocratic societies disappears. If all are not alike, all
at least have one feature in common. No profession exists in which men
do not work for money; and the remuneration which is common to them
all gives them all an air of resemblance. This serves to explain
the opinions which the Americans entertain with respect to different
callings. In America no one is degraded because he works, for everyone
about him works also; nor is anyone humiliated by the notion of
receiving pay, for the President of the United States also works for
pay. He is paid for commanding, other men for obeying orders. In the
United States professions are more or less laborious, more or less
profitable; but they are never either high or low: every honest calling
is honorable.
Chapter XIX: That Almost All The Americans Follow Industrial Callings
Agriculture is, perhaps, of all the useful arts that which improves most
slowly amongst democratic nations. Frequently, indeed, it would seem
to be stationary, because other arts are making rapid strides towards
perfection. On the other hand, almost all the tastes and habits which
the equality of condition engenders naturally lead men to commercial and
industrial occupations.
Suppose an active, enlightened, and free man, enjoying a competency, but
full of desires: he is too poor to live in idleness; he is rich enough
to feel himself protected from the immediate fear of want, and he thinks
how he can better his condition. This man has conceived a taste for
physical gratifications, which thousands of his fellow-men indulge in
around him; he has himself begun to enjoy these pleasures, and he is
eager to increase his means of satisfying these tastes more completely.
But life is slipping away, time is urgent--to what is he to turn? The
cultivation of the ground promises an almost certain result to his
exertions, but a slow one; men are not enriched by it without patience
and toil. Agriculture is therefore only suited to those who have already
large, superfluous wealth, or to those whose penury bids them only seek
a bare subsistence. The choice of such a man as we have supposed is soon
made; he sells his plot of ground, leaves his dwelling, and embarks in
some hazardous but lucrative calling. Democratic communities abound
in men of this kind; and in proportion as the equality of conditions
becomes greater, their multitude increases. Thus democracy not only
swells the number of workingmen, but it leads men to prefer one kind
of labor to another; and whilst it diverts them from agriculture, it
encourages their taste for commerce and manufactures. *a
[Footnote a: It has often been remarked that manufacturers and
mercantile men are inordinately addicted to physical gratifications, and
this has been attributed to commerce and manufactures; but that is,
I apprehend, to take the effect for the cause. The taste for physical
gratifications is not imparted to men by commerce or manufactures,
but it is rather this taste which leads men to embark in commerce and
manufactures, as a means by which they hope to satisfy themselves more
promptly and more completely. If commerce and manufactures increase the
desire of well-being, it is because every passion gathers strength in
proportion as it is cultivated, and is increased by all the efforts made
to satiate it. All the causes which make the love of worldly welfare
predominate in the heart of man are favorable to the growth of commerce
and manufactures. Equality of conditions is one of those causes; it
encourages trade, not directly by giving men a taste for business, but
indirectly by strengthening and expanding in their minds a taste for
prosperity.]
This spirit may be observed even amongst the richest members of the
community. In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to
be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune, because he finds
that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons
will be less rich than himself. Most rich men in democracies are
therefore constantly haunted by the desire of obtaining wealth, and they
naturally turn their attention to trade and manufactures, which appear
to offer the readiest and most powerful means of success. In this
respect they share the instincts of the poor, without feeling the
same necessities; say rather, they feel the most imperious of all
necessities, that of not sinking in the world.
In aristocracies the rich are at the same time those who govern. The
attention which they unceasingly devote to important public affairs
diverts them from the lesser cares which trade and manufactures
demand. If the will of an individual happens, nevertheless, to turn his
attention to business, the will of the body to which he belongs will
immediately debar him from pursuing it; for however men may declaim
against the rule of numbers, they cannot wholly escape their sway; and
even amongst those aristocratic bodies which most obstinately refuse to
acknowledge the rights of the majority of the nation, a private majority
is formed which governs the rest. *b
[Footnote b: Some aristocracies, however, have devoted themselves
eagerly to commerce, and have cultivated manufactures with success. The
history of the world might furnish several conspicuous examples. But,
generally speaking, it may be affirmed that the aristocratic principle
is not favorable to the growth of trade and manufactures. Moneyed
aristocracies are the only exception to the rule. Amongst such
aristocracies there are hardly any desires which do not require wealth
to satisfy them; the love of riches becomes, so to speak, the high road
of human passions, which is crossed by or connected with all lesser
tracks. The love of money and the thirst for that distinction which
attaches to power, are then so closely intermixed in the same souls,
that it becomes difficult to discover whether men grow covetous from
ambition, or whether they are ambitious from covetousness. This is
the case in England, where men seek to get rich in order to arrive at
distinction, and seek distinctions as a manifestation of their wealth.
The mind is then seized by both ends, and hurried into trade and
manufactures, which are the shortest roads that lead to opulence.
This, however, strikes me as an exceptional and transitory circumstance.
When wealth is become the only symbol of aristocracy, it is very
difficult for the wealthy to maintain sole possession of political
power, to the exclusion of all other men. The aristocracy of birth and
pure democracy are at the two extremes of the social and political state
of nations: between them moneyed aristocracy finds its place. The latter
approximates to the aristocracy of birth by conferring great privileges
on a small number of persons; it so far belongs to the democratic
element, that these privileges may be successively acquired by all. It
frequently forms a natural transition between these two conditions
of society, and it is difficult to say whether it closes the reign of
aristocratic institutions, or whether it already opens the new era of
democracy.]
In democratic countries, where money does not lead those who possess it
to political power, but often removes them from it, the rich do not
know how to spend their leisure. They are driven into active life by the
inquietude and the greatness of their desires, by the extent of their
resources, and by the taste for what is extraordinary, which is almost
always felt by those who rise, by whatsoever means, above the crowd.
Trade is the only road open to them. In democracies nothing is more
great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of
the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic
passions are directed towards it. Neither their own prejudices, nor
those of anybody else, can prevent the rich from devoting themselves
to it. The wealthy members of democracies never form a body which has
manners and regulations of its own; the opinions peculiar to their class
do not restrain them, and the common opinions of their country urge them
on. Moreover, as all the large fortunes which are to be met with in a
democratic community are of commercial growth, many generations must
succeed each other before their possessors can have entirely laid aside
their habits of business.
Circumscribed within the narrow space which politics leave them, rich
men in democracies eagerly embark in commercial enterprise: there they
can extend and employ their natural advantages; and indeed it is even by
the boldness and the magnitude of their industrial speculations that we
may measure the slight esteem in which productive industry would have
been held by them, if they had been born amidst an aristocracy.
A similar observation is likewise applicable to all men living in
democracies, whether they be poor or rich. Those who live in the midst
of democratic fluctuations have always before their eyes the phantom of
chance; and they end by liking all undertakings in which chance plays a
part. They are therefore all led to engage in commerce, not only for
the sake of the profit it holds out to them, but for the love of the
constant excitement occasioned by that pursuit.
The United States of America have only been emancipated for half a
century [in 1840] from the state of colonial dependence in which they
stood to Great Britain; the number of large fortunes there is small, and
capital is still scarce. Yet no people in the world has made such rapid
progress in trade and manufactures as the Americans: they constitute at
the present day the second maritime nation in the world; and although
their manufactures have to struggle with almost insurmountable natural
impediments, they are not prevented from making great and daily
advances. In the United States the greatest undertakings and
speculations are executed without difficulty, because the whole
population is engaged in productive industry, and because the poorest
as well as the most opulent members of the commonwealth are ready to
combine their efforts for these purposes. The consequence is, that a
stranger is constantly amazed by the immense public works executed by a
nation which contains, so to speak, no rich men. The Americans arrived
but as yesterday on the territory which they inhabit, and they have
already changed the whole order of nature for their own advantage. They
have joined the Hudson to the Mississippi, and made the Atlantic Ocean
communicate with the Gulf of Mexico, across a continent of more than
five hundred leagues in extent which separates the two seas. The longest
railroads which have been constructed up to the present time are in
America. But what most astonishes me in the United States, is not so
much the marvellous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable
multitude of small ones. Almost all the farmers of the United States
combine some trade with agriculture; most of them make agriculture
itself a trade. It seldom happens that an American farmer settles for
good upon the land which he occupies: especially in the districts of the
Far West he brings land into tillage in order to sell it again, and not
to farm it: he builds a farmhouse on the speculation that, as the state
of the country will soon be changed by the increase of population, a
good price will be gotten for it. Every year a swarm of the inhabitants
of the North arrive in the Southern States, and settle in the parts
where the cotton plant and the sugar-cane grow. These men cultivate the
soil in order to make it produce in a few years enough to enrich them;
and they already look forward to the time when they may return home
to enjoy the competency thus acquired. Thus the Americans carry their
business-like qualities into agriculture; and their trading passions are
displayed in that as in their other pursuits.
The Americans make immense progress in productive industry, because they
all devote themselves to it at once; and for this same reason they are
exposed to very unexpected and formidable embarrassments. As they are
all engaged in commerce, their commercial affairs are affected by
such various and complex causes that it is impossible to foresee
what difficulties may arise. As they are all more or less engaged in
productive industry, at the least shock given to business all private
fortunes are put in jeopardy at the same time, and the State is shaken.
I believe that the return of these commercial panics is an endemic
disease of the democratic nations of our age. It may be rendered less
dangerous, but it cannot be cured; because it does not originate in
accidental circumstances, but in the temperament of these nations.
Chapter XX: That Aristocracy May Be Engendered By Manufactures
I have shown that democracy is favorable to the growth of manufactures,
and that it increases without limit the numbers of the manufacturing
classes: we shall now see by what side road manufacturers may possibly
in their turn bring men back to aristocracy. It is acknowledged that
when a workman is engaged every day upon the same detail, the whole
commodity is produced with greater ease, promptitude, and economy. It
is likewise acknowledged that the cost of the production of manufactured
goods is diminished by the extent of the establishment in which they are
made, and by the amount of capital employed or of credit. These truths
had long been imperfectly discerned, but in our time they have been
demonstrated. They have been already applied to many very important
kinds of manufactures, and the humblest will gradually be governed by
them. I know of nothing in politics which deserves to fix the attention
of the legislator more closely than these two new axioms of the science
of manufactures.
When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication
of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but
at the same time he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to
the direction of the work. He every day becomes more adroit and less
industrious; so that it may be said of him, that in proportion as the
workman improves the man is degraded. What can be expected of a man who
has spent twenty years of his life in making heads for pins? and to
what can that mighty human intelligence, which has so often stirred the
world, be applied in him, except it be to investigate the best method of
making pins' heads? When a workman has spent a considerable portion
of his existence in this manner, his thoughts are forever set upon the
object of his daily toil; his body has contracted certain fixed habits,
which it can never shake off: in a word, he no longer belongs to
himself, but to the calling which he has chosen. It is in vain that laws
and manners have been at the pains to level all barriers round such
a man, and to open to him on every side a thousand different paths to
fortune; a theory of manufactures more powerful than manners and laws
binds him to a craft, and frequently to a spot, which he cannot leave:
it assigns to him a certain place in society, beyond which he cannot go:
in the midst of universal movement it has rendered him stationary.
In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more
extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more narrow-minded,
and more dependent. The art advances, the artisan recedes. On the other
hand, in proportion as it becomes more manifest that the productions of
manufactures are by so much the cheaper and better as the manufacture is
larger and the amount of capital employed more considerable, wealthy
and educated men come forward to embark in manufactures which were
heretofore abandoned to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The magnitude
of the efforts required, and the importance of the results to be
obtained, attract them. Thus at the very time at which the science
of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the class of
masters.
Whereas the workman concentrates his faculties more and more upon the
study of a single detail, the master surveys a more extensive whole, and
the mind of the latter is enlarged in proportion as that of the former
is narrowed. In a short time the one will require nothing but physical
strength without intelligence; the other stands in need of science, and
almost of genius, to insure success. This man resembles more and more
the administrator of a vast empire--that man, a brute. The master and
the workman have then here no similarity, and their differences increase
every day. They are only connected as the two rings at the extremities
of a long chain. Each of them fills the station which is made for him,
and out of which he does not get: the one is continually, closely, and
necessarily dependent upon the other, and seems as much born to obey as
that other is to command. What is this but aristocracy?
As the conditions of men constituting the nation become more and more
equal, the demand for manufactured commodities becomes more general and
more extensive; and the cheapness which places these objects within
the reach of slender fortunes becomes a great element of success. Hence
there are every day more men of great opulence and education who devote
their wealth and knowledge to manufactures; and who seek, by opening
large establishments, and by a strict division of labor, to meet the
fresh demands which are made on all sides. Thus, in proportion as the
mass of the nation turns to democracy, that particular class which is
engaged in manufactures becomes more aristocratic. Men grow more alike
in the one--more different in the other; and inequality increases in
the less numerous class in the same ratio in which it decreases in
the community. Hence it would appear, on searching to the bottom, that
aristocracy should naturally spring out of the bosom of democracy.
But this kind of aristocracy by no means resembles those kinds which
preceded it. It will be observed at once, that as it applies exclusively
to manufactures and to some manufacturing callings, it is a monstrous
exception in the general aspect of society. The small aristocratic
societies which are formed by some manufacturers in the midst of the
immense democracy of our age, contain, like the great aristocratic
societies of former ages, some men who are very opulent, and a multitude
who are wretchedly poor. The poor have few means of escaping from their
condition and becoming rich; but the rich are constantly becoming poor,
or they give up business when they have realized a fortune. Thus the
elements of which the class of the poor is composed are fixed; but the
elements of which the class of the rich is composed are not so. To say
the truth, though there are rich men, the class of rich men does not
exist; for these rich individuals have no feelings or purposes in
common, no mutual traditions or mutual hopes; there are therefore
members, but no body.
Not only are the rich not compactly united amongst themselves, but there
is no real bond between them and the poor. Their relative position is
not a permanent one; they are constantly drawn together or separated by
their interests. The workman is generally dependent on the master, but
not on any particular master; these two men meet in the factory, but
know not each other elsewhere; and whilst they come into contact on one
point, they stand very wide apart on all others. The manufacturer asks
nothing of the workman but his labor; the workman expects nothing from
him but his wages. The one contracts no obligation to protect, nor the
other to defend; and they are not permanently connected either by habit
or by duty. The aristocracy created by business rarely settles in the
midst of the manufacturing population which it directs; the object
is not to govern that population, but to use it. An aristocracy thus
constituted can have no great hold upon those whom it employs; and even
if it succeed in retaining them at one moment, they escape the next; it
knows not how to will, and it cannot act. The territorial aristocracy of
former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by
usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men, and to succor
their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first
impoverishes and debases the men who serve it, and then abandons them to
be supported by the charity of the public. This is a natural consequence
of what has been said before. Between the workmen and the master there
are frequent relations, but no real partnership.
I am of opinion, upon the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy
which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest which ever
existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most
confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless the friends of democracy
should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a
permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrate into
the world, it may be predicted that this is the channel by which they
will enter.
Book Three: Influence Of Democracy On Manners, Properly So Called
Chapter I: That Manners Are Softened As Social Conditions Become More
Equal
We perceive that for several ages social conditions have tended to
equality, and we discover that in the course of the same period the
manners of society have been softened. Are these two things merely
contemporaneous, or does any secret link exist between them, so that the
one cannot go on without making the other advance? Several causes may
concur to render the manners of a people less rude; but, of all
these causes, the most powerful appears to me to be the equality of
conditions. Equality of conditions and growing civility in manners are,
then, in my eyes, not only contemporaneous occurrences, but correlative
facts. When the fabulists seek to interest us in the actions of beasts,
they invest them with human notions and passions; the poets who sing of
spirits and angels do the same; there is no wretchedness so deep, nor
any happiness so pure, as to fill the human mind and touch the heart,
unless we are ourselves held up to our own eyes under other features.
This is strictly applicable to the subject upon which we are at present
engaged. When all men are irrevocably marshalled in an aristocratic
community, according to their professions, their property, and their
birth, the members of each class, considering themselves as children
of the same family, cherish a constant and lively sympathy towards each
other, which can never be felt in an equal degree by the citizens of
a democracy. But the same feeling does not exist between the several
classes towards each other. Amongst an aristocratic people each caste
has its own opinions, feelings, rights, manners, and modes of living.
Thus the men of whom each caste is composed do not resemble the mass of
their fellow-citizens; they do not think or feel in the same manner,
and they scarcely believe that they belong to the same human race. They
cannot, therefore, thoroughly understand what others feel, nor judge of
others by themselves. Yet they are sometimes eager to lend each other
mutual aid; but this is not contrary to my previous observation. These
aristocratic institutions, which made the beings of one and the same
race so different, nevertheless bound them to each other by close
political ties. Although the serf had no natural interest in the fate of
nobles, he did not the less think himself obliged to devote his person
to the service of that noble who happened to be his lord; and although
the noble held himself to be of a different nature from that of his
serfs, he nevertheless held that his duty and his honor constrained
him to defend, at the risk of his own life, those who dwelt upon his
domains.
It is evident that these mutual obligations did not originate in the law
of nature, but in the law of society; and that the claim of social duty
was more stringent than that of mere humanity. These services were not
supposed to be due from man to man, but to the vassal or to the lord.
Feudal institutions awakened a lively sympathy for the sufferings of
certain men, but none at all for the miseries of mankind. They infused
generosity rather than mildness into the manners of the time, and
although they prompted men to great acts of self-devotion, they
engendered no real sympathies; for real sympathies can only exist
between those who are alike; and in aristocratic ages men acknowledge
none but the members of their own caste to be like themselves.
When the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, who all belonged to the
aristocracy by birth or education, relate the tragical end of a noble,
their grief flows apace; whereas they tell you at a breath, and without
wincing, of massacres and tortures inflicted on the common sort of
people. Not that these writers felt habitual hatred or systematic
disdain for the people; war between the several classes of the community
was not yet declared. They were impelled by an instinct rather than by a
passion; as they had formed no clear notion of a poor man's sufferings,
they cared but little for his fate. The same feelings animated the lower
orders whenever the feudal tie was broken. The same ages which witnessed
so many heroic acts of self-devotion on the part of vassals for their
lords, were stained with atrocious barbarities, exercised from time to
time by the lower classes on the higher. It must not be supposed that
this mutual insensibility arose solely from the absence of public
order and education; for traces of it are to be found in the following
centuries, which became tranquil and enlightened whilst they remained
aristocratic. In 1675 the lower classes in Brittany revolted at
the imposition of a new tax. These disturbances were put down with
unexampled atrocity. Observe the language in which Madame de Sevigne, a
witness of these horrors, relates them to her daughter:--
"Aux Rochers, 30 Octobre, 1675.
"Mon Dieu, ma fille, que votre lettre d'Aix est plaisante! Au moins
relisez vos lettres avant que de les envoyer; laissez-vous surpendre a
leur agrement, et consolez-vous par ce plaisir de la peine que vous avez
d'en tant ecrire. Vous avez donc baise toute la Provence? il n'y aurait
pas satisfaction a baiser toute la Bretagne, a moins qu'on n'aimat a
sentir le vin. . . . Voulez-vous savoir des nouvelles de Rennes? On a
fait une taxe de cent mille ecus sur le bourgeois; et si on ne trouve
point cette somme dans vingt-quatre heures, elle sera doublee et
exigible par les soldats. On a chasse et banni toute une grand rue, et
defendu de les recueillir sous peine de la vie; de sorte qu'on voyait
tous ces miserables, veillards, femmes accouchees, enfans, errer en
pleurs au sortir de cette ville sans savoir ou aller. On roua avant-hier
un violon, qui avait commence la danse et la pillerie du papier timbre;
il a ete ecartele apres sa mort, et ses quatre quartiers exposes aux
quatre coins de la ville. On a pris soixante bourgeois, et on commence
demain les punitions. Cette province est un bel exemple pour les autres,
et surtout de respecter les gouverneurs et les gouvernantes, et de ne
point jeter de pierres dans leur jardin." *a
[Footnote a: To feel the point of this joke the reader should recollect
that Madame de Grignan was Gouvernante de Provence.] "Madame de Tarente
etait hier dans ces bois par un temps enchante: il n'est question ni de
chambre ni de collation; elle entre par la barriere et s'en retourne de
meme. . . ."
In another letter she adds:--
"Vous me parlez bien plaisamment de nos miseres; nous ne sommes plus si
roues; un en huit jours, pour entretenir la justice. Il est vrai que la
penderie me parait maintenant un refraichissement. J'ai une tout autre
idee de la justice, depuis que je suis en ce pays. Vos galeriens me
paraissent une societe d'honnetes gens qui se sont retires du monde pour
mener une vie douce."
It would be a mistake to suppose that Madame de Sevigne, who wrote these
lines, was a selfish or cruel person; she was passionately attached
to her children, and very ready to sympathize in the sorrows of her
friends; nay, her letters show that she treated her vassals and servants
with kindness and indulgence. But Madame de Sevigne had no clear notion
of suffering in anyone who was not a person of quality.
In our time the harshest man writing to the most insensible person of
his acquaintance would not venture wantonly to indulge in the cruel
jocularity which I have quoted; and even if his own manners allowed him
to do so, the manners of society at large would forbid it. Whence does
this arise? Have we more sensibility than our forefathers? I know not
that we have; but I am sure that our insensibility is extended to a far
greater range of objects. When all the ranks of a community are nearly
equal, as all men think and feel in nearly the same manner, each of them
may judge in a moment of the sensations of all the others; he casts a
rapid glance upon himself, and that is enough. There is no wretchedness
into which he cannot readily enter, and a secret instinct reveals to him
its extent. It signifies not that strangers or foes be the sufferers;
imagination puts him in their place; something like a personal feeling
is mingled with his pity, and makes himself suffer whilst the body
of his fellow-creature is in torture. In democratic ages men rarely
sacrifice themselves for one another; but they display general
compassion for the members of the human race. They inflict no useless
ills; and they are happy to relieve the griefs of others, when they can
do so without much hurting themselves; they are not disinterested, but
they are humane.
Although the Americans have, in a manner, reduced egotism to a social
and philosophical theory, they are nevertheless extremely open to
compassion. In no country is criminal justice administered with more
mildness than in the United States. Whilst the English seem disposed
carefully to retain the bloody traces of the dark ages in their penal
legislation, the Americans have almost expunged capital punishment from
their codes. North America is, I think, the only one country upon earth
in which the life of no one citizen has been taken for a political
offence in the course of the last fifty years. The circumstance which
conclusively shows that this singular mildness of the Americans arises
chiefly from their social condition, is the manner in which they treat
their slaves. Perhaps there is not, upon the whole, a single European
colony in the New World in which the physical condition of the blacks
is less severe than in the United States; yet the slaves still endure
horrid sufferings there, and are constantly exposed to barbarous
punishments. It is easy to perceive that the lot of these unhappy beings
inspires their masters with but little compassion, and that they look
upon slavery, not only as an institution which is profitable to them,
but as an evil which does not affect them. Thus the same man who is full
of humanity towards his fellow-creatures when they are at the same time
his equals, becomes insensible to their afflictions as soon as that
equality ceases. His mildness should therefore be attributed to the
equality of conditions, rather than to civilization and education.
What I have here remarked of individuals is, to a certain extent,
applicable to nations. When each nation has its distinct opinions,
belief, laws, and customs, it looks upon itself as the whole of mankind,
and is moved by no sorrows but its own. Should war break out between
two nations animated by this feeling, it is sure to be waged with great
cruelty. At the time of their highest culture, the Romans slaughtered
the generals of their enemies, after having dragged them in triumph
behind a car; and they flung their prisoners to the beasts of the Circus
for the amusement of the people. Cicero, who declaimed so vehemently at
the notion of crucifying a Roman citizen, had not a word to say against
these horrible abuses of victory. It is evident that in his eyes a
barbarian did not belong to the same human race as a Roman. On the
contrary, in proportion as nations become more like each other, they
become reciprocally more compassionate, and the law of nations is
mitigated.