Influence
of Democracy on the Progress of Opinion in the United States
Chapter 1 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 discussion 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 2 Of the Principal Source of Belief Among Democratic Nations
AT different periods dogmatical belief is more or less abundant. It
arises in different ways, and it may change its object or its form;
but under no circumstances will dogmatical belief cease to exist,
or, in other words, men will never cease to entertain some implicit
opinions without trying them by actual discussion. If everyone
undertook to form his own opinions and to seek for truth by isolated
paths struck out by himself alone, it is not to be supposed that any
considerable number of men would ever unite in any common belief.
But obviously without such common belief no society can prosper --
say rather no society can subsist; for without ideas held in common,
there is no common action, and without common action, there may
still be men, but there is no social body. In order that society
should exist, and, a fortiori, that a society should prosper, it is
required that all the minds of the citizens should be rallied and
held together by certain predominant ideas; and this cannot be the
case, unless each of them sometimes draws his opinions from the
common source, and consents to accept certain matters of belief at
the hands of the community.
If I now consider man in his isolated capacity, I find that
dogmatical belief is not less indispensable to him in order to live
alone, than it is to enable him to co-operate with his
fellow-creatures. If man were forced to demonstrate to himself all
the truths of which he makes daily use, his task would never end. He
would exhaust his strength in preparatory exercises, without
advancing beyond them. As, from the shortness of his life, he has
not the time, nor, from the limits of his intelligence, the
capacity, to accomplish this, he is reduced to take upon trust a
number of facts and opinions which he has not had either the time or
the power to verify himself, but which men of greater ability have
sought out, or which the world adopts. On this groundwork he raises
for himself the structure of his own thoughts; nor is he led to
proceed in this manner by choice so much as he is constrained by the
inflexible law of his condition. There is no philosopher of such
great parts in the world, but that he believes a million of things
on the faith of other people, and supposes a great many more truths
than he demonstrates. This is not only necessary but desirable. A
man who should undertake to inquire into everything for himself,
could devote to each thing but little time and attention. His task
would keep his mind in perpetual unrest, which would prevent him
from penetrating to the depth of any truth, or of grappling his mind
indissolubly to any conviction. His intellect would be at once
independent and powerless. He must therefore make his choice from
amongst the various objects of human belief, and he must adopt many
opinions without discussion, in order to search the better into that
smaller number which he sets apart for investigation. It is true
that whoever receives an opinion on the word of another, does so far
enslave his mind; but it is a salutary servitude which allows him to
make a good use of freedom.
A principle of authority must then always occur, under all
circumstances, in some part or other of the moral and intellectual
world. Its place is variable, but a place it necessarily has. The
independence of individual minds may be greater, or it may be less:
unbounded it cannot be. Thus the question is, not to know whether
any intellectual authority exists in the ages of democracy, but
simply where it resides and by what standard it is to be measured.
I have shown in the preceding chapter how the equality of conditions
leads men to entertain a sort of instinctive incredulity of the
supernatural, and a very lofty and often exaggerated opinion of the
human understanding. The men who live at a period of social equality
are not therefore easily led to place that intellectual authority to
which they bow either beyond or above humanity. They commonly seek
for the sources of truth in themselves, or in those who are like
themselves. This would be enough to prove that at such periods no
new religion could be established, and that all schemes for such a
purpose would be not only impious but absurd and irrational. It may
be foreseen that a democratic people will not easily give credence
to divine missions; that they will turn modern prophets to a ready
jest; and they that will seek to discover the chief arbiter of their
belief within, and not beyond, the limits of their kind.
individuals invested with all the power of superior intelligence,
learning, and enlightenment, whilst the multitude is sunk in
ignorance and prejudice. Men living at these aristocratic periods
are therefore naturally induced to shape their opinions by the
superior standard of a person or a class of persons, whilst they are
averse to recognize the infallibility of the mass of the people.
The contrary takes place in ages of equality. The nearer the
citizens are drawn to the common level of an equal and similar
condition, the less prone does each man become to place implicit
faith in a certain man or a certain class of men. But his readiness
to believe the multitude increases, and opinion is more than ever
mistress of the world. Not only is common opinion the only guide
which private judgment retains amongst a democratic people, but
amongst such a people it possesses a power infinitely beyond what it
has elsewhere. At periods of equality men have no faith in one
another, by reason of their common resemblance; but this very
resemblance gives them almost unbounded confidence in the judgment
of the public; for it would not seem probable, as they are all
endowed with equal means of judging, but that the greater truth
should go with the greater number.
When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself
individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he
is the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the
totality of his fellows, and to place himself in contrast to so huge
a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own
insignificance and weakness. The same equality which renders him
independent of each of his fellow-citizens taken severally, exposes
him alone and unprotected to the influence of the greater number.
The public has therefore among a democratic people a singular power,
of which aristocratic nations could never so much as conceive an
idea; for it does not persuade to certain opinions, but it enforces
them, and infuses them into the faculties by a sort of enormous
pressure of the minds of all upon the reason of each.
In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude
of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus
relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
Everybody there adopts great numbers of theories, on philosophy,
morals, and politics, without inquiry, upon public trust; and if we
look to it very narrowly, it will be perceived that religion herself
holds her sway there, much less as a doctrine of revelation than as
a commonly received opinion. The fact that the political laws of the
Americans are such that the majority rules the community with
sovereign sway, materially increases the power which that majority
naturally exercises over the mind. For nothing is more customary in
man than to recognize superior wisdom in the person of his
oppressor. This political omnipotence of the majority in the United
States doubtless augments the influence which public opinion would
obtain without it over the mind of each member of the community; but
the foundations of that influence do not rest upon it. They must be
sought for in the principle of equality itself, not in the more or
less popular institutions which men living under that condition may
give themselves. The intellectual dominion of the greater number
would probably be less absolute amongst a democratic people governed
by a king than in the sphere of a pure democracy, but it will always
be extremely absolute; and by whatever political laws men are
governed in the ages of equality, it may be foreseen that faith in
public opinion will become a species of religion there, and the
majority its ministering prophet.
Thus intellectual authority will be different, but it will not be
diminished; and far from thinking that it will disappear, I augur
that it may readily acquire too much preponderance, and confine the
action of private judgment within narrower limits than are suited
either to the greatness or the happiness of the human race. In the
principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; the one
leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other
inclined to prohibit him from thinking at all. And I perceive how,
under the dominion of certain laws, democracy would extinguish that
liberty of the mind to which a democratic social condition is
favorable; so that, after having broken all the bondage once imposed
on it by ranks or by men, the human mind would be closely fettered
to the general will of the greatest number.
If the absolute power of the majority were to be substituted by
democratic nations, for all the different powers which checked or
retarded overmuch the energy of individual minds, the evil would
only have changed its symptoms. Men would not have found the means
of independent life; they would simply have invented (no easy task)
a new dress for servitude. There is -- and I cannot repeat it too
often -- there is in this matter for profound reflection for those
who look on freedom as a holy thing, and who hate not only the
despot, but despotism. For myself, when I feel the hand of power lie
heavy on my brow, I care but little to know who oppresses me; and I
am not the more disposed to pass beneath the yoke, because it is
held out to me by the arms of a million of men.
Chapter 3 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, on every 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 for 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 objects, 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 times 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 them with injudicious
warmth.
Chapter 4 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 5 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 in dependence. 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 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.
I anticipate the objection, that as all religions have general and
eternal truths for their object, they cannot thus shape themselves
to the shifting spirit of every age without forfeiting their claim
to certainty in the eyes of mankind. To this I reply again, that the
principal opinions which constitute belief, and which theologians
call articles of faith, must be very carefully distinguished from
the accessories connected with them. Religions are obliged to hold
fast to the former, whatever be the peculiar spirit of the age; but
they should take good care not to bind themselves in the same manner
to the latter at a time when everything is in transition, and when
the mind, accustomed to the moving pageant of human affairs,
reluctantly endures the attempt to fix it to any given point. The
fixity of external and secondary things can only afford a chance of
duration when civil society is itself fixed; under any other
circumstances I hold it to be perilous.
We shall have occasion to see that, of all the passions which
originate in, or are fostered by, equality, there is one which it
renders peculiarly intense, and which it infuses at the same time
into the heart of every man: I mean the love of well-being. The
taste for well-being is the prominent and indelible feature of
democratic ages. It may be believed that a religion which should
undertake to destroy so deep seated a passion, would meet its own
destruction thence in the end; and if it attempted to wean men
entirely from the contemplation of the good things of this world, in
order to devote their faculties exclusively to the thought of
another, it may be foreseen that the soul would at length escape
from its grasp, to plunge into the exclusive enjoyment of present
and material pleasures. The chief concern of religions is to purify,
to regulate, and to restrain the excessive and exclusive taste for
well-being which men feel at periods of equality; but they would err
in attempting to control it completely or to eradicate it. They will
not succeed in curing men of the love of riches: but they may still
persuade men to enrich themselves by none but honest means.
This brings me to a final consideration, which comprises, as it
were, all the others. The more the conditions of men are equalized
and assimilated to each other, the more important is it for
religions, whilst they carefully abstain from the daily turmoil of
secular affairs, not needlessly to run counter to the ideas which
generally prevail, and the permanent interests which exist in the
mass of the people. For as public opinion grows to be more and more
evidently the first and most irresistible of existing powers, the
religious principle has no external support strong enough to enable
it long to resist its attacks. This is not less true of a democratic
people, ruled by a despot, than in a republic. In ages of equality,
kings may often command obedience, but the majority always commands
belief: to the majority, therefore, deference is to be paid in
whatsoever is not contrary to the faith.
I showed in my former volumes how the American clergy stand aloof
from secular affairs. This is the most obvious, but it is not the
only, example of their self-restraint. In America religion is a
distinct sphere, in which the priest is sovereign, but out of which
he takes care never to go. Within its limits he is the master of the
mind; beyond them, he leaves men to themselves, and surrenders them
to the independence and instability which belong to their nature and
their age. I have seen no country in which Christianity is clothed
with fewer forms, figures, and observances than in the United
States; or where it presents more distinct, more simple, or more
general notions to the mind. Although the Christians of America are
divided into a multitude of sects, they all look upon their religion
in the same light. This applies to Roman Catholicism as well as to
the other forms of belief. There are no Romish priests who show less
taste for the minute individual observances for extraordinary or
peculiar means of salvation, or who cling more to the spirit, and
less to the letter of the law, than the Roman Catholic priests of
the United States. Nowhere is that doctrine of the Church, which
prohibits the worship reserved to God alone from being offered to
the saints, more clearly inculcated or more generally followed. Yet
the Roman Catholics of America are very submissive and very sincere.
Another remark is applicable to the clergy of every communion. The
American ministers of the gospel do not attempt to draw or to fix
all the thoughts of man upon the life to come; they are willing to
surrender a portion of his heart to the cares of the present;
seeming to consider the goods of this world as important, although
as secondary, objects. If they take no part themselves in productive
labor, they are at least interested in its progression, and ready to
applaud its results; and whilst they never cease to point to the
other world as the great object of the hopes and fears of the
believer, they do not forbid him honestly to court prosperity in
this. Far from attempting to show that these things are distinct and
contrary to one another, they study rather to find out on what point
they are most nearly and closely connected.
All the American clergy know and respect the intellectual supremacy
exercised by the majority; they never sustain any but necessary
conflicts with it. They take no share in the altercations of
parties, but they readily adopt the general opinions of their
country and their age; and they allow themselves to be borne away
without opposition in the current of feeling and opinion by which
everything around them is carried along. They endeavor to amend
their contemporaries, but they do not quit fellowship with them.
Public opinion is therefore never hostile to them; it rather
supports and protects them; and their belief owes its authority at
the same time to the strength which is its own, and to that which
they borrow from the opinions of the majority.
Thus it is that, by respecting all democratic tendencies not
absolutely contrary to herself, and by making use of several of them
for her own purposes, religion sustains an advantageous struggle
with that spirit of individual independence which is her most
dangerous antagonist.
Chapter 6 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 he 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 7 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 8 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 9 The Example of the Americans Does Not Prove That a
Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude and No Taste for Science,
Literature, or Art
IT must be acknowledged that amongst few of the civilized nations of
our time have the higher sciences made less progress than in the
United States; and in few have great artists, fine poets, or
celebrated writers been more rare. Many Europeans, struck by this
fact, have looked upon it as a natural and inevitable result of
equality; and they have supposed that if a democratic state of
society and democratic institutions were ever to prevail over the
whole earth, the human mind would gradually find its beacon-lights
grow dim, and men would relapse into a period of darkness. To reason
thus is, I think, to confound several ideas which it is important to
divide and to examine separately: it is to mingle, unintentionally,
what is democratic with what is only American.
The religion professed by the first emigrants, and bequeathed by
them to their descendants, simple in its form of worship, austere
and almost harsh in its principles, and hostile to external symbols
and to ceremonial pomp, is naturally unfavorable to the fine arts,
and only yields a reluctant sufferance to the pleasures of
literature. The Americans are a very old and a very enlightened
people, who have fallen upon a new and unbounded country, where they
may extend themselves at pleasure, and which they may fertilize
without difficulty. This state of things is without a parallel in
the history of the world. In America, then, every one finds
facilities, unknown elsewhere, for making or increasing his fortune.
The spirit of gain is always on the stretch, and the human mind,
constantly diverted from the pleasures of imagination and the labors
of the intellect, is there swayed by no impulse but the pursuit of
wealth. Not only are manufacturing and commercial classes to be
found in the United States, as they are in all other countries; but
what never occurred elsewhere, the whole community is simultaneously
engaged in productive industry and commerce. I am convinced that, if
the Americans had been alone in the world, with the freedom and the
knowledge acquired by their forefathers, and the passions which are
their own, they would not have been slow to discover that progress
cannot long be made in the application of the sciences without
cultivating the theory of them; that all the arts are perfected by
one another: and, however absorbed they might have been by the
pursuit of the principal object of their desires, they would
speedily have admitted, that it is necessary to turn aside from it
occasionally, in order the better to attain it in the end.
The taste for the pleasures of the mind is moreover so natural to
the heart of civilized man, that amongst the polite nations, which
are least disposed to give themselves up to these pursuits, a
certain number of citizens are always to be found who take part in
them. This intellectual craving, when once felt, would very soon
have been satisfied. But at the very time when the Americans were
naturally inclined to require nothing of science but its special
applications to the useful arts and the means of rendering life
comfortable, learned and literary Europe was engaged in exploring
the common sources of truth, and in improving at the same time all
that can minister to the pleasures or satisfy the wants of man. At
the head of the enlightened nations of the Old World the inhabitants
of the United States more particularly distinguished one, to which
they were closely united by a common origin and by kindred habits.
Amongst this people they found distinguished men of science, artists
of skill, writers of eminence, and they were enabled to enjoy the
treasures of the intellect without requiring to labor in amassing
them. I cannot consent to separate America from Europe, in spite of
the ocean which intervenes. I consider the people of the United
States as that portion of the English people which is commissioned
to explore the wilds of the New World; whilst the rest of the
nation, enjoying more leisure and less harassed by the drudgery of
life, may devote its energies to thought, and enlarge in all
directions the empire of the mind.
The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it
may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a
similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin -- their exclusively
commercial habits -- even the country they inhabit, which seems to
divert their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and the
arts -- the proximity of Europe, which allows them to neglect these
pursuits without relapsing into barbarism -- a thousand special
causes, of which I have only been able to point out the most
important -- have singularly concurred to fix the mind of the
American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants, his
education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the
native of the United States earthward: his religion alone bids him
turn, from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to
heaven. Let us cease then to view all democratic nations under the
mask of the American people, and let us attempt to survey them at
length with their own proper features.
It is possible to conceive a people not subdivided into any castes
or scale of ranks; in which the law, recognizing no privileges,
should divide inherited property into equal shares; but which, at
the same time, should be without knowledge and without freedom. Nor
is this an empty hypothesis: a despot may find that it is his
interest to render his subjects equal and to leave them ignorant, in
order more easily to keep them slaves. Not only would a democratic
people of this kind show neither aptitude nor taste for science,
literature, or art, but it would probably never arrive at the
possession of them. The law of descent would of itself provide for
the destruction of fortunes at each succeeding generation; and new
fortunes would be acquired by none. The poor man, without either
knowledge or freedom, would not so much as conceive the idea of
raising himself to wealth; and the rich man would allow himself to
be degraded to poverty, without a notion of self-defence. Between
these two members of the community complete and invincible equality
would soon be established.
No one would then have time or taste to devote himself to the
pursuits or pleasures of the intellect; but all men would remain
paralyzed by a state of common ignorance and equal servitude. When I
conceive a democratic society of this kind, I fancy myself in one of
those low, close, and gloomy abodes, where the light which breaks in
from without soon faints and fades away. A sudden heaviness
overpowers me, and I grope through the surrounding darkness, to find
the aperture which will restore me to daylight and the air.
But all this is not applicable to men already enlightened who retain
their freedom, after having abolished from amongst them those
peculiar and hereditary rights which perpetuated the tenure of
property in the hands of certain individuals or certain bodies. When
men living in a democratic state of society are enlightened, they
readily discover that they are confined and fixed within no limits
which constrain them to take up with their present fortune. They all
therefore conceive the idea of increasing it; if they are free, they
all attempt it, but all do not succeed in the same manner. The
legislature, it is true, no longer grants privileges, but they are
bestowed by nature. As natural inequality is very great, fortunes
become unequal as soon as every man exerts all his faculties to get
rich. The law of descent prevents the establishment of wealthy
families; but it does not prevent the existence of wealthy
individuals. It constantly brings back the members of the community
to a common level, from which they as constantly escape: and the
inequality of fortunes augments in proportion as knowledge is
diffused and liberty increased.
A sect which arose in our time, and was celebrated for its talents
and its extravagance, proposed to concentrate all property into the
hands of a central power, whose function it should afterwards be to
parcel it out to individuals, according to their capacity. This
would have been a method of escaping from that complete and eternal
equality which seems to threaten democratic society. But it would be
a simpler and less dangerous remedy to grant no privilege to any,
giving to all equal cultivation and equal independence, and leaving
everyone to determine his own position. Natural inequality will very
soon make way for itself, and wealth will spontaneously pass into
the hands of the most capable.
Free and democratic communities, then, will always contain a
considerable number of people enjoying opulence or competency. The
wealthy will not be so closely linked to each other as the members
of the former aristocratic class of society: their propensities will
be different, and they will scarcely ever enjoy leisure as secure or
as complete: but they will be far more numerous than those who
belonged to that class of society could ever be. These persons will
not be strictly confined to the cares of practical life, and they
will still be able, though in different degrees, to indulge in the
pursuits and pleasures of the intellect. In those pleasures they
will indulge; for if it be true that the human mind leans on one
side to the narrow, the practical, and the useful, it naturally
rises on the other to the infinite, the spiritual, and the
beautiful. Physical wants confine it to the earth; but, as soon as
the tie is loosened, it will unbend itself again.
Not only will the number of those who can take an interest in the
productions of the mind be enlarged, but the taste for intellectual
enjoyment will descend, step by step, even to those who, in
aristocratic societies, seem to have neither time nor ability to in
indulge in them. When hereditary wealth, the privileges of rank, and
the prerogatives of birth have ceased to be, and when every man
derives his strength from himself alone, it becomes evident that the
chief cause of disparity between the fortunes of men is the mind.
Whatever tends to invigorate, to extend, or to adorn the mind,
instantly rises to great value. The utility of knowledge becomes
singularly conspicuous even to the eyes of the multitude: those who
have no taste for its charms set store upon its results, and make
some efforts to acquire it.
In free and enlightened democratic ages, there is nothing to
separate men from each other or to retain them in their peculiar
sphere; they rise or sink with extreme rapidity. All classes live in
perpetual intercourse from their great proximity to each other. They
communicate and intermingle every day -- they imitate and envy one
other: this suggests to the people many ideas, notions, and desires
which it would never have entertained if the distinctions of rank
had been fixed and society at rest. In such nations the servant
never considers himself as an entire stranger to the pleasures and
toils of his master, nor the poor man to those of the rich; the
rural population assimilates itself to that of the towns, and the
provinces to the capital. No one easily allows himself to be reduced
to the mere material cares of life; and the humblest artisan casts
at times an eager and a furtive glance into the higher regions of
the intellect. People do not read with the same notions or in the
same manner as they do in an aristocratic community; but the circle
of readers is unceasingly expanded, till it includes all the
citizens.
As soon as the multitude begins to take an interest in the labors of
the mind, it finds out that to excel in some of them is a powerful
method of acquiring fame, power, or wealth. The restless ambition
which equality begets instantly takes this direction as it does all
others. The number of those who cultivate science, letters, and the
arts, becomes immense. The intellectual world starts into prodigious
activity: everyone endeavors to open for himself a path there, and
to draw the eyes of the public after him. Something analogous occurs
to what happens in society in the United States, politically
considered. What is done is often imperfect, but the attempts are
innumerable; and, although the results of individual effort are
commonly very small, the total amount is always very large.
It is therefore not true to assert that men living in democratic
ages are naturally indifferent to science, literature, and the arts:
only it must be acknowledged that they cultivate them after their
own fashion, and bring to the task their own peculiar qualifications
and deficiencies.
Chapter Why the Americans Are More Addicted to Practical Than to
Theoretical Science
IF a democratic state of society and democratic institutions 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 mmoment 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
extraordinary.
The future will prove whether these passions, at once so rare and so
productive, come into being and into growth as easily in the midst
of democratic as in aristocratic communities. For myself, I confess
that I am slow to believe it. In aristocratic society, the class
which gives the tone to opinion, and has the supreme guidance of
affairs, being permanently and hereditarily placed above the
multitude, naturally conceives a lofty idea of itself and of man. It
loves to invent for him noble pleasures, to carve out splendid
objects for his ambition. Aristocracies often commit very tyrannical
and very inhuman actions; but they rarely entertain grovelling
thoughts; and they show a kind of haughty contempt of little
pleasures, even whilst they indulge in them. The effect is greatly
to raise the general pitch of society. In aristocratic ages vast
ideas are commonly entertained of the dignity, the power, and the
greatness of man. These opinions exert their influence on those who
cultivate the sciences, as well as on the rest of the community.
They facilitate the natural impulse of the mind to the highest
regions of thought, and they naturally prepare it to conceive a
sublime -- nay, almost a divine -- love of truth. Men of science at
such periods are consequently carried away by theory; and it even
happens that they frequently conceive an inconsiderate contempt for
the practical part of learning. "Archimedes," says Plutarch, "was of
so lofty a spirit, that he never condescended to write any treatise
on the manner of constructing all these engines of offence and
defence. And as he held this science of inventing and putting
together engines, and all arts generally speaking which tended to
any useful end in practice, to be vile, low, and mercenary, he spent
his talents and his studious hours in writing of those things only
whose beauty and subtilty had in them no admixture of necessity."
Such is the aristocratic aim of science; in democratic nations it
cannot be the same.
The greater part of the men who constitute these nations fare
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 contend 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 11 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 are 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 12 Why the Americans Raise Some Monuments so Insignificant,
and Others so Important
I HAVE just observed, that in democratic ages monuments of the arts
tend to become more numerous and less important. I now hasten to
point out the exception to this rule. In a democratic community
individuals are very powerless; but the State which represents them
all, and contains them all in its grasp, is very powerful. Nowhere
do citizens appear so insignificant as in a democratic nation;
nowhere does the nation itself appear greater, or does the mind more
easily take in a wide general survey of it. In democratic
communities the imagination is compressed when men consider
themselves; it expands indefinitely when they think of the State.
Hence it is that the same men who live on a small scale in narrow
dwellings, frequently aspire to gigantic splendor in the erection of
their public monuments.
The Americans traced out the circuit of an immense city on the site
which they intended to make their capital, but which, up to the
present time, is hardly more densely peopled than Pontoise, though,
according to them, it will one day contain a million of inhabitants.
They have already rooted up trees for ten miles round, lest they
should interfere with the future citizens of this imaginary
metropolis. They have erected a magnificent palace for Congress in
the centre of the city, and have given it the pompous name of the
Capitol. The several States of the Union are every day planning and
erecting for themselves prodigious undertakings, which would
astonish the engineers of the great European nations. Thus democracy
not only leads men to a vast number of inconsiderable productions;
it also leads them to raise some monuments on the largest scale: but
between these two extremes there is a blank. A few scattered remains
of enormous buildings can therefore teach us nothing of the social
condition and the institutions of the people by whom they were
raised. I may add, though the remark leads me to step out of my
subject, that they do not make us better acquainted with its
greatness, its civilization, and its real prosperity. Whensoever a
power of any kind shall be able to make a whole people co-operate in
a single undertaking, that power, with a little knowledge and a
great deal of time, will succeed in obtaining something enormous
from the co-operation of efforts so multiplied. But this does not
lead to the conclusion that the people was very happy, very
enlightened, or even very strong.
The Spaniards found the City of Mexico full of magnificent temples
and vast palaces; but that did not prevent Cortes from conquering
the Mexican Empire with 600 foot soldiers and sixteen horses. If the
Romans had been better acquainted with the laws of hydraulics, they
would not have constructed all the aqueducts which surround the
ruins of their cities -- they would have made a better use of their
power and their wealth. If they had invented the steam-engine,
perhaps they would not have extended to the extremities of their
empire those long artificial roads which are called Roman roads.
These things are at once the splendid memorials of their ignorance
and of their greatness. A people which should leave no other vestige
of its track than a few leaden pipes in the earth and a few iron
rods upon its surface, might have been more the master of nature
than the Romans.
Chapter 13 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 log-house.
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 worlds 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.
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, in dependently 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 14 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 15 The Study of Greek and Latin Literature Peculiarly Useful
in Democratic Communities
WHAT was called the People in the most democratic republics of
antiquity, was very unlike what we designate by that term. In
Athens, all the citizens took part in public affairs; but there were
only 20,000 citizens to more than 350,000 inhabitants. All the rest
were slaves, and discharged the greater part of those duties which
belong at the present day to the lower or even to the middle
classes. Athens, then, with her universal suffrage, was after all
merely an aristocratic republic in which all the nobles had an equal
right to the government. The struggle between the patricians and
plebeians of Rome must be considered in the same light: it was
simply an intestine feud between the elder and younger branches of
the same family. All the citizens belonged, in fact, to the
aristocracy, and partook of its character.
It is moreover to be remarked, that amongst the ancients books were
always scarce and dear; and that very great difficulties impeded
their publication and circulation. These circumstances concentrated
literary tastes and habits amongst a small number of men, who formed
a small literary aristocracy out of the choicer spirits of the great
political aristocracy. Accordingly nothing goes to prove that
literature was ever treated as a trade amongst the Greeks and
Romans.
These peoples, which not only constituted aristocracies, but very
polished and free nations, of course imparted to their literary
productions the defects and the merits which characterize the
literature of aristocratic ages. And indeed a very superficial
survey of the literary remains of the ancients will suffice to
convince us, that if those writers were sometimes deficient in
variety, or fertility in their subjects, or in boldness, vivacity,
or power of generalization in their thoughts, they always displayed
exquisite care and skill in their details. Nothing in their works
seems to be done hastily or at random: every line is written for the
eye of the connoisseur, and is shaped after some conception of ideal
beauty. No literature places those fine qualities, in which the
writers of democracies are naturally deficient, in bolder relief
than that of the ancients; no literature, therefore, ought to be
more studied in democratic ages. This study is better suited than
any other to combat the literary defects inherent in those ages; as
for their more praiseworthy literary qualities, they will spring up
of their own accord, without its being necessary to learn to acquire
them.
It is important that this point should be clearly understood. A
particular study may be useful to the literature of a people,
without being appropriate to its social and political wants. If men
were to persist in teaching nothing but the literature of the dead
languages in a community where everyone is habitually led to make
vehement exertions to augment or to maintain his fortune, the result
would be a very polished, but a very dangerous, race of citizens.
For as their social and political condition would give them every
day a sense of wants which their education would never teach them to
supply, they would perturb the State, in the name of the Greeks and
Romans, instead of enriching it by their productive industry.
It is evident that in democratic communities the interest of
individuals, as well as the security of the commonwealth, demands
that the education of the greater number should be scientific,
commercial, and industrial, rather than literary. Greek and Latin
should not be taught in all schools; but it is important that those
who by their natural disposition or their fortune are destined to
cultivate letters or prepared to relish them, should find schools
where a complete knowledge of ancient literature may be acquired,
and where the true scholar may be formed. A few excellent
universities would do more towards the attainment of this object
than a vast number of bad grammar schools, where superfluous
matters, badly learned, stand in the way of sound instruction in
necessary studies.
All who aspire to literary excellence in democratic nations, ought
frequently to refresh themselves at the springs of ancient
literature: there is no more wholesome course for the mind. Not that
I hold the literary productions of the ancients to be
irreproachable; but I think that they have some especial merits,
admirably calculated to counterbalance our peculiar defects. They
are a prop on the side on which we are in most danger of falling.
Chapter 16 The Effect of Democracy on Language
IF the reader has rightly understood what I have already 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 others 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 17 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. Democratic 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 antipoetic, 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 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, Re'ne', 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 18 Of the Inflated Style of American Writers and Orators
I HAVE frequently remarked that the Americans, who generally treat
of business in clear, plain language, devoid of all ornament, and so
extremely simple as to be often coarse, are apt to become inflated
as soon as they attempt a more poetical diction. They then vent
their pomposity from one end of a harangue to the other; and to hear
them lavish imagery on every occasion, one might fancy that they
never spoke of anything with simplicity. The English are more rarely
given to a similar failing. The cause of this may be pointed out
without much difficulty. In democratic communities each citizen is
habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object,
namely himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he then
perceives nothing but the immense form of society at large, or the
still more imposing aspect of mankind. His ideas are all either
extremely minute and clear, or extremely general and vague: what
lies between is an open void. When he has been drawn out of his own
sphere, therefore, he always expects that some amazing object will
be offered to his attention; and it is on these terms alone that he
consents to tear himself for an instant from the petty complicated
cares which form the charm and the excitement of his life. This
appears to me sufficiently to explain why men in democracies, whose
concerns are in general so paltry, call upon their poets for
conceptions so vast and descriptions so unlimited.
The authors, on their part, do not fail to obey a propensity of
which they themselves partake; they perpetually inflate their
imaginations, and expanding them beyond all bounds, they not
unfrequently abandon the great in order to reach the gigantic. By
these means they hope to attract the observation of the multitude,
and to fix it easily upon themselves: nor are their hopes
disappointed; for as the multitude seeks for nothing in poetry but
subjects of very vast dimensions, it has neither the time to measure
with accuracy the proportions of all the subjects set before it, nor
a taste sufficiently correct to perceive at once in what respect
they are out of proportion. The author and the public at once
vitiate one another.
We have just seen that amongst democratic nations, the sources of
poetry are grand, but not abundant. They are soon exhausted: and
poets, not finding the elements of the ideal in what is real and
true, abandon them entirely and create monsters. I do not fear that
the poetry of democratic nations will prove too insipid, or that it
will fly too near the ground; I rather apprehend that it will be
forever losing itself in the clouds, and that it will range at last
to purely imaginary regions. I fear that the productions of
democratic poets may often be surcharged with immense and incoherent
imagery, with exaggerated descriptions and strange creations; and
that the fantastic beings of their brain may sometimes make us
regret the world of reality.
Chapter 19 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 20 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 flee 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 freewill, 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 21 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 of; 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 minutiae, 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.
SECOND BOOK
INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRACY ON THE FEELINGS OF THE AMERICANS
Chapter 1 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
it 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 one 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 2 Of Individualism in Democratic Countries
I HAVE shown how it is that in ages of equality every man seeks for
his opinions within himself: I am now about to show how it is that,
in the same ages, all his feelings are turned towards himself alone.
Individualism 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 orig in, and it threatens to spread
in the same ratio as the equality of conditions.
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 3 Individualism Stronger at the Close of a Democratic
Revolution Than at Other Periods
THE period when the construction of democratic society 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 4 That the Americans Combat the Effects of Individualism by
Free Institutions
DESPOTISM, which is of a very timorous nature, is never more secure
of continuance than when it can keep men asunder; and all is
influence is commonly exerted for that purpose. No vice of the human
heart is so acceptable to it as egotism: a despot easily forgives
his subjects for not loving him, provided they do not love each
other. He does not ask them to assist him in governing the State; it
is enough that they do not aspire to govern it themselves. He
stigmatizes as turbulent and unruly spirits those who would combine
their exertions to promote the prosperity of the community, and,
perverting the natural meaning of words, he applauds as good
citizens those who have no sympathy for any but themselves. Thus the
vices which despotism engenders are precisely those which equality
fosters. These two things mutually and perniciously complete and
assist each other. Equality places men side by side, unconnected by
any common tie; despotism raises barriers to keep them asunder; the
former predisposes them not to consider their fellow-creatures, the
latter makes general indifference a sort of public virtue.
Despotism then, which is at all times dangerous, is more
particularly to be feared in democratic ages. It is easy to see that
in those same ages men stand most in need of freedom. When the
members of a community are forced to attend to public affairs, they
are necessarily drawn from the circle of their own interests, and
snatched at times from self-observation. As soon as a man begins to
treat of public affairs in public, he begins to perceive that he is
not so independent of his fellow-men as he had at first imagined,
and that, in order to obtain their support, he must often lend them
his co-operation.
When the public is supreme, there is no man who does not feel the
value of public goodwill, or who does not endeavor to court it by
drawing to himself the esteem and affection of those amongst whom he
is to live. Many of the passions which congeal and keep asunder
human hearts, are then obliged to retire and hide below the surface.
Pride must be dissembled; disdain dares not break out; egotism fears
its own self. Under a free government, as most public offices are
elective, the men whose elevated minds or aspiring hopes are too
closely circumscribed in private life, constantly feel that they
cannot do without the population which surrounds them. Men learn at
such times to think of their fellow-men from ambitious motives; and
they frequently find it, in a manner, their interest to forget
themselves.
I may here be met by an objection derived from electioneering
intrigues, the meannesses of candidates, and the calumnies of their
opponents. These are opportunities for animosity which occur the
oftener the more frequent elections become. Such evils are doubtless
great, but they are transient; whereas the benefits which attend
them remain. The desire of being elected may lead some men for a
time to violent hostility; but this same desire leads all men in the
long run mutually to support each other; and if it happens that an
election accidentally severs two friends, the electoral system
brings a multitude of citizens permanently together, who would
always have remained unknown to each other. Freedom engenders
private animosities, but despotism gives birth to general
indifference.
The Americans have combated by free institutions the tendency of
equality to keep men asunder, and they have subdued it. The
legislators of America did not suppose that a general representation
of the whole nation would suffice to ward off a disorder at once so
natural to the frame of democratic society, and so fatal: they also
thought that it would be well to infuse political life into each
portion of the territory, in order to multiply to an infinite extent
opportunities of acting in concert for all the members of the
community, and to make them constantly feel their mutual dependence
on each other. The plan was a wise one. The general affairs of a
country only engage the attention of leading politicians, who
assemble from time to time in the same places; and as they often
lose sight of each other afterwards, no lasting ties are established
between them. But if the object be to have the local affairs of a
district conducted by the men who reside there, the same persons are
always in contact, and they are, in a manner, forced to be
acquainted, and to adapt themselves to one another.
It is difficult to draw a man out of his own circle to interest him
in the destiny of the State, because he does not clearly understand
what influence the destiny of the State can have upon his own lot.
But if it be proposed to make a road cross the end of his estate, he
will see at a glance that there is a connection between this small
public affair and his greatest private affairs; and he will
discover, without its being shown to him, the close tie which unites
private to general interest. Thus, far more may be done by
intrusting to the citizens the administration of minor affairs than
by surrendering to them the control of important ones, towards
interesting them in the public welfare, and convincing them that
they constantly stand in need one of the other in order to provide
for it. A brilliant achievement may win for you the favor of a
people at one stroke; but to earn the love and respect of the
population which surrounds you, a long succession of little services
rendered and of obscure good deeds -- a constant habit of kindness,
and an established reputation for disinterestedness -- will be
required. Local freedom, then, which leads a great number of
citizens to value the affection of their neighbors and of their
kindred, perpetually brings men together, and forces them to help
one another, in spite of the propensities which sever them.
In the United States the more opulent citizens take great care not
to stand aloof from the people; on the contrary, they constantly
keep on easy terms with the lower classes: they listen to them, they
speak to them every day. They know that the rich in democracies
always stand in need of the poor; and that in democratic ages you
attach a poor man to you more by your manner than by benefits
conferred. The magnitude of such benefits, which sets off the
difference of conditions, causes a secret irritation to those who
reap advantage from them; but the charm of simplicity of manners is
almost irresistible: their affability carries men away, and even
their want of polish is not always displeasing. This truth does not
take root at once in the minds of the rich. They generally resist it
as long as the democratic revolution lasts, and they do not
acknowledge it immediately after that revolution is accomplished.
They are very ready to do good to the people, but they still choose
to keep them at arm's length; they think that is sufficient, but
they are mistaken. They might spend fortunes thus without warming
the hearts of the population around them; -- that population does
not ask them for the sacrifice of their money, but of their pride.
It would seem as if every imagination in the United States were upon
the stretch to invent means of increasing the wealth and satisfying
the wants of the public. The best-informed inhabitants of each
district constantly use their information to discover new truths
which may augment the general prosperity; and if they have made any
such discoveries, they eagerly surrender them to the mass of the
people.
When the vices and weaknesses, frequently exhibited by those who
govern in America, are closely examined, the prosperity of the
people occasions -- but improperly occasions -- surprise. Elected
magistrates do not make the American democracy flourish; it
flourishes because the magistrates are elective.
It would be unjust to suppose that the patriotism and the zeal which
every American displays for the welfare of his fellow-citizens are
wholly insincere. Although private interest directs the greater part
of human actions in the United States as well as elsewhere, it does
not regulate them all. I must say that I have often seen Americans
make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and I have
remarked a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to
lend faithful support to each other. The free institutions which the
inhabitants of the United States possess, and the political rights
of which they make so much use, remind every citizen, and in a
thousand ways, that he lives in society. They every instant impress
upon his mind the notion that it is the duty, as well as the
interest of men, to make themselves useful to their
fellow-creatures; and as he sees no particular ground of animosity
to them, since he is never either their master or their slave, his
heart readily leans to the side of kindness. Men attend to the
interests of the public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice:
what was intentional becomes an instinct; and by dint of working for
the good of one's fellow citizens, the habit and the taste for
serving them is at length acquired.
Many people in France consider equality of conditions as one evil,
and political freedom as a second. When they are obliged to yield to
the former, they strive at least to escape from the latter. But I
contend that in order to combat the evils which equality may
produce, there is only one effectual remedy -- namely, political
freedom.
Chapter 5 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 ire 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 off 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 manufactures, which no single citizen is
able to carry on? And if a time at length arrives, when, in
consequence of the extreme subdivision of landed property, the soil
is split into an infinite number of parcels, so that it can only be
cultivated by companies of husbandmen, will it be necessary that the
head of the government should leave the helm of state to follow the
plough? The morals and the intelligence of a democratic people would
be as much endangered as its business and manufactures, if the
government ever wholly usurped the place of private companies.
Feelings and opinions are recruited, the heart is enlarged, and the
human mind is developed by no other means than by the reciprocal
influence of men upon each other. I have shown that these influences
are almost null in democratic countries; they must therefore be
artificially created, and this can only be accomplished by
associations.
When the members of an aristocratic community adopt a new opinion,
or conceive a new sentiment, they give it a station, as it were,
beside themselves, upon the lofty platform where they stand; and
opinions or sentiments so conspicuous to the eyes of the multitude
are easily introduced into the minds or hearts of all around. In
democratic countries the governing power alone is naturally in a
condition to act in this manner; but it is easy to see that its
action is always inadequate, and often dangerous. A government can
no more be competent to keep alive and to renew the circulation of
opinions and feelings amongst a great people, than to manage all the
speculations of productive industry. No sooner does a government
attempt to go beyond its political sphere and to enter upon this new
track, than it exercises, even unintentionally, an insupportable
tyranny; for a government can only dictate strict rules, the
opinions which it favors are rigidly enforced, and it is never easy
to discriminate between its advice and its commands. Worse still
will be the case if the government really believes itself interested
in preventing all circulation of ideas; it will then stand
motionless, and oppressed by the heaviness of voluntary torpor.
Governments therefore should not be the only active powers:
associations ought, in democratic nations, to stand in lieu of those
powerful private individuals whom the equality of conditions has
swept away.
As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have
taken up an opinion or a feeling which they wish to promote in the
world, they look out for mutual assistance; and as soon as they have
found each other out, they combine. From that moment they are no
longer isolated men, but a power seen from afar, whose actions serve
for an example, and whose language is listened to. The first time I
heard in the United States that 100,000 men had bound themselves
publicly to abstain from spirituous liquors, it appeared to me more
like a joke than a serious engagement; and I did not at once
perceive why these temperate citizens could not content themselves
with drinking water by their own firesides. I at last understood
that 300,000 Americans, alarmed by the progress of drunkenness
around them, had made up their minds to patronize temperance. They
acted just in the same way as a man of high rank who should dress
very plainly, in order to inspire the humbler orders with a contempt
of luxury. It is probable that if these 100,000 men had lived in
France, each of them would singly have memorialized the government
to watch the public-houses all over the kingdom.
Nothing, in my opinion, is more deserving of our attention than the
intellectual and moral associations of America. The political and
industrial associations of that country strike us forcibly; but the
others elude our observation, or if we discover them, we understand
them imperfectly, because we have hardly ever seen anything of the
kind. It must, however, be acknowledged that they are as necessary
to the American people as the former, and perhaps more so. In
democratic countries the science of association is the mother of
science; the progress of all the rest depends upon the progress it
has made. Amongst the laws which rule human societies there is one
which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are
to remain civilized, or to become so, the art of associating
together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the
equality of conditions is increased.
Chapter 6 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 co-operation 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, 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.
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 7 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 coin 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.
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, unskilfully 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 tobe respected, or establish a lasting
government, if the right of association were not confined within
narrow limits. These blessings are doubtless invaluable, and I can
imagine that, to acquire or to preserve them, a nation may impose
upon itself severe temporary restrictions: but still it is well that
the nation should know at what price these blessings are purchased.
I can understand that it may be advisable to cut off a man's arm in
order to save his life; but it would be ridiculous to assert that he
will be as dexterous as he was before he lost it.
Chapter 8 The Americans Combat Individuals in 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 ilian 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 in oral 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 9 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 employe 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 10 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 in close 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
flee 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 11 Peculiar Effects of the Love of Physical Gratification 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 thee 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 12 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 13 Causes of the Restless Spirit of the 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 foment 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
his larger: but, on the other hand, it must be admitted that man's
hopes and his desires are oftener blasted, thee soul is more
stricken and perturbed, and care itself more keen.
Chapter 14 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 15 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 well-being, 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 16 That Excessive Care of Worldly Welfare May Impair that
Welfare
THERE is a closer tie than is commonly supposed between improvement
of the soul and the amelioration of at 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 17 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 18 That Amongst the Americans All Honest Callings Are
Honorable
AMONGST a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth,
every man works to earn a living, or has worked, or is born of
parents who have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented
to the mind on every side as the necessary, natural, and honest
condition of human existence. Not only is labor not dishonorable
amongst such a people, but it is held in honor: the prejudice is not
against it, but in its favor. In the United States a wealthy man
thinks that he owes it to public opinion to devote his leisure to
some kind of industrial or commercial pursuit, or to public
business. He would think himself in bad repute if he employed his
life solely in living. It is for the purpose of escaping this
obligation to work, that so many rich Americans come to Europe,
where they find some scattered remains of aristocratic society,
amongst which idleness is still held in honor.
Equality of conditions not only ennobles the notion of labor in
men's estimation, but it raises the notion of labor as a source of
profit. In aristocracies it is not exactly labor that is despised,
but labor with a view to profit. Labor is honorific in itself, when
it is undertaken at the sole bidding of ambition or of virtue. Yet
in aristocratic society it constantly happens that he who works for
honor is not insensible to the attractions of profit. But these two
desires only intermingle in the innermost depths of his soul: he
carefully hides from every eye the point at which they join; he
would fain conceal it from himself. In aristocratic countries there
are few public officers who do not affect to serve their country
without interested motives. Their salary is an incident of which
they think but little, and of which they always affect not to think
at all. Thus the notion of profit is kept distinct from that of
labor; however they may be united in point of fact, they are not
thought of together.
In democratic communities these two notions are, on the contrary,
always palpably united. As the desire of well-being is universal --
as fortunes are slender or fluctuating -- as everyone wants either
to increase his own resources, or to provide fresh ones for his
progeny, men clearly see that it is profit which, if not wholly, at
least partially, leads them to work. Even those who are principally
actuated by the love of fame are necessarily made familiar with the
thought that they are not exclusively actuated by that motive; and
they discover that the desire of getting a living is mingled in
their minds with the desire of making life illustrious.
As soon as, on the one hand, labor is held by the whole community to
be an honorable necessity of man's condition, and, on the other, as
soon as labor is always ostensibly performed, wholly or in part, for
the purpose of earning remuneration, the immense interval which
separated different callings in aristocratic societies disappears.
If all are not alike, all at least have one feature in common. No
profession exists in which men do not work for money; and the
remuneration which is common to them all gives them all an air of
resemblance. This serves to explain the opinions which the Americans
entertain with respect to different callings. In America no one is
degraded because he works, for everyone about him works also; nor is
anyone humiliated by the notion of receiving pay, for the President
of the United States also works for pay. He is paid for commanding,
other men for obeying orders. In the United States professions are
more or less laborious, more or less profitable; but they are never
either high or low: every honest calling is honorable.
Chapter 19 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.
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.
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 20 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 handi-craftsmen. 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.
THIRD BOOK
Influence of Democracy on Manners, Properly so Called
Chapter 1 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 surtont de
respecter les gouverneurs et les gouvernantes, et de ne point jeter
de pierres dans leur jardin.
"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 in sensible 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 2 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 3 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 4 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 be falls 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 hardhearted 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.
Chapter 5 How Democracy Affects the 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. 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.
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, bit 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 6 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 tomorrow 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 7 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.
Chapter 8 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.
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 flee 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 file
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 observances 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 9 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 file
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 the; 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 overscrupulous 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 10 The Young Woman in the Character of a Wife
IN America the independence of woman is irrecoverably 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 interests 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.
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.
Chapter 11 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.
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. 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 before-hand,
and were perfectly free not to have contracted them.
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 proximate object, which appears to be the
natural and necessary aim of their desires. Thus the principle of
equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to
the level of the earth. No men are less addicted to reverie than the
citizens of a democracy; and few of them are ever known to give way
to those idle and solitary meditations which commonly precede and
produce the great emotions of the heart. It is true they attach
great importance to procuring for themselves that sort of deep,
regular, and quiet affection which constitutes the charm and
safeguard of life, but they are not apt to run after those violent
and capricious sources of excitement which disturb and abridge it.
I am aware that all this is only applicable in its full extent to
America, and cannot at present be extended to Europe. In the course
of the last half-century, whilst laws and customs have impelled
several European nations with unexampled force towards democracy, we
have not had occasion to observe that the relations of man and woman
have become more orderly or more chaste. In some places the very
reverse may be detected: some classes are more strict -- the general
morality of file people appears to be more lax. I do not hesitate to
make the remark, for I am as little disposed to flatter my
contemporaries as to malign them. This fact must distress, but it
ought not to surprise us. The propitious influence which a
democratic state of society may exercise upon orderly habits, is one
of those tendencies which can only be discovered after a time. If
the equality of conditions is favorable to purity of morals, the
social commotion by which conditions are rendered equal is adverse
to it. In the last fifty years, during which France has been
undergoing this transformation, that country has rarely had freedom,
always disturbance. Amidst this universal confusion of notions and
this general stir of opinions -- amidst this incoherent mixture of
the just and unjust, of truth and falsehood, of right and might --
public virtue has become doubtful, and private morality wavering.
But all revolutions, whatever may have been their object or their
agents, have at first produced similar consequences; even those
which have in the end drawn the bonds of morality more tightly began
by loosening them. The violations of morality which the French
frequently witness do not appear to me to have a permanent
character; and this is already betokened by some curious signs of
the times.
Nothing is more wretchedly corrupt than an aristocracy which retains
its wealth when it has lost its power, and which still enjoys a vast
deal of leisure after it is reduced to mere vulgar pastimes. The
energetic passions and great conceptions which animated it
heretofore, leave it then; and nothing remains to it but a host of
petty consuming vices, which cling about it like worms upon a
carcass. No one denies that the French aristocracy of the last
century was extremely dissolute; whereas established habits and
ancient belief still preserved some respect for morality amongst the
other classes of society. Nor will it be contested that at the
present day the remnants of that same aristocracy exhibit a certain
severity of morals; whilst laxity of morals appears to have spread
amongst the middle and lower ranks. So that the same families which
were most profligate fifty years ago are nowadays the most
exemplary, and democracy seems only to have strengthened the
morality of the aristocratic classes. The French Revolution, by
dividing the fortunes of the nobility, by forcing them to attend
assiduously to their affairs and to their families, by making them
live under the same roof with their children, and in short by giving
a more rational and serious turn to their minds, has imparted to
them, almost without their being aware of it, a reverence for
religious belief, a love of order, of tranquil pleasures, of
domestic endearments, and of comfort; whereas the rest of the
nation, which had naturally these same tastes, was carried away into
excesses by the effort which was required to overthrow the laws and
political habits of the country. The old French aristocracy has
undergone the consequences of the Revolution, but it neither felt
the revolutionary passions nor shared in the anarchical excitement
which produced that crisis; it may easily be conceived that this
aristocracy feels the salutary influence of the Revolution in its
manners, before those who achieve it. It may therefore be said,
though at first it seems paradoxical, that, at the present day, the
most anti-democratic classes of the nation principally exhibit the
kind of morality which may reasonably be anticipated from democracy.
I cannot but think that when we shall have obtained all the effects
of this democratic Revolution, after having got rid of the tumult it
has caused, the observations which are now only applicable to the
few will gradually become true of the whole community.
Chapter 12 How the Americans Understand the Equality of the Sexes
I HAVE shown how democracy destroys or modifies the different
inequalities which originate in society; but is this all? or does it
not ultimately affect that great inequality of man and woman which
has seemed, up to the present day, to be eternally based in human
nature? I believe that the social changes which bring nearer to the
same level the father and son, the master and servant, and superiors
and inferiors generally speaking, will raise woman and make her more
and more the equal of man. But here, more than ever, I feel the
necessity of making myself clearly understood; for there is no
subject on which the coarse and lawless fancies of our age have
taken a freer range.
There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different
characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman beings not
only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions,
impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights;
they would mix them in all things -- their occupations, their
pleasures, their business. It may readily be conceived, that by thus
attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded;
and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature nothing
could ever result but weak men and disorderly women.
It is not thus that the Americans understand that species of
democratic equality which may be established between the sexes. They
admit, that as nature has appointed such wide differences between
the physical and moral constitution of man and woman, her manifest
design was to give a distinct employment to their various faculties;
and they hold that improvement does not consist in making beings so
dissimilar do pretty nearly the same things, but in getting each of
them to fulfil their respective tasks in the best possible manner.
The Americans have applied to the sexes the great principle of
political economy which governs the manufactures of our age, by
carefully dividing the duties of man from those of woman, in order
that the great work of society may be the better carried on.
In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to
trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes, and to
make them keep pace one with the other, but in two pathways which
are always different. American women never manage the outward
concerns of the family, or conduct a business, or take a part in
political life; nor are they, on the other hand, ever compelled to
perform the rough labor of the fields, or to make any of those
laborious exertions which demand the exertion of physical strength.
No families are so poor as to form an exception to this rule. If on
the one hand an American woman cannot escape from the quiet circle
of domestic employments, on the other hand she is never forced to go
beyond it. Hence it is that the women of America, who often exhibit
a masculine strength of understanding and a manly energy, generally
preserve great delicacy of personal appearance and always retain the
manners of women, although they sometimes show that they have the
hearts and minds of men.
Nor have the Americans ever supposed that one consequence of
democratic principles is the subversion of marital power, of the
confusion of the natural authorities in families. They hold that
every association must have a head in order to accomplish its
object, and that the natural head of the conjugal association is
man. They do not therefore deny him the right of directing his
partner; and they maintain, that in the smaller association of
husband and wife, as well as in the great social community, the
object of democracy is to regulate and legalize the powers which are
necessary, not to subvert all power. This opinion is not peculiar to
one sex, and contested by the other: I never observed that the women
of America consider conjugal authority as a fortunate usurpation of
their rights, nor that they thought themselves degraded by
submitting to it. It appeared to me, on the contrary, that they
attach a sort of pride to the voluntary surrender of their own will,
and make it their boast to bend themselves to the yoke, not to shake
it off. Such at least is the feeling expressed by the most virtuous
of their sex; the others are silent; and in the United States it is
not the practice for a guilty wife to clamor for the rights of
women, whilst she is trampling on her holiest duties.
It has often been remarked that in Europe a certain degree of
contempt lurks even in the flattery which men lavish upon women:
although a European frequently affects to be the slave of woman, it
may be seen that he never sincerely thinks her his equal. In the
United States men seldom compliment women, but they daily show how
much they esteem them. They constantly display an entire confidence
in the understanding of a wife, and a profound respect for her
freedom; they have decided that her mind is just as fitted as that
of a man to discover the plain truth, and her heart as firm to
embrace it; and they have never sought to place her virtue, any more
than his, under the shelter of prejudice, ignorance, and fear. It
would seem that in Europe, where man so easily submits to the
despotic sway of women, they are nevertheless curtailed of some of
the greatest qualities of the human species, and considered as
seductive but imperfect beings; and (what may well provoke
astonishment) women ultimately look upon themselves in the same
light, and almost consider it as a privilege that they are entitled
to show themselves futile, feeble, and timid. The women of America
claim no such privileges.
Again, it may be said that in our morals we have reserved strange
immunities to man; so that there is, as it were, one virtue for his
use, and another for the guidance of his partner; and that,
according to the opinion of the public, the very same act may be
punished alternately as a crime or only as a fault. The Americans
know not this iniquitous division of duties and rights; amongst them
the seducer is as much dishonored as his victim. It is true that the
Americans rarely lavish upon women those eager attentions which are
commonly paid them in Europe; but their conduct to women always
implies that they suppose them to be virtuous and refined; and such
is the respect entertained for the moral freedom of the sex, that in
the presence of a woman the most guarded language is used, lest her
ear should be offended by an expression. In America a young
unmarried woman may, alone and without fear, undertake a long
journey.
The legislators of the United States, who have mitigated almost all
the penalties of criminal law, still make rape a capital offence,
and no crime is visited with more inexorable severity by public
opinion. This may be accounted for; as the Americans can conceive
nothing more precious than a woman's honor, and nothing which ought
so much to be respected as her independence, they hold that no
punishment is too severe for the man who deprives her of them
against her will. In France, where the same offence is visited with
far milder penalties, it is frequently difficult to get a verdict
from a jury against the prisoner. Is this a consequence of contempt
of decency or contempt of women? I cannot but believe that it is a
contempt of one and of the other.
Thus the Americans do not think that man and woman have either the
duty or the right to perform the same offices, but they show an
equal regard for both their respective parts; and though their lot
is different, they consider both of them as beings of equal value.
They do not give to the courage of woman the same form or the same
direction as to that of man; but they never doubt her courage: and
if they hold that man and his partner ought not always to exercise
their intellect and understanding in the same manner, they at least
believe the understanding of the one to be as sound as that of the
other, and her intellect to be as clear. Thus, then, whilst they
have allowed the social inferiority of woman to subsist, they have
done all they could to raise her morally and intellectually to the
level of man; and in this respect they appear to me to have
excellently understood the true principle of democratic improvement.
As for myself, I do not hesitate to avow that, although the women of
the United States are confined within the narrow circle of domestic
life, and their situation is in some respects one of extreme
dependence, I have nowhere seen woman occupying a loftier position;
and if I were asked, now that I am drawing to the close of this
work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the
Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of
that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply -- to the
superiority of their women.
Chapter 13 That the Principle of Equality Naturally Divides the
Americans into a Number of Small Private Circles
IT may probably be supposed that the final consequence and necessary
effect of democratic institutions is to confound together all the
members of the community in private as well as in public life, and
to compel them all to live in common; but this would be to ascribe a
very coarse and oppressive form to the equality which originates in
democracy. No state of society or laws can render men so much alike,
but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some
differences between them; and, though different men may sometimes
find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will
never make it their pleasure. They will therefore always tend to
evade the provisions of legislation, whatever they may be; and
departing in some one respect from the circle within which they were
to be bounded, they will set up, close by the great political
community, small private circles, united together by the similitude
of their conditions, habits, and manners.
In the United States the citizens have no sort of pre-eminence over
each other; they owe each other no mutual obedience or respect; they
all meet for the administration of justice, for the government of
the State, and in general to treat of the affairs which concern
their common welfare; but I never heard that attempts have been made
to bring them all to follow the same diversions, or to amuse
themselves promiscuously in the same places of recreation. The
Americans, who mingle so readily in their political assemblies and
courts of justice, are wont on the contrary carefully to separate
into small distinct circles, in order to indulge by themselves in
the enjoyments of private life. Each of them is willing to
acknowledge all his fellow-citizens as his equals, but he will only
receive a very limited number of them amongst his friends or his
guests. This appears to me to be very natural. In proportion as the
circle of public society is extended, it may be anticipated that the
sphere of private intercourse will be contracted; far from supposing
that the members of modern society will ultimately live in common, I
am afraid that they may end by forming nothing but small coteries.
Amongst aristocratic nations the different classes are like vast
chambers, out of which it is impossible to get, into which it is
impossible to enter. These classes have no communication with each
other, but within their pale men necessarily live in daily contact;
even though they would not naturally suit, the general conformity of
a similar condition brings them nearer together. But when neither
law nor custom professes to establish frequent and habitual
relations between certain men, their intercourse originates in the
accidental analogy of opinions and tastes; hence private society is
infinitely varied. In democracies, where flee members of the
community never differ much from each other, and naturally stand in
such propinquity that they may all at any time be confounded in one
general mass, numerous artificial and arbitrary distinctions spring
up, by means of which every man hopes to keep himself aloof, lest he
should be carried away in the crowd against his will. This can never
fail to be the case; for human institutions may be changed, but not
man: whatever may be the general endeavor of a community to render
its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will
always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an
inequality to their own advantage.
In aristocracies men are separated from each other by lofty
stationary barriers; in democracies they are divided by a number of
small and almost invisible threads, which are constantly broken or
moved from place to place. Thus, whatever may be the progress of
equality, in democratic nations a great number of small private
communities will always be formed within the general pale of
political society; but none of them will bear any resemblance in its
manners to the highest class in aristocracies.
Chapter 14 Some Reflections on American Manners
NOTHING seems at first sight less important than the outward form of
human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store:
they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has
not their own manners. The influence of the social and political
state of a country upon manners is therefore deserving of serious
examination. Manners are, generally, the product of the very basis
of the character of a people, but they are also sometimes the result
of an arbitrary convention between certain men; thus they are at
once natural and acquired. When certain men perceive that they are
the foremost persons in society, without contestation and without
effort -- when they are constantly engaged on large objects, leaving
the more minute details to others -- and when they live in the
enjoyment of wealth which they did not amass and which they do not
fear to lose, it may be supposed that they feel a kind of haughty
disdain of the petty interests and practical cares of life, and that
their thoughts assume a natural greatness, which their language and
their manners denote. In democratic countries manners are generally
devoid of dignity, because private life is there extremely petty in
its character; and they are frequently low, because the mind has few
opportunities of rising above the engrossing cares of domestic
interests. True dignity in manners consists in always taking one's
proper station, neither too high nor too low; and this is as much
within the reach of a peasant as of a prince. In democracies all
stations appear doubtful; hence it is that the manners of
democracies, though often full of arrogance, are commonly wanting in
dignity, and, moreover, they are never either well disciplined or
accomplished.
The men who live in democracies are too fluctuating for a certain
number of them ever to succeed in laying down a code of good
breeding, and in forcing people to follow it. Every man therefore
behaves after his own fashion, and there is always a certain
incoherence in the manners of such times, because they are moulded
upon the feelings and notions of each individual, rather than upon
an ideal model proposed for general imitation. This, however, is
much more perceptible at the time when an aristocracy has just been
overthrown than after it has long been destroyed. New political
institutions and new social elements then bring to the same places
of resort, and frequently compel to live in common, men whose
education and habits are still amazingly dissimilar, and this
renders the motley composition of society peculiarly visible. The
existence of a former strict code of good breeding is still
remembered, but what it contained or where it is to be found is
already forgotten. Men have lost the common law of manners, and they
have not yet made up their minds to do without it; but everyone
endeavors to make to himself some sort of arbitrary and variable
rule, from the remnant of former usages; so that manners have
neither the regularity and the dignity which they often display
amongst aristocratic nations, nor the simplicity and freedom which
they sometimes assume in democracies; they are at once constrained
and without constraint.
This, however, is not the normal state of things. When the equality
of conditions is long established and complete, as all men entertain
nearly the same notions and do nearly the same things, they do not
require to agree or to copy from one another in order to speak or
act in the same manner: their manners are constantly characterized
by a number of lesser diversities, but not by any great differences.
They are never perfectly alike, because they do not copy from the
same pattern; they are never very unlike, because their social
condition is the same. At first sight a traveller would observe that
the manners of all the Americans are exactly similar; it is only
upon close examination that the peculiarities in which they differ
may be detected.
The English make game of the manners of the Americans; but it is
singular that most of the writers who have drawn these ludicrous
delineations belonged themselves to the middle classes in England,
to whom the same delineations are exceedingly applicable: so that
these pitiless censors for the most part furnish an example of the
very thing they blame in the United States; they do not perceive
that they are deriding themselves, to the great amusement of the
aristocracy of their own country.
Nothing is more prejudicial to democracy than its outward forms of
behavior: many men would willingly endure its vices, who cannot
support its manners. I cannot, however, admit that there is nothing
commendable in the manners of a democratic people. Amongst
aristocratic nations, all who live within reach of the first class
in society commonly strain to be like it, which gives rise to
ridiculous and insipid imitations. As a democratic people does not
possess any models of high breeding, at least it escapes the daily
necessity of seeing wretched copies of them. In democracies manners
are never so refined as amongst aristocratic nations, but on the
other hand they are never so coarse. Neither the coarse oaths of the
populace, nor the elegant and choice expressions of the nobility are
to be heard there: the manners of such a people are often vulgar,
but they are neither brutal nor mean. I have already observed that
in democracies no such thing as a regular code of good breeding can
be laid down; this has some inconveniences and some advantages. In
aristocracies the rules of propriety impose the same demeanor on
everyone; they make all the members of the same class appear alike,
in spite of their private inclinations; they adorn and they conceal
the natural man. Amongst a democratic people manners are neither so
tutored nor so uniform, but they are frequently more sincere. They
form, as it were, a light and loosely woven veil, through which the
real feelings and private opinions of each individual are easily
discernible. The form and the substance of human actions often,
therefore, stand in closer relation; and if the great picture of
human life be less embellished, it is more true. Thus it may be
said, in one sense, that the effect of democracy is not exactly to
give men any particular manners, but to prevent them from having
manners at all.
The feelings, the passions, the virtues, and the vices of an
aristocracy may sometimes reappear in a democracy, but not its
manners; they are lost, and vanish forever, as soon as the
democratic revolution is completed. It would seem that nothing is
more lasting than the manners of an aristocratic class, for they are
preserved by that class for some time after it has lost its wealth
and its power -- nor so fleeting, for no sooner have they
disappeared than not a trace of them is to be found; and it is
scarcely possible to say what they have been as soon as they have
ceased to be. A change in the state of society works this miracle,
and a few generations suffice to consummate it. The principal
characteristics of aristocracy are handed down by history after an
aristocracy is destroyed, but the light and exquisite touches of
manners are effaced from men's memories almost immediately after its
fall. Men can no longer conceive what these manners were when they
have ceased to witness them; they are gone, and their departure was
unseen, unfelt; for in order to feel that refined enjoyment which is
derived from choice and distinguished manners, habit +and education
must have prepared the heart, and the taste for them is lost almost
as easily as the practice of them. Thus not only a democratic people
cannot have aristocratic manners, but they neither comprehend nor
desire them; and as they never have thought of them, it is to their
minds as if such things had never been. Too much importance should
not be attached to this loss, but it may well be regretted.
I am aware that it has not unfrequently happened that the same men
have had very high-bred manners and very low-born feelings: the
interior of courts has sufficiently shown what imposing externals
may conceal the meanest hearts. But though the manners of
aristocracy did not constitute virtue, they sometimes embellish
virtue itself. It was no ordinary sight to see a numerous and
powerful class of men, whose every outward action seemed constantly
to be dictated by a natural elevation of thought and feeling, by
delicacy and regularity of taste, and by urbanity of manners. Those
manners threw a pleasing illusory charm over human nature; and
though the picture was often a false one, it could not be viewed
without a noble satisfaction.
Chapter 15 Of the Gravity of the Americans, and Why it Does Not
Prevent Them from Often Committing Inconsiderate Actions
MEN who live in democratic countries do not value the simple,
turbulent, or coarse diversions in which the people indulge in
aristocratic communities: such diversions are thought by them to be
puerile or insipid. Nor have they a greater inclination for the
intellectual and refined amusements of the aristocratic classes.
They want something productive and substantial in their pleasures;
they want to mix actual fruition with their joy. In aristocratic
communities the people readily give themselves up to bursts of
tumultuous and boisterous gayety, which shake off at once the
recollection of their privations: the natives of democracies are not
fond of being thus violently broken in upon, and they never lose
sight of their own selves without regret. They prefer to these
frivolous delights those more serious and silent amusements which
are like business, and which do not drive business wholly from their
minds. An American, instead of going in a leisure hour to dance
merrily at some place of public resort, as the fellows of his
calling continue to do throughout the greater part of Europe, shuts
himself up at home to drink. He thus enjoys two pleasures; he can go
on thinking of his business, and he can get drunk decently by his
own fireside.
I thought that the English constituted the most serious nation on
the face of the earth, but I have since seen the Americans and have
changed my opinion. I do not mean to say that temperament has not a
great deal to do with the character of the inhabitants of the United
States, but I think that their political institutions are a still
more influential cause. I believe the seriousness of the Americans
arises partly from their pride. In democratic countries even poor
men entertain a lofty notion of their personal importance: they look
upon themselves with complacency, and are apt to suppose that others
are looking at them, too. With this disposition they watch their
language and their actions with care, and do not lay themselves open
so as to betray their deficiencies; to preserve their dignity they
think it necessary to retain their gravity.
But I detect another more deep-seated and powerful cause which
instinctively produces amongst the Americans this astonishing
gravity. Under a despotism communities give way at times to bursts
of vehement joy; but they are generally gloomy and moody, because
they are afraid. Under absolute monarchies tempered by the customs
and manners of the country, their spirits are often cheerful and
even, because as they have some freedom and a good deal of security,
they are exempted from the most important cares of life; but all
free peoples are serious, because their minds are habitually
absorbed by the contemplation of some dangerous or difficult
purpose. This is more especially the case amongst those free nations
which form democratic communities. Then there are in all classes a
very large number of men constantly occupied with the serious
affairs of the government; and those whose thoughts are not engaged
in the direction of the commonwealth are wholly engrossed by the
acquisition of a private fortune. Amongst such a people a serious
demeanor ceases to be peculiar to certain men, and becomes a habit
of the nation.
We are told of small democracies in the days of antiquity, in which
the citizens met upon the public places with garlands of roses, and
spent almost all their time in dancing and theatrical amusements. I
do not believe in such republics any more than in that of Plato; or,
if the things we read of really happened, I do not hesitate to
affirm that these supposed democracies were composed of very
different elements from ours, and that they had nothing in common
with the latter except their name. But it must not be supposed that,
in the midst of all their toils, the people who live in democracies
think themselves to be pitied; the contrary is remarked to be the
case. No men are fonder of their own condition. Life would have no
relish for them if they were delivered from the anxieties which
harass them, and they show more attachment to their cares than
aristocratic nations to their pleasures.
I am next led to inquire how it is that these same democratic
nations, which are so serious, sometimes act in so inconsiderate a
manner. The Americans, who almost always preserve a staid demeanor
and a frigid air, nevertheless frequently allow themselves to be
borne away, far beyond the bounds of reason, by a sudden passion or
a hasty opinion, and they sometimes gravely commit strange
absurdities. This contrast ought not to surprise us. There is one
sort of ignorance which originates in extreme publicity. In despotic
States men know not how to act, because they are told nothing; in
democratic nations they often act at random, because nothing is to
be left untold. The former do not know -- the latter forget; and the
chief features of each picture are lost to them in a bewilderment of
details.
It is astonishing what imprudent language a public man may sometimes
use in free countries, and especially in democratic States, without
being compromised; whereas in absolute monarchies a few words
dropped by accident are enough to unmask him forever, and ruin him
without hope of redemption. This is explained by what goes before.
When a man speaks in the midst of a great crowd, many of his words
are not heard, or are forthwith obliterated from the memories of
those who hear them; but amidst the silence of a mute and motionless
throng the slightest whisper strikes the ear.
In democracies men are never stationary; a thousand chances waft
them to and fro, and their life is always the sport of unforeseen or
(so to speak) extemporaneous circumstances. Thus they are often
obliged to do things which they have imperfectly learned, to say
things they imperfectly understand, and to devote themselves to work
for which they are unprepared by long apprenticeship. In
aristocracies every man has one sole object which he unceasingly
pursues, but amongst democratic nations the existence of man is more
complex; the same mind will almost always embrace several objects at
the same time, and these objects are frequently wholly foreign to
each other: as it cannot know them all well, the mind is readily
satisfied with imperfect notions of each.
When the inhabitant of democracies is not urged by his wants, he is
so at least by his desires; for of all the possessions which he sees
around him, none are wholly beyond his reach. He therefore does
everything in a hurry, he is always satisfied with "pretty well,"
and never pauses more than an instant to consider what he has been
doing. His curiosity is at once insatiable and cheaply satisfied;
for he cares more to know a great deal quickly than to know anything
well: he has no time and but little taste to search things to the
bottom.
Thus then democratic peoples are grave, because their social and
political condition constantly leads them to engage in serious
occupations; and they act inconsiderately, because they give but
little time and attention to each of these occupations. The habit of
inattention must be considered as the greatest bane of the
democratic character.
Chapter 16 Why the National Vanity of the Americans is More Restless
and Captious than That of the English
ALL free nations are vainglorious, but national pride is displayed
by all in the same manner. The Americans in their intercourse with
strangers appear impatient of the smallest censure and insatiable of
praise. The most slender eulogium is acceptable to them; the most
exalted seldom contents them; they unceasingly harass you to extort
praise, and if you resist their entreaties they fall to praising
themselves. It would seem as if, doubting their own merit, they
wished to have it constantly exhibited before their eyes. Their
vanity is not only greedy, but restless and jealous; it will grant
nothing, whilst it demands everything, but is ready to beg and to
quarrel at the same time. If I say to an American that the country
he lives in is a fine one, "Ay," he replies, "there is not its
fellow in the world." If I applaud the freedom which its inhabitants
enjoy, he answers, "Freedom is a fine thing, but few nations are
worthy to enjoy it." If I remark the purity of morals which
distinguishes the United States, "I can imagine," says he, "that a
stranger, who has been struck by the corruption of all other
nations, is astonished at the difference." At length I leave him to
the contemplation of himself; but he returns to the charge, and does
not desist till he has got me to repeat all I had just been saying.
It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous
patriotism; it wearies even those who are disposed to respect it.
Such is not the case with the English. An Englishman calmly enjoys
the real or imaginary advantages which in his opinion his country
possesses. If he grants nothing to other nations, neither does he
solicit anything for his own. The censure of foreigners does not
affect him, and their praise hardly flatters him; his position with
regard to the rest of the world is one of disdainful and ignorant
reserve: his pride requires no sustenance, it nourishes itself. It
is remarkable that two nations, so recently sprung from the same
stock, should be so opposite to one another in their manner of
feeling and conversing.
In aristocratic countries the great possess immense privileges, upon
which their pride rests, without seeking to rely upon the lesser
advantages which accrue to them. As these privileges came to them by
inheritance, they regard them in some sort as a portion of
themselves, or at least as a natural right inherent in their own
persons. They therefore entertain a calm sense of their superiority;
they do not dream of vaunting privileges which everyone perceives
and no one contests, and these things are not sufficiently new to
them to be made topics of conversation. They stand unmoved in their
solitary greatness, well assured that they are seen of all the world
without any effort to show themselves off, and that no one will
attempt to drive them from that position. When an aristocracy
carries on the public affairs, its national pride naturally assumes
this reserved, indifferent, and haughty form, which is imitated by
all the other classes of the nation.
When, on the contrary, social conditions differ but little, the
slightest privileges are of some importance; as every man sees
around himself a million of people enjoying precisely similar or
analogous advantages, his pride becomes craving and jealous, he
clings to mere trifles, and doggedly defends them. In democracies,
as the conditions of life are very fluctuating, men have almost
always recently acquired the advantages which they possess; the
consequence is that they feel extreme pleasure in exhibiting them,
to show others and convince themselves that they really enjoy them.
As at any instant these same advantages may be lost, their
possessors are constantly on the alert, and make a point of showing
that they still retain them. Men living in democracies love their
country just as they love themselves, and they transfer the habits
of their private vanity to their vanity as a nation. The restless
and insatiable vanity of a democratic people originates so entirely
in the equality and precariousness of social conditions, that the
members of the haughtiest nobility display the very same passion in
those lesser portions of their existence in which there is anything
fluctuating or contested. An aristocratic class always differs
greatly from the other classes of the nation, by the extent and
perpetuity of its privileges; but it often happens that the only
differences between the members who belong to it consist in small
transient advantages, which may any day be lost or acquired.
The members of a powerful aristocracy, collected in a capital or a
court, have been known to contest with virulence those frivolous
privileges which depend on the caprice of fashion or the will of
their master. These persons then displayed towards each other
precisely the same puerile jealousies which animate the men of
democracies, the same eagerness to snatch the smallest advantages
which their equals contested, and the same desire to parade
ostentatiously those of which they were in possession. If national
pride ever entered into the minds of courtiers, I do not question
that they would display it in the same manner as the members of a
democratic community.
Chapter 17 That the Aspect of Society in the United States is at
Once Excited and Monotonous
IT would seem that nothing can be more adapted to stimulate and to
feed curiosity than the aspect of the United States. Fortunes,
opinions, and laws are there in ceaseless variation: it is as if
immutable nature herself were mutable, such are the changes worked
upon her by the hand of man. Yet in the end the sight of this
excited community becomes monotonous, and after having watched the
moving pageant for a time the spectator is tired of it. Amongst
aristocratic nations every man is pretty nearly stationary in his
own sphere; but men are astonishingly unlike each other -- their
passions, their notions, their habits, and their tastes are
essentially different: nothing changes, but everything differs. In
democracies, on the contrary, all men are alike and do things pretty
nearly alike. It is true that they are subject to great and frequent
vicissitudes; but as the same events of good or adverse fortune are
continually recurring, the name of the actors only is changed, the
piece is always the same. The aspect of American society is
animated, because men and things are always changing; but it is
monotonous, because all these changes are alike.
Men living in democratic ages have many passions, but most of their
passions either end in the love of riches or proceed from it. The
cause of this is, not that their souls are narrower, but that the
importance of money is really greater at such times. When all the
members of a community are independent of or indifferent to each
other, the co-operation of each of them can only be obtained by
paying for it: this infinitely multiplies the purposes to which
wealth may be applied, and increases its value. When the reverence
which belonged to what is old has vanished, birth, condition, and
profession no longer distinguish men, or scarcely distinguish them
at all: hardly anything but money remains to create strongly marked
differences between them, and to raise some of them above the common
level. The distinction originating in wealth is increased by the
disappearance and diminution of all other distinctions. Amongst
aristocratic nations money only reaches to a few points on the vast
circle of man's desires -- in democracies it seems to lead to all.
The love of wealth is therefore to be traced, either as a principal
or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do:
this gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness, and soon
renders the survey of them exceedingly wearisome. This perpetual
recurrence of the same passion is monotonous; the peculiar methods
by which this passion seeks its own gratification are no less so.
In an orderly and constituted democracy like the United States,
where men cannot enrich themselves by war, by public office, or by
political confiscation, the love of wealth mainly drives them into
business and manufactures. Although these pursuits often bring about
great commotions and disasters, they cannot prosper without strictly
regular habits and a long routine of petty uniform acts. The
stronger the passion is, the more regular are these habits, and the
more uniform are these acts. It may be said that it is the vehemence
of their desires which makes the Americans so methodical; it
perturbs their minds, but it disciplines their lives.
The remark I here apply to America may indeed be addressed to almost
all our contemporaries. Variety is disappearing from the human race;
the same ways of acting, thinking, and feeling are to be met with
all over the world. This is not only because nations work more upon
each other, and are more faithful in their mutual imitation; but as
the men of each country relinquish more and more the peculiar
opinions and feelings of a caste, a profession, or a family, they
simultaneously arrive at something nearer to the constitution of
man, which is everywhere the same. Thus they become more alike, even
without having imitated each other. Like travellers scattered about
some large wood, which is intersected by paths converging to one
point, if all of them keep their eyes fixed upon that point and
advance towards it, they insensibly draw nearer together -- though
they seek not, though they see not, though they know not each other;
and they will be surprised at length to find themselves all
collected on the same spot. All the nations which take, not any
particular man, but man himself, as the object of their researches
and their imitations, are tending in the end to a similar state of
society, like these travellers converging to the central plot of the
forest.
Chapter 18 Of Honor in the United States and in Democratic
Communities
IT would seem that men employ two very distinct methods in the
public estimation of the actions of their fellowmen; at one time
they judge them by those simple notions of right and wrong which are
diffused all over the world; at another they refer their decision to
a few very special notions which belong exclusively to some
particular age and country. It often happens that these two rules
differ; they sometimes conflict: but they are never either entirely
identified or entirely annulled by one another. Honor, at the
periods of its greatest power, sways the will more than the belief
of Then; and even whilst they yield without hesitation and without a
murmur to its dictates, they feel notwithstanding, by a dim but
mighty instinct, the existence of a more general, more ancient, and
more holy law, which they sometimes disobey although they cease not
to acknowledge it. Some actions have been held to be at the same
time virtuous and dishonorable -- a refusal to fight a duel is a
case in point.
I think these peculiarities may be otherwise explained than by the
mere caprices of certain individuals and nations, as has hitherto
been the customary mode of reasoning on the subject. Mankind is
subject to general and lasting wants that have engendered moral
laws, to the neglect of which men have ever and in all places
attached the notion of censure and shame: to infringe them was "to
do ill" -- "to do well" was to conform to them. Within the bosom of
this vast association of the human race, lesser associations have
been formed which are called nations; and amidst these nations
further subdivisions have assumed the names of classes or castes.
Each of these associations forms, as it were, a separate species of
the human race; and though it has no essential difference from the
mass of mankind, to a certain extent it stands apart and has certain
wants peculiar to itself. To these special wants must be attributed
the modifications which affect in various degrees and in different
countries the mode of considering human actions, and the estimate
which ought to be formed of them. It is the general and permanent
interest of mankind that men should not kill each other: but it may
happen to be the peculiar and temporary interest of a people or a
class to justify, or even to honor, homicide.
Honor is simply that peculiar rule, founded upon a peculiar state of
society, by the application of which a people or a class allot
praise or blame. Nothing is more unproductive to the mind than an
abstract idea; I therefore hasten to call in the aid of facts and
examples to illustrate my meaning.
I select the most extraordinary kind of honor which was ever known
in the world, and that which we are best acquainted with, viz.,
aristocratic honor springing out of feudal society. I shall explain
it by means of the principle already laid down, and I shall explain
the principle by means of the illustration. I am not here led to
inquire when and how the aristocracy of the Middle Ages came into
existence, why it was so deeply severed from the remainder of the
nation, or what founded and consolidated its power. I take its
existence as an established fact, and I am endeavoring to account
for the peculiar view which it took of the greater part of human
actions. The first thing that strikes me is, that in the feudal
world actions were not always praised or blamed with reference to
their intrinsic worth, but that they were sometimes appreciated
exclusively with reference to the person who was the actor or the
object of them, which is repugnant to the general conscience of
mankind. Thus some of the actions which were indifferent on the part
of a man in humble life, dishonored a noble; others changed their
whole character according as the person aggrieved by them belonged
or did not belong to the aristocracy. When these different notions
first arose, the nobility formed a distinct body amidst the people,
which it commanded from the inaccessible heights where it was
ensconced. To maintain this peculiar position, which constituted its
strength, it not only required political privileges, but it required
a standard of right and wrong for its own especial use. That some
particular virtue or vice belonged to the nobility rather than to
the humble classes -- that certain actions were guiltless when they
affected the villain, which were criminal when they touched the
noble -- these were often arbitrary matters; but that honor or shame
should be attached to a man's actions according to his condition,
was a result of the internal constitution of an aristocratic
community. This has been actually the case in all the countries
which have had an aristocracy; as long as a trace of the principle
remains, these peculiarities will still exist; to debauch a woman of
color scarcely injures the reputation of an American -- to marry her
dishonors him.
In some cases feudal honor enjoined revenge, and stigmatized the
forgiveness of insults; in others it imperiously commanded men to
conquer their own passions, and imposed forgetfulness of self. It
did not make humanity or kindness its law, but it extolled
generosity; it set more store on liberality than on benevolence; it
allowed men to enrich themselves by gambling or by war, but not by
labor; it preferred great crimes to small earnings; cupidity was
less distasteful to it than avarice; violence it often sanctioned,
but cunning and treachery it invariably reprobated as contemptible.
These fantastical notions did not proceed exclusively from the
caprices of those who entertained them. A class which has succeeded
in placing itself at the head of and above all others, and which
makes perpetual exertions to maintain this lofty position, must
especially honor those virtues which are conspicuous for their
dignity and splendor, and which may be easily combined with pride
and the love of power. Such men would not hesitate to invert the
natural order of the conscience in order to give those virtues
precedence before all others. It may even be conceived that some of
the more bold and brilliant vices would readily be set above the
quiet, unpretending virtues. The very existence of such a class in
society renders these things unavoidable.
The nobles of the Middle Ages placed military courage foremost
amongst virtues, and in lieu of many of them. This was again a
peculiar opinion which arose necessarily from the peculiarity of the
state of society. Feudal aristocracy existed by war and for war; its
power had been founded by arms, and by arms that power was
maintained; it therefore required nothing more than military
courage, and that quality was naturally exalted above all others;
whatever denoted it, even at the expense of reason and humanity, was
therefore approved and frequently enjoined by the manners of the
time. Such was the main principle; the caprice of man was only to be
traced in minuter details. That a man should regard a tap on the
cheek as an unbearable insult, and should be obliged to kill in
single combat the person who struck him thus lightly, is an
arbitrary rule; but that a noble could not tranquilly receive an
insult, and was dishonored if he allowed himself to take a blow
without fighting, were direct consequences of the fundamental
principles and the wants of military aristocracy.
Thus it was true to a certain extent to assert that the laws of
honor were capricious; but these caprices of honor were always
confined within certain necessary limits. The peculiar rule, which
was called honor by our forefathers, is so far from being an
arbitrary law in my eyes, that I would readily engage to ascribe its
most incoherent and fantastical injunctions to a small number of
fixed and invariable wants inherent in feudal society.
If I were to trace the notion of feudal honor into the domain of
politics, I should not find it more difficult to explain its
dictates. The state of society and the political institutions of the
Middle Ages were such, that the supreme power of the nation never
governed the community directly. That power did not exist in the
eyes of the people: every man looked up to a certain individual whom
he was bound to obey; by that intermediate personage he was
connected with all the others. Thus in feudal society the whole
system of the commonwealth rested upon the sentiment of fidelity to
the person of the lord: to destroy that sentiment was to open the
sluices of anarchy. Fidelity to a political superior was, moreover,
a sentiment of which all the members of the aristocracy had constant
opportunities of estimating the importance; for every one of them
was a vassal as well as a lord, and had to command as well as to
obey. To remain faithful to the lord, to sacrifice one's self for
him if called upon, to share his good or evil fortunes, to stand by
him in his undertakings whatever they might be -- such were the
first injunctions of feudal honor in relation to the political
institutions of those times. The treachery of a vassal was branded
with extraordinary severity by public opinion, and a name of
peculiar infamy was invented for the offence which was called
"felony."
On the contrary, few traces are to be found in the Middle Ages of
the passion which constituted the life of the nations of antiquity
-- I mean patriotism; the word itself is not of very ancient date in
the language. Feudal institutions concealed the country at large
from men's sight, and rendered the love of it less necessary. The
nation was forgotten in the passions which attached men to persons.
Hence it was no part of the strict law of feudal honor to remain
faithful to one's country. Not indeed that the love of their country
did not exist in the hearts of our forefathers; but it constituted a
dim and feeble instinct, which has grown more clear and strong in
proportion as aristocratic classes have been abolished, and the
supreme power of the nation centralized. This may be clearly seen
from the contrary judgments which European nations have passed upon
the various events of their histories, according to the generations
by which such judgments have been formed. The circumstance which
most dishonored the Constable de Bourbon in the eyes of his
contemporaries was that he bore arms against his king: that which
most dishonors him in our eyes, is that he made war against his
country; we brand him as deeply as our forefathers did, but for
different reasons.
I have chosen the honor of feudal times by way of illustration of my
meaning, because its characteristics are more distinctly marked and
more familiar to us than those of any other period; but I might have
taken an example elsewhere, and I should have reached the same
conclusion by a different road. Although we are less perfectly
acquainted with the Romans than with our own ancestors, yet we know
that certain peculiar notions of glory and disgrace obtained amongst
them, which were not solely derived from the general principles of
right and wrong. Many human actions were judged differently,
according as they affected a Roman citizen or a stranger, a freeman
or a slave; certain vices were blazoned abroad, certain virtues were
extolled above all others. "In that age," says Plutarch in the life
of Coriolanus, "martial prowess was more honored and prized in Rome
than all the other virtues, insomuch that it was called virtus, the
name of virtue itself, by applying the name of the kind to this
particular species; so that virtue in Latin was as much as to say
valor." Can anyone fail to recognize the peculiar want of that
singular community which was formed for the conquest of the world?
Any nation would furnish us with similar grounds of observation;
for, as I have already remarked, whenever men collect together as a
distinct community, the notion of honor instantly grows up amongst
them; that is to say, a system of opinions peculiar to themselves as
to what is blamable or commendable; and these peculiar rules always
originate in the special habits and special interests of the
community. This is applicable to a certain extent to democratic
communities as well as to others, as we shall now proceed to prove
by the example of the Americans. Some loose notions of the old
aristocratic honor of Europe are still to be found scattered amongst
the opinions of the Americans; but these traditional opinions are
few in number, they have but little root in the country, and but
little power. They are like a religion which has still some temples
left standing, though men have ceased to believe in it. But amidst
these half-obliterated notions of exotic honor, some new opinions
have sprung up, which constitute what may be termed in our days
American honor. I have shown how the Americans are constantly driven
to engage in commerce and industry. Their origin, their social
condition, their political institutions, and even the spot they
inhabit, urge them irresistibly in this direction. Their present
condition is then that of an almost exclusively manufacturing and
commercial association, placed in the midst of a new and boundless
country, which their principal object is to explore for purposes of
profit. This is the characteristic which most peculiarly
distinguishes the American people from all others at the present
time. All those quiet virtues which tend to give a regular movement
to the community, and to encourage business, will therefore be held
in peculiar honor by that people, and to neglect those virtues will
be to incur public contempt. All the more turbulent virtues, which
often dazzle, but more frequently disturb society, will on the
contrary occupy a subordinate rank in the estimation of this same
people: they may be neglected without forfeiting the esteem of the
community -- to acquire them would perhaps be to run a risk of
losing it.
The Americans make a no less arbitrary classification of men's
vices. There are certain propensities which appear censurable to the
general reason and the universal conscience of mankind, but which
happen to agree with the peculiar and temporary wants of the
American community: these propensities are lightly reproved,
sometimes even encouraged; for instance, the love of wealth and the
secondary propensities connected with it may be more particularly
cited. To clear, to till, and to transform the vast uninhabited
continent which is his domain, the American requires the daily
support of an energetic passion; that passion can only be the love
of wealth; the passion for wealth is therefore not reprobated in
America, and provided it does not go beyond the bounds assigned to
it for public security, it is held in honor. The American lauds as a
noble and praiseworthy ambition what our own forefathers in the
Middle Ages stigmatized as servile cupidity, just as he treats as a
blind and barbarous frenzy that ardor of conquest and martial temper
which bore them to battle. In the United States fortunes are lost
and regained without difficulty; the country is boundless, and its
resources inexhaustible. The people have all the wants and cravings
of a growing creature; and whatever be their efforts, they are
always surrounded by more than they can appropriate. It is not the
ruin of a few individuals which may be soon repaired, but the
inactivity and sloth of the community at large which would be fatal
to such a people. Boldness of enterprise is the foremost cause of
its rapid progress, its strength, and its greatness. Commercial
business is there like a vast lottery, by which a small number of
men continually lose, but the State is always a gainer; such a
people ought therefore to encourage and do honor to boldness in
commercial speculations. But any bold speculation risks the fortune
of the speculator and of all those who put their trust in him. The
Americans, who make a virtue of commercial temerity, have no right
in any case to brand with disgrace those who practise it. Hence
arises the strange indulgence which is shown to bankrupts in the
United States; their honor does not suffer by such an accident. In
this respect the Americans differ, not only from the nations of
Europe, but from all the commercial nations of our time, and
accordingly they resemble none of them in their position or their
wants.
In America all those vices which tend to impair the purity of
morals, and to destroy the conjugal tie, are treated with a degree
of severity which is unknown in the rest of the world. At first
sight this seems strangely at variance with the tolerance shown
there on other subjects, and one is surprised to meet with a
morality so relaxed and so austere amongst the selfsame people. But
these things are less incoherent than they seem to be. Public
opinion in the United States very gently represses that love of
wealth which promotes the commercial greatness and the prosperity of
file nation, and it especially condemns that laxity of morals which
diverts the human mind from the pursuit of well-being, and disturbs
the internal order of domestic life which is so necessary to success
in business. To earn the esteem of their countrymen, the Americans
are therefore constrained to adapt themselves to orderly habits --
and it may be said in this sense that they make it a matter of honor
to live chastely.
On one point American honor accords with the notions of honor
acknowledged in Europe; it places courage as the highest virtue, and
treats it as the greatest of fife moral necessities of man; but the
notion of courage itself assumes a different aspect. In the United
States martial valor is but little prized; the courage which is best
known and most esteemed is that which emboldens men to brave the
dangers of the ocean, in order to arrive earlier in port -- to
support the privations of the wilderness without complaint, and
solitude more cruel than privations -- the courage which renders
them almost insensible to the loss of a fortune laboriously
acquired, and instantly prompts to fresh exertions to make another.
Courage of this kind is peculiarly necessary to the maintenance and
prosperity of the American communities, and it is held by them in
peculiar honor and estimation; to betray a want of it is to incur
certain disgrace.
I have yet another characteristic point which may serve to place the
idea of this chapter in stronger relief. In a democratic society
like that of the United States, where fortunes are scanty and
insecure, everybody works, and work opens a way to everything: this
has changed the point of honor quite round, and has turned it
against idleness. I have sometimes met in America with young men of
wealth, personally disinclined to all laborious exertion, but who
had been compelled to embrace a profession. Their disposition and
their fortune allowed them to remain without employment; public
opinion forbade it, too imperiously to be disobeyed. In the European
countries, on the contrary, where aristocracy is still struggling
with the flood which overwhelms it, I have often seen men,
constantly spurred on by their wants and desires, remain in
idleness, in order not to lose the esteem of their equals; and I
have known them submit to ennui and privations rather than to work.
No one can fail to perceive that these opposite obligations are two
different rules of conduct, both nevertheless originating in the
notion of honor.
What our forefathers designated as honor absolutely was in reality
only one of its forms; they gave a generic name to what was only a
species. Honor therefore is to be found in democratic as well as in
aristocratic ages, but it will not be difficult to show that it
assumes a different aspect in the former. Not only are its
injunctions different, but we shall shortly see that they are less
numerous, less precise, and that its dictates are less rigorously
obeyed. The position of a caste is always much more peculiar than
that of a people. Nothing is so much out of the way of the world as
a small community invariably composed of the same families (as was
for instance the aristocracy of the Middle Ages), whose object is to
concentrate and to retain, exclusively and hereditarily, education,
wealth, and power amongst its own members. But the more out of the
way the position of a community happens to be, the more numerous are
its special wants, and the more extensive are its notions of honor
corresponding to those wants. The rules of honor will therefore
always be less numerous amongst a people not divided into castes
than amongst any other. If ever any nations are constituted in which
it may even be difficult to find any peculiar classes of society,
the notion of honor will be confined to a small number of precepts,
which will be more and more in accordance with the moral laws
adopted by the mass of mankind. Thus the laws of honor will be less
peculiar and less multifarious amongst a democratic people than in
an aristocracy. They will also be more obscure; and this is a
necessary consequence of what goes before; for as the distinguishing
marks of honor are less numerous and less peculiar, it must often be
difficult to distinguish them. To this, other reasons may be added.
Amongst the aristocratic nations of the Middle Ages, generation
succeeded generation in vain; each family was like a never-dying,
ever-stationary man, and the state of opinions was hardly more
changeable than that of conditions. Everyone then had always the
same objects before his eyes, which he contemplated from the same
point; his eyes gradually detected the smallest details, and his
discernment could not fail to become in the end clear and accurate.
Thus not only had the men of feudal times very extraordinary
opinions in matters of honor, but each of those opinions was present
to their minds under a clear and precise form.
This can never be the case in America, where all men are in constant
motion; and where society, transformed daily by its own operations,
changes its opinions together with its wants. In such a country men
have glimpses of the rules of honor, but they have seldom time to
fix attention upon them.
But even if society were motionless, it would still be difficult to
determine the meaning which ought to be attached to the word
"honor." In the Middle Ages, as each class had its own honor, the
same opinion was never received at the same time by a large number
of men; and this rendered it possible to give it a determined and
accurate form, which was the more easy, as all those by whom it was
received, having a perfectly identical and most peculiar position,
were naturally disposed to agree upon the points of a law which was
made for themselves alone. Thus the code of honor became a complete
and detailed system, in which everything was anticipated and
provided for beforehand, and a fixed and always palpable standard
was applied to human actions. Amongst a democratic nation, like the
Americans, in which ranks are identified, and the whole of society
forms one single mass, composed of elements which are all analogous
though not entirely similar, it is impossible ever to agree
beforehand on what shall or shall not be allowed by the laws of
honor. Amongst that people, indeed, some national wants do exist
which give rise to opinions common to the whole nation on points of
honor; but these opinions never occur at the same time, in the same
manner, or with the same intensity to the minds of the whole
community; the law of honor exists, but it has no organs to
promulgate it.
The confusion is far greater still in a democratic country like
Prance, where the different classes of which the former fabric of
society was composed, being brought together but not yet mingled,
import day by day into each other's circles various and sometimes
conflicting notions of honor -- where every man, at his own will and
pleasure, forsakes one portion of his forefathers' creed, and
retains another; so that, amidst so many arbitrary measures, no
common rule can ever be established, and it is almost impossible to
predict which actions will be held in honor and which will be
thought disgraceful. Such times are wretched, but they are of short
duration.
As honor, amongst democratic nations, is imperfectly defined, its
influence is of course less powerful; for it is difficult to apply
with certainty and firmness a law which is not distinctly known.
Public opinion, the natural and supreme interpreter of the laws of
honor, not clearly discerning to which side censure or approval
ought to lean, can only pronounce a hesitating judgment. Sometimes
the opinion of the public may contradict itself; more frequently it
does not act, and lets things pass.
The weakness of the sense of honor in democracies also arises from
several other causes. In aristocratic countries, the same notions of
honor are always entertained by only a few persons, always limited
in number, often separated from the rest of their fellow-citizens.
Honor is easily mingled and identified in their minds with the idea
of all that distinguishes their own position; it appears to them as
the chief characteristic of their own rank; they apply its different
rules with all the warmth of personal interest, and they feel (if I
may use the expression) a passion for complying with its dictates.
This truth is extremely obvious in the old black-letter lawbooks on
the subject of "trial by battel." The nobles, in their disputes,
were bound to use the lance and sword; whereas the villains used
only sticks amongst themselves, "inasmuch as," to use the words of
the old books, "villains have no honor." This did not mean, as it
may be imagined at the present day, that these people were
contemptible; but simply that their actions were not to be judged by
the same rules which were applied to the actions of the aristocracy.
It is surprising, at first sight, that when the sense of honor is
most predominant, its injunctions are usually most strange; so that
the further it is removed from common reason the better it is
obeyed; whence it has sometimes been inferred that the laws of honor
were strengthened by their own extravagance. The two things indeed
originate from the same source, but the one is not derived from the
other. Honor becomes fantastical in proportion to the peculiarity of
the wants which it denotes, and the paucity of the men by whom those
wants are felt; and it is because it denotes wants of this kind that
its influence is great. Thus the notion of honor is not the stronger
for being fantastical, but it is fantastical and strong from the
selfsame cause.
Further, amongst aristocratic nations each rank is different, but
all ranks are fixed; every man occupies a place in his own sphere
which he cannot relinquish, and he lives there amidst other men who
are bound by the same ties. Amongst these nations no man can either
hope or fear to escape being seen; no man is placed so low but that
he has a stage of his own, and none can avoid censure or applause by
his obscurity. In democratic States on the contrary, where all the
members of the community are mingled in the same crowd and in
constant agitation, public opinion has no hold on men; they
disappear at every instant, and elude its power. Consequently the
dictates of honor will be there less imperious and less stringent;
for honor acts solely for the public eye -- differing in this
respect from mere virtue, which lives upon itself contented with its
own approval.
If the reader has distinctly apprehended all that goes before, he
will understand that there is a close and necessary relation between
the inequality of social conditions and what has here been styled
honor -- a relation which, if I am not mistaken, had not before been
clearly pointed out. I shall therefore make one more attempt to
illustrate it satisfactorily. Suppose a nation stands apart from the
rest of mankind: independently of certain general wants inherent in
the human race, it will also have wants and interests peculiar to
itself: certain opinions of censure or approbation forthwith arise
in the community, which are peculiar to itself, and which are styled
honor by the members of that community. Now suppose that in this
same nation a caste arises, which, in its turn, stands apart from
all the other classes, and contracts certain peculiar wants, which
give rise in their turn to special opinions. The honor of this
caste, composed of a medley of the peculiar notions of the nation,
and the still more peculiar notions of the caste, will be as remote
as it is possible to conceive from the simple and general opinions
of men.
Having reached this extreme point of the argument, I now return.
When ranks are commingled and privileges abolished, the men of whom
a nation is composed being once more equal and alike, their
interests and wants become identical, and all the peculiar notions
which each caste styled honor successively disappear: the notion of
honor no longer proceeds from any other source than the wants
peculiar to the nation at large, and it denotes the individual
character of that nation to the world. Lastly, if it be allowable to
suppose that all the races of mankind should be commingled, and that
all the peoples of earth should ultimately come to have the same
interests, the same wants, undistinguished from each other by any
characteristic peculiarities, no conventional value whatever would
then be attached to men's actions; they would all be regarded by all
in the same light; the general necessities of mankind, revealed by
conscience to every man, would become the common standard. The
simple and general notions of right and wrong only would then be
recognized in the world, to which, by a natural and necessary tie,
the idea of censure or approbation would be attached. Thus, to
comprise all my meaning in a single proposition, the dissimilarities
and inequalities of men gave rise to the notion of honor; that
notion is weakened in proportion as these differences are
obliterated, and with them it would disappear.
Chapter 19 Why so Many Ambitious Men and so Little Lofty Ambition
Are To Be Found in the United States
THE first thing which strikes a traveller in the United States is
the innumerable multitude of those who seek to throw off their
original condition; and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition
to be observed in the midst of the universally ambitious stir of
society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise; but
hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude, or to drive
at very lofty aims. All are constantly seeking to acquire property,
power, and reputation -- few contemplate these things upon a great
scale; and this is the more surprising, as nothing is to be
discerned in the manners or laws of America to limit desire, or to
prevent it from spreading its impulses in every direction. It seems
difficult to attribute this singular state of things to the equality
of social conditions; for at the instant when that same equality was
established in France, the flight of ambition became unbounded.
Nevertheless, I think that the principal cause which may be assigned
to this fact is to be found in the social condition and democratic
manners of the Americans.
All revolutions enlarge the ambition of men: this proposition is
more peculiarly true of those revolutions which overthrow an
aristocracy. When the former barriers which kept back the multitude
from fame and power are suddenly thrown down, a violent and
universal rise takes place towards that eminence so long coveted and
at length to be enjoyed. In this first burst of triumph nothing
seems impossible to anyone: not only are desires boundless, but the
power of satisfying them seems almost boundless, too. Amidst the
general and sudden renewal of laws and customs, in this vast
confusion of all men and all ordinances, the various members of the
community rise and sink again with excessive rapidity; and power
passes so quickly from hand to hand that none need despair of
catching it in turn. It must be recollected, moreover, that the
people who destroy an aristocracy have lived under its laws; they
have witnessed its splendor, and they have unconsciously imbibed the
feelings and notions which it entertained. Thus at the moment when
an aristocracy is dissolved, its spirit still pervades the mass of
the community, and its tendencies are retained long after it has
been defeated. Ambition is therefore always extremely great as long
as a democratic revolution lasts, and it will remain so for some
time after the revolution is consummated. The reminiscence of the
extraordinary events which men have witnessed is not obliterated
from their memory in a day. The passions which a revolution has
roused do not disappear at its close. A sense of instability remains
in the midst of re-established order: a notion of easy success
survives the strange vicissitudes which gave it birth; desires still
remain extremely enlarged, when the means of satisfying them are
diminished day by day. The taste for large fortunes subsists, though
large fortunes are rare: and on every side we trace the ravages of
inordinate and hapless ambition kindled in hearts which they consume
in secret and in vain.
At length, however, the last vestiges of the struggle are effaced;
the remains of aristocracy completely disappear; the great events by
which its fall was attended are forgotten; peace succeeds to war,
and the sway of order is restored in the new realm; desires are
again adapted to the means by which they may be fulfilled; the
wants, the opinions, and the feelings of men cohere once more; the
level of the community is permanently determined, and democratic
society established. A democratic nation, arrived at this permanent
and regular state of things, will present a very different spectacle
from that which we have just described; and we may readily conclude
that, if ambition becomes great whilst the conditions of society are
growing equal, it loses that quality when they have grown so. As
wealth is subdivided and knowledge diffused, no one is entirely
destitute of education or of property; the privileges and
disqualifications of caste being abolished, and men having shattered
the bonds which held them fixed, the notion of advancement suggests
itself to every mind, the desire to rise swells in every heart, and
all men want to mount above their station: ambition is the universal
feeling.
But if the equality of conditions gives some resources to all the
members of the community, it also prevents any of them from having
resources of great extent, which necessarily circumscribes their
desires within somewhat narrow limits. Thus amongst democratic
nations ambition is ardent and continual, but its aim is not
habitually lofty; and life is generally spent in eagerly coveting
small objects which are within reach. What chiefly diverts the men
of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their
fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to
improve them. They strain their faculties to the utmost to achieve
paltry results, and this cannot fail speedily to limit their
discernment and to circumscribe their powers. They might be much
poorer and still be greater. The small number of opulent citizens
who are to be found amidst a democracy do not constitute an
exception to this rule. A man who raises himself by degrees to
wealth and power, contracts, in the course of this protracted labor,
habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake
off. A man cannot enlarge his mind as he would his house. The same
observation is applicable to the sons of such a man; they are born,
it is true, in a lofty position, but their parents were humble; they
have grown up amidst feelings and notions which they cannot
afterwards easily get rid of; and it may be presumed that they will
inherit the propensities of their father as well as his wealth. It
may happen, on the contrary, that the poorest scion of a powerful
aristocracy may display vast ambition, because the traditional
opinions of his race and the general spirit of his order still buoy
him up for some time above his fortune.
Another thing which prevents the men of democratic periods from
easily indulging in the pursuit of lofty objects, is the lapse of
time which they foresee must take place before they can be ready to
approach them. "It is a great advantage," says Pascal, "to be a man
of quality, since it brings one man as forward at eighteen or twenty
as another man would be at fifty, which is a clear gain of thirty
years." Those thirty years are commonly wanting to the ambitious
characters of democracies. The principle of equality, which allows
every man to arrive at everything, prevents all men from rapid
advancement.
In a democratic society, as well as elsewhere, there are only a
certain number of great fortunes to be made; and as the paths which
lead to them are indiscriminately open to all, the progress of all
must necessarily be slackened. As the candidates appear to be nearly
alike, and as it is difficult to make a selection without infringing
the principle of equality, which is the supreme law of democratic
societies, the first idea which suggests itself is to make them all
advance at the same rate and submit to the same probation. Thus in
proportion as men become more alike, and the principle of equality
is more peaceably and deeply infused into the institutions and
manners of the country, the rules of advancement become more
inflexible, advancement itself slower, the difficulty of arriving
quickly at a certain height far greater. From hatred of privilege
and from the embarrassment of choosing, all men are at last
constrained, whatever may be their standard, to pass the same
ordeal; all are indiscriminately subjected to a multitude of petty
preliminary exercises, in which their youth is wasted and their
imagination quenched, so that they despair of ever fully attaining
what is held out to them; and when at length they are in a condition
to perform any extraordinary acts, the taste for such things has
forsaken them.
In China, where the equality of conditions is exceedingly great and
very ancient, no man passes from one public office to another
without undergoing a probationary trial. This probation occurs
afresh at every stage of his career; and the notion is now so rooted
in the manners of the people that I remember to have read a Chinese
novel, in which the hero, after numberless crosses, succeeds at
length in touching the heart of his mistress by taking honors. A
lofty ambition breathes with difficulty in such an atmosphere.
The remark I apply to politics extends to everything; equality
everywhere produces the same effects; where the laws of a country do
not regulate and retard the advancement of men by positive
enactment, competition attains the same end. In a well-established
democratic community great and rapid elevation is therefore rare; it
forms an exception to the common rule; and it is the singularity of
such occurrences that makes men forget how rarely they happen. Men
living in democracies ultimately discover these things; they find
out at last that the laws of their country open a boundless field of
action before them, but that no one can hope to hasten across it.
Between them and the final object of their desires, they perceive a
multitude of small intermediate impediments which must be slowly
surmounted: this prospect wearies and discourages their ambition at
once. They therefore give up hopes so doubtful and remote to search
nearer to themselves for less lofty and more easy enjoyments. Their
horizon is not bounded by the laws but narrowed by themselves.
I have remarked that lofty ambitions are more rare in the ages of
democracy than in times of aristocracy: I may add that when, in
spite of these natural obstacles, they do spring into existence,
their character is different. In aristocracies the career of
ambition is often wide, but its boundaries are determined. In
democracies ambition commonly ranges in a narrower field, but if
once it gets beyond that, hardly any limits can be assigned to it.
As men are individually weak -- as they live asunder, and in
constant motion -- as precedents are of little authority and laws
but of short duration, resistance to novelty is languid, and the
fabric of society never appears perfectly erect or firmly
consolidated. So that, when once an ambitious man has the power in
his grasp, there is nothing he may not dare; and when it is gone
from him, he meditates the overthrow of the State to regain it. This
gives to great political ambition a character of revolutionary
violence, which it seldom exhibits to an equal degree in
aristocratic communities. The common aspect of democratic nations
will present a great number of small and very rational objects of
ambition, from amongst which a few ill-controlled desires of a
larger growth will at intervals break out: but no such a thing as
ambition conceived and contrived on a vast scale is to be met with
there.
I have shown elsewhere by what secret influence the principle of
equality makes the passion for physical gratifications and the
exclusive love of the present predominate in the human heart: these
different propensities mingle with the sentiment of ambition, and
tinge it, as it were, with their hues. I believe that ambitious men
in democracies are less engrossed than any others with the interests
and the judgment of posterity; the present moment alone engages and
absorbs them. They are more apt to complete a number of undertakings
with rapidity than to raise lasting monuments of their achievements;
and they care much more for success than for fame. What they most
ask of men is obedience -- what they most covet is empire. Their
manners have in almost all cases remained below the height of their
station; the consequence is that they frequently carry very low
tastes into their extraordinary fortunes, and that they seem to have
acquired the supreme power only to minister to their coarse or
paltry pleasures.
I think that in our time it is very necessary to cleanse, to
regulate, and to adapt the feeling of ambition, but that it would be
extremely dangerous to seek to impoverish and to repress it
overmuch. We should attempt to lay down certain extreme limits,
which it should never be allowed to outstep; but its range within
those established limits should not be too much checked. I confess
that I apprehend much less for democratic society from the boldness
than from the mediocrity of desires. What appears to me most to be
dreaded is that, in the midst of the small incessant occupations of
private life, ambition should lose its vigor and its greatness --
that the passions of man should abate, but at the same time be
lowered, so that the march of society should every day become more
tranquil and less aspiring. I think then that the leaders of modern
society would be wrong to seek to lull the community by a state of
too uniform and too peaceful happiness; and that it is well to
expose it from time to time to matters of difficulty and danger, in
order to raise ambition and to give it a field of action. Moralists
are constantly complaining that the ruling vice of the present time
is pride. This is true in one sense, for indeed no one thinks that
he is not better than his neighbor, or consents to obey his
superior: but it is extremely false in another; for the same man who
cannot endure subordination or equality, has so contemptible an
opinion of himself that he thinks he is only born to indulge in
vulgar pleasures. He willingly takes up with low desires, without
daring to embark in lofty enterprises, of which he scarcely dreams.
Thus, far from thinking that humility ought to be preached to our
contemporaries, I would have endeavors made to give them a more
enlarged idea of themselves and of their kind. Humility is
unwholesome to them; what they want is, in my opinion, pride. I
would willingly exchange several of our small virtues for this one
vice.
Chapter 20 The Trade of Place-Hunting in Certain Democratic
Countries
IN the United States as soon as a man has acquired some education
and pecuniary resources, he either endeavors to get rich by commerce
or industry, or he buys land in the bush and turns pioneer. All that
he asks of the State is not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be
secure of his earnings. Amongst the greater part of European
nations, when a man begins to feel his strength and to extend his
desires, the first thing that occurs to him is to get some public
employment. These opposite effects, originating in the same cause,
deserve our passing notice.
When public employments are few in number, ill-paid and precarious,
whilst the different lines of business are numerous and lucrative,
it is to business, and not to official duties, that the new and
eager desires engendered by the principle of equality turn from
every side. But if, whilst the ranks of society are becoming more
equal, the education of the people remains incomplete, or their
spirit the reverse of bold -- if commerce and industry, checked in
their growth, afford only slow and arduous means of making a fortune
-- the various members of the community, despairing of ameliorating
their own condition, rush to the head of the State and demand its
assistance. To relieve their own necessities at the cost of the
public treasury, appears to them to be the easiest and most open, if
not the only, way they have to rise above a condition which no
longer contents them; place-hunting becomes the most generally
followed of all trades. This must especially be the case, in those
great centralized monarchies in which the number of paid offices is
immense, and the tenure of them tolerably secure, so that no one
despairs of obtaining a place, and of enjoying it as undisturbedly
as a hereditary fortune.
I shall not remark that the universal and inordinate desire for
place is a great social evil; that it destroys the spirit of
independence in the citizen, and diffuses a venal and servile humor
throughout the frame of society; that it stifles the manlier
virtues: nor shall I be at the pains to demonstrate that this kind
of traffic only creates an unproductive activity, which agitates the
country without adding to its resources: all these things are
obvious. But I would observe, that a government which encourages
this tendency risks its own tranquillity, and places its very
existence in great jeopardy. I am aware that at a time like our own,
when the love and respect which formerly clung to authority are seen
gradually to decline, it may appear necessary to those in power to
lay a closer hold on every man by his own interest, and it may seem
convenient to use his own passions to keep him in order and in
silence; but this cannot be so long, and what may appear to be a
source of strength for a certain time will assuredly become in the
end a great cause of embarrassment and weakness.
Amongst democratic nations, as well as elsewhere, the number of
official appointments has in the end some limits; but amongst those
nations, the number of aspirants is unlimited; it perpetually
increases, with a gradual and irresistible rise in proportion as
social conditions become more equal, and is only checked by the
limits of the population. Thus, when public employments afford the
only outlet for ambition, the government necessarily meets with a
permanent opposition at last; for it is tasked to satisfy with
limited means unlimited desires. It is very certain that of all
people in the world the most difficult to restrain and to manage are
a people of solicitants. Whatever endeavors are made by rulers, such
a people can never be contented; and it is always to be apprehended
that they will ultimately overturn the constitution of the country,
and change the aspect of the State, for the sole purpose of making a
clearance of places. The sovereigns of the present age, who strive
to fix upon themselves alone all those novel desires which are
aroused by equality, and to satisfy them, will repent in the end, if
I am not mistaken, that they ever embarked in this policy: they will
one day discover that they have hazarded their own power, by making
it so necessary; and that the more safe and honest course would have
been to teach their subjects the art of providing for themselves.
Chapter 21 Why Great Revolutions Will Become More Rare
A PEOPLE which has existed for centuries under a system of castes
and classes can only arrive at a democratic state of society by
passing through a long series of more or less critical
transformations, accomplished by violent efforts, and after numerous
vicissitudes; in the course of which, property, opinions, and power
are rapidly transferred from one hand to another. Even after this
great revolution is consummated, the revolutionary habits engendered
by it may long be traced, and it will be followed by deep commotion.
As all this takes place at the very time at which social conditions
are becoming more equal, it is inferred that some concealed relation
and secret tie exist between the principle of equality itself and
revolution, insomuch that the one cannot exist without giving rise
to the other.
On this point reasoning may seem to lead to the same result as
experience. Amongst a people whose ranks are nearly equal, no
ostensible bond connects men together, or keeps them settled in
their station. None of them have either a permanent right or power
to command -- none are forced by their condition to obey; but every
man, finding himself possessed of some education and some resources,
may choose his own path and proceed apart from all his fellow-men.
The same causes which make the members of the community independent
of each other, continually impel them to new and restless desires,
and constantly spur them onwards. It therefore seems natural that,
in a democratic community, men, things, and opinions should be
forever changing their form and place, and that democratic ages
should be times of rapid and incessant transformation.
But is this really the case? does the equality of social conditions
habitually and permanently lead men to revolution? does that state
of society contain some perturbing principle which prevents the
community from ever subsiding into calm, and disposes the citizens
to alter incessantly their laws, their principles, and their
manners? I do not believe it; and as the subject is important, I beg
for the reader's close attention. Almost all the revolutions which
have changed the aspect of nations have been made to consolidate or
to destroy social inequality. Remove the secondary causes which have
produced the great convulsions of the world, and you will almost
always find the principle of inequality at the bottom. Either the
poor have attempted to plunder the rich, or the rich to enslave the
poor. If then a state of society can ever be founded in which every
man shall have something to keep, and little to take from others,
much will have been done for the peace of the world. I am aware that
amongst a great democratic people there will always be some members
of the community in great poverty, and others in great opulence; but
the poor, instead of forming the immense majority of the nation, as
is always the case in aristocratic communities, are comparatively
few in number, and the laws do not bind them together by the ties of
irremediable and hereditary penury. The wealthy, on their side, are
scarce and powerless; they have no privileges which attract public
observation; even their wealth, as it is no longer incorporated and
bound up with the soil, is impalpable, and as it were invisible. As
there is no longer a race of poor men, so there is no longer a race
of rich men; the latter spring up daily from the multitude, and
relapse into it again. Hence they do not form a distinct class,
which may be easily marked out and plundered; and, moreover, as they
are connected with the mass of their fellow-citizens by a thousand
secret ties, the people cannot assail them without inflicting an
injury upon itself. Between these two extremes of democratic
communities stand an innumerable multitude of men almost alike, who,
without being exactly either rich or poor, are possessed of
sufficient property to desire the maintenance of order, yet not
enough to excite envy. Such men are the natural enemies of violent
commotions: their stillness keeps all beneath them and above them
still, and secures the balance of the fabric of society. Not indeed
that even these men are contented with what they have gotten, or
that they feel a natural abhorrence for a revolution in which they
might share the spoil without sharing the calamity.; on the
contrary, they desire, with unexampled ardor, to get rich, but the
difficulty is to know from whom riches can be taken. The same state
of society which constantly prompts desires, restrains these desires
within necessary limits: it gives men more liberty of changing and
less interest in change.
Not only are the men of democracies not naturally desirous of
revolutions, but they are afraid of them. All revolutions more or
less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in
democratic countries are possessed of property -- not only are they
possessed of property, but they live in the condition of men who set
the greatest store upon their property. If we attentively consider
each of the classes of which society is composed, it is easy to see
that the passions engendered by property are keenest and most
tenacious amongst the middle classes. The poor often care but little
for what they possess, because they suffer much more from the want
of what they have not, than they enjoy the little they have. The
rich have many other passions besides that of riches to satisfy;
and, besides, the long and arduous enjoyment of a great fortune
sometimes makes them in the end insensible to its charms. But the
men who have a competency, alike removed from opulence and from
penury, attach an enormous value to their possessions. As they are
still almost within the reach of poverty, they see its privations
near at hand, and dread them; between poverty and themselves there
is nothing but a scanty fortune, upon which they immediately fix
their apprehensions and their hopes. Every day increases the
interest they take in it, by the constant cares which it occasions;
and they are the more attached to it by their continual exertions to
increase the amount. The notion of surrendering the smallest part of
it is insupportable to them, and they consider its total loss as the
worst of misfortunes. Now these eager and apprehensive men of small
property constitute the class which is constantly increased by the
equality of conditions. Hence, in democratic communities, the
majority of the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by
a revolution, but they continually and in a thousand ways feel that
they might lose by one.
I have shown in another part of this work that the equality of
conditions naturally urges men to embark in commercial and
industrial pursuits, and that it tends to increase and to distribute
real property: I have also pointed out the means by which it
inspires every man with an eager and constant desire to increase his
welfare. Nothing is more opposed to revolutionary passions than
these things. It may happen that the final result of a revolution is
favorable to commerce and manufactures; but its first consequence
will almost always be the ruin of manufactures and mercantile men,
because it must always change at once the general principles of
consumption, and temporarily upset the existing proportion between
supply and; demand. I know of nothing more opposite to revolutionary
manners than commercial manners. Commerce is naturally adverse to
all the violent passions; it loves to temporize, takes delight in
compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. It is patient,
insinuating, flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures
until obliged by the most absolute necessity. Commerce renders men
independent of each other, gives them a lofty notion of their
personal importance, leads them to seek to conduct their own
affairs, and teaches how to conduct them well; it therefore prepares
men for freedom, but preserves them from revolutions. In a
revolution the owners of personal property have more to fear than
all others; for on the one hand their property is often easy to
seize, and on the other it may totally disappear at any moment -- a
subject of alarm to which the owners of real property are less
exposed, since, although they may lose the income of their estates,
they may hope to preserve the land itself through the greatest
vicissitudes. Hence the former are much more alarmed at the symptoms
of revolutionary commotion than the latter. Thus nations are less
disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal property is
augmented and distributed amongst them, and as the number of those
possessing it increases. Moreover, whatever profession men may
embrace, and whatever species of property they may possess, one
characteristic is common to them all. No one is fully contented with
his present fortune -- all are perpetually striving in a thousand
ways to improve it. Consider any one of them at any period of his
life, and he will be found engaged with some new project for the
purpose of increasing what he has; talk not to him of the interests
and the rights of mankind: this small domestic concern absorbs for
the time all his thoughts, and inclines him to defer political
excitement to some other season. This not only prevents men from
making revolutions, but deters men from desiring them. Violent
political passions have but little hold on those who have devoted
all their faculties to the pursuit of their well-being. The ardor
which they display in small matters calms their zeal for momentous
undertakings.
From time to time indeed, enterprising and ambitious men will arise
in democratic communities, whose unbounded aspirations cannot be
contented by following the beaten track. Such men like revolutions
and hail their approach; but they have great difficulty in bringing
them about, unless unwonted events come to their assistance. No man
can struggle with advantage against the spirit of his age and
country; and, however powerful he may be supposed to be, he will
find it difficult to make his contemporaries share in feelings and
opinions which are repugnant to all their feelings and desires.
It is a mistake to believe that, when once the equality of
conditions has become the old and uncontested state of society, and
has imparted its characteristics to the manners of a nation, men
will easily allow themselves to be thrust into perilous risks by an
imprudent leader or a bold innovator. Not indeed that they will
resist him openly, by well-contrived schemes, or even by a
premeditated plan of resistance. They will not struggle
energetically against him, sometimes they will even applaud him --
but they do not follow him. To his vehemence they secretly oppose
their inertia; to his revolutionary tendencies their conservative
interests; their homely tastes to his adventurous passions; their
good sense to the flights of his genius; to his poetry their prose.
With immense exertion he raises them for an instant, but they
speedily escape from him, and fall back, as it were, by their own
weight. He strains himself to rouse the indifferent and distracted
multitude, and finds at last that he is reduced to impotence, not
because he is conquered, but because he is alone.
I do not assert that men living in democratic communities are
naturally stationary; I think, on the contrary, that a perpetual
stir prevails in the bosom of those societies, and that rest is
unknown there; but I think that men bestir themselves within certain
limits beyond which they hardly ever go. They are forever varying,
altering, and restoring secondary matters; but they carefully
abstain from touching what is fundamental. They love change, but
they dread revolutions. Although the Americans are constantly
modifying or abrogating some of their laws, they by no means display
revolutionary passions. It may be easily seen, from the promptitude
with which they check and calm themselves when public excitement
begins to grow alarming, and at the very moment when passions seem
most roused, that they dread a revolution as the worst of
misfortunes, and that every one of them is inwardly resolved to make
great sacrifices to avoid such a catastrophe. In no country in the
world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in
the United States; nowhere does the majority display less
inclination for those principles which threaten to alter, in
whatever manner, the laws of property. I have often remarked that
theories which are of a revolutionary nature, since they cannot be
put in practice without a complete and sometimes a sudden change in
the state of property and persons, are much less favorably viewed in
the United States than in the great monarchical countries of Europe:
if some men profess them, the bulk of the people reject them with
instinctive abhorrence. I do not hesitate to say that most of the
maxims commonly called democratic in France would be proscribed by
the democracy of the United States. This may easily be understood:
in America men have the opinions and passions of democracy, in
Europe we have still the passions and opinions of revolution. If
ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about
by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States
-- that is to say, they will owe their origin, not to the equality,
but to the inequality, of conditions.
When social conditions are equal, every man is apt to live apart,
centred in himself and forgetful of the public. If the rulers of
democratic nations were either to neglect to correct this fatal
tendency, or to encourage it from a notion that it weans men from
political passions and thus wards off revolutions, they might
eventually produce the evil they seek to avoid, and a time might
come when the inordinate passions of a few men, aided by the
unintelligent selfishness or the pusillanimity of the greater
number, would ultimately compel society to pass through strange
vicissitudes. In democratic communities revolutions are seldom
desired except by a minority; but a minority may sometimes effect
them. I do not assert that democratic nations are secure from
revolutions; I merely say that the state of society in those nations
does not led to revolutions, but rather wards them off. A democratic
people left to itself will not easily embark in great hazards; it is
only led to revolutions unawares; it may sometimes undergo them, but
it does not make them; and I will add that, when such a people has
been allowed to acquire sufficient knowledge and experience, it will
not suffer them to be made. I am well aware that in this respect
public institutions may themselves do much; they may encourage or
repress the tendencies which originate in the state of society. I
therefore do not maintain, I repeat, that a people is secure from
revolutions simply because conditions are equal in the community;
but I think that, whatever the institutions of such a people may be,
great revolutions will always be far less violent and less frequent
than is supposed; and I can easily discern a state of polity, which,
when combined with the principle of equality, would render society
more stationary than it has ever been in our western part of the
world.
The observations I have here made on events may also be applied in
part to opinions. Two things are surprising in the United States --
the mutability of the greater part of human actions, and the
singular stability of certain principles. Men are in constant
motion; the mind of man appears almost unmoved. When once an opinion
has spread over the country and struck root there, it would seem
that no power on earth is strong enough to eradicate it. In the
United States, general principles in religion, philosophy, morality,
and even politics, do not vary, or at least are only modified by a
hidden and often an imperceptible process: even the grossest
prejudices are obliterated with incredible slowness, amidst the
continual friction of men and things.
I hear it said that it is in the nature and the habits of
democracies to be constantly changing their opinions and feelings.
This may be true of small democratic nations, like those of the
ancient world, in which the whole community could be assembled in a
public place and then excited at will by an orator. But I saw
nothing of the kind amongst the great democratic people which dwells
upon the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean. What struck me in
the United States was the difficulty in shaking the majority in an
opinion once conceived, or of drawing it off from a leader once
adopted. Neither speaking nor writing can accomplish it; nothing but
experience will avail, and even experience must be repeated. This is
surprising at first sight, but a more attentive investigation
explains the fact. I do not think that it is as easy as is supposed
to uproot the prejudices of a democratic people -- to change its
belief -- to supersede principles once established, by new
principles in religion, politics, and morals -- in a word, to make
great and frequent changes in men's minds. Not that the human mind
is there at rest -- it is in constant agitation; but it is engaged
in infinitely varying the consequences of known principles, and in
seeking for new consequences, rather than in seeking for new
principles. Its motion is one of rapid circumvolution, rather than
of straightforward impulse by rapid and direct effort; it extends
its orbit by small continual and hasty movements, but it does not
suddenly alter its position.
Men who are equal in rights, in education, in fortune, or, to
comprise all in one word, in their social condition, have
necessarily wants, habits, and tastes which are hardly dissimilar.
As they look at objects under the same aspect, their minds naturally
tend to analogous conclusions; and, though each of them may deviate
from his contemporaries and from opinions of his own, they will
involuntarily and unconsciously concur in a certain number of
received opinions. The more attentively I consider the effects of
equality upon the mind, the more am I persuaded that the
intellectual anarchy which we witness about us is not, as many men
suppose, the natural state of democratic nations. I think it is
rather to be regarded as an accident peculiar to their youth, and
that it only breaks out at that period of transition when men have
already snapped the former ties which bound them together, but are
still amazingly different in origin, education, and manners; so
that, having retained opinions, propensities and tastes of great
diversity, nothing any longer prevents men from avowing them openly.
The leading opinions of men become similar in proportion as their
conditions assimilate; such appears to me to be the general and
permanent law -- the rest is casual and transient.
I believe that it will rarely happen to any man amongst a democratic
community, suddenly to frame a system of notions very remote from
that which his contemporaries have adopted; and if some such
innovator appeared, I apprehend that he would have great difficulty
in finding listeners, still more in finding believers. When the
conditions of men are almost equal, they do not easily allow
themselves to be persuaded by each other. As they all live in close
intercourse, as they have learned the same things together, and as
they lead the same life, they are not naturally disposed to take one
of themselves for a guide, and to follow him implicitly. Men seldom
take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon
trust. Not only is confidence in the superior attainments of certain
individuals weakened amongst democratic nations, as I have elsewhere
remarked, but the general notion of the intellectual superiority
which any man whatsoever may acquire in relation to the rest of the
community is soon overshadowed. As men grow more like each other,
the doctrine of the equality of the intellect gradually infuses
itself into their opinions; and it becomes more difficult for any
innovator to acquire or to exert much influence over the minds of a
people. In such communities sudden intellectual revolutions will
therefore be rare; for, if we read aright the history of the world,
we shall find that great and rapid changes in human opinions have
been produced far less by the force of reasoning than by the
authority of a name. Observe, too, that as the men who live in
democratic societies are not connected with each other by any tie,
each of them must be convinced individually; whilst in aristocratic
society it is enough to convince a few -- the rest follow. If Luther
had lived in an age of equality, and had not had princes and
potentates for his audience, he would perhaps have found it more
difficult to change the aspect of Europe. Not indeed that the men of
democracies are naturally strongly persuaded of the certainty of
their opinions, or are unwavering in belief; they frequently
entertain doubts which no one, in their eyes, can remove. It
sometimes happens at such times that the human mind would willingly
change its position; but as nothing urges or guides it forwards, it
oscillates to and fro without progressive motion.
Even when the reliance of a democratic people has been won, it is
still no easy matter to gain their attention. It is extremely
difficult to obtain a hearing from men living in democracies, unless
it be to speak to them of themselves. They do not attend to the
things said to them, because they are always fully engrossed with
the things they are doing. For indeed few men are idle in democratic
nations; life is passed in the midst of noise and excitement, and
men are so engaged in acting that little remains to them for
thinking. I would especially remark that they are not only employed,
but that they are passionately devoted to their employments. They
are always in action, and each of their actions absorbs their
faculties: the zeal which they display in business puts out the
enthusiasm they might otherwise entertain for ideas. I think that it
is extremely difficult to excite the enthusiasm of a democratic
people for any theory which has not a palpable, direct, and
immediate connection with the daily occupations of life: therefore
they will not easily forsake their old opinions; for it is
enthusiasm which flings the minds of men out of the beaten track,
and effects the great revolutions of the intellect as well as the
great revolutions of the political world. Thus democratic nations
have neither time nor taste to go in search of novel opinions. Even
when those they possess become doubtful, they still retain them,
because it would take too much time and inquiry to change them --
they retain them, not as certain, but as established.
There are yet other and more cogent reasons which prevent any great
change from being easily effected in the principles of a democratic
people. I have already adverted to them at the commencement of this
part of my work. If the influence of individuals is weak and hardly
perceptible amongst such a people, the power exercised by the mass
upon the mind of each individual is extremely great -- I have
already shown for what reasons. I would now observe that it is wrong
to suppose that this depends solely upon the form of government, and
that the majority would lose its intellectual supremacy if it were
to lose its political power. In aristocracies men have often much
greatness and strength of their own: when they find themselves at
variance with the greater number of their fellow-countrymen, they
withdraw to their own circle, where they support and console
themselves. Such is not the case in a democratic country; there
public favor seems as necessary as the air we breathe, and to live
at variance with the multitude is, as it were, not to live. The
multitude requires no laws to coerce those who think not like
itself: public disapprobation is enough; a sense of their loneliness
and impotence overtakes them and drives them to despair.
Whenever social conditions are equal, public opinion presses with
enormous weight upon the mind of each individual; it surrounds,
directs, and oppresses him; and this arises from the very
constitution of society, much more than from its political laws. As
men grow more alike, each man feels himself weaker in regard to all
the rest; as he discerns nothing by which he is considerably raised
above them, or distinguished from them, he mistrusts himself as soon
as they assail him. Not only does he' mistrust his strength, but he
even doubts of his right; and he is very near acknowledging that he
is in the wrong, when the greater number of his countrymen assert
that he is so. The majority do not need to constrain him -- they
convince him. In whatever way then the powers of a democratic
community may be organized and balanced, it will always be extremely
difficult to believe what the bulk of the people reject, or to
profess what they condemn.
This circumstance is extraordinarily favorable to the stability of
opinions. When an opinion has taken root amongst a democratic
people, and established itself in the minds of the bulk of the
community, it afterwards subsists by itself and is maintained
without effort, because no one attacks it. Those who at first
rejected it as false, ultimately receive it as the general
impression; and those who still dispute it in their hearts, conceal
their dissent; they are careful not to engage in a dangerous and
useless conflict. It is true, that when the majority of a democratic
people change their opinions, they may suddenly and arbitrarily
effect strange revolutions in men's minds; but their opinions do not
change without much difficulty, and it is almost as difficult to
show that they are changed.
Time, events, or the unaided individual action of the mind, will
sometimes undermine or destroy an opinion, without any outward sign
of the change. It has not been openly assailed, no conspiracy has
been formed to make war on it, but its followers one by one
noiselessly secede -- day by day a few of them abandon it, until at
last it is only professed by a minority. In this state it will still
continue to prevail. As its enemies remain mute, or only interchange
their thoughts by stealth, they are themselves unaware for a long
period that a great revolution has actually been effected; and in
this state of uncertainty they take no steps -- they observe each
other and are silent. The majority have ceased to believe what they
believed before; but they still affect to believe, and this empty
phantom of public opinion is strong enough to chill innovators, and
to keep them silent and at a respectful distance. We live at a time
which has witnessed the most rapid changes of opinion in the minds
of men; nevertheless it may be that the leading opinions of society
will ere long be more settled than they have been for several
centuries in our history: that time is not yet come, but it may
perhaps be approaching. As I examine more closely the natural wants
and tendencies of democratic nations, I grow persuaded that if ever
social equality is generally and permanently established in the
world, great intellectual and political revolutions will become more
difficult and less frequent than is supposed. Because the men of
democracies appear always excited, uncertain, eager, changeable in
their wills and in their positions, it is imagined that they are
suddenly to abrogate their laws, to adopt new opinions, and to
assume new manners. But if the principle of equality predisposes men
to change, it also suggests to them certain interests and tastes
which cannot be satisfied without a settled order of things;
equality urges them on, but at the same time it holds them back; it
spurs them, but fastens them to earth; -- it kindles their desires,
but limits their powers. This, however, is not perceived at first;
the passions which tend to sever the citizens of a democracy are
obvious enough; but the hidden force which restrains and unites them
is not discernible at a glance.
Amidst the ruins which surround me, shall I dare to say that
revolutions are not what I most fear for coming generations? If men
continue to shut themselves more closely within the narrow circle of
domestic interests and to live upon that kind of excitement, it is
to be apprehended that they may ultimately become inaccessible to
those great and powerful public emotions which perturb nations --
but which enlarge them and recruit them. When property becomes so
fluctuating, and the love of property so restless and so ardent, I
cannot but fear that men may arrive at such a state as to regard
every new theory as a peril, every innovation as an irksome toil,
every social improvement as a stepping-stone to revolution, and so
refuse to move altogether for fear of being moved too far. I dread,
and I confess it, lest they should at last so entirely give way to a
cowardly love of present enjoyment, as to lose sight of the
interests of their future selves and of those of their descendants;
and to prefer to glide along the easy current of life, rather than
to make, when it is necessary, a strong and sudden effort to a
higher purpose. It is believed by some that modern society will be
ever changing its aspect; for myself, I fear that it will ultimately
be too invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same
prejudices, the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and
circumscribed; that the mind will swing backwards and forwards
forever, without begetting fresh ideas; that man will waste his
strength in bootless and solitary trifling; and, though in continual
motion, that humanity will cease to advance.
Chapter 22 Why Democratic Nations Are Naturally Desirous of Peace,
and Democratic Armies of War
THE same interests, the same fears, the same passions which deter
democratic nations from revolutions, deter them also from war; the
spirit of military glory and the spirit of revolution are weakened
at the same time and by the same causes. The ever-increasing numbers
of men of property -- lovers of peace, the growth of personal wealth
which war so rapidly consumes, the mildness of manners, the
gentleness of heart, those tendencies to pity which are engendered
by the equality of conditions, that coolness of understanding which
renders men comparatively insensible to the violent and poetical
excitement of arms -- all these causes concur to quench the military
spirit. I think it may be admitted as a general and constant rule,
that, amongst civilized nations, the warlike passions will become
more rare and less intense in proportion as social conditions shall
be more equal. War is nevertheless an occurrence to which all
nations are subject, democratic nations as well as others. Whatever
taste they may have for peace, they must hold themselves in
readiness to repel aggression, or in other words they must have an
army.
Fortune, which has conferred so many peculiar benefits upon the
inhabitants of the United States, has placed them in the midst of a
wilderness, where they have, so to speak, no neighbors: a few
thousand soldiers are sufficient for their wants; but this is
peculiar to America, not to democracy. The equality of conditions,
and the manners as well as the institutions resulting from it, do
not exempt a democratic people from the necessity of standing
armies, and their armies always exercise a powerful influence over
their fate. It is therefore of singular importance to inquire what
are the natural propensities of the men of whom these armies are
composed.
Amongst aristocratic nations, especially amongst those in which
birth is the only source of rank, the same inequality exists in the
army as in the nation; the officer is noble, the soldier is a serf;
the one is naturally called upon to command, the other to obey. In
aristocratic armies, the private soldier's ambition is therefore
circumscribed within very narrow limits. Nor has the ambition of the
officer an unlimited range. An aristocratic body not only forms a
part of the scale of ranks in the nation, but it contains a scale of
ranks within itself: the members of whom it is composed are placed
one above another, in a particular and unvarying manner. Thus one
man is born to the command of a regiment, another to that of a
company; when once they have reached the utmost object of their
hopes, they stop of their own accord, and remain contented with
their lot. There is, besides, a strong cause, which, in
aristocracies, weakens the officer's desire of promotion. Amongst
aristocratic nations, an officer, independently of his rank in the
army, also occupies an elevated rank in society; the former is
almost always in his eyes only an appendage to the latter. A
nobleman who embraces the profession of arms follows it less from
motives of ambition than from a sense of the duties imposed on him
by his birth. He enters the army in order to find an honorable
employment for the idle years of his youth, and to be able to bring
back to his home and his peers some honorable recollections of
military life; but his principal object is not to obtain by that
profession either property, distinction, or power, for he possesses
these advantages in his own right, and enjoys them without leaving
his home.
In democratic armies all the soldiers may become officers, which
makes the desire of promotion general, and immeasurably extends the
bounds of military ambition. The officer, on his part, sees nothing
which naturally and necessarily stops him at one grade more than at
another; and each grade has immense importance in his eyes, because
his rank in society almost always depends on his rank in the army.
Amongst democratic nations it often happens that an officer has no
property but his pay, and no distinction but that of military
honors: consequently as often as his duties change, his fortune
changes, and he becomes, as it were, a new man. What was only an
appendage to his position in aristocratic armies, has thus become
the main point, the basis of his whole condition. Under the old
French monarchy officers were always called by their titles of
nobility; they are now always called by the title of their military
rank. This little change in the forms of language suffices to show
that a great revolution has taken place in the constitution of
society and in that of the army. In democratic armies the desire of
advancement is almost universal: it is ardent, tenacious, perpetual;
it is strengthened by all other desires, and only extinguished with
life itself. But it is easy to see, that of all armies in the world,
those in which advancement must be slowest in time of peace are the
armies of democratic countries. As the number of commissions is
naturally limited, whilst the number of competitors is almost
unlimited, and as the strict law of equality is over all alike, none
can make rapid progress -- many can make no progress at all. Thus
the desire of advancement is greater, and the opportunities of
advancement fewer, there than elsewhere. All the ambitious spirits
of a democratic army are consequently ardently desirous of war,
because war makes vacancies, and warrants the violation of that law
of seniority which is the sole privilege natural to democracy.
We thus arrive at this singular consequence, that of all armies
those most ardently desirous of war are democratic armies, and of
all nations those most fond of peace are democratic nations: and,
what makes these facts still more extraordinary, is that these
contrary effects are produced at the same time by the principle of
equality.
All the members of the community, being alike, constantly harbor the
wish, and discover the possibility, of changing their condition and
improving their welfare: this makes them fond of peace, which is
favorable to industry, and allows every man to pursue his own little
undertakings to their completion. On the other hand, this same
equality makes soldiers dream of fields of battle, by increasing the
value of military honors in the eyes of those who follow the
profession of arms, and by rendering those honors accessible to all.
In either case the inquietude of the heart is the same, the taste
for enjoyment as insatiable, the ambition of success as great -- the
means of gratifying it are alone different.
These opposite tendencies of the nation and the army expose
democratic communities to great dangers. When a military spirit
forsakes a people, the profession of arms immediately ceases to be
held in honor, and military men fall to the lowest rank of the
public servants: they are little esteemed, and no longer understood.
The reverse `of what takes place in aristocratic ages then occurs;
the men who enter the army are no longer those of the highest, but
of the lowest rank. Military ambition is only indulged in when no
other is possible. Hence arises a circle of cause and consequence
from which it is difficult to escape: the best part of the nation
shuns the military profession because that profession is not
honored, and the profession is not honored because the best part of
the nation has ceased to follow it. It is then no matter of surprise
that democratic armies are often restless, ill-tempered, and
dissatisfied with their lot, although their physical condition is
commonly far better, and their discipline less strict than in other
countries. The soldier feels that he occupies an inferior position,
and his wounded pride either stimulates his taste for hostilities
which would render his services necessary, or gives him a turn for
revolutions, during which he may hope to win by force of arms the
political influence and personal importance now denied him. The
composition of democratic armies makes this last-mentioned danger
much to be feared. In democratic communities almost every man has
some property to preserve; but democratic armies are generally led
by men without property, most of whom have little to lose in civil
broils. The bulk of the nation is naturally much more afraid of
revolutions than in the ages of aristocracy, but the leaders of the
army much less so.
Moreover, as amongst democratic nations (to repeat what I have just
remarked) the wealthiest, the best educated, and the most able men
seldom adopt the military profession, the army, taken collectively,
eventually forms a small nation by itself, where the mind is less
enlarged, and habits are more rude than in the nation at large. Now,
this small uncivilized nation has arms in its possession, and alone
knows how to use them: for, indeed, the pacific temper of the
community increases the danger to which a democratic people is
exposed from the military and turbulent spirit of the army. Nothing
is so dangerous as an army amidst an unwarlike nation; the excessive
love of the whole community for quiet continually puts its
constitution at the mercy of the soldiery.
It may therefore be asserted, generally speaking, that if democratic
nations are naturally prone to peace from their interests and their
propensities, they are constantly drawn to war and revolutions by
their armies. Military revolutions, which are scarcely ever to be
apprehended in aristocracies, are always to be dreaded amongst
democratic nations. These perils must be reckoned amongst the most
formidable which beset their future fate, and the attention of
statesmen should be sedulously applied to find a remedy for the
evil.
When a nation perceives that it is inwardly affected by the restless
ambition of its army, the first thought which occurs is to give this
inconvenient ambition an object by going to war. I speak no ill of
war: war almost always enlarges the mind of a people, and raises
their character. In some cases it is the only check to the excessive
growth of certain propensities which naturally spring out of the
equality of conditions, and it must be considered as a necessary
corrective to certain inveterate diseases to which democratic
communities are liable. War has great advantages, but we must not
flatter ourselves that it can diminish the danger I have just
pointed out. That peril is only suspended by it, to return more
fiercely when the war is over; for armies are much more impatient of
peace after having tasted military exploits. War could only be a
remedy for a people which should always be athirst for military
glory. I foresee that all the military rulers who may rise up in
great democratic nations, will find it easier to conquer with their
armies, than to make their armies live at peace after conquest.
There are two things which a democratic people will always find very
difficult -- to begin a war, and to end it.
Again, if war has some peculiar advantages for democratic nations,
on the other hand it exposes them to certain dangers which
aristocracies have no cause to dread to an equal extent. I shall
only point out two of these. Although war gratifies the army, it
embarrasses and often exasperates that countless multitude of men
whose minor passions every day require peace in order to be
satisfied. Thus there is some risk of its causing, under another
form, the disturbance it is intended to prevent. No protracted war
can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. Not indeed
that after every victory it is to be apprehended that the victorious
generals will possess themselves by force of the supreme power,
after the manner of Sylla and Caesar: the danger is of another kind.
War does not always give over democratic communities to military
government, but it must invariably and immeasurably increase the
powers of civil government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate
the direction of all men and the management of all things in the
hands of the administration. If it lead not to despotism by sudden
violence, it prepares men for it more gently by their habits. All
those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought
to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish
it. This is the first axiom of the science.
One remedy, which appears to be obvious when the ambition of
soldiers and officers becomes the subject of alarm, is to augment
the number of commissions to be distributed by increasing the army.
This affords temporary relief, but it plunges the country into
deeper difficulties at some future period. To increase the army may
produce a lasting effect in an aristocratic community, because
military ambition is there confined to one class of men, and the
ambition of each individual stops, as it were, at a certain limit;
so that it may be possible to satisfy all who feel its influence.
But nothing is gained by increasing the army amongst a democratic
people, because the number of aspirants always rises in exactly the
same ratio as the army itself. Those whose claims have been
satisfied by the creation of new commissions are instantly succeeded
by a fresh multitude beyond all power of satisfaction; and even
those who were but now satisfied soon begin to crave more
advancement; for the same excitement prevails in the ranks of the
army as in the civil classes of democratic society, and what men
want is not to reach a certain grade, but to have constant
promotion. Though these wants may not be very vast, they are
perpetually recurring. Thus a democratic nation, by augmenting its
army, only allays for a time the ambition of the military
profession, which soon becomes even more formidable, because the
number of those who feel it is increased. I am of opinion that a
restless and turbulent spirit is an evil inherent in the very
constitution of democratic armies, and beyond hope of cure. The
legislators of democracies must not expect to devise any military
organization capable by its influence of calming and restraining the
military profession: their efforts would exhaust their powers,
before the object is attained.
The remedy for the vices of the army is not to be found in the army
itself, but in the country. Democratic nations are naturally afraid
of disturbance and of despotism; the object is to turn these natural
instincts into well-digested, deliberate, and lasting tastes. When
men have at last learned to make a peaceful and profitable use of
freedom, and have felt its blessings -- when they have conceived a
manly love of order, and have freely submitted themselves to
discipline -- these same men, if they follow the profession of arms,
bring into it, unconsciously and almost against their will, these
same habits and manners. The general spirit of the nation being
infused into the spirit peculiar to the army, tempers the opinions
and desires engendered by military life, or represses them by the
mighty force of public opinion. Teach but the citizens to be
educated, orderly, firm, and free, the soldiers will be disciplined
and obedient. Any law which, in repressing the turbulent spirit of
the army, should tend to diminish the spirit of freedom in the
nation, and to overshadow the notion of law and right, would defeat
its object: it would do much more to favor, than to defeat, the
establishment of military tyranny.
After all, and in spite of all precautions, a large army amidst a
democratic people will always be a source of great danger; the most
effectual means of diminishing that danger would be to reduce the
army, but this is a remedy which all nations have it not in their
power to use.
Chapter 23 Which is the Most Warlike and Most Revolutionary Class in
Democratic Armies?
IT is a part of the essence of a democratic army to be very numerous
in proportion to the people to which it belongs, as I shall
hereafter show. On the other hand, men living in democratic times
seldom choose a military life. Democratic nations are therefore soon
led to give up the system of voluntary recruiting for that of
compulsory enlistment. The necessity of their social condition
compels them to resort to the latter means, and it may easily be
foreseen that they will all eventually adopt it. When military
service is compulsory, the burden is indiscriminately and equally
borne by the whole community. This is another necessary consequence
of the social condition of these nations, and of their notions. The
government may do almost whatever it pleases, provided it appeals to
the whole community at once: it is the unequal distribution of the
weight, not the weight itself, which commonly occasions resistance.
But as military service is common to all the citizens, the evident
consequence is that each of them remains but for a few years on
active duty. Thus it is in the nature of things that the soldier in
democracies only passes through the army, whilst among most
aristocratic nations the military profession is one which the
soldier adopts, or which is imposed upon him, for life.
This has important consequences. Amongst the soldiers of a
democratic army, some acquire a taste for military life, but the
majority, being enlisted against their will, and ever ready to go
back to their homes, do not consider themselves as seriously engaged
in the military profession, and are always thinking of quitting it.
Such men do not contract the wants, and only half partake in the
passions, which that mode of life engenders. They adapt themselves
to their military duties, but their minds are still attached to the
interests and the duties which engaged them in civil life. They do
not therefore imbibe the spirit of the army -- or rather, they
infuse the spirit of the community at large into the army, and
retain it there. Amongst democratic nations the private soldiers
remain most like civilians: upon them the habits of the nation have
the firmest hold, and public opinion most influence. It is by the
instrumentality of the private soldiers especially that it may be
possible to infuse into a democratic army the love of freedom and
the respect of rights, if these principles have once been
successfully inculcated on the people at large. The reverse happens
amongst aristocratic nations, where the soldiery have eventually
nothing in common with their fellow-citizens, and where they live
amongst them as strangers, and often as enemies. In aristocratic
armies the officers are the conservative element, because the
officers alone have retained a strict connection with civil society,
and never forego their purpose of resuming their place in it sooner
or later: in democratic armies the private soldiers stand in this
position, and from the same cause.
It often happens, on the contrary, that in these same democratic
armies the officers contract tastes and wants wholly distinct from
those of the nation -- a fact which may be thus accounted for.
Amongst democratic nations, the man who becomes an officer severs
all the ties which bound him to civil life; he leaves it forever; he
has no interest to resume it. His true country is the army, since he
owes all he has to the rank he has attained in it; he therefore
follows the fortunes of the army, rises or sinks with it, and
henceforward directs all his hopes to that quarter only. As the
wants of an officer are distinct from those of the country, he may
perhaps ardently desire ward or labor to bring about a revolution at
the very moment when the nation is most desirous of stability and
peace. There are, nevertheless, some causes which allay this
restless and warlike spirit. Though ambition is universal and
continual amongst democratic nations, we have seen that it is seldom
great. A man who, being born in the lower classes of the community,
has risen from the ranks to be an officer, has already taken a
prodigious step. He has gained a footing in a sphere above that
which he filled in civil life, and he has acquired rights which most
democratic nations will ever consider as inalienable. He is willing
to pause after so great an effort, and to enjoy what he has won. The
fear of risking what he has already obtained damps the desire of
acquiring what he has not got. Having conquered the first and
greatest impediment which opposed his advancement, he resigns
himself with less impatience to the slowness of his progress. His
ambition will be more and more cooled in proportion as the
increasing distinction of his rank teaches him that he has more to
put in jeopardy. If I am not mistaken, the least warlike, and also
the least revolutionary part, of a democratic army, will always be
its chief commanders.
But the remarks I have just made on officers and soldiers are not
applicable to a numerous class which in all armies fills the
intermediate space between them -- I mean the class of
non-commissioned officers. This class of non-commissioned officers
which have never acted a part in history until the present century,
is henceforward destined, I think, to play one of some importance.
Like the officers, non-commissioned officers have broken, in their
minds, all the ties which bound them to civil life; like the former,
they devote themselves permanently to the service, and perhaps make
it even more exclusively the object of all their desires: but
non-commissioned officers are men who have not yet reached a firm
and lofty post at which they may pause and breathe more freely, ere
they can attain further promotion. By the very nature of his duties,
which is invariable, a non-commissioned officer is doomed to lead an
obscure, confined, comfortless, and precarious existence; as yet he
sees nothing of military life but its dangers; he knows nothing but
its privations and its discipline -- more difficult to support than
dangers: he suffers the more from his present miseries, from knowing
that the constitution of society and of the army allow him to rise
above them; he may, indeed, at any time obtain his commission, and
enter at once upon command, honors, independence, rights, and
enjoyments. Not only does this object of his hopes appear to him of
immense importance, but he is never sure of reaching it till it is
actually his own; the grade he fills is by no means irrevocable; he
is always entirely abandoned to the arbitrary pleasure of his
commanding officer, for this is imperiously required by the
necessity of discipline: a slight fault, a whim, may always deprive
him in an instant of the fruits of many years of toil and endeavor;
until he has reached the grade to which he aspires he has
accomplished nothing; not till he reaches that grade does his career
seem to begin. A desperate ambition cannot fail to be kindled in a
man thus incessantly goaded on by his youth, his wants, his
passions, the spirit of his age, his hopes, and his fears.
Non-commissioned officers are therefore bent on war -- on war
always, and at any cost; but if war be denied them, then they desire
revolutions to suspend the authority of established regulations, and
to enable them, aided by the general confusion and the political
passions of the time, to get rid of their superior officers and to
take their places. Nor is it impossible for them to bring about such
a crisis, because their common origin and habits give them much
influence over the soldiers, however different may be their passions
and their desires.
It would be an error to suppose that these various characteristics
of officers, non-commissioned officers, and men, belong to any
particular time or country; they will always occur at all times, and
amongst all democratic nations. In every democratic army the
non-commissioned officers will be the worst representatives of the
pacific and orderly spirit of the country, and the private soldiers
will be the best. The latter will carry with them into military life
the strength or weakness of the manners of the nation; they will
display a faithful reflection of the community: if that community is
ignorant and weak, they will allow themselves to be drawn by their
leaders into disturbances, either unconsciously or against their
will; if it is enlightened and energetic, the community will itself
keep them within the bounds of order.
Chapter 24 Causes which Render Democratic Armies Weaker Than Other
Armies at the Outset of a Campaign, and More Formidable in
Protracted Warfare
ANY army is in danger of being conquered at the outset of a
campaign, after a long peace; any army which has long been engaged
in warfare has strong chances of victory: this truth is peculiarly
applicable to democratic armies. In aristocracies the military
profession, being a privileged career, is held in honor even in time
of peace. Men of great talents, great attainments, and great
ambition embrace it; the army is in all respects on a level with the
nation, and frequently above it. We have seen, on the contrary, that
amongst a democratic people the choicer minds of the nation are
gradually drawn away from the military profession, to seek by other
paths distinction, power, and especially wealth. After a long peace
-- and in democratic ages the periods of peace are long -- the army
is always inferior to the country itself. In this state it is called
into active service; and until war has altered it, there is danger
for the country as well as for the army.
I have shown that in democratic armies, and in time of peace, the
rule of seniority is the supreme and inflexible law of advancement.
This is not only a consequence, as I have before observed, of the
constitution of these armies, but of the constitution of the people,
and it will always occur. Again, as amongst these nations the
officer derives his position in the country solely from his position
in the army, and as he draws all the distinction and the competency
he enjoys from the same source, he does not retire from his
profession, or is not super-annuated, till towards the extreme close
of life. The consequence of these two causes is, that when a
democratic people goes to war after a long interval of peace all the
leading officers of the army are old men. I speak not only of the
generals, but of the non-commissioned officers, who have most of
them been stationary, or have only advanced step by step. It may be
remarked with surprise, that in a democratic army after a long peace
all the soldiers are mere boys, and all the superior officers in
declining years; so that the former are wanting in experience, the
latter in vigor. This is a strong element of defeat, for the first
condition of successful generalship is youth: I should not have
ventured to say so if the greatest captain of modern times had not
made the observation.
These two causes do not act in the same manner upon aristocratic
armies: as men are promoted in them by right of birth much more than
by right of seniority, there are in all ranks a certain number of
young men, who bring to their profession all the early vigor of body
and mind. Again, as the men who seek for military honors amongst an
aristocratic people, enjoy a settled position in civil society, they
seldom continue in the army until old age overtakes them. After
having devoted the most vigorous years of youth to the career of
arms, they voluntarily retire, and spend at home the remainder of
their maturer years.
A long peace not only fills democratic armies with elderly officers,
but it also gives to all the officers habits both of body and mind
which render them unfit for actual service. The man who has long
lived amidst the calm and lukewarm atmosphere of democratic manners
can at first ill adapt himself to the harder toils and sterner
duties of warfare; and if he has not absolutely lost the taste for
arms, at least he has assumed a mode of life which unfits him for
conquest.
Amongst aristocratic nations, the ease of civil life exercises less
influence on the manners of the army, because amongst those nations
the aristocracy commands the army: and an aristocracy, however
plunged in luxurious pleasures, has always many other passions
besides that of its own well-being, and to satisfy those passions
more thoroughly its well-being will be readily sacrificed.
I have shown that in democratic armies, in time of peace, promotion
is extremely slow. The officers at first support this state of
things with impatience, they grow excited, restless, exasperated,
but in the end most of them make up their minds to it. Those who
have the largest share of ambition and of resources quit the army;
others, adapting their tastes and their desires to their scanty
fortunes, ultimately look upon the military profession in a civil
point of view. The quality they value most in it is the competency
and security which attend it: their whole notion of the future rests
upon the certainty of this little provision, and all they require is
peaceably to enjoy it. Thus not only does a long peace fill an army
with old men, but it frequently imparts the views of old men to
those who are still in the prime of life.
I have also shown that amongst democratic nations in time of peace
the military profession is held in little honor and indifferently
followed. This want of public favor is a heavy discouragement to the
army; it weighs down the minds of the troops, and when war breaks
out at last, they cannot immediately resume their spring and vigor.
No similar cause of moral weakness occurs in aristocratic armies:
there the officers are never lowered either in their own eyes or in
those of their countrymen, because, independently of their military
greatness, they are personally great. But even if the influence of
peace operated on the two kinds of armies in the same manner, the
results would still be different. When the officers of an
aristocratic army have lost their warlike spirit and the desire of
raising themselves by service, they still retain a certain respect
for the honor of their class, and an old habit of being foremost to
set an example. But when the officers of a democratic army have no
longer the love of war and the ambition of arms, nothing whatever
remains to them.
I am therefore of opinion that, when a democratic people engages in
a war after a long peace, it incurs much more risk of defeat than
any other nation; but it ought not easily to be cast down by its
reverses, for the chances of success for such an army are increased
by the duration of the war. When a war has at length, by its long
continuance, roused the whole community from their peaceful
occupations and ruined their minor undertakings, the same passions
which made them attach so much importance to the maintenance of
peace will be turned to arms. War, after it has destroyed all modes
of speculation, becomes itself the great and sole speculation, to
which all the ardent and ambitious desires which equality engenders
are exclusively directed. Hence it is that the selfsame democratic
nations which are so reluctant to engage in hostilities, sometimes
perform prodigious achievements when once they have taken the field.
As the war attracts more and more of public attention, and is seen
to create high reputations and great fortunes in a short space of
time, the choicest spirits of the nation enter the military
profession: all the enterprising, proud, and martial minds, no
longer of the aristocracy solely, but of the whole country, are
drawn in this direction. As the number of competitors for military
honors is immense, and war drives every man to his proper level,
great generals are always sure to spring up. A long war produces
upon a democratic army the same effects that a revolution produces
upon a people; it breaks through regulations, and allows
extraordinary men to rise above the common level. Those officers
whose bodies and minds have grown old in peace, are removed, or
superannuated, or they die. In their stead a host of young men are
pressing on, whose frames are already hardened, whose desires are
extended and inflamed by active service. They are bent on
advancement at all hazards, and perpetual advancement; they are
followed by others with the same passions and desires, and after
these are others yet unlimited by aught but the size of the army.
The principle of equality opens the door of ambition to all, and
death provides chances for ambition. Death is constantly thinning
the ranks, making vacancies, closing and opening the career of arms.
There is moreover a secret connection between the military character
and the character of democracies, which war brings to light. The men
of democracies are naturally passionately eager to acquire what they
covet, and to enjoy it on easy conditions. They for the most part
worship chance, and are much less afraid of death than of
difficulty. This is the spirit which they bring to commerce and
manufactures; and this same spirit, carried with them to the field
of battle, induces them willingly to expose their lives in order to
secure in a moment the rewards of victory. No kind of greatness is
more pleasing to the imagination of a democratic people than
military greatness -- a greatness of vivid and sudden lustre,
obtained without toil, by nothing but the risk of life. Thus, whilst
the interests and the tastes of the members of a democratic
community divert them from war, their habits of mind fit them for
carrying on war well; they soon make good soldiers, when they are
roused from their business and their enjoyments. If peace is
peculiarly hurtful to democratic armies, war secures to them
advantages which no other armies ever possess; and these advantages,
however little felt at first, cannot fail in the end to give them
the victory. An aristocratic nation, which in a contest with a
democratic people does not succeed in ruining the latter at the
outset of the war, always runs a great risk of being conquered by
it.
Chapter 25 Of Discipline in Democratic Armies
IT is a very general opinion, especially in aristocratic countries,
that the great social equality which prevails in democracies
ultimately renders the private soldier independent of the officer,
and thus destroys the bond of discipline. This is a mistake, for
there are two kinds of discipline, which it is important not to
confound. When the officer is noble and the soldier a serf -- one
rich, the other poor -- the former educated and strong, the latter
ignorant and weak -- the strictest bond of obedience may easily be
established between the two men. The soldier is broken in to
military discipline, as it were, before he enters the army; or
rather, military discipline is nothing but an enhancement of social
servitude. In aristocratic armies the soldier will soon become
insensible to everything but the orders of his superior officers; he
acts without reflection, triumphs without enthusiasm, and dies
without complaint: in this state he is no longer a man, but he is
still a most formidable animal trained for war.
A democratic people must despair of ever obtaining from soldiers
that blind, minute, submissive, and invariable obedience which an
aristocratic people may impose on them without difficulty. The state
of society does not prepare them for it, and the nation might be in
danger of losing its natural advantages if it sought artificially to
acquire advantages of this particular kind. Amongst democratic
communities, military discipline ought not to attempt to annihilate
the free spring of the faculties; all that can be done by discipline
is to direct it; the obedience thus inculcated is less exact, but it
is more eager and more intelligent. It has its root in the will of
him who obeys: it rests not only on his instinct, but on his reason;
and consequently it will often spontaneously become more strict as
danger requires it. The discipline of an aristocratic army is apt to
be relaxed in war, because that discipline is founded upon habits,
and war disturbs those habits. The discipline of a democratic army
on the contrary is strengthened in sight of the enemy, because every
soldier then clearly perceives that he must be silent and obedient
in order to conquer.
The nations which have performed the greatest warlike achievements
knew no other discipline than that which I speak of. Amongst the
ancients none were admitted into the armies but freemen and
citizens, who differed but little from one another, and were
accustomed to treat each other as equals. In this respect it may be
said that the armies of antiquity were democratic, although they
came out of the bosom of aristocracy; the consequence was that in
those armies a sort of fraternal familiarity prevailed between the
officers and the men. Plutarch's lives of great commanders furnish
convincing instances of the fact: the soldiers were in the constant
habit of freely addressing their general, and the general listened
to and answered whatever the soldiers had to say: they were kept in
order by language and by example, far more than by constraint or
punishment; the general was as much their companion as their chief.
I know not whether the soldiers of Greece and Rome ever carried the
minutiae of military discipline to the same degree of perfection as
the Russians have done; but this did not prevent Alexander from
conquering Asia -- and Rome, the world.
Chapter 26 Some Considerations on War in Democratic Communities
WHEN the principle of equality is in growth, not only amongst a
single nation, but amongst several neighboring nations at the same
time, as is now the case in Europe, the inhabitants of these
different countries, notwithstanding the dissimilarity of language,
of customs, and of laws, nevertheless resemble each other in their
equal dread of war and their common love of peace. It is in vain
that ambition or anger puts arms in the hands of princes; they are
appeased in spite of themselves by a species of general apathy and
good-will, which makes the sword drop from their grasp, and wars
become more rare. As the spread of equality, taking place in several
countries at once, simultaneously impels their various inhabitants
to follow manufactures and commerce, not only do their tastes grow
alike, but their interests are so mixed and entangled with one
another that no nation can inflict evils on other nations without
those evils falling back upon itself; and all nations ultimately
regard war as a calamity, almost as severe to the conqueror as to
the conquered. Thus, on the one hand, it is extremely difficult in
democratic ages to draw nations into hostilities; but on the other
hand, it is almost impossible that any two of them should go to war
without embroiling the rest. The interests of all are so interlaced,
their opinions and their wants so much alike, that none can remain
quiet when the others stir. Wars therefore become more rare, but
when they break out they spread over a larger field. Neighboring
democratic nations not only become alike in some respects, but they
eventually grow to resemble each other in almost all. This
similitude of nations has consequences of great importance in
relation to war.
If I inquire why it is that the Helvetic Confederacy made the
greatest and most powerful nations of Europe tremble in the
fifteenth century, whilst at the present day the power of that
country is exactly proportioned to its population, I perceive that
the Swiss are become like all the surrounding communities, and those
surrounding communities like the Swiss: so that as numerical
strength now forms the only difference between them, victory
necessarily attends the largest army. Thus one of the consequences
of the democratic revolution which is going on in Europe is to make
numerical strength preponderate on all fields of battle, and to
constrain all small nations to incorporate themselves with large
States, or at least to adopt the policy of the latter. As numbers
are the determining cause of victory, each people ought of course to
strive by all the means in its power to bring the greatest possible
number of men into the field. When it was possible to enlist a kind
of troops superior to all others, such as the Swiss infantry or the
French horse of the sixteenth century, it was not thought necessary
to raise very large armies; but the case is altered when one soldier
is as efficient as another.
The same cause which begets this new want also supplies means of
satisfying it; for, as I have already observed, when men are all
alike, they are all weak, and the supreme power of the State is
naturally much stronger amongst democratic nations than elsewhere.
Hence, whilst these nations are desirous of enrolling the whole male
population in the ranks of the army, they have the power of
effecting this object: the consequence is, that in democratic ages
armies seem to grow larger in proportion as the love of war
declines. In the same ages, too, the manner of carrying on war is
likewise altered by the same causes. Machiavelli observes in "The
Prince," "that it is much more difficult to subdue a people which
has a prince and his barons for its leaders, than a nation which is
commanded by a prince and his slaves." To avoid offence, let us read
public functionaries for slaves, and this important truth will be
strictly applicable to our own time.
A great aristocratic people cannot either conquer its neighbors, or
be conquered by them, without great difficulty. It cannot conquer
them, because all its forces can never be collected and held
together for a considerable period: it cannot be conquered, because
an enemy meets at every step small centres of resistance by which
invasion is arrested. War against an aristocracy may be compared to
war in a mountainous country; the defeated party has constant
opportunities of rallying its forces to make a stand in a new
position. Exactly the reverse occurs amongst democratic nations:
they easily bring their whole disposable force into the field, and
when the nation is wealthy and populous it soon becomes victorious;
but if ever it is conquered, and its territory invaded, it has few
resources at command; and if the enemy takes the capital, the nation
is lost. This may very well be explained: as each member of the
community is individually isolated and extremely powerless, no one
of the whole body can either defend himself or present a rallying
point to others. Nothing is strong in a democratic country except
the State; as the military strength of the State is destroyed by the
destruction of the army, and its civil power paralyzed by the
capture of the chief city, all that remains is only a multitude
without strength or government, unable to resist the organized power
by which it is assailed. I am aware that this danger may be lessened
by the creation of provincial liberties, and consequently of
provincial powers, but this remedy will always be insufficient. For
after such a catastrophe, not only is the population unable to carry
on hostilities, but it may be apprehended that they will not be
inclined to attempt it.
In accordance with the law of nations adopted in civilized
countries, the object of wars is not to seize the property of
private individuals, but simply to get possession of political
power. The destruction of private property is only occasionally
resorted to for the purpose of attaining the latter object. When an
aristocratic country is invaded after the defeat of its army, the
nobles, although they are at the same time the wealthiest members of
the community, will continue to defend themselves individually
rather than submit; for if the conqueror remained master of the
country, he would deprive them of their political power, to which
they cling even more closely than to their property. They therefore
prefer fighting to subjection, which is to them the greatest of all
misfortunes; and they readily carry the people along with them
because the people has long been used to follow and obey them, and
besides has but little to risk in the war. Amongst a nation in which
equality of conditions prevails, each citizen, on the contrary, has
but slender share of political power, and often has no share at all;
on the other hand, all are independent, and all have something to
lose; so that they are much less afraid of being conquered, and much
more afraid of war, than an aristocratic people. It will always be
extremely difficult to decide a democratic population to take up
arms, when hostilities have reached its own territory. Hence the
necessity of giving to such a people the rights and the political
character which may impart to every citizen some of those interests
that cause the nobles to act for the public welfare in aristocratic
countries.
It should never be forgotten by the princes and other leaders of
democratic nations, that nothing but the passion and the habit of
freedom can maintain an advantageous contest with the passion and
the habit of physical well-being. I can conceive nothing better
prepared for subjection, in case of defeat, than a democratic people
without free institutions.
Formerly it was customary to take the field with a small body of
troops, to fight in small engagements, and to make long, regular
sieges: modern tactics consist in fighting decisive battles, and, as
soon as a line of march is open before the army, in rushing upon the
capital city, in order to terminate the war at a single blow.
Napoleon, it is said, was the inventor of this new system; but the
invention of such a system did not depend on any individual man,
whoever he might be. The mode in which Nopoleon carried on war was
suggested to him by the state of society in his time; that mode was
successful, because it was eminently adapted to that state of
society, and because he was the first to employ it. Napoleon was the
first commander who marched at the head of an army from capital to
capital, but the road was opened for him by the ruin of feudal
society. It may fairly be believed that, if that extraordinary man
had been born three hundred years ago, he would not have derived the
same results from his method of warfare, or, rather, that he would
have had a different method.
I shall add but a few words on civil wars, for fear of exhausting
the patience of the reader. Most of the remarks which I have made
respecting foreign wars are applicable a' fortiori to civil wars.
Men living in democracies are not naturally prone to the military
character; they sometimes assume it, when they have been dragged by
compulsion to the field; but to rise in a body and voluntarily to
expose themselves to the horrors of war, and especially of civil
war, is a course which the men of democracies are not apt to adopt.
None but the most adventurous members of the community consent to
run into such risks; the bulk of the population remains motionless.
But even if the population were inclined to act, considerable
obstacles would stand in their way; for they can resort to no old
and well-established influence which they are willing to obey -- no
well-known leaders to rally the discontented, as well as to
discipline and to lead them -- no political powers subordinate to
the supreme power of the nation, which afford an effectual support
to the resistance directed against the government. In democratic
countries the moral power of the majority is immense, and the
physical resources which it has at its command are out of all
proportion to the physical resources which may be combined against
it. Therefore the party which occupies the seat of the majority,
which speaks in its name and wields its power, triumphs
instantaneously and irresistibly over all private resistance; it
does not even give such opposition time to exist, but nips it in the
bud. Those who in such nations seek to effect a revolution by force
of arms have no other resource than suddenly to seize upon the whole
engine of government as it stands, which can better be done by a
single blow than by a war; for as soon as there is a regular war,
the party which represents the State is always certain to conquer.
The only case in which a civil war could arise is, if the army
should divide itself into two factions, the one raising the standard
of rebellion, the other remaining true to its allegiance. An army
constitutes a small community, very closely united together, endowed
with great powers of vitality, and able to supply its own wants for
some time. Such a war might be bloody, but it could not be long; for
either the rebellious army would gain over the government by the
sole display of its resources, or by its first victory, and then the
war would be over; or the struggle would take place, and then that
portion of the army which should not be supported by the organized
powers of the State would speedily either disband itself or be
destroyed. It may therefore be admitted as a general truth, that in
ages of equality civil wars will become much less frequent and less
protracted.
FOURTH BOOK
INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRATIC OPINIONS AND SENTIMENTS ON POLITICAL SOCIETY
Chapter 1 Influence of Democratic Opinions and Sentiments on
Political Society
I SHOULD imperfectly fulfil the purpose of this book, if, having
shown what opinions and sentiments are suggested by the principle of
equality, I did not point out, ere I conclude, the general influence
which these same opinions and sentiments may exercise upon the
government of human societies. To succeed in this object I shall
frequently have to retrace my steps; but I trust the reader will not
refuse to follow me through paths already known to him, which may
lead to some new truth.
The principle of equality, which makes men independent of each
other, gives them a habit and a taste for following, in their
private actions, no other guide but their own will. This complete
independence, which they constantly enjoy towards their equals and
in the intercourse of private life, tends to make them look upon all
authority with a jealous eye, and speedily suggests to them the
notion and the love of political freedom. Men living at such times
have a natural bias to free institutions. Take any one of them at a
venture, and search if you can his most deep-seated instincts; you
will find that of all governments he will soonest conceive and most
highly value that government, whose head he has himself elected, and
whose administration he may control. Of all the political effects
produced by the equality of conditions, this love of independence is
the first to strike the observing, and to alarm the timid; nor can
it be said that their alarm is wholly misplaced, for anarchy has a
more formidable aspect in democratic countries than elsewhere. As
the citizens have no direct influence on each other, as soon as the
supreme power of the nation fails, which kept them all in their
several stations, it would seem that disorder must instantly reach
its utmost pitch, and that, every man drawing aside in a different
direction, the fabric of society must at once crumble away.
I am, however, persuaded that anarchy is not the principal evil
which democratic ages have to fear, but the least. For the principle
of equality begets two tendencies; the one leads men straight to
independence, and may suddenly drive them into anarchy; the other
conducts them by a longer, more secret, but more certain road, to
servitude. Nations readily discern the former tendency, and are
prepared to resist it; they are led away by the latter, without
perceiving its drift; hence it is peculiarly important to point it
out. For myself, I am so far from urging as a reproach to the
principle of equality that it renders men untractable, that this
very circumstance principally calls forth my approbation. I admire
to see how it deposits in the mind and heart of man the dim
conception and instinctive love of political independence, thus
preparing the remedy for the evil which it engenders; it is on this
very account that I am attached to it.
Chapter 2 That the Notions of Democratic Nations on Government Are
Naturally Favorable to the Concentration of Power
THE notion of secondary powers, placed between the sovereign and his
subjects, occurred naturally to the imagination of aristocratic
nations, because those communities contained individuals or families
raised above the common level, and apparently destined to command by
their birth, their education, and their wealth. This same notion is
naturally wanting in the minds of men in democratic ages, for
converse reasons: it can only be introduced artificially, it can
only be kept there with difficulty; whereas they conceive, as it
were, without thinking upon the subject, the notion of a sole and
central power which governs the whole community by its direct
influence. Moreover in politics, as well as in philosophy and in
religion, the intellect of democratic nations is peculiarly open to
simple and general notions. Complicated systems are repugnant to it,
and it's favorite conception is that of a great nation composed of
citizens all resembling the same pattern, and all governed by a
single power.
The very next notion to that of a sole and central power, which
presents itself to the minds of men in the ages of equality, is the
notion of uniformity of legislation. As every man sees that he
differs but little from those about him, he cannot understand why a
rule which is applicable to one man should not be equally applicable
to all others. Hence the slightest privileges are repugnant to his
reason; the faintest dissimilarities in the political institutions
of the same people offend him, and uniformity of legislation appears
to him to be the first condition of good government. I find, on the
contrary, that this same notion of a uniform rule, equally binding
on all the members of the community, was almost unknown to the human
mind in aristocratic ages; it was either never entertained, or it
was rejected. These contrary tendencies of opinion ultimately turn
on either side to such blind instincts and such ungovernable habits
that they still direct the actions of men, in spite of particular
exceptions. Notwithstanding the immense variety of conditions in the
Middle Ages, a certain number of persons existed at that period in
precisely similar circumstances; but this did not prevent the laws
then in force from assigning to each of them distinct duties and
different rights. On the contrary, at the present time all the
powers of government are exerted to impose the same customs and the
same laws on populations which have as yet but few points of
resemblance. As the conditions of men become equal amongst a people,
individuals seem of less importance, and society of greater
dimensions; or rather, every citizen, being assimilated to all the
rest, is lost in the crowd, and nothing stands conspicuous but the
great and imposing image of the people at large. This naturally
gives the men of democratic periods a lofty opinion of the
privileges of society, and a very humble notion of the rights of
individuals; they are ready to admit that the interests of the
former are everything, and those of the latter nothing. They are
willing to acknowledge that the power which represents the community
has far more information and wisdom than any of the members of that
community; and that it is the duty, as well as the right, of that
power to guide as well as govern each private citizen.
If we closely scrutinize our contemporaries, and penetrate to the
root of their political opinions, we shall detect some of the
notions which I have just pointed out, and we shall perhaps be
surprised to find so much accordance between men who are so often at
variance. The Americans hold, that in every State the supreme power
ought to emanate from the people; but when once that power is
constituted, they can conceive, as it were, no limits to it, and
they are ready to admit that it has the right to do whatever it
pleases. They have not the slightest notion of peculiar privileges
granted to cities, families, or persons: their minds appear never to
have foreseen that it might be possible not to apply with strict
uniformity the same laws to every part, and to all the inhabitants.
These same opinions are more and more diffused in Europe; they even
insinuate themselves amongst those nations which most vehemently
reject the principle of the sovereignty of the people. Such nations
assign a different origin to the supreme power, but they ascribe to
that power the same characteristics. Amongst them all, the idea of
intermediate powers is weakened and obliterated: the idea of rights
inherent in certain individuals is rapidly disappearing from the
minds of men; the idea of the omnipotence and sole authority of
society at large rises to fill its place. These ideas take root and
spread in proportion as social conditions become more equal, and men
more alike; they are engendered by equality, and in turn they hasten
the progress of equality.
In France, where the revolution of which I am speaking has gone
further than in any other European country, these opinions have got
complete hold of the public mind. If we listen attentively to the
language of the various parties in France, we shall find that there
is not one which has not adopted them. Most of these parties censure
the conduct of the government, but they all hold that the government
ought perpetually to act and interfere in everything that is done.
Even those which are most at variance are nevertheless agreed upon
this head. The unity, the ubiquity, the omnipotence of the supreme
power, and the uniformity of its rules, constitute the principal
characteristics of all the political systems which have been put
forward in our age. They recur even in the wildest visions of
political regeneration: the human mind pursues them in its dreams.
If these notions spontaneously arise in the minds of private
individuals, they suggest themselves still more forcibly to the
minds of princes. Whilst the ancient fabric of European society is
altered and dissolved, sovereigns acquire new conceptions of their
opportunities and their duties; they learn for the first time that
the central power which they represent may and ought to administer
by its own agency, and on a uniform plan, all the concerns of the
whole community. This opinion, which, I will venture to say, was
never conceived before our time by the monarchs of Europe, now sinks
deeply into the minds of kings, and abides there amidst all the
agitation of more unsettled thoughts.
Our contemporaries are therefore much less divided than is commonly
supposed; they are constantly disputing as to the hands in which
supremacy is to be vested, but they readily agree upon the duties
and the rights of that supremacy. The notion they all form of
government is that of a sole, simple, providential, and creative
power. All secondary opinions in politics are unsettled; this one
remains fixed, invariable, and consistent. It is adopted by
statesmen and political philosophers; it is eagerly laid hold of by
the multitude; those who govern and those who are governed agree to
pursue it with equal ardor: it is the foremost notion of their
minds, it seems inborn. It originates therefore in no caprice of the
human intellect, but it is a necessary condition of the present
state of mankind.
Chapter 3 That the Sentiments of Democratic Nations Accord with
Their Opinions in Leading Them to Concentrate Political Power
IF it be true that, in ages of equality, men readily adopt the
notion of a great central power, it cannot be doubted on the other
hand that their habits and sentiments predispose them to recognize
such a power and to give it their support. This may be demonstrated
in a few words, as the greater part of the reasons, to which the
fact may be attributed, have been previously stated. As the men who
inhabit democratic countries have no superiors, no inferiors, and no
habitual or necessary partners in their undertakings, they readily
fall back upon themselves and consider themselves as beings apart. I
had occasion to point this out at considerable length in treating of
individualism. Hence such men can never, without an effort, tear
themselves from their private affairs to engage in public business;
their natural bias leads them to abandon the latter to the sole
visible and permanent representative of the interests of the
community, that is to say, to the State. Not only are they naturally
wanting in a taste for public business, but they have frequently no
time to attend to it. Private life is so busy in democratic periods,
so excited, so full of wishes and of work, that hardly any energy or
leisure remains to each individual for public life. I am the last
man to contend that these propensities are unconquerable, since my
chief object in writing this book has been to combat them. I only
maintain that at the present day a secret power is fostering them in
the human heart, and that if they are not checked they will wholly
overgrow it.
I have also had occasion to show how the increasing love of
well-being, and the fluctuating character of property, cause
democratic nations to dread all violent disturbance. The love of
public tranquillity is frequently the only passion which these
nations retain, and it becomes more active and powerful amongst them
in proportion as all other passions droop and die. This naturally
disposes the members of the community constantly to give or to
surrender additional rights to the central power, which alone seems
to be interested in defending them by the same means float it uses
to defend itself. As in ages of equality no man is compelled to lend
his assistance to his fellow-men, and none has any right to expect
much support from them, everyone is at once independent and
powerless. These two conditions, which must never be either
separately considered or confounded together, inspire the citizen of
a democratic country with very contrary propensities. His
independence fills him with self-reliance and pride amongst his
equals; his debility makes him feel from time to time the want of
some outward assistance, which he cannot expect from any of them,
because they are all impotent and unsympathizing. In this
predicament he naturally turns his eyes to that imposing power which
alone rises above the level of universal depression. Of that power
his wants and especially his desires continually remind him, until
he ultimately views it as the sole and necessary support of his own
weakness. This may more completely explain what frequently takes
place in democratic countries, where the very men who are so
impatient of superiors patiently submit to a master, exhibiting at
once their pride and their servility.
The hatred which men bear to privilege increases in proportion as
privileges become more scarce and less considerable, so that
democratic passions would seem to burn most fiercely at the very
time when they have least fuel. I have already given the reason of
this phenomenon. When all conditions are unequal, no inequality is
so great as to offend the eye; whereas the slightest dissimilarity
is odious in the midst of general uniformity: the more complete is
this uniformity, the more insupportable does the sight of such a
difference become. Hence it is natural that the love of equality
should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that
it should grow by what it feeds upon. This never-dying,
ever-kindling hatred, which sets a democratic people against the
smallest privileges, is peculiarly favorable to the gradual
concentration of all political rights in the hands of the
representative of the State alone. The sovereign, being necessarily
and incontestably above all the citizens, excites not their envy,
and each of them thinks that he strips his equals of the prerogative
which he concedes to the crown. The man of a democratic age is
extremely reluctant to obey his neighbor who is his equal; he
refuses to acknowledge in such a person ability superior to his own;
he mistrusts his justice, and is jealous of his power; he fears and
he contemns him; and he loves continually to remind him of the
common dependence in which both of them stand to the same master.
Every central power which follows its natural tendencies courts and
encourages the principle of equality; for equality singularly
facilitates, extends, and secures the influence of a central power.
In like manner it may be said that every central government worships
uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinite
number of small details which must be attended to if rules were to
be adapted to men, instead of indiscriminately subjecting men to
rules: thus the government likes what the citizens like, and
naturally hates what they hate. These common sentiments, which, in
democratic nations, constantly unite the sovereign and every member
of the community in one and the same conviction, establish a secret
and lasting sympathy between them. The faults of the government are
pardoned for the sake of its tastes; public confidence is only
reluctantly withdrawn in the midst even of its excesses and its
errors, and it is restored at the first call. Democratic nations
often hate those in whose hands the central power is vested; but
they always love that power itself.
Thus, by two separate paths, I have reached the same conclusion. I
have shown that the principle of equality suggests to men the notion
of a sole, uniform, and strong government: I have now shown that the
principle of equality imparts to them a taste for it. To governments
of this kind the nations of our age are therefore tending. They are
drawn thither by the natural inclination of mind and heart; and in
order to reach that result, it is enough that they do not check
themselves in their course. I am of opinion, that, in the democratic
ages which are opening upon us, individual independence and local
liberties will ever be the produce of artificial contrivance; that
centralization will be the natural form of government.
Chapter 4 Of Certain Peculiar and Accidental Causes which Either
Lead a People to Complete Centralization of Government, or which
Divert Them from It
IF all democratic nations are instinctively led to the
centralization of government, they tend to this result in an unequal
manner. This depends on the particular circumstances which may
promote or prevent the natural consequences of that state of society
-- circumstances which are exceedingly numerous; but I shall only
advert to a few of them. Amongst men who have lived free long before
they became equal, the tendencies derived from free institutions
combat, to a certain extent, the propensities superinduced by the
principle of equality; and although the central power may increase
its privileges amongst such a people, the private members of such a
community will never entirely forfeit their independence. But when
the equality of conditions grows up amongst a people which has never
known, or has long ceased to know, what freedom is (and such is the
case upon the Continent of Europe), as the former habits of the
nation are suddenly combined, by some sort of natural attraction,
with the novel habits and principles engendered by the state of
society, all powers seem spontaneously to rush to the centre. These
powers accumulate there with astonishing rapidity, and the State
instantly attains the utmost limits of its strength, whilst private
persons allow themselves to sink as suddenly to the lowest degree of
weakness.
The English who emigrated three hundred years ago to found a
democratic commonwealth on the shores of the New World, had all
learned to take a part in public affairs in their mother-country;
they were conversant with trial by jury; they were accustomed to
liberty of speech and of the press -- to personal freedom, to the
notion of rights and the practice of asserting them. They carried
with them to America these free institutions and manly customs, and
these institutions preserved them against the encroachments of the
State. Thus amongst the Americans it is freedom which is old --
equality is of comparatively modern date. The reverse is occurring
in Europe, where equality, introduced by absolute power and under
the rule of kings, was already infused into the habits of nations
long before freedom had entered into their conceptions.
I have said that amongst democratic nations the notion of government
naturally presents itself to the mind under the form of a sole and
central power, and that the notion of intermediate powers is not
familiar to them. This is peculiarly applicable to the democratic
nations which have witnessed the triumph of the principle of
equality by means of a violent revolution. As the classes which
managed local affairs have been suddenly swept away by the storm,
and as the confused mass which remains has as yet neither the
organization nor the habits which fit it to assume the
administration of these same affairs, the State alone seems capable
of taking upon itself all the details of government, and
centralization becomes, as it were, the unavoidable state of the
country. Napoleon deserves neither praise nor censure for having
centred in his own hands almost all the administrative power of
France; for, after the abrupt disappearance of the nobility and the
higher rank of the middle classes, these powers devolved on him of
course: it would have been almost as difficult for him to reject as
to assume them. But no necessity of this kind has ever been felt by
the Americans, who, having passed through no revolution, and having
governed themselves from the first, never had to call upon the State
to act for a time as their guardian. Thus the progress of
centralization amongst a democratic people depends not only on the
progress of equality, but on the manner in which this equality has
been established.
At the commencement of a great democratic revolution, when
hostilities have but just broken out between the different classes
of society, the people endeavors to centralize the public
administration in the hands of the government, in order to wrest the
management of local affairs from the aristocracy. Towards the close
of such a revolution, on the contrary, it is usually the conquered
aristocracy that endeavors to make over the management of all
affairs to the State, because such an aristocracy dreads the tyranny
of a people which has become its equal, and not unfrequently its
master. Thus it is not always the same class of the community which
strives to increase the prerogative of the government; but as long
as the democratic revolution lasts there is always one class in the
nation, powerful in numbers or in wealth, which is induced, by
peculiar passions or interests, to centralize the public
administration, independently of that hatred of being governed by
one's neighbor, which is a general and permanent feeling amongst
democratic nations. It may be remarked, that at the present day the
lower orders in England are striving with all their might to destroy
local independence, and to transfer the administration from all
points of the circumference to the centre; whereas the higher
classes are endeavoring to retain this administration within its
ancient boundaries. I venture to predict that a time will come when
the very reverse will happen.
These observations explain why the supreme power is always stronger,
and private individuals weaker, amongst a democratic people which
has passed through a long and arduous struggle to reach a state of
equality than amongst a democratic community in which the citizens
have been equal from the first. The example of the Americans
completely demonstrates the fact. The inhabitants of the United
States were never divided by any privileges; they have never known
the mutual relation of master and inferior, and as they neither
dread nor hate each other, they have never known the necessity of
calling in the supreme power to manage their affairs. The lot of the
Americans is singular: they have derived from the aristocracy of
England the notion of private rights and the taste for local
freedom; and they have been able to retain both the one and the
other, because they have had no aristocracy to combat.
If at all times education enables men to defend their independence,
this is most especially true in democratic ages. When all men are
alike, it is easy to found a sole and all-powerful government, by
the aid of mere instinct. But men require much intelligence,
knowledge, and art to organize and to maintain secondary powers
under similar circumstances, and to create amidst the independence
and individual weakness of the citizens such free associations as
may be in a condition to struggle against tyranny without destroying
public order.
Hence the concentration of power and the subjection of individuals
will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same
proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their
ignorance. It is true, that in ages of imperfect civilization the
government is frequently as wanting in the knowledge required to
impose a despotism upon the people as the people are wanting in the
knowledge required to shake it off; but the effect is not the same
on both sides. However rude a democratic people may be, the central
power which rules it is never completely devoid of cultivation,
because it readily draws to its own uses what little cultivation is
to be found in the country, and, if necessary, may seek assistance
elsewhere. Hence, amongst a nation which is ignorant as well as
democratic, an amazing difference cannot fail speedily to arise
between the intellectual capacity of the ruler and that of each of
his subjects. This completes the easy concentration of all power in
his hands: the administrative function of the State is perpetually
extended, because the State alone is competent to administer the
affairs of the country. Aristocratic nations, however unenlightened
they may be, never afford the same spectacle, because in them
instruction is nearly equally diffused between the monarch and the
leading members of the community.
The pacha who now rules in Egypt found the population of that
country composed of men exceedingly ignorant and equal, and he has
borrowed the science and ability of Europe to govern that people. As
the personal attainments of the sovereign are thus combined with the
ignorance and democratic weakness of his subjects, the utmost
centralization has been established without impediment, and the
pacha has made the country his manufactory, and the inhabitants his
workmen.
I think that extreme centralization of government ultimately
enervates society, and thus after a length of time weakens the
government itself; but I do not deny that a centralized social power
may be able to execute great undertakings with facility in a given
time and on a particular point. This is more especially true of war,
in which success depends much more on the means of transferring all
the resources of a nation to one single point, than on the extent of
those resources. Hence it is chiefly in war that nations desire and
frequently require to increase the powers of the central government.
All men of military genius are fond of centralization, which
increases their strength; and all men of centralizing genius are
fond of war, which compels nations to combine all their powers in
the hands of the government. Thus the democratic tendency which
leads men unceasingly to multiply the privileges of the State, and
to circumscribe the rights of private persons, is much more rapid
and constant amongst those democratic nations which are exposed by
their position to great and frequent wars, than amongst all others.
I have shown how the dread of disturbance and the love of well-being
insensibly lead democratic nations to increase the functions of
central government, as the only power which appears to be
intrinsically sufficiently strong, enlightened, and secure, to
protect them from anarchy. I would now add, that all the particular
circumstances which tend to make the state of a democratic community
agitated and precarious, enhance this general propensity, and lead
private persons more and more to sacrifice their rights to their
tranquillity. A people is therefore never so disposed to increase
the functions of central government as at the close of a long and
bloody revolution, which, after having wrested property from the
hands of its former possessors, has shaken all belief, and filled
the nation with fierce hatreds, conflicting interests, and
contending factions. The love of public tranquillity becomes at such
times an indiscriminating passion, and the members of the community
are apt to conceive a most inordinate devotion to order.
I have already examined several of the incidents which may concur to
promote the centralization of power, but the principal cause still
remains to be noticed. The foremost of the incidental causes which
may draw the management of all affairs into the hands of the ruler
in democratic countries, is the origin of that ruler himself, and
his own propensities. Men who live in the ages of equality are
naturally fond of central power, and are willing to extend its
privileges; but if it happens that this same power faithfully
represents their own interests, and exactly copies their own
inclinations, the confidence they place in it knows no bounds, and
they think that whatever they bestow upon it is bestowed upon
themselves.
The attraction of administrative powers to the centre will always be
less easy and less rapid under the reign of kings who are still in
some way connected with the old aristocratic order, than under new
princes, the children of their own achievements, whose birth,
prejudices, propensities, and habits appear to bind them
indissolubly to the cause of equality. I do not mean that princes of
aristocratic origin who live in democratic ages do not attempt to
centralize; I believe they apply themselves to that object as
diligently as any others. For them, the sole advantages of equality
lie in that direction; but their opportunities are less great,
because the community, instead of volunteering compliance with their
desires, frequently obeys them with reluctance. In democratic
communities the rule is that centralization must increase in
proportion as the sovereign is less aristocratic. When an ancient
race of kings stands at the head of an aristocracy, as the natural
prejudices of the sovereign perfectly accord with the natural
prejudices of the nobility, the vices inherent in aristocratic
communities have a free course, and meet with no corrective. The
reverse is the case when the scion of a feudal stock is placed at
the head of a democratic people. The sovereign is constantly led, by
his education, his habits, and his associations, to adopt sentiments
suggested by the inequality of conditions, and the people tend as
constantly, by their social condition, to those manners which are
engendered by equality. At such times it often happens that the
citizens seek to control the central power far less as a tyrannical
than as an aristocratical power, and that they persist in the firm
defence of their independence, not only because they would remain
free, but especially because they are determined to remain equal. A
revolution which overthrows an ancient regal family, in order to
place men of more recent growth at the head of a democratic people,
may temporarily weaken the central power; but however anarchical
such a revolution may appear at first, we need not hesitate to
predict that its final and certain consequence will be to extend and
to secure the prerogatives of that power. The foremost or indeed the
sole condition which is required in order to succeed in centralizing
the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or
to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism,
which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced as it were to
a single principle.
Chapter 5 That Amongst the European Nations of Our Time the Power of
Governments is Increasing, Although the Persons Who Govern Are Less
Stable
ON reflecting upon what has already been said, the reader will be
startled and alarmed to find that in Europe everything seems to
conduce to the indefinite extension of the prerogatives of
government, and to render all that enjoyed the rights of private
independence more weak, more subordinate, and more precarious. The
democratic nations of Europe have all the general and permanent
tendencies which urge the Americans to the centralization of
government, and they are moreover exposed to a number of secondary
and incidental causes with which the Americans are unacquainted. It
would seem as if every step they make towards equality brings them
nearer to despotism. And indeed if we do but cast our looks around,
we shall be convinced that such is the fact. During the aristocratic
ages which preceded the present time, the sovereigns of Europe had
been deprived off or had relinquished, many of the rights inherent
in their power. Not a hundred years ago, amongst the greater part of
European nations, numerous private persons and corporations were
sufficiently independent to administer justice, to raise and
maintain troops, to levy taxes, and frequently even to make or
interpret the law. The State has everywhere resumed to itself alone
these natural attributes of sovereign power; in all matters of
government the State tolerates no intermediate agent between itself
and the people, and in general business it directs the people by its
own immediate influence. I am far from blaming this concentration of
power, I simply point it out.
At the same period a great number of secondary powers existed in
Europe, which represented local interests and administered local
affairs. Most of these local authorities have already disappeared;
all are speedily tending to disappear, or to fall into the most
complete dependence. From one end of Europe to the other the
privileges of the nobility, the liberties of cities, and the powers
of provincial bodies, are either destroyed or upon the verge of
destruction. Europe has endured, in the course of the last
half-century, many revolutions and counter-revolutions which have
agitated it in opposite directions: but all these perturbations
resemble each other in one respect -- they have all shaken or
destroyed the secondary powers of government. The local privileges
which the French did not abolish in the countries they conquered,
have finally succumbed to the policy of the princes who conquered
the French. Those princes rejected all the innovations of the French
Revolution except centralization: that is the only principle they
consented to receive from such a source. My object is to remark,
that all these various rights, which have been successively wrested,
in our time, from classes, corporations, and individuals, have not
served to raise new secondary powers on a more democratic basis, but
have uniformly been concentrated in the hands of the sovereign.
Everywhere the State acquires more and more direct control over the
humblest members of the community, and a more exclusive power of
governing each of them in his smallest concerns. Almost all the
charitable establishments of Europe were formerly in the hands of
private persons or of corporations; they are now almost all
dependent on the supreme government, and in many countries are
actually administered by that power. The State almost exclusively
undertakes to supply bread to the hungry, assistance and shelter to
the sick, work to the idle, and to act as the sole reliever of all
kinds of misery. Education, as well as charity, is become in most
countries at the present day a national concern. The State receives,
and often takes, the child from the arms of the mother, to hand it
over to official agents: the State undertakes to train the heart and
to instruct the mind of each generation. Uniformity prevails in the
courses of public instruction as in everything else; diversity, as
well as freedom, is disappearing day by day. Nor do I hesitate to
affirm, that amongst almost all the Christian nations of our days,
Catholic as well as Protestant, religion is in danger of falling
into the hands of the government. Not that rulers are over-jealous
of the right of settling points of doctrine, but they get more and
more hold upon the will of those by whom doctrines are expounded;
they deprive the clergy of their property, and pay them by salaries;
they divert to their own use the influence of the priesthood, they
make them their own ministers -- often their own servants -- and by
this alliance with religion they reach the inner depths of the soul
of man.
But this is as yet only one side of the picture. The authority of
government has not only spread, as we have just seen, throughout the
sphere of all existing powers, till that sphere can no longer
contain it, but it goes further, and invades the domain heretofore
reserved to private independence. A multitude of actions, which were
formerly entirely beyond the control of the public administration,
have been subjected to that control in our time, and the number of
them is constantly increasing. Amongst aristocratic nations the
supreme government usually contented itself with managing and
superintending the community in whatever directly and ostensibly
concerned the national honor; but in all other respects the people
were left to work out their own free will. Amongst these nations the
government often seemed to forget that there is a point at which the
faults and the sufferings of private persons involve the general
prosperity, and that to prevent the ruin of a private individual
must sometimes be a matter of public importance. The democratic
nations of our time lean to the opposite extreme. It is evident that
most of our rulers will not content themselves with governing the
people collectively: it would seem as if they thought themselves
responsible for the actions and private condition of their subjects
-- as if they had undertaken to guide and to instruct each of them
in the various incidents of life, and to secure their happiness
quite independently of their own consent. On the other hand private
individuals grow more and more apt to look upon the supreme power in
the same light; they invoke its assistance in all their necessities,
and they fix their eyes upon the administration as their mentor or
their guide.
I assert that there is no country in Europe in which the public
administration has not become, not only more centralized, but more
inquisitive and more minute: it everywhere interferes in private
concerns more than it did; it regulates more undertakings, and
undertakings of a lesser kind; and it gains a firmer footing every
day about, above, and around all private persons, to assist, to
advise, and to coerce them. Formerly a sovereign lived upon the
income of his lands, or the revenue of his taxes; this is no longer
the case now that his wants have increased as well as his power.
Under the same circumstances which formerly compelled a prince to
put on a new tax, he now has recourse to a loan. Thus the State
gradually becomes the debtor of most of the wealthier members of the
community, and centralizes the largest amounts of capital in its own
hands. Small capital is drawn into its keeping by another method. As
men are intermingled and conditions become more equal, the poor have
more resources, more education, and more desires; they conceive the
notion of bettering their condition, and this teaches them to save.
These savings are daily producing an infinite number of small
capitals, the slow and gradual produce of labor, which are always
increasing. But the greater part of this money would be unproductive
if it remained scattered in the hands of its owners. This
circumstance has given rise to a philanthropic institution, which
will soon become, if I am not mistaken, one of our most important
political institutions. Some charitable persons conceived the notion
of collecting the savings of the poor and placing them out at
interest. In some countries these benevolent associations are still
completely distinct from the State; but in almost all they
manifestly tend to identify themselves with the government; and in
some of them the government has superseded them, taking upon itself
the enormous task of centralizing in one place, and putting out at
interest on its own responsibility, the daily savings of many
millions of the working classes. Thus the State draws to itself the
wealth of the rich by loans, and has the poor man's mite at its
disposal in the savings banks. The wealth of the country is
perpetually flowing around the government and passing through its
hands; the accumulation increases in the same proportion as the
equality of conditions; for in a democratic country the State alone
inspires private individuals with confidence, because the State
alone appears to be endowed with strength and durability. Thus the
sovereign does not confine himself to the management of the public
treasury; he interferes in private money matters; he is the
superior, and often the master, of all the members of the community;
and, in addition to this, he assumes the part of their steward and
paymaster.
The central power not only fulfils of itself the whole of the duties
formerly discharged by various authorities -- extending those
duties, and surpassing those authorities -- but it performs them
with more alertness, strength, and independence than it displayed
before. All the governments of Europe have in our time singularly
improved the science of administration: they do more things, and
they do everything with more order, more celerity, and at less
expense; they seem to be constantly enriched by all the experience
of which they have stripped private persons. From day to day the
princes of Europe hold their subordinate officers under stricter
control, and they invent new methods for guiding them more closely,
and inspecting them with less trouble. Not content with managing
everything by their agents, they undertake to manage the conduct of
their agents in everything; so that the public administration not
only depends upon one and the same power, but it is more and more
confined to one spot and concentrated in the same hands. The
government centralizes its agency whilst it increases its
prerogative -- hence a twofold increase of strength.
In examining the ancient constitution of the judicial power, amongst
most European nations, two things strike the mind -- the
independence of that power, and the extent of its functions. Not
only did the courts of justice decide almost all differences between
private persons, but in very in any cases they acted as arbiters
between private persons and the State. I do not here allude to the
political and administrative offices which courts of judicature had
in some countries usurped, but the judicial office common to them
all. In most of the countries of Europe, there were, and there still
are, many private rights, connected for the most part with the
general right of property, which stood under the protection of the
courts of justice, and which the State could not violate without
their sanction. It was this semi-political power which mainly
distinguished the European courts of judicature from all others; for
all nations have had judges, but all have not invested their judges
with the same privileges. Upon examining what is now occurring
amongst the democratic nations of Europe which are called free, as
well as amongst the others, it will be observed that new and more
dependent courts are everywhere springing up by the side of the old
ones, for the express purpose of deciding, by an extraordinary
jurisdiction, such litigated matters as may arise between the
government and private persons. The elder judicial power retains its
independence, but its jurisdiction is narrowed; and there is a
growing tendency to reduce it to be exclusively the arbiter between
private interests. The number of these special courts of justice is
continually increasing, and their functions increase likewise. Thus
the government is more and more absolved from the necessity of
subjecting its policy and its rights to the sanction of another
power. As judges cannot be dispensed with, at least the State is to
select them, and always to hold them under its control; so that,
between the government and private individuals, they place the
effigy of justice rather than justice itself. The State is not
satisfied with drawing all concerns to itself, but it acquires an
ever-increasing power of deciding on them all without restriction
and without appeal.
There exists amongst the modern nations of Europe one great cause,
independent of all those which have already been pointed out, which
perpetually contributes to extend the agency or to strengthen the
prerogative of the supreme power, though it has not been
sufficiently attended to: I mean the growth of manufactures, which
is fostered by the progress of social equality. Manufactures
generally collect a multitude of men on the same spot, amongst whom
new and complex relations spring up. These men are exposed by their
calling to great and sudden alternations of plenty and want, during
which public tranquillity is endangered. It may also happen that
these employments sacrifice the health, and even the life, of those
who gain by them, or of those who live by them. Thus the
manufacturing classes require more regulation, superintendence, and
restraint than the other classes of society, and it is natural that
the powers of government should increase in the same proportion as
those classes.
This is a truth of general application; what follows more especially
concerns the nations of Europe. In the centuries which preceded that
in which we live, the aristocracy was in possession of the soil, and
was competent to defend it: landed property was therefore surrounded
by ample securities, and its possessors enjoyed great independence.
This gave rise to laws and customs which have been perpetuated,
notwithstanding the subdivision of lands and the ruin of the
nobility; and, at the present time, landowners and agriculturists
are still those amongst the community who must easily escape from
the control of the supreme power. In these same aristocratic ages,
in which all the sources of our history are to be traced, personal
property was of small importance, and those who possessed it were
despised and weak: the manufacturing class formed an exception in
the midst of those aristocratic communities; as it had no certain
patronage, it was not outwardly protected, and was often unable to
protect itself. Hence a habit sprung up of considering manufacturing
property as something of a peculiar nature, not entitled to the same
deference, and not worthy of the same securities as property in
general; and manufacturers were looked upon as a small class in the
bulk of the people, whose independence was of small importance, and
who might with propriety be abandoned to the disciplinary passions
of princes. On glancing over the codes of the middle ages, one is
surprised to see, in those periods of personal independence, with
what incessant royal regulations manufactures were hampered, even in
their smallest details: on this point centralization was as active
and as minute as it can ever be. Since that time a great revolution
has taken place in the world; manufacturing property, which was then
only in the germ, has spread till it covers Europe: the
manufacturing class has been multiplied and enriched by the remnants
of all other ranks; it has grown and is still perpetually growing in
number, in importance, in wealth. Almost all those who do not belong
to it are connected with it at least on some one point; after having
been an exception in society, it threatens to become the chief, if
not the only, class; nevertheless the notions and political
precedents engendered by it of old still cling about it. These
notions and these precedents remain unchanged, because they are old,
and also because they happen to be in perfect accordance with the
new notions and general habits of our contemporaries. Manufacturing
property then does not extend its rights in the same ratio as its
importance. The manufacturing classes do not become less dependent,
whilst they become more numerous; but, on the contrary, it would
seem as if despotism lurked within them, and naturally grew with
their growth. As a nation becomes more engaged in manufactures, the
want of roads, canals, harbors, and other works of a semi-public
nature, which facilitate the acquisition of wealth, is more strongly
felt; and as a nation becomes more democratic, private individuals
are less able, and the State more able, to execute works of such
magnitude. I do not hesitate to assert that the manifest tendency of
all governments at the present time is to take upon themselves alone
the execution of these undertakings; by which means they daily hold
in closer dependence the population which they govern.
On the other hand, in proportion as the power of a State increases,
and its necessities are augmented, the State consumption of
manufactured produce is always growing larger, and these commodities
are generally made in the arsenals or establishments of the
government. Thus, in every kingdom, the ruler becomes the principal
manufacturer; he collects and retains in his service a vast number
of engineers, architects, mechanics, and handicraftsmen. Not only is
he the principal manufacturer, but he tends more and more to become
the chief, or rather the master of all other manufacturers. As
private persons become more powerless by becoming more equal, they
can effect nothing in manufactures without combination; but the
government naturally seeks to place these combinations under its own
control.
It must be admitted that these collective beings, which are called
combinations, are stronger and more formidable than a private
individual can ever be, and that they have less of the
responsibility of their own actions; whence it seems reasonable that
they should not be allowed to retain so great an independence of the
supreme government as might be conceded to a private individual.
Rulers are the more apt to follow this line of policy, as their own
inclinations invite them to it. Amongst democratic nations it is
only by association that the resistance of the people to the
government can ever display itself: hence the latter always looks
with ill-favor on those associations which are not in its own power;
and it is well worthy of remark, that amongst democratic nations,
the people themselves often entertain a secret feeling of fear and
jealousy against these very associations, which prevents the
citizens from defending the institutions of which they stand so much
in need. The power and the duration of these small private bodies,
in the midst of the weakness and instability of the whole community,
astonish and alarm the people; and the free use which each
association makes of its natural powers is almost regarded as a
dangerous privilege. All the associations which spring up in our age
are, moreover, new corporate powers, whose rights have not been
sanctioned by time; they come into existence at a time when the
notion of private rights is weak, and when the power of government
is unbounded; hence it is not surprising that they lose their
freedom at their birth. Amongst all European nations there are some
kinds of associations which cannot be formed until the State has
examined their by-laws, and authorized their existence. In several
others, attempts are made to extend this rule to all associations;
the consequences of such a policy, if it were successful, may easily
be foreseen. If once the sovereign had a general right of
authorizing associations of all kinds upon certain conditions, he
would not be long without claiming the night of superintending and
managing them, in order to prevent them from departing from the
rules laid down by himself. In this manner, the State, after having
reduced all who are desirous of forming associations into
dependence, would proceed to reduce into the same condition all who
belong to associations already formed -- that is to say, almost all
the men who are now in existence. Governments thus appropriate to
themselves, and convert to their own purposes, the greater part of
this new power which manufacturing interests have in our time
brought into the world. Manufactures govern us -- they govern
manufactures.
I attach so much importance to all that I have just been saying,
that I am tormented by the fear of having impaired my meaning in
seeking to render it more clear. If the reader thinks that the
examples I have adduced to support my observations are insufficient
or ill-chosen -- if he imagines that I have anywhere exaggerated the
encroachments of the supreme power, and, on the other hand, that I
have underrated the extent of the sphere which still remains open to
the exertions of individual independence, I entreat him to lay down
the book for a moment, and to turn his mind to reflect for himself
upon the subjects I have attempted to explain. Let him attentively
examine what is taking place in France and in other countries -- let
him inquire of those about him -- let him search himself, and I am
much mistaken if he does not arrive, without my guidance, and by
other paths, at the point to which I have sought to lead him. He
will perceive that for the last half-century, centralization has
everywhere been growing up in a thousand different ways. Wars,
revolutions, conquests, have served to promote it: all men have
labored to increase it. In the course of the same period, during
which men have succeeded each other with singular rapidity at the
head of affairs, their notions, interests, and passions have been
infinitely diversified; but all have by some means or other sought
to centralize. This instinctive centralization has been the only
settled point amidst the extreme mutability of their lives and of
their thoughts.
If the reader, after having investigated these details of human
affairs, will seek to survey the wide prospect as a whole, he will
be struck by the result. On the one hand the most settled dynasties
shaken or overthrown -- the people everywhere escaping by violence
from the sway of their laws -- abolishing or limiting the authority
of their rulers or their princes -- the nations, which are not in
open revolution, restless at least, and excited -- all of them
animated by the same spirit of revolt: and on the other hand, at
this very period of anarchy, and amongst these untractable nations,
the incessant increase of the prerogative of the supreme government,
becoming more centralized, more adventurous, more absolute, more
extensive -- the people perpetually falling under the control of the
public administration -- led insensibly to surrender to it some
further portion of their individual independence, till the very men,
who from time to time upset a throne and trample on a race of kings,
bend more and more obsequiously to the slightest dictate of a clerk.
Thus two contrary revolutions appear in our days to be going on; the
one continually weakening the supreme power, the other as
continually strengthening it: at no other period in our history has
it appeared so weak or so strong.
But upon a more attentive examination of the state of the world, it
appears that these two revolutions are intimately connected
together, that they originate in the same source, and that after
having followed a separate course, they lead men at last to the same
result. I may venture once more to repeat what I have already said
or implied in several parts of this book: great care must be taken
not to confound the principle of equality itself with the revolution
which finally establishes that principle in the social condition and
the laws of a nation: here lies the reason of almost all the
phenomena which occasion our astonishment. All the old political
powers of Europe, the greatest as well as the least, were founded in
ages of aristocracy, and they more or less represented or defended
the principles of inequality and of privilege. To make the novel
wants and interests, which the growing principle of equality
introduced, preponderate in government, our contemporaries had to
overturn or to coerce the established powers. This led them to make
revolutions, and breathed into many of them, that fierce love of
disturbance and independence, which all revolutions, whatever be
their object, always engender. I do not believe that there is a
single country in Europe in which the progress of equality has not
been preceded or followed by some violent changes in the state of
property and persons; and almost all these changes have been
attended with much anarchy and license, because they have been made
by the least civilized portion of the nation against that which is
most civilized. Hence proceeded the two-fold contrary tendencies
which I have just pointed out. As long as the democratic revolution
was glowing with heat, the men who were bent upon the destruction of
old aristocratic powers hostile to that revolution, displayed a
strong spirit of independence; but as the victory or the principle
of equality became more complete, they gradually surrendered
themselves to the propensities natural to that condition of
equality, and they strengthened and centralized their governments.
They had sought to be free in order to make themselves equal; but in
proportion as equality was more established by the aid of freedom,
freedom itself was thereby rendered of more difficult attainment.
These two states of a nation have sometimes been contemporaneous:
the last generation in France showed how a people might organize a
stupendous tyranny in the community, at the very time when they were
baffling the authority of the nobility and braving the power of all
kings -- at once teaching the world the way to win freedom, and the
way to lose it. In our days men see that constituted powers are
dilapidated on every side -- they see all ancient authority gasping
away, all ancient barriers tottering to their fall, and the judgment
of the wisest is troubled at the sight: they attend only to the
amazing revolution which is taking place before their eyes, and they
imagine that mankind is about to fall into perpetual anarchy: if
they looked to the final consequences of this revolution, their
fears would perhaps assume a different shape. For myself, I confess
that I put no trust in the spirit of freedom which appears to
animate my contemporaries. I see well enough that the nations of
this age are turbulent, but I do not clearly perceive that they are
liberal; and I fear lest, at the close of those perturbations which
rock the base of thrones, the domination of sovereigns may prove
more powerful than it ever was before.
Chapter 6 What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear
I HAD remarked during my stay in the United States, that democratic
state of society, similar to that of the Americans, might offer
singular facilities for the establishment of despotism; and I
perceived, upon my return to Europe, how much use had already been
made by most of our rulers, of the notions, the sentiments, and the
wants engendered by this same social condition, for the purpose of
extending the circle of their power. This led me to think that the
nations of Christendom would perhaps eventually undergo some sort of
oppression like that which hung over several of the nations of the
ancient world. A more accurate examination of the subject, and five
years of further meditations, have not diminished my apprehensions,
but they have changed the object of them. No sovereign ever lived in
former ages so absolute or so powerful as to undertake to administer
by his own agency, and without the assistance of intermediate
powers, all the parts of a great empire: none ever attempted to
subject all his subjects indiscriminately to strict uniformity of
regulation, and personally to tutor and direct every member of the
community. The notion of such an undertaking never occurred to the
human mind; and if any man had conceived it, the want of
information, the imperfection of the administrative system, and
above all, the natural obstacles caused by the inequality of
conditions, would speedily have checked flee execution of so vast a
design. When the Roman emperors were at the height of their power,
the different nations of the empire still preserved manners and
customs of great diversity; although they were subject to the same
monarch, most of the provinces were separately administered; they
abounded in powerful and active municipalities; and although the
whole government of the empire was centred in the hands of the
emperor alone, and he always remained, upon occasions, the supreme
arbiter in all matters, yet the details of social life and private
occupations lay for the most part beyond his control. The emperors
possessed, it is true, an immense and unchecked power, which allowed
them to gratify all their whimsical tastes, and to employ for that
purpose the whole strength of the State. They frequently abused that
power arbitrarily to deprive their subjects of property or of life:
their tyranny was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach
the greater number; it was fixed to some few main objects, and
neglected the rest; it was violent, but its range was limited.
But it would seem that if despotism were to be established amongst
the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different
character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would
degrade men without tormenting them. I do not question, that in an
age of instruction and equality like our own, sovereigns might more
easily succeed in collecting all political power into their own
hands, and might interfere ii' ore habitually and decidedly within
the circle of private interests, than any sovereign of antiquity
could ever do. But this same principle of equality which facilitates
despotism, tempers its rigor. We have seen how the manners of
society become more humane and gentle in proportion as men become
more equal and alike. When no member of the community has much power
or much wealth, tyranny is, as it were, without opportunities and a
field of action. As all fortunes are scanty, the passions of men are
naturally circumscribed -- their imagination limited, their
pleasures simple. This universal moderation moderates the sovereign
himself, and checks within certain limits the inordinate extent of
his desires.
Independently of these reasons drawn from the nature of the state of
society itself, I might add many others arising from causes beyond
my subject; but I shall keep within the limits I have laid down to
myself. Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at
certain periods of extreme effervescence or of great danger: but
these crises will be rare and brief. When I consider the petty
passions of our contemporaries, the mildness of their manners, the
extent of their education, the purity of their religion, the
gentleness of their morality, their regular and industrious habits,
and the restraint which they almost all observe in their vices no
less than in their virtues, 1 have no fear that they will meet with
tyrants in their rulers, but rather guardians. I think then that the
species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is
unlike anything which ever before existed in the world: our
contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I am
trying myself to choose an expression which will accurately convey
the whole of the idea I have formed of it, but in vain; the old
words "despotism" and "tyranny" are inappropriate the thing itself
is new; and since I cannot name it, I must attempt to define it.
I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear
in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an
innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly
endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which
they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger
to the fate of all the rest -- his children and his private friends
constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his
fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not -- he
touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and
for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be
said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men
stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone
to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That
power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be
like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object
was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep
them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people
should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For
their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses
to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of float happiness: it
provides for their security, foresees and supplies their
necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal
concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property,
and subdivides their inheritances -- what remains, but to spare them
all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it
every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful
and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower
range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The
principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has
predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as
benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in
its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power
then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface
of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and
uniform, through which the most original minds and the most
energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The
will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men
are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained
from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents
existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates,
extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to
be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of
which the government is the shepherd.
I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and
gentle kind which I have just described, might be combined more
easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of
freedom; and that it might even establish itself under the wing of
the sovereignty of the people. Our contemporaries are constantly
excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they
wish to remain free: as they cannot destroy either one or the other
of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at
once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of
government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of
centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a
respite; they console themselves for being in tutelage by the
reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man
allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it
is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large that
holds the end of his chain. By this system the people shake off
their state of dependence just long enough to select their master,
and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present
day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between
administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they
think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom
when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large.
This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies
less to me than the fact of extorted obedience.
I do not however deny that a constitution of this kind appears to me
to be infinitely preferable to one, which, after having concentrated
all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an
irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms which
democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the
worst. When the sovereign is elective, or narrowly watched by a
legislature which is really elective and independent, the oppression
which he exercises over individuals is sometimes greater, but it is
always less degrading; because every man, when he is oppressed and
disarmed, may still imagine, that whilst he yields obedience it is
to himself he yields it, and that it is to one of his own
inclinations that all the rest give way. In like manner I can
understand that when the sovereign represents the nation, and is
dependent upon the people, the rights and the power of which every
citizen is deprived, not only serve the head of the State, but the
State itself; and that private persons derive some return from the
sacrifice of their independence which they have made to the public.
To create a representation of the people in every centralized
country is, therefore, to diminish the evil which extreme
centralization may produce, but not to get rid of it. I admit that
by this means room is left for the intervention of individuals in
the more important affairs; but it is not the less suppressed in the
smaller and more private ones. It must not be forgotten that it is
especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less
necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible
to be secure of the one without possessing the other. Subjection in
minor affairs breaks out every day, and is felt by the whole
community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but
it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the
exercise of their will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and
their character enervated; whereas that obedience, which is exacted
on a few important but rare occasions, only exhibits servitude at
certain intervals, and throws the burden of it upon a small number
of men. It is in vain to summon a people, which has been rendered so
dependent on the central power, to choose from time to time the
representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their
free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from
gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for
themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.
I add that they will soon become incapable of exercising the great
and only privilege which remains to them. The democratic nations
which have introduced freedom into their political constitution, at
the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their
administrative constitution, have been led into strange paradoxes.
To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is
wanted -- the people are held to be unequal to the task, but when
the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested
with immense powers; they are alternately made the playthings of
their ruler, and his masters -- more than kings, and less than men.
After having exhausted all the different modes of election, without
finding one to suit their purpose, they are still amazed, and still
bent on seeking further; as if the evil they remark did not
originate in the constitution of the country far more than in that
of the electoral body. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how men
who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should
succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be
governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and
energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient
people. A constitution, which should be republican in its head and
ultra-monarchical in all its other parts, has ever appeared to me to
be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the ineptitude of
the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation,
weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer
institutions, or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a
single master.
Chapter 7 Continuation of the Preceding Chapters
I BELIEVE that it is easier to establish an absolute and despotic
government amongst a people in which the conditions of society are
equal, than amongst any other; and I think that if such a government
were once established amongst such a people, it would not only
oppress men, but would eventually strip each of them of several of
the highest qualities of humanity. Despotism therefore appears to me
peculiarly to be dreaded in democratic ages. I should have loved
freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I
am ready to worship it. On the other hand, I am persuaded that all
who shall attempt, in the ages upon which we are entering, to base
freedom upon aristocratic privilege, will fail -- that all who shall
attempt to draw and to retain authority within a single class, will
fail. At the present day no ruler is skilful or strong enough to
found a despotism, by re-establishing permanent distinctions of rank
amongst his subjects: no legislator is wise or powerful enough to
preserve free institutions, if he does not take equality for his
first principle and his watchword. All those of our contemporaries
who would establish or secure the independence and the dignity of
their fellow-men, must show themselves the friends of equality; and
the only worthy means of showing themselves as such, is to be so:
upon this depends the success of their holy enterprise. Thus the
question is not how to reconstruct aristocratic society, but how to
make liberty proceed out of that democratic state of society in
which God has placed us.
These two truths appear to me simple, clear, and fertile in
consequences; and they naturally lead me to consider what kind of
free government can be established amongst a people in which social
conditions are equal.
It results from the very constitution of democratic nations and from
their necessities, that the power of government amongst them must be
more uniform, more centralized, more extensive, more searching, and
more efficient than in other countries. Society at large is
naturally stronger and more active, individuals more subordinate and
weak; the former does more, the latter less; and this is inevitably
the case. It is not therefore to be expected that the range of
private independence will ever be as extensive in democratic as in
aristocratic countries -- nor is this to be desired; for, amongst
aristocratic nations, the mass is often sacrificed to the
individual, and the prosperity of the greater number to the
greatness of the few. It is both necessary and desirable that the
government of a democratic people should be active and powerful: and
our object should not be to render it weak or indolent, but solely
to prevent it from abusing its aptitude and its strength.
The circumstance which most contributed to secure the in dependence
of private persons in aristocratic ages, was, that the supreme power
did not affect to take upon itself alone the government and
administration of the community; those functions were necessarily
partially left to the members of the aristocracy: so that as the
supreme power was always divided, it never weighed with its whole
weight and in the same manner on each individual. Not only did the
government not perform everything by its immediate agency; but as
most of the agents who discharged its duties derived their power not
from the State, but from the circumstance of their birth, they were
not perpetually under its control. The government could not make or
unmake them in an instant, at pleasure, nor bend them in strict
uniformity to its slightest caprice -- this was an additional
guarantee of private independence. I readily admit that recourse
cannot be had to the same means at the present time: but I discover
certain democratic expedients which may be substituted for them.
Instead of vesting in the government alone all the administrative
powers of which corporations and nobles have been deprived, a
portion of them may be entrusted to secondary public bodies,
temporarily composed of private citizens: thus the liberty of
private persons will be more secure, and their equality will not be
diminished.
The Americans, who care less for words than the French, still
designate by the name of "county" the largest of their
administrative districts: but the duties of the count or
lord-lieutenant are in part performed by a provincial assembly. At a
period of equality like our own it would be unjust and unreasonable
to institute hereditary officers; but there is nothing to prevent us
from substituting elective public officers to a certain extent.
Election is a democratic expedient which insures the independence of
the public officer in relation to the government, as much and even
more than hereditary rank can insure it amongst aristocratic
nations. Aristocratic countries abound in wealthy and influential
persons who are competent to provide for themselves, and who cannot
be easily or secretly oppressed: such persons restrain a government
within general habits of moderation and reserve. I am very well
aware that democratic countries contain no such persons naturally;
but something analogous to them may be created by artificial means.
I firmly believe that an aristocracy cannot again be founded in the
world; but I think that private citizens, by combining together, may
constitute bodies of great wealth, influence, and strength,
corresponding to the persons of an aristocracy. By this means many
of the greatest political advantages of aristocracy would be
obtained without its injustice or its dangers. An association for
political, commercial, or manufacturing purposes, or even for those
of science and literature, is a powerful and enlightened member of
flee community, which cannot be disposed of at pleasure, or
oppressed without remonstrance; and which, by defending its own
rights against the encroachments of the government, saves the common
liberties of the country.
In periods of aristocracy every man is always bound so closely to
many of his fellow-citizens, that he cannot be assailed without
their coming to his assistance. In ages of equality every man
naturally stands alone; he has no hereditary friends whose
co-operation he may demand -- no class upon whose sympathy he may
rely: he is easily got rid of, and he is trampled on with impunity.
At the present time, an oppressed member of the community has
therefore only one method of self-defence -- he may appeal to the
whole nation; and if the whole nation is deaf to his complaint, he
may appeal to mankind: the only means he has of making this appeal
is by the press. Thus the liberty of the press is infinitely more
valuable amongst democratic nations than amongst all others; it is
the only cure for the evils which equality may produce. Equality
sets men apart and weakens them; but the press places a powerful
weapon within every man's reach, which the weakest and loneliest of
them all may use. Equality deprives a man of the support of his
connections; but the press enables him to summon all his
fellow-countrymen and all his fellow-men to his assistance. Printing
has accelerated the progress of equality, and it is also one of its
best correctives.
I think that men living in aristocracies may, strictly speaking, do
without the liberty of the press: but such is not the case with
those who live in democratic countries. To protect their personal
independence I trust not to great political assemblies, to
parliamentary privilege, or to the assertion of popular sovereignty.
All these things may, to a certain extent, be reconciled with
personal servitude -- but that servitude cannot be complete if the
press is free: the press is the chiefest democratic instrument of
freedom.
Something analogous may be said of the judicial power. It is a part
of the essence of judicial power to attend to private interests, and
to fix itself with predilection on minute objects submitted to its
observation; another essential quality of judicial power is never to
volunteer its assistance to the oppressed, but always to be at the
disposal of the humblest of those who solicit it; their complaint,
however feeble they may themselves be, will force itself upon the
ear of justice and claim redress, for this is inherent in the very
constitution of the courts of justice. A power of this kind is
therefore peculiarly adapted to the wants of freedom, at a time when
the eye and finger of the government are constantly intruding into
the minutest details of human actions, and when private persons are
at once too weak to protect themselves, and too much isolated for
them to reckon upon the assistance of their fellows. The strength of
the courts of law has ever been the greatest security which can be
offered to personal independence; but this is more especially the
case in democratic ages: private rights and interests are in
constant danger, if the judicial power does not grow more extensive
and more strong to keep pace with the growing equality of
conditions.
Equality awakens in men several propensities extremely dangerous to
freedom, to which the attention of the legislator ought constantly
to be directed. I shall only remind the reader of the most important
amongst them. Men living in democratic ages do not readily
comprehend the utility of forms: they feel an instinctive contempt
for them -- I have elsewhere shown for what reasons. Forms excite
their contempt and often their hatred; as they commonly aspire to
none but easy and present gratifications, they rush onwards to the
object of their desires, and the slightest delay exasperates them.
This same temper, carried with them into political life, renders
them hostile to forms, which perpetually retard or arrest them in
some of their projects. Yet this objection which the men of
democracies make to forms is the very thing which renders forms so
useful to freedom; for their chief merit is to serve as a barrier
between the strong and the weak, the ruler and the people, to retard
the one, and give the other time to look about him. Forms become
more necessary in proportion as the government becomes more active
and more powerful, whilst private persons are becoming more indolent
and more feeble. Thus democratic nations naturally stand more in
need of forms than other nations, and they naturally respect them
less. This deserves most serious attention. Nothing is more pitiful
than the arrogant disdain of most of our contemporaries for
questions of form; for the smallest questions of form have acquired
in our time an importance which they never had before: many of the
greatest interests of mankind depend upon them. I think that if the
statesmen of aristocratic ages could sometimes contemn forms with
impunity, and frequently rise above them, the statesmen to whom the
government of nations is now confided ought to treat the very least
among them with respect, and not neglect them without imperious
necessity. In aristocracies the observance of forms was
superstitious; amongst us they ought to be kept with a deliberate
and enlightened deference.
Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations
and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and
undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men
feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is
generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time
during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons
amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of
recent growth, and extremely precarious -- the consequence is that
they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated
without remorse. But it happens that at the same period and amongst
the same nations in which men conceive a natural contempt for the
rights of private persons, the rights of society at large are
naturally extended and consolidated: in other words, men become less
attached to private rights at the very time at which it would be
most necessary to retain and to defend what little remains of them.
It is therefore most especially in the present democratic ages, that
the true friends of the liberty and the greatness of man ought
constantly to be on the alert to prevent the power of government
from lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals to the
general execution of its designs. At such times no citizen is so
obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed
-- no private rights are so unimportant that they can be surrendered
with impunity to the caprices of a government. The reason is plain:
-- if the private right of an individual is violated at a time when
the human mind is fully impressed with the importance and the
sanctity of such rights, the injury done is confined to the
individual whose right is infringed; but to violate such a right, at
the present day, is deeply to corrupt the manners of the nation and
to put the whole community in jeopardy, because the very notion of
this kind of right constantly tends amongst us to be impaired and
lost.
There are certain habits, certain notions, and certain vices which
are peculiar to a state of revolution, and which a protracted
revolution cannot fail to engender and to propagate, whatever be, in
other respects, its character, its purpose, and the scene on which
it takes place. When any nation has, within a short space of time,
repeatedly varied its rulers, its opinions, and its laws, the men of
whom it is composed eventually contract a taste for change, and grow
accustomed to see all changes effected by sudden violence. Thus they
naturally conceive a contempt for forms which daily prove
ineffectual; and they do not support without impatience the dominion
of rules which they have so often seen infringed. As the ordinary
notions of equity and morality no longer suffice to explain and
justify all the innovations daily begotten by a revolution, the
principle of public utility is called in, the doctrine of political
necessity is conjured up, and men accustom themselves to sacrifice
private interests without scruple, and to trample on the rights of
individuals in order more speedily to accomplish any public purpose.
These habits and notions, which I shall call revolutionary, because
all revolutions produce them, occur in aristocracies just as much as
amongst democratic nations; but amongst the former they are often
less powerful and always less lasting, because there they meet with
habits, notions, defects, and impediments, which counteract them:
they consequently disappear as soon as the revolution is terminated,
and the nation reverts to its former political courses. This is not
always the case in democratic countries, in which it is ever to be
feared that revolutionary tendencies, becoming more gentle and more
regular, without entirely disappearing from society, will be
gradually transformed into habits of subjection to the
administrative authority of the government. I know of no countries
in which revolutions are more dangerous than in democratic
countries; because, independently of the accidental and transient
evils which must always attend them, they may always create some
evils which are permanent and unending. I believe that there are
such things as justifiable resistance and legitimate rebellion: I do
not therefore assert, as an absolute proposition, that the men of
democratic ages ought never to make revolutions; but I think that
they have especial reason to hesitate before they embark in them,
and that it is far better to endure many grievances in their present
condition than to have recourse to so perilous a remedy.
I shall conclude by one general idea, which comprises not only all
the particular ideas which have been expressed in the present
chapter, but also most of those which it is the object of this book
to treat of. In the ages of aristocracy which preceded our own,
there were private persons of great power, and a social authority of
extreme weakness. The outline of society itself was not easily
discernible, and constantly confounded with the different powers by
which the community was ruled. The principal efforts of the men of
those times were required to strengthen, aggrandize, and secure the
supreme power; and on the other hand, to circumscribe individual
independence within narrower limits, and to subject private
interests to the interests of the public. Other perils and other
cares await the men of our age. Amongst the greater part of modern
nations, the government, whatever may be its origin, its
constitution, or its name, has become almost omnipotent, and private
persons are falling, more and more, into the lowest stage of
weakness and dependence. In olden society everything was different;
unity and uniformity were nowhere to be met with. In modern society
everything threatens to become so much alike, that the peculiar
characteristics of each individual will soon be entirely lost in the
general aspect of the world. Our forefathers were ever prone to make
an improper use of the notion, that private rights ought to be
respected; and we are naturally prone on the other hand to
exaggerate the idea that the interest of a private individual ought
always to bend to the interest of the many. The political world is
metamorphosed: new remedies must henceforth be sought for new
disorders. To lay down extensive, but distinct and settled limits,
to the action of the government; to confer certain rights on private
persons, and to secure to them the undisputed enjoyment of those
rights; to enable individual man to maintain whatever independence,
strength, and original power he still possesses; to raise him by the
side of society at large, and uphold him in that position -- these
appear to me the main objects of legislators in the ages upon which
we are now entering. It would seem as if the rulers of our time
sought only to use men in order to make things great; I wish that
they would try a little more to make great men; that they would set
less value on the work, and more upon the workman; that they would
never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man
belonging to it is individually weak, and that no form or
combination of social polity has yet been devised, to make an
energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled
citizens.
I trace amongst our contemporaries two contrary notions which are
equally injurious. One set of men can perceive nothing in the
principle of equality but the anarchical tendencies which it
engenders: they dread their own free agency -- they fear themselves.
Other thinkers, less numerous but more enlightened, take a different
view: besides that track which starts from the principle of equality
to terminate in anarchy, they have at last discovered the road which
seems to lead men to inevitable servitude. They shape their souls
beforehand to this necessary condition; and, despairing of remaining
free, they already do obeisance in their hearts to the master who is
soon to appear. The former abandon freedom, because they think it
dangerous; the latter, because they hold it to be impossible. If I
had entertained the latter conviction, I should not have written
this book, but I should have confined myself to deploring in secret
the destiny of mankind. I have sought to point out the dangers to
which the principle of equality exposes the independence of man,
because I firmly believe that these dangers are the most formidable,
as well as the least foreseen, of all those which futurity holds in
store: but I do not think that they are insurmountable. The men who
live in the democratic ages upon which we are entering have
naturally a taste for independence: they are naturally impatient of
regulation, and they are wearied by the permanence even of the
condition they themselves prefer. They are fond of power; but they
are prone to despise and hate those who wield it, and they easily
elude its grasp by their own mobility and insignificance. These
propensities will always manifest themselves, because they originate
in the groundwork of society, which will undergo no change: for a
long time they will prevent the establishment of any despotism, and
they will furnish fresh weapons to each succeeding generation which
shall struggle in favor of the liberty of mankind. Let us then look
forward to the future with that salutary fear which makes men keep
watch and ward for freedom, not with that faint and idle terror
which depresses and enervates the heart.
Chapter 8 General Survey of the Subject
BEFORE I close forever the theme that has detained me so long, I
would fain take a parting survey of all the various characteristics
of modern society, and appreciate at last the general influence to
be exercised by the principle of equality upon the fate of mankind;
but I am stopped by the difficulty of the task, and in presence of
so great an object my sight is troubled, and my reason fails. The
society of the modern world which I have sought to delineate, and
which I seek to judge, has but just come into existence. Time has
not yet shaped it into perfect form: the great revolution by which
it has been created is not yet over: and amidst the occurrences of
our time, it is almost impossible to discern what will pass away
with the revolution itself, and what will survive its close. The
world which is rising into existence is still half encumbered by the
remains of the world which is waning into decay; and amidst the vast
perplexity of human affairs, none can say how much of ancient
institutions and former manners will remain, or how much will
completely disappear. Although the revolution which is taking place
in the social condition, the laws, the opinions, and the feelings of
men, is still very far from being terminated, yet its results
already admit of no comparison with anything that the world has ever
before witnessed. I go back from age to age up to the remotest
antiquity; but I find no parallel to what is occurring before my
eyes: as the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the
mind of man wanders in obscurity.
Nevertheless, in the midst of a prospect so wide, so novel and so
confused, some of the more prominent characteristics may already be
discerned and pointed out. The good things and the evils of life are
more equally distributed in the world: great wealth tends to
disappear, the number of small fortunes to increase; desires and
gratifications are multiplied, but extraordinary prosperity and
irremediable penury are alike unknown. The sentiment of ambition is
universal, but the scope of ambition is seldom vast. Each individual
stands apart in solitary weakness; but society at large is active,
provident, and powerful: the performances of private persons are
insignificant, those of the State immense. There is little energy of
character; but manners are mild, and laws humane. If there be few
instances of exalted heroism or of virtues of the highest,
brightest, and purest temper, men's habits are regular, violence is
rare, and cruelty almost unknown. Human existence becomes longer,
and property more secure: life is not adorned with brilliant
trophies, but it is extremely easy and tranquil. Few pleasures are
either very refined or very coarse; and highly polished manners are
as uncommon as great brutality of tastes. Neither men of great
learning, nor extremely ignorant communities, are to be met with;
genius becomes more rare, information more diffused. The human mind
is impelled by the small efforts of all mankind combined together,
$not by the strenuous activity of certain men. There is less
perfection, but more abundance, in all the productions of the arts.
The ties of race, of rank, and of country are relaxed the great bond
of humanity is strengthened. If I endeavor to find out the most
general and the most prominent of all these different
characteristics, I shall have occasion to perceive, that what is
taking place in men's fortunes manifests itself under a thousand
other forms. Almost all extremes are softened or blunted: all that
was most prominent is superseded by some mean term, at once less
lofty and less low, less brilliant and less obscure, than what
before existed in the world.
When I survey this countless multitude of beings, shaped in each
oiler's likeness, amidst whom nothing rises and nothing falls, the
sight of such universal uniformity saddens and chills me, and I am
tempted to regret that state of society which has ceased to be. When
the world was full of men of great importance and extreme
insignificance, of great wealth and extreme poverty, of great
learning and extreme ignorance, I turned aside from the latter to
fix my observation on the former alone, who gratified my sympathies.
But I admit that this gratification arose from my own weakness: it
is because I am unable to see at once all that is around me, that I
am allowed thus to select and separate the objects of my
predilection from among so many others. Such is not the case with
that almighty and eternal Being whose gaze necessarily includes the
whole of created things, and who surveys distinctly, though at once,
mankind and man. We may naturally believe that it is not the
singular prosperity of the few, but the greater well-being of all,
which is most pleasing in the sight of the Creator and Preserver of
men. What appears to me to be man's decline, is to His eye
advancement; what afflicts me is acceptable to Him. A state of
equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just; and its
justice constitutes its greatness and its beauty. I would strive
then to raise myself to this point of the divine contemplation, and
thence to view and to judge the concerns of men.
No man, upon the earth, can as yet affirm absolutely and generally,
that the new state of the world is better than its former one; but
it is already easy to perceive that this state is different. Some
vices and some virtues were so inherent in the constitution of an
aristocratic nation, and are so opposite to the character of a
modern people, that they can never be infused into it; some good
tendencies and some bad propensities which were unknown to the
former, are natural to the latter; some ideas suggest themselves
spontaneously to the imagination of the one, which are utterly
repugnant to the mind of the other. They are like two distinct
orders of human beings, each of which has its own merits and
defects, its own advantages and its own evils. Care must therefore
be taken not to judge the state of society, which is now coming into
existence, by notions derived from a state of society which no
longer exists; for as these states of society are exceedingly
different in their structure, they cannot be submitted to a just or
fair comparison. It would be scarcely more reasonable to require of
our own contemporaries the peculiar virtues which originated in the
social condition of their forefathers, since that social condition
is itself fallen, and has drawn into one promiscuous ruin the good
and evil which belonged to it.
But as yet these things are imperfectly understood. I find that a
great number of my contemporaries undertake to make a certain
selection from amongst the institutions, the opinions, and the ideas
which originated in the aristocratic constitution of society as it
was: a portion of these elements they would willingly relinquish,
but they would keep the remainder and transplant them into their new
world. I apprehend that such men are wasting their time and their
strength in virtuous but unprofitable efforts. The object is not to
retain the peculiar advantages which the inequality of conditions
bestows upon mankind, but to secure the new benefits which equality
may supply. We have not to seek to make ourselves like our
progenitors, but to strive to work out that species of greatness and
happiness which is our own. For myself, who now look back from this
extreme limit of my task, and discover from afar, but at once, the
various objects which have attracted my more attentive investigation
upon my way, I am full of apprehensions and of hopes. I perceive
mighty dangers which it is possible to ward off -- mighty evils
which may be avoided or alleviated; and I cling with a firmer hold
to the belief, that for democratic nations to be virtuous and
prosperous they require but to will it. I am aware that many of my
contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters
here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and
unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race,
or from the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are
false and cowardly; such principles can never produce aught but
feeble men and pusillanimous nations. Providence has not created
mankind entirely independent or entirely free. It is true that
around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot
pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and
free: as it is with man, so with communities. The nations of our
time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but
it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to
lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to
prosperity or to wretchedness.
APPENDIX
Appendix A
For information concerning all the countries of the West which have
not been visited by Europeans, consult the account of two
expeditions undertaken at the expense of Congress by Major Long.
This traveller particularly mentions, on the subject of the great
American desert, that a line may be drawn nearly parallel to the
20th degree of longitude a (meridian of Washington), beginning from
the Red River and ending at the River Platte. From this imaginary
line to the Rocky Mountains, which bound the valley of the
Mississippi on the west, lie immense plains, which are almost
entirely covered with sand, incapable of cultivation, or scattered
over with masses of granite. In summer, these plains are quite
destitute of water, and nothing is to be seen on them but herds of
buffaloes and wild horses. Some hordes of Indians are also found
there, but in no great numbers. Major Long was told that in
travelling northwards from the River Platte you find the same desert
lying constantly on the left; but he was unable to ascertain the
truth of this report. However worthy of confidence may be the
narrative of Major Long, it must be remembered that he only passed
through the country of which he speaks, without deviating widely
from the line which he had traced out for his journey.
Appendix B
South America, in the region between the tropics, produces an
incredible profusion of climbing plants, of which the flora of the
Antilles alone presents us with forty different species. Among the
most graceful of these shrubs is the passion-flower, which,
according to Descourtiz, grows with such luxuriance in the Antilles,
as to climb trees by means of the tendrils with which it is
provided, and form moving flowers of rich and elegant festoons,
decorated with blue and purple flowers, and fragrant with perfume.
The Mimosa scandens (Acacia a grandes gousses) is a creeper of
enormous and rapid growth, which climbs from tree to tree, and
sometimes covers more than half a league.
Appendix C
The languages which are spoken by the Indians of America, from the
Pole to Cape Horn, are said to be all formed upon the same model,
and subject to the same grammatical rules; whence it may fairly be
concluded that all the Indian nations sprang from the same stock.
Each tribe of the American continent speaks a different dialect; but
the number of languages, properly so called, is very small, a fact
which tends to prove that the nations of the New World had not a
very remote origin. Moreover, the languages of America have a great
degree of regularity, from which it seems probable that the tribes
which employ them had not undergone any great revolutions, or been
incorporated voluntarily or by constraint, with foreign nations. For
it is generally the union of several languages into one which
produces grammatical irregularities. It is not long since the
American languages, especially those of the North, first attracted
the serious attention of philologists, when the discovery was made
that this idiom of a barbarous people was the product of a
complicated system of ideas and very learned combinations. These
languages were found to be very rich, and great pains had been taken
at their formation to render them agreeable to the ear. The
grammatical system of the Americans differs from all others in
several points, but especially in the following: --
Some nations of Europe, amongst others the Germans, have the power
of combining at pleasure different expressions, and thus giving a
complex sense to certain words. The Indians have given a most
surprising extension to this power, so as to arrive at the means of
connecting a great number of ideas with a single term. This will be
easily understood with the help of an example quoted by Mr.
Duponceau, in the "Memoirs of the Philosophical Society of America":
A Delaware woman playing with a cat or a young dog, says this
writer, is heard to pronounce the word kuligatschis, which is thus
composed: k is the sign of the second person, and signifies "thou "
or "thy "; uli is a part of the word wulit, which signifies
"beautiful," "pretty"; gat is another fragment, of the word wichgat,
which means "paw"; and, lastly, schis is a diminutive giving the
idea of smallness. Thus in one word the Indian woman has expressed
"Thy pretty little paw." Take another example of the felicity with
which the savages of America have composed their words. A young man
of Delaware is called pilape. This word is formed from pilsit,
"chaste," "innocent"; and lenape, "man"; viz., "man in his purity
and innocence." This facility of combining words is most remarkable
in the strange formation of their verbs. The most complex action is
often expressed by a single verb, which serves to convey all the
shades of an idea by the modification of its construction. Those who
may wish to examine more in detail this subject, which I have only
glanced at superficially, should read: --
1. The correspondence of Mr. Duponceau and the Rev. Mr. Hecwelder
relative to the Indian languages, which is to be found in the first
volume of the " Memoirs of the Philosophical Society of America,"
published at Philadelphia, 1819, by Abraham Small; vol. i. p.
356-464.
2. The "Grammar of the Delaware or Lenape Language," by Geiberger,
and the preface of Mr. Duponceau. All these are in the same
collection, vol. iii.
3. An excellent account of these works, which is at the end of the
sixth volume of the American Encyclopedia.
Appendix D
See in Charlevoix, vol. i. p. 235, the history of the first war
which the French inhabitants of Canada carried on, in 1610, against
the Iroquois. The latter, armed with bows and arrows, offered a
desperate resistance to the French and their allies. Charlevoix is
not a great painter, yet he exhibits clearly enough, in this
narrative, the contrast between the European manners and those of
savages, as well as the different way in which the two races of men
understood the sense of honor. When the French, says he, seized upon
the beaver-skins which covered the Indians who had fallen, the
Hurons, their allies, were greatly offended at this proceeding; but
without hesitation they set to work in their usual manner,
inflicting horrid cruelties upon the prisoners, and devouring one of
those who had been killed, which made the Frenchmen shudder. The
barbarians prided themselves upon a scrupulousness which they were
surprised at not finding in our nation, and could not understand
that there was less to reprehend in the stripping of dead bodies
than in the devouring of their flesh like wild beasts. Charlevoix,
in another place (vol. i. p. 230), thus describes the first torture
of which Champlain was an eyewitness, and the return of the Hurons
into their own village. Having proceeded about eight leagues, says
he, our allies halted; and having singled out `one of their
captives, they reproached him with all the cruelties which he had
practised upon the warriors of their nation who had fallen into his
hands, and told him that he might expect to be treated in like
manner; adding, that if he had any spirit he would prove it by
singing. He immediately chanted forth his death-song, and then his
war-song, and all the songs he knew, "but in a very mournful
strain," says Champlain, who was not then aware that all savage
music has a melancholy character. The tortures which succeeded,
accompanied by all the horrors which we shall mention hereafter,
terrified the French, who made every effort to put a stop to them,
but in vain. The following night, one of the Hurons having dreamt
that they were pursued, the retreat was changed to a real flight,
and the savages never stopped until they were out of the reach of
danger. The moment they perceived the cabins of their own village,
they cut themselves long sticks, to which they fastened the scalps
which had fallen to their share, and carried them in triumph. At
this sight, the women swam to the canoes, where they received the
bloody scalps from the hands of their husbands, and tied them round
their necks. The warriors offered one of these horrible trophies to
Champlain; they also presented him with some bows and arrows -- the
only spoils of the Iroquois which they had ventured to seize --
entreating him to show them to the King of France. Champlain lived a
whole winter quite alone among these barbarians, without being under
any alarm for his person or property.
Appendix E
Although the Puritanical strictness which presided over the
establishment of the English colonies in America is now much
relaxed, remarkable traces of it are still found in their habits and
their laws. In 1792, at the very time when the anti-Christian
republic of France began its ephemeral existence, the legislative
body of Massachusetts promulgated the following law, to compel the
citizens to observe the Sabbath. We give the preamble and the
principal articles of this law, which is worthy of the reader's
attention: "Whereas," says the legislator, "the observation of the
Sunday is an affair of public interest; inasmuch as it produces a
necessary suspension of labor, leads men to reflect upon the duties
of life, and the errors to which human nature is liable, and
provides for the public and private worship of God, the creator and
governor of the universe, and for the performance of such acts of
charity as are the ornament and comfort of Christian societies: --
Whereas irreligious or light-minded persons, forgetting the duties
which the Sabbath imposes, and the benefits which these duties
confer on society, are known to profane its sanctity, by following
their pleasures or their affairs; this way of acting being contrary
to their own interest as Christians, and calculated to annoy those
who do not follow their example; being also of great injury to
society at large, by spreading a taste for dissipation and dissolute
manners; Be it enacted and ordained by the Governor, Council, and
Representatives convened in General Court of Assembly, that all and
every person and persons shall on that day carefully apply
themselves to the duties of religion and piety, that no tradesman or
labourer shall exercise his ordinary calling, and that no game or
recreation shall be used on the Lord's Day, upon pain of forfeiting
ten shillings.
"That no one shall travel on that day, or any part thereof, under
pain of forfeiting twenty shillings; that no vessel shall leave a
harbour of the colony; that no persons shall keep outside the
meeting-house during the time of public worship, or profane the time
by playing or talking, on penalty of five shillings.
"Public-houses shall not entertain any other than strangers or
lodgers, under penalty of five shillings for every person found
drinking and abiding therein.
"Any person in health, who, without sufficient reason, shall omit to
worship God in public during three months, shall be condemned to a
fine of ten shillings.
"Any person guilty of misbehaviour in a place of public worship,
shall be fined from five to forty shillings.
"These laws are to be enforced by the tything-men of each township,
who have authority to visit public-houses on the Sunday. The
innkeeper who shall refuse them admittance, shall be fined forty
shillings for such offence.
"The tything-men are to stop travellers, and require of them their
reason for being on the road on Sunday; anyone refusing to answer,
shall be sentenced to pay a fine not exceeding five pounds sterling.
If the reason given by the traveller be not deemed by the
tything-man sufficient, he may bring the traveller before the
justice of the peace of the district." (Law of March 8, 1792;
General Laws of Massachusetts, vol. i. p. 410.)
On March 11, 1797, a new law increased the amount of fines, half of
which was to be given to the informer. (Same collection, vol. ii. p.
525.) On February 16, 1816, a new law confirmed these same measures.
(Same collection, vol. ii. p. 405.) Similar enactments exist in the
laws of the State of New York, revised in 1827 and 1828. (See
Revised Statutes, Part I. chapter 20, p. 675.) In these it is
declared that no one is allowed on the Sabbath to sport, to fish, to
play at games, or to frequent houses where liquor is sold. No one
can travel, except in case of necessity.
And this is not the only trace which the religious strictness and
austere manners of the first emigrants have left behind them in the
American laws. In the Revised Statutes of the State of New York,
vol. i. p. 662, is the following claus: --
"Whoever shall win or lose in the space of twenty-four hours, by
gaming or betting, the sum of twenty-five dollars, shall be found
guilty of a misdemeanour, and upon conviction shall be condemned to
pay a fine equal to at least five times the value of flee sum lost
or won; which shall be paid to the inspector of the poor of the
township. He that loses twenty-five dollars or more may bring an
action to recover them; and if he neglects to do so the inspector of
the poor may prosecute the winner, and oblige him to pay into the
poor's box both the sum he has gained and three times as much
besides."
The laws we quote from are of recent date; but they are
unintelligible without going back to the very origin of the
colonies. I have no doubt that in our days the penal part of these
laws is very rarely applied. Laws preserve their inflexibility, long
after the manners of a nation have yielded to the influence of time.
It is still true, however, that nothing strikes a foreigner on his
arrival in America more forcibly than the regard paid to the
Sabbath. There is one, in particular, of the large American cities,
in which all social movements begin to be suspended even on Saturday
evening. You traverse its streets at the hour at which you expect
men in the middle of life to be engaged in business, and young
people in pleasure; and you meet with solitude and silence. Not only
have all ceased to work, but they appear to have ceased to exist.
Neither the movements of industry are heard, nor the accents of joy,
nor even the confused murmur which arises from the midst of a great
city. Chains are hung across the streets in the neighborhood of the
churches; the half-closed shutters of the houses scarcely admit a
ray of sun into the dwellings of the citizens. Now and then you
perceive a solitary individual who glides silently along the
deserted streets and lanes. Next day, at early dawn, the rolling of
carriages, the noise of hammers, the cries of the population, begin
to make themselves heard again. The city is awake. An eager crowd
hastens towards the resort of commerce and industry; everything
around you bespeaks motion, bustle, hurry. A feverish activity
succeeds to the lethargic stupor of yesterday; you might almost
suppose that they had but one day to acquire wealth and to enjoy it.
Appendix F
It is unnecessary for me to say, that in the chapter which has just
been read, I have not had the intention of giving a history of
America. My only object was to enable the reader to appreciate the
influence which the opinions and manners of the first emigrants had
exercised upon the fate of the different colonies, and of the Union
in general. I have therefore confined myself to the quotation of a
few detached fragments. I do not know whether I am deceived, but it
appears to me that, by pursuing the path which I have merely pointed
out, it would be easy to present such pictures of the American
republics as would not be unworthy the attention of the public, and
could not fail to suggest to the statesman matter for reflection.
Not being able to devote myself to this labor, I am anxious to
render it easy to others; and, for this purpose, I subjoin a short
catalogue and analysis of the works which seem to me the most
important to consult.
At the head of the general documents which it would be advantageous
to examine I place the work entitled "An Historical Collection of
State Papers, and other authentic Documents, intended as Materials
for a History of the United States of America," by Ebenezer Hasard.
The first volume of this compilation, which was printed at
Philadelphia in 1792, contains a literal copy of all the charters
granted by the Crown of England to the emigrants, as well as the
principal acts of the colonial governments, during the commencement
of their existence. Amongst other authentic documents, we here find
a great many relating to the affairs of New England and Virginia
during this period. The second volume is almost entirely devoted to
the acts of the Confederation of 1643. This federal compact, which
was entered into by the colonies of New England with the view of
resisting the Indians, was the first instance of union afforded by
the Anglo-Americans. There were besides many other confederations of
the same nature, before the famous one of 1776, which brought about
the independence of the colonies.
Each colony has, besides, its own historic monuments, some of which
are extremely curious; beginning with Virginia, the State which was
first peopled. The earliest historian of Virginia was its founder,
Captain John Smith. Captain Smith has left us an octavo volume,
entitled "The generall Historie of Virginia and New England, by
Captain John Smith, sometymes Governor in those Countryes, and
Admirall of New England " printed at London in 1627. The work is
adorned with curious maps and engravings of the time when it
appeared; the narrative extends from the year 1584 to 1626. Smith's
work is highly and deservedly esteemed. The author was one of the
most celebrated adventurers of a period of remarkable adventure; his
book breathes that ardor for discovery, that spirit of enterprise,
which characterized the men of his time, when the manners of
chivalry were united to zeal for commerce, and made subservient to
the acquisition of wealth. But Captain Smith is most remarkable for
uniting to the virtues which characterized his contemporaries
several qualities to which they were generally strangers; his style
is simple and concise, his narratives bear the stamp of truth, and
his descriptions are free from false ornament. This author throws
most valuable light upon the state and condition of the Indians at
the time when North America was first discovered.
The second historian to consult is Beverley, who commences his
narrative with the year 1585, and ends it with 1700. The first part
of his book contains historical documents, properly so called,
relative to the infancy of the colony. The second affords a most
curious picture of the state of the Indians at this remote period.
The third conveys very clear ideas concerning the manners, social
conditions, laws, and political customs of the Virginians in the
author's lifetime. Beverley was a native of Virginia, which
occasions him to say at the beginning of his book, that he entreats
his readers not to exercise their critical severity upon it, since,
having been born in the Indies, he does not aspire to purity of
language. Notwithstanding this colonial modesty, the author shows
throughout his book the impatience with which he endures the
supremacy of the mother-country. In this work of Beverley are also
found numerous traces of that spirit of civil liberty which animated
the English colonies of America at the time when he wrote. He also
shows the dissensions which existed among them, and retarded their
independence. Beverley detests his Catholic neighbors of Maryland
even more than he hates the English government: his style is simple,
his narrative interesting, and apparently trustworthy.
I saw in America another work which ought to be consulted, entitled
"The History of Virginia," by William Stith. This book affords some
curious details, but I thought it long and diffuse.
The most ancient as well as the best document to be consulted on the
history of Carolina, is a work in small quarto, entitled "The
History of Carolina," by John Lawson, printed at London in 1718.
This work contains, in the first part, a journey of discovery in the
west of Carolina; the account of which, given in the form of a
journal, is in general confused and superficial; but it contains a
verb striking description of the mortality caused among the savages
of that time both by the smallpox and the immoderate use of brandy;
with a curious picture of the corruption of manners prevalent
amongst them, which was increased by the presence of Europeans. The
second part of Lawson's book is taken up with a description of the
physical condition of Carolina, and its productions. In the third
part, the author gives an interesting account of the manners,
customs, and government of flee Indians at that period. There is a
good deal of talent and originality in this part of the work. Lawson
concludes his history with a copy of the charter granted to the
Carolinas in the reign of Charles II. The general tone of this work
is light, and often licentious, forming a perfect contrast to the
solemn style of the works published at the same period in New
England. Lawson's history is extremely scarce in America, and cannot
be procured in Europe. There is, however, a copy of it in the Royal
Library at Paris.
From the southern extremity of the United States, I pass at once to
the northern limit; as the intermediate space was not peopled till a
later period. I must first point out a very curious compilation,
entitled " Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society,"
printed for the first time at Boston in 1792, and reprinted in 1806.
The collection of which I speak, and which is continued to the
present day, contains a great number of very valuable documents
relating to the history of the different States in New England.
Among them are letters which have never been published, and
authentic pieces which had been buried in provincial archives. The
whole work of Gookin, concerning the Indians, is inserted there.
I have mentioned several times in the chapter to which this note
relates, the work of Nathaniel Norton entitled "New England's
Memorial"; sufficiently, perhaps, to prove that it deserves the
attention of those who would be conversant with the history of New
England. This book is in octavo, and was reprinted at Boston in
1826.
The most valuable and important authority which exists upon the
history of New England, is the work of the Rev. Cotton Mather,
entitled "Magnalia Christi Americana, or the Ecclesiastical History
of New England, 1620-1698, 2 vols. 8vo, reprinted at Hartford,
United States, in 1820." The author divided his work into seven
books. The first presents the history of the events which prepared
and brought about the establishment of New England. The second
contains the lives of the first governors and chief magistrates who
presided over the country. The third is devoted to the lives and
labors of the evangelical ministers who, during the same period, had
the care of souls. In the fourth the author relates the institution
and progress of the University of Cambridge (Massachusetts). In the
fifth he describes the principles and the discipline of the Church
of New England. The sixth is taken up in retracing certain facts,
which, in the opinion of Mather, prove the merciful interposition of
Providence in behalf of the inhabitants of New England. Lastly, in
the seventh, the author gives an account of the heresies and the
troubles to which the Church of New England was exposed. Cotton
Mather was an evangelical minister who was born at Boston, and
passed his life there. His narratives are distinguished by the same
ardor and religious zeal which led to the foundation of the colonies
of New England. Traces of bad taste sometimes occur in his manner of
writing; but he interests, because he is full of enthusiasm. He is
often intolerant, still oftener credulous, but he never betrays an
intention to deceive. Sometimes his book contains fine passages, and
true and profound reflections, such as the following: -- "Before the
arrival of the Puritans," says he (vol. i. chap. iv.), "there were
more than a few attempts of the English to people and improve the
parts of New England which were to the northward of New Plymouth;
but the designs of those attempts being aimed no higher than the
advancement of some worldly interests, a constant series of
disasters has confounded them, until there was a plantation erected
upon the nobler designs of Christianity: and that plantation though
it has had more adversaries than perhaps any one upon earth, yet,
having obtained help from God, it continues to this day." Mather
occasionally relieves the austerity of his descriptions with images
full of tender feeling: after having spoken of an English lady whose
religious ardor had brought her to America with her husband, and who
soon after sank under the fatigues and privations of exile, he
adds," As for her virtuous husband, Isaac Johnson, He tryed To live
without her, liked it not, and dyed."
Mather's work gives an admirable picture of the time and country
which he describes. In his account of the motives which led the
Puritans to seek an asylum beyond seas, he says: --
"The God of Heaven served, as it were, a summons upon the spirits of
his people in the English nation, stirring up the spirits of
thousands which never saw the faces of each other, with a most
unanimous inclination to leave all the pleasant accommodations of
their native country, and go over a terrible ocean, into a more
terrible desert, for the pure enjoyment of all his ordinances. It is
now reasonable that, before we pass any further, the reasons of his
undertaking should be more exactly made known unto posterity,
especially unto the posterity of those that were the undertakers,
lest they come at length to forget and neglect the true interest of
New England. Wherefore I shall now transcribe some of them from a
manuscript, wherein they were then tendered unto consideration:
General Considerations for the Plantation of New England
"First, It will be a service unto the Church of great consequence,
to carry the Gospel unto those parts of the world, and raise a
bulwark against the kingdom of Antichrist, which the Jesuits labour
to rear up in all parts of the world.
"Secondly, All other Churches of Europe have been brought under
desolations; and it may be feared that the like judgments are coming
upon us; and who knows but God hath provided this place to be a
refuge for many whom he means to save out of the general
destruction?
"Thirdly, The land grows weary of her inhabitants, insomuch that
man, which is the most precious of all creatures, is here more vile
and base than the earth he treads upon; children, neighbours, and
friends, especially the poor, are counted the greatest burdens,
which, if things were right, would be the chiefest of earthly
blessings.
"Fourthly, We are grown to that intemperance in all excess of riot,
as no mean estate almost will suffice a man to keep sail with his
equals, and he that fails in it must live in scorn and contempt:
hence it comes to pass, that all arts and trades are carried in that
deceitful manner and unrighteous course, as it is almost impossible
for a good upright man to maintain his constant charge and live
comfortably in them.
"Fifthly, The schools of learning and religion are so corrupted, as
(besides the unsupportable charge of education) most children, even
the best, wittiest, and of the fairest hopes, are perverted,
corrupted, and utterly overthrown by the multitude of evil examples
and licentious behaviours in these seminaries.
"Sixthly, The whole earth is the Lord's garden, and he hath given it
to the sons of Adam, to be tilled and improved by them: why, then,
should we stand starving here for places of habitation, and in the
meantime suffer whole countries, as profitable for the use of man,
to lie waste without any improvement?
"Seventhly, What can be a better or nobler work, and more worthy of
a Christian, than to erect and support a reformed particular Church
in its infancy, and unite our forces with such a company of faithful
people, as by timely assistance may grow stronger and prosper; but
for want of it, may be put to great hazards, if not be wholly
ruined?
"Eighthly, If any such as are known to be godly, and live in wealth
and prosperity here, shall forsake all this to join with this
reformed Church, and with it run the hazard of an hard and mean
condition, it will be an example of great use, both for the removing
of scandal and to give more life unto the faith of God's people in
their prayers for the plantation, and also to encourage others to
join the more willingly in it."
Further on, when he declares the principles of the Church of New
England with respect to morals, Mather inveighs with violence
against the custom of drinking healths at table, which he denounces
as a pagan and abominable practice. He proscribes with the same
rigor all ornaments for the hair used by the female sex, as well as
their custom of having the arms and neck uncovered. In another part
of his work he relates several instances of witchcraft which had
alarmed New England. It is plain that the visible action of the
devil in the affairs of this world appeared to him an incontestable
and evident fact.
This work of Cotton Mather displays, in many places, the spirit of
civil liberty and political independence which characterized the
times in which he lived. Their principles respecting government are
discoverable at every page. Thus, for instance, the inhabitants of
Massachusetts, in the year 1630, ten years after the foundation of
Plymouth, are found to have devoted L400 sterling to the
establishment of the University of Cambridge. In passing from the
general documents relative to the history of New England to those
which describe the several States comprised within its limits, I
ought first to notice The History of the Colony of Massachusetts,"
by Hutchinson, Lieutenant-Governor of the Massachusetts Province, 2
vols. 8vo. The history of Hutchinson, which I have several times
quoted in flee chapter to which this note relates, commences in the
year 1628, and ends in 1750. Throughout the work there is a striking
air of truth and the greatest simplicity of style: it is full of
minute details. The best history to consult concerning Connecticut
is that of Benjamin Trumbull, entitled "A Complete History of
Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesiastical," 1630-1764, 2 vols. 8vo,
printed in 1818 at New Haven. This history contains a clear and calm
account of all the events which happened in Connecticut during the
period given in the title. The author drew from the best sources,
and his narrative bears the stamp of truth. All that he says of the
early days of Connecticut is extremely curious. See especially the
Constitution of 1639, vol. i. ch. vi. p. 100; and also the Penal
Laws of Connecticut, vol. i. ch. vii. p. 123.
"The History of New Hampshire," by Jeremy Belknap, is a work held in
merited estimation. It was printed at Boston in 1792, in 2 vols.
8vo. The third chapter of the first volume is particularly worthy of
attention for the valuable details it affords on the political and
religious principles of the Puritans, on the causes of their
emigration, and on their laws. The following curious quotation is
given from a sermon delivered in 1663: -- "It concerneth New England
always to remember that they are a plantation religious, not a
plantation of trade. The profession of the purity of doctrine,
worship, and discipline, is written upon her forehead. Let
merchants, and such as are increasing cent. per cent., remember
this, that worldly gain was not the end and design of the people of
New England, but religion. And if any man among us make religion as
twelve, and the world as thirteen, such an one hath not the spirit
of a true New Englishman." The reader of Belknap will find in his
work more general ideas, and more strength of thought, than are to
be met with in the American historians even to the present day.
Among the Central States which deserve our attention for their
remote origin, New York and Pennsylvania are the foremost. The best
history we have of the former is entitled "A History of New York,"
by William Smith, printed at London in 1757. Smith gives us
important details of the wars between the French and English in
America. His is the best account of the famous confederation of the
Iroquois.
With respect to Pennsylvania, I cannot do better than point out the
work of Proud, entitled "The History of Pennsylvania, from the
original Institution and Settlement of that Province, under the
first Proprietor and Governor, William Penn, in 1681, till after the
year 1742," by Robert Proud, 2 vols. 8vo, printed at Philadelphia in
1797. This work is deserving of the especial attention of the
reader; it contains a mass of curious documents concerning Penn, the
doctrine of the Quakers, and the character, manners, and customs of
the first inhabitants of Pennsylvania. I need not add that among the
most important documents relating to this State are the works of
Penn himself, and those of Franklin.
Appendix G
We read in Jefferson's" Memoirs " as follows: --
At the time of the first settlement of the English in Virginia, when
land was to be had for little or nothing, some provident persons
having obtained large grants of it, and being desirous of
maintaining the splendor of their families, entailed their property
upon their descendants. The transmission of these estates from
generation to generation, to men who bore the same name, had the
effect of raising up a distinct class of families, who, possessing
by law the privilege of perpetuating their wealth, formed by these
means a sort of patrician order, distinguished by the grandeur and
luxury of their establishments. From this order it was that the King
usually chose his councillors of state."
In the United States, the principal clauses of the English law
respecting descent have been universally rejected. The first rule
that we follow, says Mr. Kent, touching inheritance, is the
following: -- If a man dies intestate, his property goes to his
heirs in a direct line. If he has but one heir or heiress, he or she
succeeds to the whole. If there are several heirs of the same
degree, they divide the inheritance equally amongst them, without
distinction of sex. This rule was prescribed for the first time in
the State of New York by a statute of February 23, 1786. (See
Revised Statutes, vol. iii. Appendix, p. 48.) It has since then been
adopted in the Revised Statutes of the same State. At the present
day this law holds good throughout the whole of the United States,
with the exception of the State of Vermont, where the male heir
inherits a double portion. (Kent's "Commentaries," vol. iv. p. 370.)
Mr. Kent, in the same work, vol. iv. p. 1-22, gives a historical
account of American legislation on the subject of entail: by this we
learn that, previous to the Revolution, the colonies followed the
English law of entail. Estates tail were abolished in Virginia in
1776, on a motion of Mr. Jefferson. They were suppressed in New York
in 1786, and have since been abolished in North Carolina, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Georgia, and Missouri. In Vermont, Indiana, Illinois,
South Carolina, and Louisiana, entail was never introduced. Those
States which thought proper to preserve the English law of entail,
modified it in such a way as to deprive it of its most aristocratic
tendencies. " Our general principles on the subject of government,"
says Mr. Kent, "tend to favor the free circulation of property."
It cannot fail to strike the French reader who studies the law of
inheritance, that on the questions the French legislation is
infinitely more democratic even than the American. The American law
makes an equal division of the father's property, but only in the
case of his will not being known; "for every man," says the law, "in
the State of New York (Revised Statutes, vol. iii. Appendix, p. 51),
has entire liberty, power, and authority, to dispose of his property
by will, to leave it entire, or divided in favor of any persons he
chooses as his heirs, provided he do not leave it to a political
body or any corporation." The French law obliges the testator to
divide his property equally, or nearly so, among his heirs. Most of
the American republics still admit of entails, under certain
restrictions; but the French law prohibits entail in all cases. If
the social condition of the Americans is more democratic than that
of the French, the laws of the latter are the most democratic of the
two. This may be explained more easily than at first appears to be
the case. In France, democracy is still occupied in the work of
destruction; in America, it reigns quietly over the ruins it has
made.
Appendix H
Summary of the Qualifications of Voters in the United States as They
Existed in 1832
All the States agree in granting the right of voting at the age of
twenty-one. In all of them it is necessary to have resided for a
certain time in the district where the vote is given. This period
varies from three months to two years.
As to the qualification: in the State of Massachusetts it is
necessary to have an income of L3 or a capital of L60.
In Rhode Island, a man must possess landed property to the amount of
$133.
In Connecticut, he must have a property which gives an income of
$17. A year of service in the militia also gives the elective
privilege.
In New Jersey, an elector must have a property of L50 a year.
In South Carolina and Maryland, the elector must possess fifty acres
of land.
In Tennessee, he must possess some property.
In the States of Mississippi, Ohio, Georgia, Virginia, Pennsylvania,
Delaware, New York, the only necessary qualification for voting is
that of paying the taxes; and in most of the States, to serve in the
militia is equivalent to the payment of taxes.
In Maine and New Hampshire any man can vote who is not on the pauper
list.
Lastly, in the States of Missouri, Alabama, Illinois, Louisiana,
Indiana, Kentucky, and Vermont, the conditions of voting have no
reference to the property of the elector.
I believe there is no other State besides that of North Carolina in
which different conditions are applied to the voting for the Senate
and the electing the House of Representatives. The electors of the
former, in this case, should possess in property fifty acres of
land; to vote for the latter, nothing more is required than to pay
taxes.
Appendix I
The small number of custom-house officers employed in the United
States, compared with the extent of the coast, renders smuggling
very easy; notwithstanding which, it is less practised than
elsewhere, because everybody endeavors to repress it. In America
there is no police for the prevention of fires, and such accidents
are more frequent than in Europe; but in general they are more
speedily extinguished, because the surrounding population is prompt
in lending assistance.
Appendix K
It is incorrect to assert that centralization was produced by the
French Revolution; the revolution brought it to perfection, but did
not create it. The mania for centralization and government
regulations dates from the time when jurists began to take a share
in the government, in the time of Philippe-le-Bel; ever since which
period they have been on the increase. In the year 1775, M. de
Malesherbes, speaking in the name of the Cour des Aides, said to
Louis XIV: --
"...Every corporation and every community of citizens retained the
right of administering its own affairs; a right which not only forms
part of the primitive constitution of the kingdom, but has a still
higher origin; for it is the right of nature, and of reason.
Nevertheless, your subjects, Sire, have been deprived of it; and we
cannot refrain from saying that in this respect your government has
fallen into puerile extremes. From the time when powerful ministers
made it a political principle to prevent the convocation of a
national assembly, one consequence has succeeded another, until the
deliberations of the inhabitants of a village are declared null when
they have not been authorized by the Intendant. Of course, if the
community has an expensive undertaking to carry through, it must
remain under the control of the sub-delegate of the Intendant, and,
consequently, follow the plan he proposes, employ his favorite
workmen, pay them according to his pleasure; and if an action at law
is deemed necessary, the Intendant's permission must be obtained.
The cause must be pleaded before this first tribunal, previous to
its being carried into a public court; and if the opinion of the
Intendant is opposed to that of the inhabitants, or if their
adversary enjoys his favor, the community is deprived of the power
of defending its rights. Such are the means, Sire, which have been
exerted to extinguish the municipal spirit in France; and to stifle,
if possible, the opinions of the citizens. The nation may be said to
lie under an interdict, and to be in wardship under guardians." What
could be said more to the purpose at the present day, when the
Revolution has achieved what are called its victories in
centralization?
In 1789, Jefferson wrote from Paris to one of his friends: -- "There
is no country where the mania for over-governing has taken deeper
root than in France, or been the source of greater mischief."
(Letter to Madison, August 28, 1789.) The fact is, that for several
centuries past the central power of France has done everything it
could to extend central administration; it has acknowledged no other
limits than its own strength. The central power to which the
Revolution gave birth made more rapid advances than any of its
predecessors, because it was stronger and wiser than they had been;
Louis XIV committed the welfare of such communities to the caprice
of an intendant; Napoleon left them to that of the Minister. The
same principle governed both, though its consequences were more or
less remote.
Appendix L
The immutability of the constitution of France is a necessary
consequence of the laws of that country. To begin with the most
important of all the laws, that which decides the order of
succession to the throne; what can be more immutable in its
principle than a political order founded upon the natural succession
of father to son? In 1814, Louis XVIII had established the perpetual
law of hereditary succession in favor of his own family. The
individuals who regulated the consequences of the Revolution of 1830
followed his example; they merely established the perpetuity of the
law in favor of another family. In this respect they imitated the
Chancellor Meaupou, who, when he erected the new Parliament upon the
ruins of the old, took care to declare in the same ordinance that
the rights of the new magistrates should be as inalienable as those
of their predecessors had been. The laws of 1830, like those of
1814, point out no way of changing the constitution: and it is
evident that the ordinary means of legislation are insufficient for
this purpose. As the King, the Peers, and the Deputies, all derive
their authority from the constitution, these three powers united
cannot alter a law by virtue of which alone they govern. Out of the
pale of the constitution they are nothing: where, when, could they
take their stand to effect a change in its provisions? The
alternative is clear: either their efforts are powerless against the
charter, which continues to exist in spite of them, in which case
they only reign in the name of the charter; or they succeed in
changing the charter, and then, the law by which they existed being
annulled, they themselves cease to exist. By destroying the charter,
they destroy themselves. This is much more evident in the laws of
1830 than in those of 1814. In 1814, the royal prerogative took its
stand above and beyond the constitution; but in 1830, it was
avowedly created by, and dependent on, the constitution. A part,
therefore, of the French constitution is immutable, because it is
united to the destiny of a family; and the body of the constitution
is equally immutable, because there appear to be no legal means of
changing it. These remarks are not applicable to England. That
country having no written constitution, who can assert when its
constitution is changed?
Appendix M
The most esteemed authors who have written upon the English
Constitution agree with each other in establishing the omnipotence
of the Parliament. Delolme says: "It is a fundamental principle with
the English lawyers, that Parliament can do everything except making
a woman a man, or a man a woman." Blackstone expresses himself more
in detail, if not more energetically, than Delolme, in the following
terms: -- "The power and jurisdiction of Parliament, says Sir Edward
Coke (4 Inst. 36), is so transcendent and absolute that it cannot be
confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds." And of
this High Court, he adds, may be truly said, "Si antiquitatem
spectes, est vetustissinza; si dignitatern, est honoratissinta; si
jurisdictionem, est capacissima." It hath sovereign and
uncontrollable authority in the making, confirming, enlarging,
restraining, abrogating, repealing, reviving, and expounding of
laws, concerning matters of all possible denominations;
ecclesiastical or temporal; civil, military, maritime, or criminal;
this being the place where that absolute despotic power which must,
in all governments, reside somewhere, is intrusted by the
constitution of these kingdoms. All mischiefs and grievances,
operations and remedies, that transcend the ordinary course of the
laws, are within the reach of this extraordinary tribunal. It can
regulate or new-model the succession to the Crown; as was done in
the reign of Henry VIII and William III. It can alter the
established religion of the land; as was done in a variety of
instances in the reigns of King Henry VIII and his three children.
It can change and create afresh even the constitution of the
kingdom, and of parliaments themselves; as was done by the Act of
Union and the several statutes for triennial and septennial
elections. It can, in short, do everything that is not naturally
impossible to be done; and, therefore some have not scrupled to call
its power, by a figure rather too bold, the omnipotence of
Parliament."
Appendix N
There is no question upon which the American constitutions agree
more fully than upon that of political jurisdiction. All the
constitutions which take cognizance of this matter, give to the
House of Delegates the exclusive right of impeachment; excepting
only the constitution of North Carolina, which grants the same
privilege to grand juries. (Article 23.) Almost all the
constitutions give the exclusive right of pronouncing sentence to
the Senate, or to the Assembly which occupies its place.
The only punishments which the political tribunals can inflict are
removal, or the interdiction of public functions for the future.
There is no other constitution but that of Virginia (p. 152), which
enables them to inflict every kind of punishment. The crimes which
are subject to political jurisdiction are, in the federal
constitution (Section 4, Art. i); in that of Indiana (Art. 3,
paragraphs 23 and 24); of New York (Art. 5); of Delaware (Art. 5),
high treason, bribery, and other high crimes or offences. In the
Constitution of Massachusetts (Chap. 1, Section 2); that of North
Carolina (Art. 23); of Virginia (p. 252), misconduct and
maladministration. In the constitution of New Hampshire (p. 105),
corruption, intrigue, and maladministration. In Vermont (Chap. 2,
Art. 24), maladministration. In South Carolina (Art. 5); Kentucky
(Art. 5); Tennessee (Art. 4); Ohio (Art. 1, 23, 24); Louisiana (Art.
5); Mississippi (Art. 5); Alabama AFT (Art. 6); Pennsylvania (Art.
4), crimes committed in the non-performance of official duties. In
the States of Illinois, Georgia, 5 Maine, and Connecticut, no
particular offences are specified.
Appendix O
It is true that the powers of Europe may carry on maritime wars with
the Union; but there is always greater facility and less danger in
supporting a man time than a continental war. Maritime warfare only
requires one species of effort. A commercial people which consents
to furnish its government with the necessary funds, is sure to
possess a fleet. And it is far easier to induce a nation to part
with its money, almost unconsciously, than to reconcile it to
sacrifices of men and personal efforts. Moreover, defeat by sea
rarely compromises the existence or independence of the people which
endures it. As for continental wars, it is evident that the nations
of Europe cannot be formidable in this way to the American Union. It
would be very difficult to transport and maintain in America more
than 25,000 soldiers; an army which may be considered to represent a
nation of about 2,000,000 of men. The most populous nation of Europe
contending in this way against the Union, is in the position of a
nation of 2,000,000 of inhabitants at war with one of 12,000,000.
Add to this, that America has all its resources within reach, whilst
the European is at 4,000 miles distance from his; and that the
immensity of the American continent would of itself present an
insurmountable obstacle to its conquest.
Appendix P
The first American journal appeared in April, 1704, and was
published at Boston. See "Collection of the Historical Society of
Massachusetts," vol. vi. p. 66. It would be a mistake to suppose
that the periodical press has always been entirely free in the
American colonies: an attempt was made to establish something
analogous to a censorship and preliminary security. Consult the
Legislative Documents of Massachusetts of January 14, 1722. The
Committee appointed by the General Assembly (the legislative body of
the province) for the purpose of examining into circumstances
connected with a paper entitled "The New England Courier," expresses
its opinion that" the tendency of the said journal is to turn
religion into derision and bring it into contempt; that it mentions
the sacred writers in a profane and irreligious manner; that it puts
malicious interpretations upon the conduct of the ministers of the
Gospel; and that the Government of his Majesty is insulted, and the
peace and tranquillity of the province disturbed by the said
journal. The Committee is consequently of opinion that the printer
and publisher, James Franklin, should be forbidden to print and
publish the said journal or any other work `in future, without
having previously submitted it to the Secretary of the province; and
that the justices of the peace for the county of Suffolk should be
commissioned to require bail of the said James Franklin for his good
conduct during the ensuing year." The suggestion of the Committee
was adopted and passed into a law, but the effect of it was null,
for the journal eluded the prohibition by putting the name of
Benjamin Franklin instead of James Franklin at the bottom of its
columns, and thin manoeuvre was supported by public opinion.
Appendix Q
The Federal Constitution has introduced the jury into the tribunals
of the Union in the same way as the States had introduced it into
their own several courts; but as it has not established any fixed
rules for the choice of jurors, the federal courts select them from
the ordinary jury list which each State makes for itself. The laws
of the States must therefore be examined for the theory of the
formation of juries. See Story's "Commentaries on the Constitution,"
B. iii. chap. 38, p. 654-659; Sergeant's" Constitutional Law," p.
165. See also the Federal Laws of the years 1789, 1800, and 1802,
upon the subject. For the purpose of thoroughly understanding the
American principles with respect to the formation of juries, I
examined laws of States at a distance from one another, and the
following observations were the result of my inquiries. In America,
all the citizens who exercise the elective franchise have the right
of serving upon a jury. The great State of New York, however, has
made a slight difference between the two privileges, but in a spirit
quite contrary to that of the laws of France; for in the State of
New York there are fewer persons eligible as jurymen than there are
electors. It may be said in general that the right of forming part
of a jury, like the right of electing representatives, is open to
all the citizens: the exercise of this right, however, is not put
indiscriminately into any hands. Every year a body of municipal or
county magistrates -- called "selectmen" in New England,
"supervisors" in New York, "trustees " in Ohio, and "sheriffs of the
parish" in Louisiana -- choose for each county a certain number of
citizens who have the right of serving as jurymen, and who are
supposed to be capable of exercising their functions. These
magistrates, being themselves elective, excite no distrust; their
powers, like those of most republican magistrates, are very
extensive and very arbitrary, and they frequently make use of them
to remove unworthy or incompetent jurymen. The names of the jurymen
thus chosen are transmitted to the County Court; and the jury who
have to decide any affair are drawn by lot from the whole list of
names. The Americans have contrived in every way to make the common
people eligible to the jury, and to render the service as little
onerous as possible. The sessions are held in the chief town of
every county, and the jury are indemnified for their attendance
either by the State or the parties concerned. They receive in
general a dollar per day, besides their travelling expenses. In
America, the being placed upon the jury is looked upon as a burden,
but it is a burden which is very supportable. See Brevard's" Digest
of the Public Statute Law of South Carolina," vol. i. pp. 446 and
454, vol. ii. pp. 218 and 338; "The General Laws of Massachusetts,
revised and published by authority of the Legislature," vol. ii. pp.
187 and 331; "The Revised Statutes of the State of New York," vol.
ii. pp. 411, 643, 717, 720; "The Statute Law of the State of
Tennessee," vol. i. p. 209; "Acts of the State of Ohio," pp. 95 and
210; and "Digeste general des Actes de la Legislature de la
Louisiane."
Appendix R
If we attentively examine the constitution of the jury as introduced
into civil proceedings in England, we shall readily perceive that
the jurors are under the immediate control of the judge. It is true
that the verdict of the jury, in civil as well as in criminal cases,
comprises the question of fact and the question of right in the same
reply; thus -- a house is claimed by Peter as having been purchased
by him: this is the fact to be decided. The defendant puts in a plea
of incompetency on the part of the vendor: this is the legal
question to be resolved. But the jury do not enjoy the same
character of infallibility in civil cases, according to the practice
of the English courts, as they do in criminal cases. The judge may
refuse to receive the verdict; and even after the first trial has
taken place, a second or new trial may be awarded by the Court. See
Blackstone's "Commentaries," book iii. ch. 24.
Appendix S
I find in my travelling journal a passage which may serve to convey
a more complete notion of the trials to which the women of America,
who consent to follow their husbands into the wilds, are often
subjected. This description has nothing to recommend it to the
reader but its strict accuracy:
". . . From time to time we come to fresh clearings; all these
places are alike; I shall describe the one at which we have halted
tonight, for it will serve to remind me of all the others.
"The bell which the pioneers hang round the necks of their cattle,
in order to find them again in the woods, announced our approach to
a clearing, when we were yet a long way off; and we soon afterwards
heard the stroke of the hatchet, hewing down the trees of the
forest. As we came nearer, traces of destruction marked the presence
of civilized man; the road was strewn with shattered boughs; trunks
of trees, half consumed by fire, or cleft by the wedge, were still
standing in the track we were following. We continued to proceed
till we reached a wood in which all the trees seemed to have been
suddenly struck dead; in the height of summer their boughs were as
leafless as in winter; and upon closer examination we found that a
deep circle had been cut round the bark, which, by stopping the
circulation of the sap, soon kills the tree. We were informed that
this is commonly the first thing a pioneer does; as he cannot in the
first year cut down all the trees which cover his new parcel of
land, he sows Indian corn under their branches, and puts the trees
to death in order to prevent them from injuring his crop. Beyond
this field, at present imperfectly traced out, we suddenly came upon
the cabin of its owner, situated in the centre of a plot of ground
more carefully cultivated than the rest, but where man was still
waging unequal warfare with the forest; there the trees were cut
down, but their roots were not removed, and the trunks still
encumbered the ground which they so recently shaded. Around these
dry blocks, wheat, suckers of trees, and plants of every kind, grow
and intertwine in all the luxuriance of wild, untutored nature.
Amidst this vigorous and various vegetation stands the house of the
pioneer, or, as they call it, the log house. Like the ground about
it, this rustic dwelling bore marks of recent and hasty labor; its
length seemed not to exceed thirty feet, its height fifteen; the
walls as well as the roof were formed of rough trunks of trees,
between which a little moss and clay had been inserted to keep out
the cold and rain.
"As night was coming on, we determined to ask the master of the log
house for a lodging. At the sound of our footsteps, the children who
were playing amongst the scattered branches sprang up and ran
towards the house, as if they were frightened at the sight of man;
whilst two large dogs, almost wild, with ears erect and outstretched
nose, came growling out of their hut, to cover the retreat of their
young masters. The pioneer himself made his appearance at the door
of his dwelling; he looked at us with a rapid and inquisitive
glance, made a sign to the dogs to go into the house, and set them
the example, without betraying either curiosity or apprehension at
our arrival.
"We entered the log house: the inside is quite unlike that of the
cottages of the peasantry of Europe: it contains more than is
superfluous, less than is necessary. A single window with a muslin
blind; on a hearth of trodden clay an immense fire, which lights the
whole structure; above the hearth a good rifle, a deer's skin, and
plumes of eagles' feathers; on the right hand of the chimney a map
of the United States, raised and shaken by the wind through the
crannies in the wall; near the map, upon a shelf formed of a roughly
hewn plank, a few volumes of books -- a Bible, the six first books
of Milton, and two of Shakespeare's plays; along the wall, trunks
instead of closets; in the centre of the room a rude table, with
legs of green wood, and with the bark still upon them, looking as if
they grew out of the ground on which they stood; but on this table a
teapot of British ware, silver spoons, cracked teacups, and some
newspapers.
"The master of this dwelling has the strong angular features and
lank limbs peculiar to the native of New England. It is evident that
this man was not born in the solitude in which we have met with him:
his physical constitution suffices to show that his earlier years
were spent in the midst of civilized society, and that he belongs to
that restless, calculating, and adventurous race of men, who do with
the utmost coolness things only to be accounted for by the ardor of
the passions, and who endure the life of savages for a time, in
order to conquer and civilize the backwoods.
"When the pioneer perceived that we were crossing his threshold, he
came to meet us and shake hands, as is their custom; but his face
was quite unmoved; he opened the conversation by inquiring what was
going on in the world; and when his curiosity was satisfied, he held
his peace, as if he were tired by the noise and importunity of
mankind. When we questioned him in our turn, he gave us all the
information we required; he then attended sedulously, but without
eagerness, to our personal wants. Whilst he was engaged in providing
thus kindly for us, how came it that in spite of ourselves we felt
our gratitude die upon our lips? It is that our host whilst he
performs the duties of hospitality, seems to be obeying an irksome
necessity of his condition: he treats it as a duty imposed upon him
by his situation, not as a pleasure. By the side of the hearth sits
a woman with a baby on her lap: she nods to us without disturbing
herself. Like the pioneer, this woman is in the prime of life; her
appearance would seem superior to her condition, and her apparel
even betrays a lingering taste for dress; but her delicate limbs
appear shrunken, her features are drawn in, her eye is mild and
melancholy; her whole physiognomy bears marks of a degree of
religious resignation, a deep quiet of all passions, and some sort
of natural and tranquil firmness, ready to meet all the ills of
life, without fearing and without braving them. Her children cluster
about her, full of health, turbulence, and energy: they are true
children of the wilderness; their mother watches them from time to
time with mingled melancholy and joy: to look at their strength and
her languor, one might imagine that the life she has given them has
exhausted her own, and still she regrets not what they have cost
her. The house inhabited by these emigrants has no internal
partition or loft. In the one chamber of which it consists, the
whole family is gathered for the night. The dwelling is itself a
little world -- an ark of civilization amidst an ocean of foliage: a
hundred steps beyond it the primeval forest spreads its shades, and
solitude resumes its sway."
Appendix T
It is not the equality of conditions which makes men immoral and
irreligious; but when men, being equal, are at the same time immoral
and irreligious, the effects of immorality and irreligion easily
manifest themselves outwardly, because men have but little influence
upon each other, and no class exists which can undertake to keep
society in order. Equality of conditions never engenders profligacy
of morals, but it sometimes allows that profligacy to show itself.
Appendix U
Setting aside all those who do not think at all, and those who dare
not say what they think, the immense majority of the Americans will
still be found to appear satisfied with the political institutions
by which they are governed; and, I believe, really to be so. I look
upon this state of public opinion as an indication, but not as a
demonstration, of the absolute excellence of American laws. The
pride of a nation, the gratification of certain ruling passions by
the law, a concourse of circumstances, defects which escape notice,
and more than all the rest, the influence of a majority which shuts
the mouth of all cavillers, may long perpetuate the delusions of a
people as well as those of a man. Look at England throughout the
eighteenth century. No nation was ever more prodigal of
self-applause, no people was ever more self-satisfied; then every
part of its constitution was right -- everything, even to its most
obvious defects, was irreproachable: at the present day a vast
number of Englishmen seem to have nothing better to do than to prove
that this constitution was faulty in many respects. Which was right?
-- the English people of the last century, or the English people of
the present day?
The same thing has occurred in France. It is certain that during the
reign of Louis XIV the great bulk of the nation was devotedly
attached to the form of government which, at that time, governed the
community. But it is a vast error to suppose that there was anything
degraded in the character of the French of that age. There might be
some sort of servitude in France at that time, but assuredly there
was no servile spirit among the people. The writers of that age felt
a species of genuine enthusiasm in extolling the power of their
king; and there was no peasant so obscure in his hovel as not to
take a pride in the glory of his sovereign, and to die cheerfully
with the cry " Vive le Roi!" upon his lips. These very same forms of
loyalty are now odious to the French people. Which are wrong? -- the
French of the age of Louis XIV, or their descendants of the present
day?
Our judgment of the laws of a people must not then be founded
exclusively upon its inclinations, since those inclinations change
from age to age; but upon more elevated principles and a more
general experience. The love which a people may show for its law
proves only this: -- that we should not be in too great a hurry to
change them.
Appendix V
In the chapter to which this note relates I have pointed out one
source of danger: I am now about to point out another kind of peril,
more rare indeed, but far more formidable if it were ever to make
its appearance. If the love of physical gratification and the taste
for well-being, which are naturally suggested to men by a state of
equality, were to get entire possession of the mind of a democratic
people, and to fill it completely, the manners of the nation would
become so totally opposed to military tastes, that perhaps even the
army would eventually acquire a love of peace, in spite of the
peculiar interest which leads it to desire war. Living in the midst
of a state of general relaxation, the troops would ultimately think
it better to rise without efforts, by the slow but commodious
advancement of a peace establishment, than to purchase more rapid
promotion at the cost of all the toils and privations of the field.
With these feelings, they would take up arms without enthusiasm, and
use them without energy; they would allow themselves to be led to
meet the foe, instead of marching to attack him. It must not be
supposed that this pacific state of the army would render it adverse
to revolutions; for revolutions, and especially military
revolutions, which are generally very rapid, are attended indeed
with great dangers, but not with protracted toil; they gratify
ambition at less cost than war; life only is at stake, and the men
of democracies care less for their lives than for their comforts.
Nothing is more dangerous for the freedom and the tranquillity of a
people than an army afraid of war, because, as such an army no
longer seeks to maintain its importance and its influence on the
field of battle, it seeks to assert them elsewhere. Thus it might
happen that the men of whom a democratic army consists should lose
the interests of citizens without acquiring the virtues of soldiers;
and that the army should cease to be fit for war without ceasing to
be turbulent. I shall here repeat what I have said in the text: the
remedy for these dangers is not to be found in the army, but in the
country: a democratic people which has preserved the manliness of
its character will never be at a loss for military prowess in its
soldiers.
Appendix W
Men connect the greatness of their idea of unity with means, God
with ends: hence this idea of greatness, as men conceive it, leads
us into infinite littleness. To compel all men to follow the same
course towards the same object is a human notion; -- to introduce
infinite variety of action, but so combined that all these acts lead
by a multitude of different courses to the accomplishment of one
great design, is a conception of the Deity. The human idea of unity
is almost always barren; the divine idea pregnant with abundant
results. Men think they manifest their greatness by simplifying the
means they use; but it is the purpose of God which is simple -- his
means are infinitely varied.
Appendix X
A democratic people is not only led by its own tastes to centralize
its government, but the passions of all the men by whom it is
governed constantly urge it in the same direction. It may easily be
foreseen that almost all the able and ambitious members of a
democratic community will labor without ceasing to extend the powers
of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield
those powers. It is a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that
extreme centralization may be injurious to the State, since they are
centralizing for their own benefit. Amongst the public men of
democracies there are hardly any but men of great disinterestedness
or extreme mediocrity who seek to oppose the centralization of
government: the former are scarce, the latter powerless.
Appendix Y
I have often asked myself what would happen if, amidst the
relaxation of democratic manners, and as a consequence of the
restless spirit of the army, a military government were ever to be
founded amongst any of the nations of the present age. I think that
even such a government would not differ very much from the outline I
have drawn in the chapter to which this note belongs, and that it
would retain none of the fierce characteristics of a military
oligarchy. I am persuaded that, in such a case, a sort of fusion --
would take place between the habits of official men and those of the
military service. The administration would assume something of a
military character, and the army some of the usages of the civil
administration. The result would be a regular, clear, exact, and
absolute system of government; the people would become the
reflection of the army, and the community be drilled like a
garrison.
Appendix Z
It cannot be absolutely or generally affirmed that the greatest
danger of the present age is license or tyranny, anarchy or
despotism. Both are equally to be feared; and the one may as easily
proceed as the other from the selfsame cause, namely, that "general
apathy," which is the consequence of what I have termed
"individualism": it is because this apathy exists, that the
executive government, having mustered a few troops, is able to
commit acts of oppression one day, and the next day a party, which
has mustered some thirty men in its ranks, can also commit acts of
oppression. Neither one nor the other can found anything to last;
and the causes which enable them to succeed easily, prevent them
from succeeding long: they rise because nothing opposes them, and
they sink because nothing supports them. The proper object therefore
of our most strenuous resistance, is far less either anarchy or
despotism than the apathy which may almost indifferently beget
either the one or the other.
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