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Democracy In America, Volume 2

by Alexis de Toqueville

February, 1997 [Etext #816]

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A request to all readers:

I have tried to catch as many actual errors as I could, but I am

sure others exist. If you notice an error, please let me know,

identifying by chapter and paragraph where the mistake occurs.

David Reed, [email protected] or [email protected]

Democracy In America

Alexis De Tocqueville

Translator - Henry Reeve

Book Two

A request to all readers:

I have tried to catch as many actual errors as I could, but I am

sure others exist. If you notice an error, please let me know,

identifying by chapter and paragraph where the mistake occurs.

David Reed, [email protected] or [email protected]

Influence Of Democracy On Progress Of Opinion In US

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

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 constrainsd 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.

Book One - Chapters III-V

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.

Book One - Chapters VI-IX

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.

Book One - Chapters X-XII

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 subtility 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 usetul 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.

Book One - Chapters XIII-XV

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.

Book One - Chapters XVI-XVIII

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 actualites to designate

in one word the things passing before his eyes at the instant;

and he will comprehend under the term eventualites 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.

Book One -Chapters XIX-XXI

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.

Book 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

himselfalone. 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.

Book Two - Chapters V-VII

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 publichouses 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.

Book Two - Chapters VII-XIII

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.

Book Two - Chapters XIV-XIII

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.

Book Two - Chapters XIX-XX

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 - Chapters I-IV

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.

Chapter II: That Democracy Renders The Habitual Intercourse Of

The Americans Simple And Easy

Democracy does not attach men strongly to each other; but it

places their habitual intercourse upon an easier footing. If two

Englishmen chance to meet at the Antipodes, where they are

surrounded by strangers whose language and manners are almost

unknown to them, they will first stare at each other with much

curiosity and a kind of secret uneasiness; they will then turn

away, or, if one accosts the other, they will take care only to

converse with a constrained and absent air upon very unimportant

subjects. Yet there is no enmity between these men; they have

never seen each other before, and each believes the other to be a

respectable person. Why then should they stand so cautiously

apart? We must go back to England to learn the reason.

When it is birth alone, independent of wealth, which classes

men in society, everyone knows exactly what his own position is

upon the social scale; he does not seek to rise, he does not fear

to sink. In a community thus organized, men of different castes

communicate very little with each other; but if accident brings

them together, they are ready to converse without hoping or

fearing to lose their own position. Their intercourse is not

upon a footing of equality, but it is not constrained. When

moneyed aristocracy succeeds to aristocracy of birth, the case is

altered. The privileges of some are still extremely great, but

the possibility of acquiring those privileges is open to all:

whence it follows that those who possess them are constantly

haunted by the apprehension of losing them, or of other men's

sharing them; those who do not yet enjoy them long to possess

them at any cost, or, if they fail to appear at least to possess

them - which is not impossible. As the social importance of men

is no longer ostensibly and permanently fixed by blood, and is

infinitely varied by wealth, ranks still exist, but it is not

easy clearly to distinguish at a glance those who respectively

belong to them. Secret hostilities then arise in the community;

one set of men endeavor by innumerable artifices to penetrate, or

to appear to penetrate, amongst those who are above them; another

set are constantly in arms against these usurpers of their

rights; or rather the same individual does both at once, and

whilst he seeks to raise himself into a higher circle, he is

always on the defensive against the intrusion of those below him.

Such is the condition of England at the present time; and I

am of opinion that the peculiarity before adverted to is

principally to be attributed to this cause. As aristocratic

pride is still extremely great amongst the English, and as the

limits of aristocracy are ill-defined, everybody lives in

constant dread lest advantage should be taken of his familiarity.

Unable to judge at once of the social position of those he meets,

an Englishman prudently avoids all contact with them. Men are

afraid lest some slight service rendered should draw them into an

unsuitable acquaintance; they dread civilities, and they avoid

the obtrusive gratitude of a stranger quite as much as his

hatred. Many people attribute these singular anti-social

propensities, and the reserved and taciturn bearing of the

English, to purely physical causes. I may admit that there is

something of it in their race, but much more of it is

attributable to their social condition, as is proved by the

contrast of the Americans.

In America, where the privileges of birth never existed, and

where riches confer no peculiar rights on their possessors, men

unacquainted with each other are very ready to frequent the same

places, and find neither peril nor advantage in the free

interchange of their thoughts. If they meet by accident, they

neither seek nor avoid intercourse; their manner is therefore

natural, frank, and open: it is easy to see that they hardly

expect or apprehend anything from each other, and that they do

not care to display, any more than to conceal, their position in

the world. If their demeanor is often cold and serious, it is

never haughty or constrained; and if they do not converse, it is

because they are not in a humor to talk, not because they think

it their interest to be silent. In a foreign country two

Americans are at once friends, simply because they are Americans.

They are repulsed by no prejudice; they are attracted by their

common country. For two Englishmen the same blood is not enough;

they must be brought together by the same rank. The Americans

remark this unsociable mood of the English as much as the French

do, and they are not less astonished by it. Yet the Americans

are connected with England by their origin, their religion, their

language, and partially by their manners; they only differ in

their social condition. It may therefore be inferred that the

reserve of the English proceeds from the constitution of their

country much more than from that of its inhabitants.

Chapter III: Why The Americans Show So Little Sensitiveness In

Their Own Country, And Are So Sensitive In Europe

The temper of the Americans is vindictive, like that of all

serious and reflecting nations. They hardly ever forget an

offence, but it is not easy to offend them; and their resentment

is as slow to kindle as it is to abate. In aristocratic

communities where a small number of persons manage everything,

the outward intercourse of men is subject to settled conventional

rules. Everyone then thinks he knows exactly what marks of

respect or of condescension he ought to display, and none are

presumed to be ignorant of the science of etiquette. These

usages of the first class in society afterwards serve as a model

to all the others; besides which each of the latter lays down a

code of its own, to which all its members are bound to conform.

Thus the rules of politeness form a complex system of

legislation, which it is difficult to be perfectly master of, but

from which it is dangerous for anyone to deviate; so that men are

constantly exposed involuntarily to inflict or to receive bitter

affronts. But as the distinctions of rank are obliterated, as

men differing in education and in birth meet and mingle in the

same places of resort, it is almost impossible to agree upon the

rules of good breeding. As its laws are uncertain, to disobey

them is not a crime, even in the eyes of those who know what they

are; men attach more importance to intentions than to forms, and

they grow less civil, but at the same time less quarrelsome.

There are many little attentions which an American does not care

about; he thinks they are not due to him, or he presumes that

they are not known to be due: he therefore either does not

perceive a rudeness or he forgives it; his manners become less

courteous, and his character more plain and masculine.

The mutual indulgence which the Americans display, and the

manly confidence with which they treat each other, also result

from another deeper and more general cause, which I have already

adverted to in the preceding chapter. In the United States the

distinctions of rank in civil society are slight, in political

society they are null; an American, therefore, does not think

himself bound to pay particular attentions to any of his fellow-

citizens, nor does he require such attentions from them towards

himself. As he does not see that it is his interest eagerly to

seek the company of any of his countrymen, he is slow to fancy

that his own company is declined: despising no one on account of

his station, he does not imagine that anyone can despise him for

that cause; and until he has clearly perceived an insult, he does

not suppose that an affront was intended. The social condition

of the Americans naturally accustoms them not to take offence in

small matters; and, on the other hand, the democratic freedom

which they enjoy transfuses this same mildness of temper into the

character of the nation. The political institutions of the

United States constantly bring citizens of all ranks into

contact, and compel them to pursue great undertakings in concert.

People thus engaged have scarcely time to attend to the details

of etiquette, and they are besides too strongly interested in

living harmoniously for them to stick at such things. They

therefore soon acquire a habit of considering the feelings and

opinions of those whom they meet more than their manners, and

they do not allow themselves to be annoyed by trifles.

I have often remarked in the United States that it is not

easy to make a man understand that his presence may be dispensed

with; hints will not always suffice to shake him off. I

contradict an American at every word he says, to show him that

his conversation bores me; he instantly labors with fresh

pertinacity to convince me; I preserve a dogged silence, and he

thinks I am meditating deeply on the truths which he is uttering;

at last I rush from his company, and he supposes that some urgent

business hurries me elsewhere. This man will never understand

that he wearies me to extinction unless I tell him so: and the

only way to get rid of him is to make him my enemy for life.

It appears surprising at first sight that the same man

transported to Europe suddenly becomes so sensitive and captious,

that I often find it as difficult to avoid offending him here as

it was to put him out of countenance. These two opposite effects

proceed from the same cause. Democratic institutions generally

give men a lofty notion of their country and of themselves. An

American leaves his country with a heart swollen with pride; on

arriving in Europe he at once finds out that we are not so

engrossed by the United States and the great people which

inhabits them as he had supposed, and this begins to annoy him.

He has been informed that the conditions of society are not equal

in our part of the globe, and he observes that among the nations

of Europe the traces of rank are not wholly obliterated; that

wealth and birth still retain some indeterminate privileges,

which force themselves upon his notice whilst they elude

definition. He is therefore profoundly ignorant of the place

which he ought to occupy in this half-ruined scale of classes,

which are sufficiently distinct to hate and despise each other,

yet sufficiently alike for him to be always confounding them. He

is afraid of ranging himself too high - still more is he afraid

of being ranged too low; this twofold peril keeps his mind

constantly on the stretch, and embarrasses all he says and does.

He learns from tradition that in Europe ceremonial observances

were infinitely varied according to different ranks; this

recollection of former times completes his perplexity, and he is

the more afraid of not obtaining those marks of respect which are

due to him, as he does not exactly know in what they consist. He

is like a man surrounded by traps: society is not a recreation

for him, but a serious toil: he weighs your least actions,

interrogates your looks, and scrutinizes all you say, lest there

should be some hidden allusion to affront him. I doubt whether

there was ever a provincial man of quality so punctilious in

breeding as he is: he endeavors to attend to the slightest rules

of etiquette, and does not allow one of them to be waived towards

himself: he is full of scruples and at the same time of

pretensions; he wishes to do enough, but fears to do too much;

and as he does not very well know the limits of the one or of the

other, he keeps up a haughty and embarrassed air of reserve.

But this is not all: here is yet another double of the human

heart. An American is forever talking of the admirable equality

which prevails in the United States; aloud he makes it the boast

of his country, but in secret he deplores it for himself; and he

aspires to show that, for his part, he is an exception to the

general state of things which he vaunts. There is hardly an

American to be met with who does not claim some remote kindred

with the first founders of the colonies; and as for the scions of

the noble families of England, America seemed to me to be covered

with them. When an opulent American arrives in Europe, his first

care is to surround himself with all the luxuries of wealth: he

is so afraid of being taken for the plain citizen of a democracy,

that he adopts a hundred distorted ways of bringing some new

instance of his wealth before you every day. His house will be

in the most fashionable part of the town: he will always be

surrounded by a host of servants. I have heard an American

complain, that in the best houses of Paris the society was rather

mixed; the taste which prevails there was not pure enough for

him; and he ventured to hint that, in his opinion, there was a

want of elegance of manner; he could not accustom himself to see

wit concealed under such unpretending forms.

These contrasts ought not to surprise us. If the vestiges

of former aristocratic distinctions were not so completely

effaced in the United States, the Americans would be less simple

and less tolerant in their own country -they would require less,

and be less fond of borrowed manners in ours.

Chapter IV: Consequences Of The Three Preceding Chapters

When men feel a natural compassion for their mutual

sufferings - when they are brought together by easy and frequent

intercourse, and no sensitive feelings keep them asunder - it may

readily be supposed that they will lend assistance to one another

whenever it is needed. When an American asks for the

co-operation of his fellow-citizens it is seldom refused, and I

have often seen it afforded spontaneously and with great

goodwill. If an accident happens on the highway, everybody

hastens to help the sufferer; if some great and sudden calamity

befalls a family, the purses of a thousand strangers are at once

willingly opened, and small but numerous donations pour in to

relieve their distress. It often happens amongst the most

civilized nations of the globe, that a poor wretch is as

friendless in the midst of a crowd as the savage in his wilds:

this is hardly ever the case in the United States. The

Americans, who are always cold and often coarse in their manners,

seldom show insensibility; and if they do not proffer services

eagerly, yet they do not refuse to render them.

All this is not in contradiction to what I have said before

on the subject of individualism. The two things are so far from

combating each other, that I can see how they agree. Equality of

conditions, whilst it makes men feel their independence, shows

them their own weakness: they are free, but exposed to a thousand

accidents; and experience soon teaches them that, although they

do not habitually require the assistance of others, a time almost

always comes when they cannot do without it. We constantly see

in Europe that men of the same profession are ever ready to

assist each other; they are all exposed to the same ills, and

that is enough to teach them to seek mutual preservatives,

however hard- hearted and selfish they may otherwise be. When

one of them falls into danger, from which the others may save him

by a slight transient sacrifice or a sudden effort, they do not

fail to make the attempt. Not that they are deeply interested in

his fate; for if, by chance, their exertions are unavailing, they

immediately forget the object of them, and return to their own

business; but a sort of tacit and almost involuntary agreement

has been passed between them, by which each one owes to the

others a temporary support which he may claim for himself in

turn. Extend to a people the remark here applied to a class, and

you will understand my meaning. A similar covenant exists in

fact between all the citizens of a democracy: they all feel

themselves subject to the same weakness and the same dangers; and

their interest, as well as their sympathy, makes it a rule with

them to lend each other mutual assistance when required. The more

equal social conditions become, the more do men display this

reciprocal disposition to oblige each other. In democracies no

great benefits are conferred, but good offices are constantly

rendered: a man seldom displays self- devotion, but all men are

ready to be of service to one another.

Book Three - Chapters V-VII

Chapter V: How Democracy Affects nhe Relation Of Masters And

Servants

An American who had travelled for a long time in Europe once

said to me, "The English treat their servants with a stiffness

and imperiousness of manner which surprise us; but on the other

hand the French sometimes treat their attendants with a degree of

familiarity or of politeness which we cannot conceive. It looks

as if they were afraid to give orders: the posture of the

superior and the inferior is ill-maintained." The remark was a

just one, and I have often made it myself. I have always

considered England as the country in the world where, in our

time, the bond of domestic service is drawn most tightly, and

France as the country where it is most relaxed. Nowhere have I

seen masters stand so high or so low as in these two countries.

Between these two extremes the Americans are to be placed. Such

is the fact as it appears upon the surface of things: to discover

the causes of that fact, it is necessary to search the matter

thoroughly.

No communities have ever yet existed in which social

conditions have been so equal that there were neither rich nor

poor, and consequently neither masters nor servants. Democracy

does not prevent the existence of these two classes, but it

changes their dispositions and modifies their mutual relations.

Amongst aristocratic nations servants form a distinct class, not

more variously composed than that of masters. A settled order is

soon established; in the former as well as in the latter class a

scale is formed, with numerous distinctions or marked gradations

of rank, and generations succeed each other thus without any

change of position. These two communities are superposed one

above the other, always distinct, but regulated by analogous

principles. This aristocratic constitution does not exert a less

powerful influence on the notions and manners of servants than on

those of masters; and, although the effects are different, the

same cause may easily be traced. Both classes constitute small

communities in the heart of the nation, and certain permanent

notions of right and wrong are ultimately engendered amongst

them. The different acts of human life are viewed by one

particular and unchanging light. In the society of servants, as

in that of masters, men exercise a great influence over each

other: they acknowledge settled rules, and in the absence of law

they are guided by a sort of public opinion: their habits are

settled, and their conduct is placed under a certain control.

These men, whose destiny is to obey, certainly do not

understand fame, virtue, honesty, and honor in the same manner as

their masters; but they have a pride, a virtue, and an honesty

pertaining to their condition; and they have a notion, if I may

use the expression, of a sort of servile honor. *a Because a

class is mean, it must not be supposed that all who belong to it

are mean- hearted; to think so would be a great mistake. However

lowly it may be, he who is foremost there, and who has no notion

of quitting it, occupies an aristocratic position which inspires

him with lofty feelings, pride, and self-respect, that fit him

for the higher virtues and actions above the common. Amongst

aristocratic nations it was by no means rare to find men of noble

and vigorous minds in the service of the great, who felt not the

servitude they bore, and who submitted to the will of their

masters without any fear of their displeasure. But this was

hardly ever the case amongst the inferior ranks of domestic

servants. It may be imagined that he who occupies the lowest

stage of the order of menials stands very low indeed. The French

created a word on purpose to designate the servants of the

aristocracy - they called them lackeys. This word "lackey"

served as the strongest expression, when all others were

exhausted, to designate human meanness. Under the old French

monarchy, to denote by a single expression a low-spirited

contemptible fellow, it was usual to say that he had the "soul of

a lackey"; the term was enough to convey all that was intended.

[Footnote a: If the principal opinions by which men are guided

are examined closely and in detail, the analogy appears still

more striking, and one is surprised to find amongst them, just as

much as amongst the haughtiest scions of a feudal race, pride of

birth, respect for their ancestry and their descendants, disdain

of their inferiors, a dread of contact, a taste for etiquette,

precedents, and antiquity.]

The permanent inequality of conditions not only gives

servants certain peculiar virtues and vices, but it places them

in a peculiar relation with respect to their masters. Amongst

aristocratic nations the poor man is familiarized from his

childhood with the notion of being commanded: to whichever side

he turns his eyes the graduated structure of society and the

aspect of obedience meet his view. Hence in those countries the

master readily obtains prompt, complete, respectful, and easy

obedience from his servants, because they revere in him not only

their master but the class of masters. He weighs down their will

by the whole weight of the aristocracy. He orders their actions -

to a certain extent he even directs their thoughts. In

aristocracies the master often exercises, even without being

aware of it, an amazing sway over the opinions, the habits, and

the manners of those who obey him, and his influence extends even

further than his authority.

In aristocratic communities there are not only hereditary

families of servants as well as of masters, but the same families

of servants adhere for several generations to the same families

of masters (like two parallel lines which neither meet nor

separate); and this considerably modifies the mutual relations of

these two classes of persons. Thus, although in aristocratic

society the master and servant have no natural resemblance -

although, on the contrary, they are placed at an immense distance

on the scale of human beings by their fortune, education, and

opinions - yet time ultimately binds them together. They are

connected by a long series of common reminiscences, and however

different they may be, they grow alike; whilst in democracies,

where they are naturally almost alike, they always remain

strangers to each other. Amongst an aristocratic people the

master gets to look upon his servants as an inferior and

secondary part of himself, and he often takes an interest in

their lot by a last stretch of egotism.

Servants, on their part, are not averse to regard themselves

in the same light; and they sometimes identify themselves with

the person of the master, so that they become an appendage to him

in their own eyes as well as in his. In aristocracies a servant

fills a subordinate position which he cannot get out of; above

him is another man, holding a superior rank which he cannot lose.

On one side are obscurity, poverty, obedience for life; on the

other, and also for life, fame, wealth, and command. The two

conditions are always distinct and always in propinquity; the tie

that connects them is as lasting as they are themselves. In this

predicament the servant ultimately detaches his notion of

interest from his own person; he deserts himself, as it were, or

rather he transports himself into the character of his master,

and thus assumes an imaginary personality. He complacently

invests himself with the wealth of those who command him; he

shares their fame, exalts himself by their rank, and feeds his

mind with borrowed greatness, to which he attaches more

importance than those who fully and really possess it. There is

something touching, and at the same time ridiculous, in this

strange confusion of two different states of being. These

passions of masters, when they pass into the souls of menials,

assume the natural dimensions of the place they occupy -they are

contracted and lowered. What was pride in the former becomes

puerile vanity and paltry ostentation in the latter. The

servants of a great man are commonly most punctilious as to the

marks of respect due to him, and they attach more importance to

his slightest privileges than he does himself. In France a few

of these old servants of the aristocracy are still to be met with

here and there; they have survived their race, which will soon

disappear with them altogether. In the United States I never saw

anyone at all like them. The Americans are not only unacquainted

with the kind of man, but it is hardly possible to make them

understand that such ever existed. It is scarcely less difficult

for them to conceive it, than for us to form a correct notion of

what a slave was amongst the Romans, or a serf in the Middle

Ages. All these men were in fact, though in different degrees,

results of the same cause: they are all retiring from our sight,

and disappearing in the obscurity of the past, together with the

social condition to which they owed their origin.

Equality of conditions turns servants and masters into new

beings, and places them in new relative positions. When social

conditions are nearly equal, men are constantly changing their

situations in life: there is still a class of menials and a class

of masters, but these classes are not always composed of the same

individuals, still less of the same families; and those who

command are not more secure of perpetuity than those who obey.

As servants do not form a separate people, they have no habits,

prejudices, or manners peculiar to themselves; they are not

remarkable for any particular turn of mind or moods of feeling.

They know no vices or virtues of their condition, but they

partake of the education, the opinions, the feelings, the

virtues, and the vices of their contemporaries; and they are

honest men or scoundrels in the same way as their masters are.

The conditions of servants are not less equal than those of

masters. As no marked ranks or fixed subordination are to be

found amongst them, they will not display either the meanness or

the greatness which characterizes the aristocracy of menials as

well as all other aristocracies. I never saw a man in the United

States who reminded me of that class of confidential servants of

which we still retain a reminiscence in Europe, neither did I

ever meet with such a thing as a lackey: all traces of the one

and of the other have disappeared.

In democracies servants are not only equal amongst

themselves, but it may be said that they are in some sort the

equals of their masters. This requires explanation in order to

be rightly understood. At any moment a servant may become a

master, and he aspires to rise to that condition: the servant is

therefore not a different man from the master. Why then has the

former a right to command, and what compels the latter to obey? -

the free and temporary consent of both their wills. Neither of

them is by nature inferior to the other; they only become so for

a time by covenant. Within the terms of this covenant, the one

is a servant, the other a master; beyond it they are two citizens

of the commonwealth - two men. I beg the reader particularly to

observe that this is not only the notion which servants

themselves entertain of their own condition; domestic service is

looked upon by masters in the same light; and the precise limits

of authority and obedience are as clearly settled in the mind of

the one as in that of the other.

When the greater part of the community have long attained a

condition nearly alike, and when equality is an old and

acknowledged fact, the public mind, which is never affected by

exceptions, assigns certain general limits to the value of man,

above or below which no man can long remain placed. It is in

vain that wealth and poverty, authority and obedience,

accidentally interpose great distances between two men; public

opinion, founded upon the usual order of things, draws them to a

common level, and creates a species of imaginary equality between

them, in spite of the real inequality of their conditions. This

all-powerful opinion penetrates at length even into the hearts of

those whose interest might arm them to resist it; it affects

their judgment whilst it subdues their will. In their inmost

convictions the master and the servant no longer perceive any

deep-seated difference between them, and they neither hope nor

fear to meet with any such at any time. They are therefore

neither subject to disdain nor to anger, and they discern in each

other neither humility nor pride. The master holds the contract

of service to be the only source of his power, and the servant

regards it as the only cause of his obedience. They do not

quarrel about their reciprocal situations, but each knows his own

and keeps it.

In the French army the common soldier is taken from nearly

the same classes as the officer, and may hold the same

commissions; out of the ranks he considers himself entirely equal

to his military superiors, and in point of fact he is so; but

when under arms he does not hesitate to obey, and his obedience

is not the less prompt, precise, and ready, for being voluntary

and defined. This example may give a notion of what takes place

between masters and servants in democratic communities.

It would be preposterous to suppose that those warm and

deep- seated affections, which are sometimes kindled in the

domestic service of aristocracy, will ever spring up between

these two men, or that they will exhibit strong instances of

self-sacrifice. In aristocracies masters and servants live

apart, and frequently their only intercourse is through a third

person; yet they commonly stand firmly by one another. In

democratic countries the master and the servant are close

together; they are in daily personal contact, but their minds do

not intermingle; they have common occupations, hardly ever common

interests. Amongst such a people the servant always considers

himself as a sojourner in the dwelling of his masters. He knew

nothing of their forefathers - he will see nothing of their

descendants -he has nothing lasting to expect from their hand.

Why then should he confound his life with theirs, and whence

should so strange a surrender of himself proceed? The reciprocal

position of the two men is changed - their mutual relations must

be so too.

I would fain illustrate all these reflections by the example

of the Americans; but for this purpose the distinctions of

persons and places must be accurately traced. In the South of

the Union, slavery exists; all that I have just said is

consequently inapplicable there. In the North, the majority of

servants are either freedmen or the children of freedmen; these

persons occupy a contested position in the public estimation; by

the laws they are brought up to the level of their masters - by

the manners of the country they are obstinately detruded from it.

They do not themselves clearly know their proper place, and they

are almost always either insolent or craven. But in the Northern

States, especially in New England, there are a certain number of

whites, who agree, for wages, to yield a temporary obedience to

the will of their fellow-citizens. I have heard that these

servants commonly perform the duties of their situation with

punctuality and intelligence; and that without thinking

themselves naturally inferior to the person who orders them, they

submit without reluctance to obey him. They appear to me to

carry into service some of those manly habits which independence

and equality engender. Having once selected a hard way of life,

they do not seek to escape from it by indirect means; and they

have sufficient respect for themselves, not to refuse to their

master that obedience which they have freely promised. On their

part, masters require nothing of their servants but the faithful

and rigorous performance of the covenant: they do not ask for

marks of respect, they do not claim their love or devoted

attachment; it is enough that, as servants, they are exact and

honest. It would not then be true to assert that, in democratic

society, the relation of servants and masters is disorganized: it

is organized on another footing; the rule is different, but there

is a rule.

It is not my purpose to inquire whether the new state of

things which I have just described is inferior to that which

preceded it, or simply different. Enough for me that it is fixed

and determined: for what is most important to meet with among men

is not any given ordering, but order. But what shall I say of

those sad and troubled times at which equality is established in

the midst of the tumult of revolution - when democracy, after

having been introduced into the state of society, still struggles

with difficulty against the prejudices and manners of the

country? The laws, and partially public opinion, already declare

that no natural or permanent inferiority exists between the

servant and the master. But this new belief has not yet reached

the innermost convictions of the latter, or rather his heart

rejects it; in the secret persuasion of his mind the master

thinks that he belongs to a peculiar and superior race; he dares

not say so, but he shudders whilst he allows himself to be

dragged to the same level. His authority over his servants

becomes timid and at the same time harsh: he has already ceased

to entertain for them the feelings of patronizing kindness which

long uncontested power always engenders, and he is surprised

that, being changed himself, his servant changes also. He wants

his attendants to form regular and permanent habits, in a

condition of domestic service which is only temporary: he

requires that they should appear contented with and proud of a

servile condition, which they will one day shake off - that they

should sacrifice themselves to a man who can neither protect nor

ruin them - and in short that they should contract an

indissoluble engagement to a being like themselves, and one who

will last no longer than they will.

Amongst aristocratic nations it often happens that the

condition of domestic service does not degrade the character of

those who enter upon it, because they neither know nor imagine

any other; and the amazing inequality which is manifest between

them and their master appears to be the necessary and unavoidable

consequence of some hidden law of Providence. In democracies the

condition of domestic service does not degrade the character of

those who enter upon it, because it is freely chosen, and adopted

for a time only; because it is not stigmatized by public opinion,

and creates no permanent inequality between the servant and the

master. But whilst the transition from one social condition to

another is going on, there is almost always a time when men's

minds fluctuate between the aristocratic notion of subjection and

the democratic notion of obedience. Obedience then loses its

moral importance in the eyes of him who obeys; he no longer

considers it as a species of divine obligation, and he does not

yet view it under its purely human aspect; it has to him no

character of sanctity or of justice, and he submits to it as to a

degrading but profitable condition. At that moment a confused

and imperfect phantom of equality haunts the minds of servants;

they do not at once perceive whether the equality to which they

are entitled is to be found within or without the pale of

domestic service; and they rebel in their hearts against a

subordination to which they have subjected themselves, and from

which they derive actual profit. They consent to serve, and they

blush to obey; they like the advantages of service, but not the

master; or rather, they are not sure that they ought not

themselves to be masters, and they are inclined to consider him

who orders them as an unjust usurper of their own rights. Then

it is that the dwelling of every citizen offers a spectacle

somewhat analogous to the gloomy aspect of political society. A

secret and intestine warfare is going on there between powers,

ever rivals and suspicious of one another: the master is

ill-natured and weak, the servant ill-natured and intractable;

the one constantly attempts to evade by unfair restrictions his

obligation to protect and to remunerate - the other his

obligation to obey. The reins of domestic government dangle

between them, to be snatched at by one or the other. The lines

which divide authority from oppression, liberty from license, and

right from might, are to their eyes so jumbled together and

confused, that no one knows exactly what he is, or what he may

be, or what he ought to be. Such a condition is not democracy,

but revolution.

Chapter VI: That Democratic Institutions And Manners Tend To

Raise Rents And Shorten The Terms Of Leases

What has been said of servants and masters is applicable, to

a certain extent, to landowners and farming tenants; but this

subject deserves to be considered by itself. In America there

are, properly speaking, no tenant farmers; every man owns the

ground he tills. It must be admitted that democratic laws tend

greatly to increase the number of landowners, and to diminish

that of farming tenants. Yet what takes place in the United

States is much less attributable to the institutions of the

country than to the country itself. In America land is cheap,

and anyone may easily become a landowner; its returns are small,

and its produce cannot well be divided between a landowner and a

farmer. America therefore stands alone in this as well as in

many other respects, and it would be a mistake to take it as an

example.

I believe that in democratic as well as in aristocratic

countries there will be landowners and tenants, but the

connection existing between them will be of a different kind. In

aristocracies the hire of a farm is paid to the landlord, not

only in rent, but in respect, regard, and duty; in democracies

the whole is paid in cash. When estates are divided and passed

from hand to hand, and the permanent connection which existed

between families and the soil is dissolved, the landowner and the

tenant are only casually brought into contact. They meet for a

moment to settle the conditions of the agreement, and then lose

sight of each other; they are two strangers brought together by a

common interest, and who keenly talk over a matter of business,

the sole object of which is to make money.

In proportion as property is subdivided and wealth

distributed over the country, the community is filled with people

whose former opulence is declining, and with others whose

fortunes are of recent growth and whose wants increase more

rapidly than their resources. For all such persons the smallest

pecuniary profit is a matter of importance, and none of them feel

disposed to waive any of their claims, or to lose any portion of

their income. As ranks are intermingled, and as very large as

well as very scanty fortunes become more rare, every day brings

the social condition of the landowner nearer to that of the

farmer; the one has not naturally any uncontested superiority

over the other; between two men who are equal, and not at ease in

their circumstances, the contract of hire is exclusively an

affair of money. A man whose estate extends over a whole

district, and who owns a hundred farms, is well aware of the

importance of gaining at the same time the affections of some

thousands of men; this object appears to call for his exertions,

and to attain it he will readily make considerable sacrifices.

But he who owns a hundred acres is insensible to similar

considerations, and he cares but little to win the private regard

of his tenant.

An aristocracy does not expire like a man in a single day;

the aristocratic principle is slowly undermined in men's opinion,

before it is attacked in their laws. Long before open war is

declared against it, the tie which had hitherto united the higher

classes to the lower may be seen to be gradually relaxed.

Indifference and contempt are betrayed by one class, jealousy and

hatred by the others; the intercourse between rich and poor

becomes less frequent and less kind, and rents are raised. This

is not the consequence of a democratic revolution, but its

certain harbinger; for an aristocracy which has lost the

affections of the people, once and forever, is like a tree dead

at the root, which is the more easily torn up by the winds the

higher its branches have spread.

In the course of the last fifty years the rents of farms

have amazingly increased, not only in France but throughout the

greater part of Europe. The remarkable improvements which have

taken place in agriculture and manufactures within the same

period do not suffice in my opinion to explain this fact;

recourse must be had to another cause more powerful and more

concealed. I believe that cause is to be found in the democratic

institutions which several European nations have adopted, and in

the democratic passions which more or less agitate all the rest.

I have frequently heard great English landowners congratulate

themselves that, at the present day, they derive a much larger

income from their estates than their fathers did. They have

perhaps good reasons to be glad; but most assuredly they know not

what they are glad of. They think they are making a clear gain,

when it is in reality only an exchange; their influence is what

they are parting with for cash; and what they gain in money will

ere long be lost in power.

There is yet another sign by which it is easy to know that a

great democratic revolution is going on or approaching. In the

Middle Ages almost all lands were leased for lives, or for very

long terms; the domestic economy of that period shows that leases

for ninety-nine years were more frequent then than leases for

twelve years are now. Men then believed that families were

immortal; men's conditions seemed settled forever, and the whole

of society appeared to be so fixed, that it was not supposed that

anything would ever be stirred or shaken in its structure. In

ages of equality, the human mind takes a different bent; the

prevailing notion is that nothing abides, and man is haunted by

the thought of mutability. Under this impression the landowner

and the tenant himself are instinctively averse to protracted

terms of obligation; they are afraid of being tied up to-morrow

by the contract which benefits them today. They have vague

anticipations of some sudden and unforeseen change in their

conditions; they mistrust themselves; they fear lest their taste

should change, and lest they should lament that they cannot rid

themselves of what they coveted; nor are such fears unfounded,

for in democratic ages that which is most fluctuating amidst the

fluctuation of all around is the heart of man.

Chapter VII: Influence Of Democracy On Wages

Most of the remarks which I have already made in speaking of

servants and masters, may be applied to masters and workmen. As

the gradations of the social scale come to be less observed,

whilst the great sink the humble rise, and as poverty as well as

opulence ceases to be hereditary, the distance both in reality

and in opinion, which heretofore separated the workman from the

master, is lessened every day. The workman conceives a more

lofty opinion of his rights, of his future, of himself; he is

filled with new ambition and with new desires, he is harassed by

new wants. Every instant he views with longing eyes the profits

of his employer; and in order to share them, he strives to

dispose of his labor at a higher rate, and he generally succeeds

at length in the attempt. In democratic countries, as well as

elsewhere, most of the branches of productive industry are

carried on at a small cost, by men little removed by their wealth

or education above the level of those whom they employ. These

manufacturing speculators are extremely numerous; their interests

differ; they cannot therefore easily concert or combine their

exertions. On the other hand the workmen have almost always some

sure resources, which enable them to refuse to work when they

cannot get what they conceive to be the fair price of their

labor. In the constant struggle for wages which is going on

between these two classes, their strength is divided, and success

alternates from one to the other. It is even probable that in

the end the interest of the working class must prevail; for the

high wages which they have already obtained make them every day

less dependent on their masters; and as they grow more

independent, they have greater facilities for obtaining a further

increase of wages.

I shall take for example that branch of productive industry

which is still at the present day the most generally followed in

France, and in almost all the countries of the world - I mean the

cultivation of the soil. In France most of those who labor for

hire in agriculture, are themselves owners of certain plots of

ground, which just enable them to subsist without working for

anyone else. When these laborers come to offer their services to

a neighboring landowner or farmer, if he refuses them a certain

rate of wages, they retire to their own small property and await

another opportunity.

I think that, upon the whole, it may be asserted that a slow

and gradual rise of wages is one of the general laws of

democratic communities. In proportion as social conditions

become more equal, wages rise; and as wages are higher, social

conditions become more equal. But a great and gloomy exception

occurs in our own time. I have shown in a preceding chapter that

aristocracy, expelled from political society, has taken refuge in

certain departments of productive industry, and has established

its sway there under another form; this powerfully affects the

rate of wages. As a large capital is required to embark in the

great manufacturing speculations to which I allude, the number of

persons who enter upon them is exceedingly limited: as their

number is small, they can easily concert together, and fix the

rate of wages as they please. Their workmen on the contrary are

exceedingly numerous, and the number of them is always

increasing; for, from time to time, an extraordinary run of

business takes place, during which wages are inordinately high,

and they attract the surrounding population to the factories.

But, when once men have embraced that line of life, we have

already seen that they cannot quit it again, because they soon

contract habits of body and mind which unfit them for any other

sort of toil. These men have generally but little education and

industry, with but few resources; they stand therefore almost at

the mercy of the master. When competition, or other fortuitous

circumstances, lessen his profits, he can reduce the wages of his

workmen almost at pleasure, and make from them what he loses by

the chances of business. Should the workmen strike, the master,

who is a rich man, can very well wait without being ruined until

necessity brings them back to him; but they must work day by day

or they die, for their only property is in their hands. They

have long been impoverished by oppression, and the poorer they

become the more easily may they be oppressed: they can never

escape from this fatal circle of cause and consequence. It is

not then surprising that wages, after having sometimes suddenly

risen, are permanently lowered in this branch of industry;

whereas in other callings the price of labor, which generally

increases but little, is nevertheless constantly augmented.

This state of dependence and wretchedness, in which a part

of the manufacturing population of our time lives, forms an

exception to the general rule, contrary to the state of all the

rest of the community; but, for this very reason, no circumstance

is more important or more deserving of the especial consideration

of the legislator; for when the whole of society is in motion, it

is difficult to keep any one class stationary; and when the

greater number of men are opening new paths to fortune, it is no

less difficult to make the few support in peace their wants and

their desires.

Book Three - Chapters VIII-X

Chapter VIII: Influence Of Democracy On Kindred

I have just examined the changes which the equality of

conditions produces in the mutual relations of the several

members of the community amongst democratic nations, and amongst

the Americans in particular. I would now go deeper, and inquire

into the closer ties of kindred: my object here is not to seek

for new truths, but to show in what manner facts already known

are connected with my subject.

It has been universally remarked, that in our time the

several members of a family stand upon an entirely new footing

towards each other; that the distance which formerly separated a

father from his sons has been lessened; and that paternal

authority, if not destroyed, is at least impaired. Something

analogous to this, but even more striking, may be observed in the

United States. In America the family, in the Roman and

aristocratic signification of the word, does not exist. All that

remains of it are a few vestiges in the first years of childhood,

when the father exercises, without opposition, that absolute

domestic authority, which the feebleness of his children renders

necessary, and which their interest, as well as his own

incontestable superiority, warrants. But as soon as the young

American approaches manhood, the ties of filial obedience are

relaxed day by day: master of his thoughts, he is soon master of

his conduct. In America there is, strictly speaking, no

adolescence: at the close of boyhood the man appears, and begins

to trace out his own path. It would be an error to suppose that

this is preceded by a domestic struggle, in which the son has

obtained by a sort of moral violence the liberty that his father

refused him. The same habits, the same principles which impel the

one to assert his independence, predispose the other to consider

the use of that independence as an incontestable right. The

former does not exhibit any of those rancorous or irregular

passions which disturb men long after they have shaken off an

established authority; the latter feels none of that bitter and

angry regret which is apt to survive a bygone power. The father

foresees the limits of his authority long beforehand, and when

the time arrives he surrenders it without a struggle: the son

looks forward to the exact period at which he will be his own

master; and he enters upon his freedom without precipitation and

without effort, as a possession which is his own and which no one

seeks to wrest from him. *a

[Footnote a: The Americans, however, have not yet thought fit to

strip the parent, as has been done in France, of one of the chief

elements of parental authority, by depriving him of the power of

disposing of his property at his death. In the United States

there are no restrictions on the powers of a testator. In this

respect, as in almost all others, it is easy to perceive, that if

the political legislation of the Americans is much more

democratic than that of the French, the civil legislation of the

latter is infinitely more democratic than that of the former.

This may easily be accounted for. The civil legislation of France

was the work of a man who saw that it was his interest to satisfy

the democratic passions of his contemporaries in all that was not

directly and immediately hostile to his own power. He was

willing to allow some popular principles to regulate the

distribution of property and the government of families, provided

they were not to be introduced into the administration of public

affairs. Whilst the torrent of democracy overwhelmed the civil

laws of the country, he hoped to find an easy shelter behind its

political institutions. This policy was at once both adroit and

selfish; but a compromise of this kind could not last; for in the

end political institutions never fail to become the image and

expression of civil society; and in this sense it may be said

that nothing is more political in a nation than its civil

legislation.]

It may perhaps not be without utility to show how these

changes which take place in family relations, are closely

connected with the social and political revolution which is

approaching its consummation under our own observation. There

are certain great social principles, which a people either

introduces everywhere, or tolerates nowhere. In countries which

are aristocratically constituted with all the gradations of rank,

the government never makes a direct appeal to the mass of the

governed: as men are united together, it is enough to lead the

foremost, the rest will follow. This is equally applicable to

the family, as to all aristocracies which have a head. Amongst

aristocratic nations, social institutions recognize, in truth, no

one in the family but the father; children are received by

society at his hands; society governs him, he governs them. Thus

the parent has not only a natural right, but he acquires a

political right, to command them: he is the author and the

support of his family; but he is also its constituted ruler. In

democracies, where the government picks out every individual

singly from the mass, to make him subservient to the general laws

of the community, no such intermediate person is required: a

father is there, in the eye of the law, only a member of the

community, older and richer than his sons.

When most of the conditions of life are extremely unequal,

and the inequality of these conditions is permanent, the notion

of a superior grows upon the imaginations of men: if the law

invested him with no privileges, custom and public opinion would

concede them. When, on the contrary, men differ but little from

each other, and do not always remain in dissimilar conditions of

life, the general notion of a superior becomes weaker and less

distinct: it is vain for legislation to strive to place him who

obeys very much beneath him who commands; the manners of the time

bring the two men nearer to one another, and draw them daily

towards the same level. Although the legislation of an

aristocratic people should grant no peculiar privileges to the

heads of families; I shall not be the less convinced that their

power is more respected and more extensive than in a democracy;

for I know that, whatsoever the laws may be, superiors always

appear higher and inferiors lower in aristocracies than amongst

democratic nations.

When men live more for the remembrance of what has been than

for the care of what is, and when they are more given to attend

to what their ancestors thought than to think themselves, the

father is the natural and necessary tie between the past and the

present - the link by which the ends of these two chains are

connected. In aristocracies, then, the father is not only the

civil head of the family, but the oracle of its traditions, the

expounder of its customs, the arbiter of its manners. He is

listened to with deference, he is addressed with respect, and the

love which is felt for him is always tempered with fear. When

the condition of society becomes democratic, and men adopt as

their general principle that it is good and lawful to judge of

all things for one's self, using former points of belief not as a

rule of faith but simply as a means of information, the power

which the opinions of a father exercise over those of his sons

diminishes as well as his legal power.

Perhaps the subdivision of estates which democracy brings

with it contributes more than anything else to change the

relations existing between a father and his children. When the

property of the father of a family is scanty, his son and himself

constantly live in the same place, and share the same

occupations: habit and necessity bring them together, and force

them to hold constant communication: the inevitable consequence

is a sort of familiar intimacy, which renders authority less

absolute, and which can ill be reconciled with the external forms

of respect. Now in democratic countries the class of those who

are possessed of small fortunes is precisely that which gives

strength to the notions, and a particular direction to the

manners, of the community. That class makes its opinions

preponderate as universally as its will, and even those who are

most inclined to resist its commands are carried away in the end

by its example. I have known eager opponents of democracy who

allowed their children to address them with perfect colloquial

equality.

Thus, at the same time that the power of aristocracy is

declining, the austere, the conventional, and the legal part of

parental authority vanishes, and a species of equality prevails

around the domestic hearth. I know not, upon the whole, whether

society loses by the change, but I am inclined to believe that

man individually is a gainer by it. I think that, in proportion

as manners and laws become more democratic, the relation of

father and son becomes more intimate and more affectionate; rules

and authority are less talked of; confidence and tenderness are

oftentimes increased, and it would seem that the natural bond is

drawn closer in proportion as the social bond is loosened. In a

democratic family the father exercises no other power than that

with which men love to invest the affection and the experience of

age; his orders would perhaps be disobeyed, but his advice is for

the most part authoritative. Though he be not hedged in with

ceremonial respect, his sons at least accost him with confidence;

no settled form of speech is appropriated to the mode of

addressing him, but they speak to him constantly, and are ready

to consult him day by day; the master and the constituted ruler

have vanished -the father remains. Nothing more is needed, in

order to judge of the difference between the two states of

society in this respect, than to peruse the family correspondence

of aristocratic ages. The style is always correct, ceremonious,

stiff, and so cold that the natural warmth of the heart can

hardly be felt in the language. The language, on the contrary,

addressed by a son to his father in democratic countries is

always marked by mingled freedom, familiarity and affection,

which at once show that new relations have sprung up in the bosom

of the family.

A similar revolution takes place in the mutual relations of

children. In aristocratic families, as well as in aristocratic

society, every place is marked out beforehand. Not only does the

father occupy a separate rank, in which he enjoys extensive

privileges, but even the children are not equal amongst

themselves. The age and sex of each irrevocably determine his

rank, and secure to him certain privileges: most of these

distinctions are abolished or diminished by democracy. In

aristocratic families the eldest son, inheriting the greater part

of the property, and almost all the rights of the family, becomes

the chief, and, to a certain extent, the master, of his brothers.

Greatness and power are for him - for them, mediocrity and

dependence. Nevertheless it would be wrong to suppose that,

amongst aristocratic nations, the privileges of the eldest son

are advantageous to himself alone, or that they excite nothing

but envy and hatred in those around him. The eldest son commonly

endeavors to procure wealth and power for his brothers, because

the general splendor of the house is reflected back on him who

represents it; the younger sons seek to back the elder brother in

all his undertakings, because the greatness and power of the head

of the family better enable him to provide for all its branches.

The different members of an aristocratic family are therefore

very closely bound together; their interests are connected, their

minds agree, but their hearts are seldom in harmony.

Democracy also binds brothers to each other, but by very

different means. Under democratic laws all the children are

perfectly equal, and consequently independent; nothing brings

them forcibly together, but nothing keeps them apart; and as they

have the same origin, as they are trained under the same roof, as

they are treated with the same care, and as no peculiar privilege

distinguishes or divides them, the affectionate and youthful

intimacy of early years easily springs up between them. Scarcely

any opportunities occur to break the tie thus formed at the

outset of life; for their brotherhood brings them daily together,

without embarrassing them. It is not, then, by interest, but by

common associations and by the free sympathy of opinion and of

taste, that democracy unites brothers to each other. It divides

their inheritance, but it allows their hearts and minds to mingle

together. Such is the charm of these democratic manners, that

even the partisans of aristocracy are caught by it; and after

having experienced it for some time, they are by no means tempted

to revert to the respectful and frigid observance of aristocratic

families. They would be glad to retain the domestic habits of

democracy, if they might throw off its social conditions and its

laws; but these elements are indissolubly united, and it is

impossible to enjoy the former without enduring the latter.

The remarks I have made on filial love and fraternal

affection are applicable to all the passions which emanate

spontaneously from human nature itself. If a certain mode of

thought or feeling is the result of some peculiar condition of

life, when that condition is altered nothing whatever remains of

the thought or feeling. Thus a law may bind two members of the

community very closely to one another; but that law being

abolished, they stand asunder. Nothing was more strict than the

tie which united the vassal to the lord under the feudal system;

at the present day the two men know not each other; the fear, the

gratitude, and the affection which formerly connected them have

vanished, and not a vestige of the tie remains. Such, however,

is not the case with those feelings which are natural to mankind.

Whenever a law attempts to tutor these feelings in any particular

manner, it seldom fails to weaken them; by attempting to add to

their intensity, it robs them of some of their elements, for they

are never stronger than when left to themselves.

Democracy, which destroys or obscures almost all the old

conventional rules of society, and which prevents men from

readily assenting to new ones, entirely effaces most of the

feelings to which these conventional rules have given rise; but

it only modifies some others, and frequently imparts to them a

degree of energy and sweetness unknown before. Perhaps it is not

impossible to condense into a single proposition the whole

meaning of this chapter, and of several others that preceded it.

Democracy loosens social ties, but it draws the ties of nature

more tight; it brings kindred more closely together, whilst it

places the various members of the community more widely apart.

Chapter IX: Education Of Young Women In The United States

No free communities ever existed without morals; and, as I

observed in the former part of this work, morals are the work of

woman. Consequently, whatever affects the condition of women,

their habits and their opinions, has great political importance

in my eyes. Amongst almost all Protestant nations young women

are far more the mistresses of their own actions than they are in

Catholic countries. This independence is still greater in

Protestant countries, like England, which have retained or

acquired the right of self-government; the spirit of freedom is

then infused into the domestic circle by political habits and by

religious opinions. In the United States the doctrines of

Protestantism are combined with great political freedom and a

most democratic state of society; and nowhere are young women

surrendered so early or so completely to their own guidance.

Long before an American girl arrives at the age of marriage, her

emancipation from maternal control begins; she has scarcely

ceased to be a child when she already thinks for herself, speaks

with freedom, and acts on her own impulse. The great scene of

the world is constantly open to her view; far from seeking

concealment, it is every day disclosed to her more completely,

and she is taught to survey it with a firm and calm gaze. Thus

the vices and dangers of society are early revealed to her; as

she sees them clearly, she views them without illusions, and

braves them without fear; for she is full of reliance on her own

strength, and her reliance seems to be shared by all who are

about her. An American girl scarcely ever displays that virginal

bloom in the midst of young desires, or that innocent and

ingenuous grace which usually attends the European woman in the

transition from girlhood to youth. It is rarely that an American

woman at any age displays childish timidity or ignorance. Like

the young women of Europe, she seeks to please, but she knows

precisely the cost of pleasing. If she does not abandon herself

to evil, at least she knows that it exists; and she is remarkable

rather for purity of manners than for chastity of mind. I have

been frequently surprised, and almost frightened, at the singular

address and happy boldness with which young women in America

contrive to manage their thoughts and their language amidst all

the difficulties of stimulating conversation; a philosopher would

have stumbled at every step along the narrow path which they trod

without accidents and without effort. It is easy indeed to

perceive that, even amidst the independence of early youth, an

American woman is always mistress of herself; she indulges in all

permitted pleasures, without yielding herself up to any of them;

and her reason never allows the reins of self-guidance to drop,

though it often seems to hold them loosely.

In France, where remnants of every age are still so

strangely mingled in the opinions and tastes of the people, women

commonly receive a reserved, retired, and almost cloistral

education, as they did in aristocratic times; and then they are

suddenly abandoned, without a guide and without assistance, in

the midst of all the irregularities inseparable from democratic

society. The Americans are more consistent. They have found out

that in a democracy the independence of individuals cannot fail

to be very great, youth premature, tastes ill-restrained, customs

fleeting, public opinion often unsettled and powerless, paternal

authority weak, and marital authority contested. Under these

circumstances, believing that they had little chance of

repressing in woman the most vehement passions of the human

heart, they held that the surer way was to teach her the art of

combating those passions for herself. As they could not prevent

her virtue from being exposed to frequent danger, they determined

that she should know how best to defend it; and more reliance was

placed on the free vigor of her will than on safeguards which

have been shaken or overthrown. Instead, then, of inculcating

mistrust of herself, they constantly seek to enhance their

confidence in her own strength of character. As it is neither

possible nor desirable to keep a young woman in perpetual or

complete ignorance, they hasten to give her a precocious

knowledge on all subjects. Far from hiding the corruptions of

the world from her, they prefer that she should see them at once

and train herself to shun them; and they hold it of more

importance to protect her conduct than to be over-scrupulous of

her innocence.

Although the Americans are a very religious people, they do

not rely on religion alone to defend the virtue of woman; they

seek to arm her reason also. In this they have followed the same

method as in several other respects; they first make the most

vigorous efforts to bring individual independence to exercise a

proper control over itself, and they do not call in the aid of

religion until they have reached the utmost limits of human

strength. I am aware that an education of this kind is not

without danger; I am sensible that it tends to invigorate the

judgment at the expense of the imagination, and to make cold and

virtuous women instead of affectionate wives and agreeable

companions to man. Society may be more tranquil and better

regulated, but domestic life has often fewer charms. These,

however, are secondary evils, which may be braved for the sake of

higher interests. At the stage at which we are now arrived the

time for choosing is no longer within our control; a democratic

education is indispensable to protect women from the dangers with

which democratic institutions and manners surround them.

Chapter X: The Young Woman In The Character Of A Wife

In America the independence of woman is irrevocably lost in

the bonds of matrimony: if an unmarried woman is less constrained

there than elsewhere, a wife is subjected to stricter

obligations. The former makes her father's house an abode of

freedom and of pleasure; the latter lives in the home of her

husband as if it were a cloister. Yet these two different

conditions of life are perhaps not so contrary as may be

supposed, and it is natural that the American women should pass

through the one to arrive at the other.

Religious peoples and trading nations entertain peculiarly

serious notions of marriage: the former consider the regularity

of woman's life as the best pledge and most certain sign of the

purity of her morals; the latter regard it as the highest

security for the order and prosperity of the household. The

Americans are at the same time a puritanical people and a

commercial nation: their religious opinions, as well as their

trading habits, consequently lead them to require much abnegation

on the part of woman, and a constant sacrifice of her pleasures

to her duties which is seldom demanded of her in Europe. Thus in

the United States the inexorable opinion of the public carefully

circumscribes woman within the narrow circle of domestic interest

and duties, and forbids her to step beyond it.

Upon her entrance into the world a young American woman

finds these notions firmly established; she sees the rules which

are derived from them; she is not slow to perceive that she

cannot depart for an instant from the established usages of her

contemporaries, without putting in jeopardy her peace of mind,

her honor, nay even her social existence; and she finds the

energy required for such an act of submission in the firmness of

her understanding and in the virile habits which her education

has given her. It may be said that she has learned by the use of

her independence to surrender it without a struggle and without a

murmur when the time comes for making the sacrifice. But no

American woman falls into the toils of matrimony as into a snare

held out to her simplicity and ignorance. She has been taught

beforehand what is expected of her, and voluntarily and freely

does she enter upon this engagement. She supports her new

condition with courage, because she chose it. As in America

paternal discipline is very relaxed and the conjugal tie very

strict, a young woman does not contract the latter without

considerable circumspection and apprehension. Precocious

marriages are rare. Thus American women do not marry until their

understandings are exercised and ripened; whereas in other

countries most women generally only begin to exercise and to

ripen their understandings after marriage.

I by no means suppose, however, that the great change which

takes place in all the habits of women in the United States, as

soon as they are married, ought solely to be attributed to the

constraint of public opinion: it is frequently imposed upon

themselves by the sole effort of their own will. When the time

for choosing a husband is arrived, that cold and stern reasoning

power which has been educated and invigorated by the free

observation of the world, teaches an American woman that a spirit

of levity and independence in the bonds of marriage is a constant

subject of annoyance, not of pleasure; it tells her that the

amusements of the girl cannot become the recreations of the wife,

and that the sources of a married woman's happiness are in the

home of her husband. As she clearly discerns beforehand the only

road which can lead to domestic happiness, she enters upon it at

once, and follows it to the end without seeking to turn back.

The same strength of purpose which the young wives of

America display, in bending themselves at once and without

repining to the austere duties of their new condition, is no less

manifest in all the great trials of their lives. In no country

in the world are private fortunes more precarious than in the

United States. It is not uncommon for the same man, in the

course of his life, to rise and sink again through all the grades

which lead from opulence to poverty. American women support

these vicissitudes with calm and unquenchable energy: it would

seem that their desires contract, as easily as they expand, with

their fortunes. *a

[Footnote a: See Appendix S.]

The greater part of the adventurers who migrate every year

to people the western wilds, belong, as I observed in the former

part of this work, to the old Anglo-American race of the Northern

States. Many of these men, who rush so boldly onwards in pursuit

of wealth, were already in the enjoyment of a competency in their

own part of the country. They take their wives along with them,

and make them share the countless perils and privations which

always attend the commencement of these expeditions. I have

often met, even on the verge of the wilderness, with young women,

who after having been brought up amidst all the comforts of the

large towns of New England, had passed, almost without any

intermediate stage, from the wealthy abode of their parents to a

comfortless hovel in a forest. Fever, solitude, and a tedious

life had not broken the springs of their courage. Their features

were impaired and faded, but their looks were firm: they appeared

to be at once sad and resolute. I do not doubt that these young

American women had amassed, in the education of their early

years, that inward strength which they displayed under these

circumstances. The early culture of the girl may still therefore

be traced, in the United States, under the aspect of marriage:

her part is changed, her habits are different, but her character

is the same.

Book Three - Chapters XI-XIV

Chapter XI: That The Equality Of Conditions Contributes To The

Maintenance Of Good Morals In America

Some philosophers and historians have said, or have hinted,

that the strictness of female morality was increased or

diminished simply by the distance of a country from the equator.

This solution of the difficulty was an easy one; and nothing was

required but a globe and a pair of compasses to settle in an

instant one of the most difficult problems in the condition of

mankind. But I am not aware that this principle of the

materialists is supported by facts. The same nations have been

chaste or dissolute at different periods of their history; the

strictness or the laxity of their morals depended therefore on

some variable cause, not only on the natural qualities of their

country, which were invariable. I do not deny that in certain

climates the passions which are occasioned by the mutual

attraction of the sexes are peculiarly intense; but I am of

opinion that this natural intensity may always be excited or

restrained by the condition of society and by political

institutions.

Although the travellers who have visited North America

differ on a great number of points, they all agree in remarking

that morals are far more strict there than elsewhere. It is

evident that on this point the Americans are very superior to

their progenitors the English. A superficial glance at the two

nations will establish the fact. In England, as in all other

countries of Europe, public malice is constantly attacking the

frailties of women. Philosophers and statesmen are heard to

deplore that morals are not sufficiently strict, and the literary

productions of the country constantly lead one to suppose so. In

America all books, novels not excepted, suppose women to be

chaste, and no one thinks of relating affairs of gallantry. No

doubt this great regularity of American morals originates partly

in the country, in the race of the people, and in their religion:

but all these causes, which operate elsewhere, do not suffice to

account for it; recourse must be had to some special reason.

This reason appears to me to be the principle of equality and the

institutions derived from it. Equality of conditions does not of

itself engender regularity of morals, but it unquestionably

facilitates and increases it. *a

[Footnote a: See Appendix T.]

Amongst aristocratic nations birth and fortune frequently

make two such different beings of man and woman, that they can

never be united to each other. Their passions draw them

together, but the condition of society, and the notions suggested

by it, prevent them from contracting a permanent and ostensible

tie. The necessary consequence is a great number of transient

and clandestine connections. Nature secretly avenges herself for

the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man. This is not

so much the case when the equality of conditions has swept away

all the imaginary, or the real, barriers which separated man from

woman. No girl then believes that she cannot become the wife of

the man who loves her; and this renders all breaches of morality

before marriage very uncommon: for, whatever be the credulity of

the passions, a woman will hardly be able to persuade herself

that she is beloved, when her lover is perfectly free to marry

her and does not.

The same cause operates, though more indirectly, on married

life. Nothing better serves to justify an illicit passion, either

to the minds of those who have conceived it or to the world which

looks on, than compulsory or accidental marriages. *b In a

country in which a woman is always free to exercise her power of

choosing, and in which education has prepared her to choose

rightly, public opinion is inexorable to her faults. The rigor

of the Americans arises in part from this cause. They consider

marriages as a covenant which is often onerous, but every

condition of which the parties are strictly bound to fulfil,

because they knew all those conditions beforehand, and were

perfectly free not to have contracted them.

[Footnote b: The literature of Europe sufficiently corroborates

this remark. When a European author wishes to depict in a work of

imagination any of these great catastrophes in matrimony which so

frequently occur amongst us, he takes care to bespeak the

compassion of the reader by bringing before him ill-assorted or

compulsory marriages. Although habitual tolerance has long since

relaxed our morals, an author could hardly succeed in interesting

us in the misfortunes of his characters, if he did not first

palliate their faults. This artifice seldom fails: the daily

scenes we witness prepare us long beforehand to be indulgent.

But American writers could never render these palliations

probable to their readers; their customs and laws are opposed to

it; and as they despair of rendering levity of conduct pleasing,

they cease to depict it. This is one of the causes to which must

be attributed the small number of novels published in the United

States.]

The very circumstances which render matrimonial fidelity

more obligatory also render it more easy. In aristocratic

countries the object of marriage is rather to unite property than

persons; hence the husband is sometimes at school and the wife at

nurse when they are betrothed. It cannot be wondered at if the

conjugal tie which holds the fortunes of the pair united allows

their hearts to rove; this is the natural result of the nature of

the contract. When, on the contrary, a man always chooses a wife

for himself, without any external coercion or even guidance, it

is generally a conformity of tastes and opinions which brings a

man and a woman together, and this same conformity keeps and

fixes them in close habits of intimacy.

Our forefathers had conceived a very strange notion on the

subject of marriage: as they had remarked that the small number

of love-matches which occurred in their time almost always turned

out ill, they resolutely inferred that it was exceedingly

dangerous to listen to the dictates of the heart on the subject.

Accident appeared to them to be a better guide than choice. Yet

it was not very difficult to perceive that the examples which

they witnessed did in fact prove nothing at all. For in the

first place, if democratic nations leave a woman at liberty to

choose her husband, they take care to give her mind sufficient

knowledge, and her will sufficient strength, to make so important

a choice: whereas the young women who, amongst aristocratic

nations, furtively elope from the authority of their parents to

throw themselves of their own accord into the arms of men whom

they have had neither time to know, nor ability to judge of, are

totally without those securities. It is not surprising that they

make a bad use of their freedom of action the first time they

avail themselves of it; nor that they fall into such cruel

mistakes, when, not having received a democratic education, they

choose to marry in conformity to democratic customs. But this is

not all. When a man and woman are bent upon marriage in spite of

the differences of an aristocratic state of society, the

difficulties to be overcome are enormous. Having broken or

relaxed the bonds of filial obedience, they have then to

emancipate themselves by a final effort from the sway of custom

and the tyranny of opinion; and when at length they have

succeeded in this arduous task, they stand estranged from their

natural friends and kinsmen: the prejudice they have crossed

separates them from all, and places them in a situation which

soon breaks their courage and sours their hearts. If, then, a

couple married in this manner are first unhappy and afterwards

criminal, it ought not to be attributed to the freedom of their

choice, but rather to their living in a community in which this

freedom of choice is not admitted.

Moreover it should not be forgotten that the same effort

which makes a man violently shake off a prevailing error,

commonly impels him beyond the bounds of reason; that, to dare to

declare war, in however just a cause, against the opinion of

one's age and country, a violent and adventurous spirit is

required, and that men of this character seldom arrive at

happiness or virtue, whatever be the path they follow. And this,

it may be observed by the way, is the reason why in the most

necessary and righteous revolutions, it is so rare to meet with

virtuous or moderate revolutionary characters. There is then no

just ground for surprise if a man, who in an age of aristocracy

chooses to consult nothing but his own opinion and his own taste

in the choice of a wife, soon finds that infractions of morality

and domestic wretchedness invade his household: but when this

same line of action is in the natural and ordinary course of

things, when it is sanctioned by parental authority and backed by

public opinion, it cannot be doubted that the internal peace of

families will be increased by it, and conjugal fidelity more

rigidly observed.

Almost all men in democracies are engaged in public or

professional life; and on the other hand the limited extent of

common incomes obliges a wife to confine herself to the house, in

order to watch in person and very closely over the details of

domestic economy. All these distinct and compulsory occupations

are so many natural barriers, which, by keeping the two sexes

asunder, render the solicitations of the one less frequent and

less ardent -the resistance of the other more easy.

Not indeed that the equality of conditions can ever succeed

in making men chaste, but it may impart a less dangerous

character to their breaches of morality. As no one has then

either sufficient time or opportunity to assail a virtue armed in

self-defence, there will be at the same time a great number of

courtesans and a great number of virtuous women. This state of

things causes lamentable cases of individual hardship, but it

does not prevent the body of society from being strong and alert:

it does not destroy family ties, or enervate the morals of the

nation. Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a

few, but by laxity of morals amongst all. In the eyes of a

legislator, prostitution is less to be dreaded than intrigue.

The tumultuous and constantly harassed life which equality

makes men lead, not only distracts them from the passion of love,

by denying them time to indulge in it, but it diverts them from

it by another more secret but more certain road. All men who

live in democratic ages more or less contract the ways of

thinking of the manufacturing and trading classes; their minds

take a serious, deliberate, and positive turn; they are apt to

relinquish the ideal, in order to pursue some visible and

proximat

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