Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of
human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they
grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not
their own manners. The influence of the social and political state of
a country upon manners is therefore deserving of serious examination.
Manners are, generally, the product of the very basis of the character
of a people, but they are also sometimes the result of an arbitrary
convention between certain men; thus they are at once natural and
acquired. When certain men perceive that they are the foremost persons
in society, without contestation and without effort--when they are
constantly engaged on large objects, leaving the more minute details to
others--and when they live in the enjoyment of wealth which they did not
amass and which they do not fear to lose, it may be supposed that they
feel a kind of haughty disdain of the petty interests and practical
cares of life, and that their thoughts assume a natural greatness, which
their language and their manners denote. In democratic countries manners
are generally devoid of dignity, because private life is there extremely
petty in its character; and they are frequently low, because the mind
has few opportunities of rising above the engrossing cares of domestic
interests. True dignity in manners consists in always taking one's
proper station, neither too high nor too low; and this is as much within
the reach of a peasant as of a prince. In democracies all stations
appear doubtful; hence it is that the manners of democracies, though
often full of arrogance, are commonly wanting in dignity, and, moreover,
they are never either well disciplined or accomplished.
The men who live in democracies are too fluctuating for a certain number
of them ever to succeed in laying down a code of good breeding, and in
forcing people to follow it. Every man therefore behaves after his own
fashion, and there is always a certain incoherence in the manners of
such times, because they are moulded upon the feelings and notions of
each individual, rather than upon an ideal model proposed for general
imitation. This, however, is much more perceptible at the time when
an aristocracy has just been overthrown than after it has long been
destroyed. New political institutions and new social elements then bring
to the same places of resort, and frequently compel to live in common,
men whose education and habits are still amazingly dissimilar, and
this renders the motley composition of society peculiarly visible. The
existence of a former strict code of good breeding is still remembered,
but what it contained or where it is to be found is already forgotten.
Men have lost the common law of manners, and they have not yet made up
their minds to do without it; but everyone endeavors to make to himself
some sort of arbitrary and variable rule, from the remnant of former
usages; so that manners have neither the regularity and the dignity
which they often display amongst aristocratic nations, nor the
simplicity and freedom which they sometimes assume in democracies; they
are at once constrained and without constraint.
This, however, is not the normal state of things. When the equality of
conditions is long established and complete, as all men entertain nearly
the same notions and do nearly the same things, they do not require to
agree or to copy from one another in order to speak or act in the same
manner: their manners are constantly characterized by a number of lesser
diversities, but not by any great differences. They are never perfectly
alike, because they do not copy from the same pattern; they are never
very unlike, because their social condition is the same. At first sight
a traveller would observe that the manners of all the Americans
are exactly similar; it is only upon close examination that the
peculiarities in which they differ may be detected.
The English make game of the manners of the Americans; but it is
singular that most of the writers who have drawn these ludicrous
delineations belonged themselves to the middle classes in England, to
whom the same delineations are exceedingly applicable: so that these
pitiless censors for the most part furnish an example of the very thing
they blame in the United States; they do not perceive that they are
deriding themselves, to the great amusement of the aristocracy of their
own country.
Nothing is more prejudicial to democracy than its outward forms of
behavior: many men would willingly endure its vices, who cannot support
its manners. I cannot, however, admit that there is nothing commendable
in the manners of a democratic people. Amongst aristocratic nations, all
who live within reach of the first class in society commonly strain to
be like it, which gives rise to ridiculous and insipid imitations. As a
democratic people does not possess any models of high breeding, at least
it escapes the daily necessity of seeing wretched copies of them.
In democracies manners are never so refined as amongst aristocratic
nations, but on the other hand they are never so coarse. Neither the
coarse oaths of the populace, nor the elegant and choice expressions
of the nobility are to be heard there: the manners of such a people
are often vulgar, but they are neither brutal nor mean. I have already
observed that in democracies no such thing as a regular code of good
breeding can be laid down; this has some inconveniences and some
advantages. In aristocracies the rules of propriety impose the same
demeanor on everyone; they make all the members of the same class appear
alike, in spite of their private inclinations; they adorn and they
conceal the natural man. Amongst a democratic people manners are neither
so tutored nor so uniform, but they are frequently more sincere. They
form, as it were, a light and loosely woven veil, through which the real
feelings and private opinions of each individual are easily discernible.
The form and the substance of human actions often, therefore, stand
in closer relation; and if the great picture of human life be less
embellished, it is more true. Thus it may be said, in one sense, that
the effect of democracy is not exactly to give men any particular
manners, but to prevent them from having manners at all.
The feelings, the passions, the virtues, and the vices of an aristocracy
may sometimes reappear in a democracy, but not its manners; they are
lost, and vanish forever, as soon as the democratic revolution is
completed. It would seem that nothing is more lasting than the manners
of an aristocratic class, for they are preserved by that class for some
time after it has lost its wealth and its power--nor so fleeting, for
no sooner have they disappeared than not a trace of them is to be found;
and it is scarcely possible to say what they have been as soon as they
have ceased to be. A change in the state of society works this
miracle, and a few generations suffice to consummate it. The principal
characteristics of aristocracy are handed down by history after an
aristocracy is destroyed, but the light and exquisite touches of manners
are effaced from men's memories almost immediately after its fall. Men
can no longer conceive what these manners were when they have ceased to
witness them; they are gone, and their departure was unseen, unfelt; for
in order to feel that refined enjoyment which is derived from choice and
distinguished manners, habit and education must have prepared the heart,
and the taste for them is lost almost as easily as the practice of them.
Thus not only a democratic people cannot have aristocratic manners, but
they neither comprehend nor desire them; and as they never have thought
of them, it is to their minds as if such things had never been. Too
much importance should not be attached to this loss, but it may well be
regretted.
I am aware that it has not unfrequently happened that the same men have
had very high-bred manners and very low-born feelings: the interior of
courts has sufficiently shown what imposing externals may conceal the
meanest hearts. But though the manners of aristocracy did not constitute
virtue, they sometimes embellish virtue itself. It was no ordinary sight
to see a numerous and powerful class of men, whose every outward action
seemed constantly to be dictated by a natural elevation of thought
and feeling, by delicacy and regularity of taste, and by urbanity
of manners. Those manners threw a pleasing illusory charm over human
nature; and though the picture was often a false one, it could not be
viewed without a noble satisfaction.