Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2)

A >> Alexis de Toqueville >> Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2)


If the absolute power of the majority were to be substituted by
democratic nations, for all the different powers which checked or
retarded overmuch the energy of individual minds, the evil would
only have changed its symptoms. Men would not have found the means of
independent life; they would simply have invented (no easy task) a new
dress for servitude. There is--and I cannot repeat it too often--there
is in this matter for profound reflection for those who look on freedom
as a holy thing, and who hate not only the despot, but despotism. For
myself, when I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but
little to know who oppresses me; and I am not the more disposed to pass
beneath the yoke, because it is held out to me by the arms of a million
of men.




Chapter III: Why The Americans Display More Readiness And More Taste For
General Ideas Than Their Forefathers, The English.

The Deity does not regard the human race collectively. He surveys at one
glance and severally all the beings of whom mankind is composed, and he
discerns in each man the resemblances which assimilate him to all his
fellows, and the differences which distinguish him from them. God,
therefore, stands in no need of general ideas; that is to say, he is
never sensible of the necessity of collecting a considerable number
of analogous objects under the same form for greater convenience in
thinking. Such is, however, not the case with man. If the human mind
were to attempt to examine and pass a judgment on all the individual
cases before it, the immensity of detail would soon lead it astray
and bewilder its discernment: in this strait, man has recourse to
an imperfect but necessary expedient, which at once assists and
demonstrates his weakness. Having superficially considered a certain
number of objects, and remarked their resemblance, he assigns to them a
common name, sets them apart, and proceeds onwards.

General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the
insufficiency of the human intellect; for there are in nature no
beings exactly alike, no things precisely identical, nor any rules
indiscriminately and alike applicable to several objects at once. The
chief merit of general ideas is, that they enable the human mind to
pass a rapid judgment on a great many objects at once; but, on the other
hand, the notions they convey are never otherwise than incomplete, and
they always cause the mind to lose as much in accuracy as it gains
in comprehensiveness. As social bodies advance in civilization, they
acquire the knowledge of new facts, and they daily lay hold almost
unconsciously of some particular truths. The more truths of this kind a
man apprehends, the more general ideas is he naturally led to conceive.
A multitude of particular facts cannot be seen separately, without at
last discovering the common tie which connects them. Several individuals
lead to the perception of the species; several species to that of the
genus. Hence the habit and the taste for general ideas will always
be greatest amongst a people of ancient cultivation and extensive
knowledge.

But there are other reasons which impel men to generalize their ideas,
or which restrain them from it.

The Americans are much more addicted to the use of general ideas than
the English, and entertain a much greater relish for them: this appears
very singular at first sight, when it is remembered that the two nations
have the same origin, that they lived for centuries under the same laws,
and that they still incessantly interchange their opinions and their
manners. This contrast becomes much more striking still, if we fix our
eyes on our own part of the world, and compare together the two most
enlightened nations which inhabit it. It would seem as if the mind of
the English could only tear itself reluctantly and painfully away from
the observation of particular facts, to rise from them to their causes;
and that it only generalizes in spite of itself. Amongst the French, on
the contrary, the taste for general ideas would seem to have grown to
so ardent a passion, that it must be satisfied on every occasion. I am
informed, every morning when I wake, that some general and eternal law
has just been discovered, which I never heard mentioned before. There is
not a mediocre scribbler who does not try his hand at discovering truths
applicable to a great kingdom, and who is very ill pleased with himself
if he does not succeed in compressing the human race into the compass
of an article. So great a dissimilarity between two very enlightened
nations surprises me. If I again turn my attention to England, and
observe the events which have occurred there in the last half-century,
I think I may affirm that a taste for general ideas increases in that
country in proportion as its ancient constitution is weakened.

The state of civilization is therefore insufficient by itself to explain
what suggests to the human mind the love of general ideas, or diverts it
from them. When the conditions of men are very unequal, and inequality
itself is the permanent state of society, individual men gradually
become so dissimilar that each class assumes the aspect of a distinct
race: only one of these classes is ever in view at the same instant; and
losing sight of that general tie which binds them all within the vast
bosom of mankind, the observation invariably rests not on man, but on
certain men. Those who live in this aristocratic state of society never,
therefore, conceive very general ideas respecting themselves, and that
is enough to imbue them with an habitual distrust of such ideas, and
an instinctive aversion of them. He, on the contrary, who inhabits a
democratic country, sees around him, one very hand, men differing but
little from each other; he cannot turn his mind to any one portion of
mankind, without expanding and dilating his thought till it embrace the
whole. All the truths which are applicable to himself, appear to him
equally and similarly applicable to each of his fellow-citizens and
fellow-men. Having contracted the habit of generalizing his ideas in
the study which engages him most, and interests him more than others,
he transfers the same habit to all his pursuits; and thus it is that
the craving to discover general laws in everything, to include a great
number of objects under the same formula, and to explain a mass of facts
by a single cause, becomes an ardent, and sometimes an undiscerning,
passion in the human mind.

Nothing shows the truth of this proposition more clearly than the
opinions of the ancients respecting their slaves. The most profound and
capacious minds of Rome and Greece were never able to reach the idea, at
once so general and so simple, of the common likeness of men, and of the
common birthright of each to freedom: they strove to prove that slavery
was in the order of nature, and that it would always exist. Nay, more,
everything shows that those of the ancients who had passed from the
servile to the free condition, many of whom have left us excellent
writings, did themselves regard servitude in no other light.

All the great writers of antiquity belonged to the aristocracy
of masters, or at least they saw that aristocracy established and
uncontested before their eyes. Their mind, after it had expanded itself
in several directions, was barred from further progress in this one; and
the advent of Jesus Christ upon earth was required to teach that all the
members of the human race are by nature equal and alike.

In the ages of equality all men are independent of each other, isolated
and weak. The movements of the multitude are not permanently guided
by the will of any individuals; at such times humanity seems always to
advance of itself. In order, therefore, to explain what is passing in
the world, man is driven to seek for some great causes, which, acting
in the same manner on all our fellow-creatures, thus impel them all
involuntarily to pursue the same track. This again naturally leads the
human mind to conceive general ideas, and superinduces a taste for them.

I have already shown in what way the equality of conditions leads every
man to investigate truths for himself. It may readily be perceived that
a method of this kind must insensibly beget a tendency to general ideas
in the human mind. When I repudiate the traditions of rank, profession,
and birth; when I escape from the authority of example, to seek out, by
the single effort of my reason, the path to be followed, I am inclined
to derive the motives of my opinions from human nature itself; which
leads me necessarily, and almost unconsciously, to adopt a great number
of very general notions.

All that I have here said explains the reasons for which the English
display much less readiness and taste or the generalization of ideas
than their American progeny, and still less again than their French
neighbors; and likewise the reason for which the English of the present
day display more of these qualities than their forefathers did. The
English have long been a very enlightened and a very aristocratic
nation; their enlightened condition urged them constantly to generalize,
and their aristocratic habits confined them to particularize. Hence
arose that philosophy, at once bold and timid, broad and narrow,
which has hitherto prevailed in England, and which still obstructs and
stagnates in so many minds in that country.

Independently of the causes I have pointed out in what goes before,
others may be discerned less apparent, but no less efficacious, which
engender amongst almost every democratic people a taste, and frequently
a passion, for general ideas. An accurate distinction must be taken
between ideas of this kind. Some are the result of slow, minute, and
conscientious labor of the mind, and these extend the sphere of human
knowledge; others spring up at once from the first rapid exercise of the
wits, and beget none but very superficial and very uncertain notions.
Men who live in ages of equality have a great deal of curiosity and very
little leisure; their life is so practical, so confused, so excited, so
active, that but little time remains to them for thought. Such men are
prone to general ideas because they spare them the trouble of studying
particulars; they contain, if I may so speak, a great deal in a little
compass, and give, in a little time, a great return. If then, upon a
brief and inattentive investigation, a common relation is thought to be
detected between certain obtects, inquiry is not pushed any further; and
without examining in detail how far these different objects differ or
agree, they are hastily arranged under one formulary, in order to pass
to another subject.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a democratic period is the
taste all men have at such ties for easy success and present enjoyment.
This occurs in the pursuits of the intellect as well as in all others.
Most of those who live at a time of equality are full of an ambition at
once aspiring and relaxed: they would fain succeed brilliantly and at
once, but they would be dispensed from great efforts to obtain success.
These conflicting tendencies lead straight to the research of general
ideas, by aid of which they flatter themselves that they can figure very
importantly at a small expense, and draw the attention of the public
with very little trouble. And I know not whether they be wrong in
thinking thus. For their readers are as much averse to investigating
anything to the bottom as they can be themselves; and what is generally
sought in the productions of the mind is easy pleasure and information
without labor.

If aristocratic nations do not make sufficient use of general ideas,
and frequently treat them with inconsiderate disdain, it is true, on
the other hand, that a democratic people is ever ready to carry ideas of
this kind to excess, and to espouse the with injudicious warmth.




Chapter IV: Why The Americans Have Never Been So Eager As The French For
General Ideas In Political Matters

I observed in the last chapter, that the Americans show a less decided
taste for general ideas than the French; this is more especially true in
political matters. Although the Americans infuse into their legislation
infinitely more general ideas than the English, and although they pay
much more attention than the latter people to the adjustment of the
practice of affairs to theory, no political bodies in the United
States have ever shown so warm an attachment to general ideas as the
Constituent Assembly and the Convention in France. At no time has the
American people laid hold on ideas of this kind with the passionate
energy of the French people in the eighteenth century, or displayed the
same blind confidence in the value and absolute truth of any theory.
This difference between the Americans and the French originates in
several causes, but principally in the following one. The Americans form
a democratic people, which has always itself directed public affairs.
The French are a democratic people, who, for a long time, could only
speculate on the best manner of conducting them. The social condition of
France led that people to conceive very general ideas on the subject
of government, whilst its political constitution prevented it from
correcting those ideas by experiment, and from gradually detecting their
insufficiency; whereas in America the two things constantly balance and
correct each other.

It may seem, at first sight, that this is very much opposed to what I
have said before, that democratic nations derive their love of theory
from the excitement of their active life. A more attentive examination
will show that there is nothing contradictory in the proposition. Men
living in democratic countries eagerly lay hold of general ideas because
they have but little leisure, and because these ideas spare them the
trouble of studying particulars. This is true; but it is only to be
understood to apply to those matters which are not the necessary and
habitual subjects of their thoughts. Mercantile men will take up very
eagerly, and without any very close scrutiny, all the general ideas on
philosophy, politics, science, or the arts, which may be presented to
them; but for such as relate to commerce, they will not receive them
without inquiry, or adopt them without reserve. The same thing applies
to statesmen with regard to general ideas in politics. If, then, there
be a subject upon which a democratic people is peculiarly liable to
abandon itself, blindly and extravagantly, to general ideas, the best
corrective that can be used will be to make that subject a part of
the daily practical occupation of that people. The people will then be
compelled to enter upon its details, and the details will teach them the
weak points of the theory. This remedy may frequently be a painful one,
but its effect is certain.

Thus it happens, that the democratic institutions which compel every
citizen to take a practical part in the government, moderate that
excessive taste for general theories in politics which the principle of
equality suggests.




Chapter V: Of The Manner In Which Religion In The United States Avails
Itself Of Democratic Tendencies

I have laid it down in a preceding chapter that men cannot do without
dogmatical belief; and even that it is very much to be desired that such
belief should exist amongst them. I now add, that of all the kinds of
dogmatical belief the most desirable appears to me to be dogmatical
belief in matters of religion; and this is a very clear inference, even
from no higher consideration than the interests of this world. There is
hardly any human action, however particular a character be assigned
to it, which does not originate in some very general idea men have
conceived of the Deity, of his relation to mankind, of the nature of
their own souls, and of their duties to their fellow-creatures. Nor can
anything prevent these ideas from being the common spring from which
everything else emanates. Men are therefore immeasurably interested in
acquiring fixed ideas of God, of the soul, and of their common duties
to their Creator and to their fellow-men; for doubt on these first
principles would abandon all their actions to the impulse of chance,
and would condemn them to live, to a certain extent, powerless and
undisciplined.

This is then the subject on which it is most important for each of us to
entertain fixed ideas; and unhappily it is also the subject on which
it is most difficult for each of us, left to himself, to settle his
opinions by the sole force of his reason. None but minds singularly free
from the ordinary anxieties of life--minds at once penetrating, subtle,
and trained by thinking--can even with the assistance of much time and
care, sound the depth of these most necessary truths. And, indeed, we
see that these philosophers are themselves almost always enshrouded in
uncertainties; that at every step the natural light which illuminates
their path grows dimmer and less secure; and that, in spite of all their
efforts, they have as yet only discovered a small number of conflicting
notions, on which the mind of man has been tossed about for thousands of
years, without either laying a firmer grasp on truth, or finding novelty
even in its errors. Studies of this nature are far above the average
capacity of men; and even if the majority of mankind were capable of
such pursuits, it is evident that leisure to cultivate them would still
be wanting. Fixed ideas of God and human nature are indispensable to the
daily practice of men's lives; but the practice of their lives prevents
them from acquiring such ideas.

The difficulty appears to me to be without a parallel. Amongst the
sciences there are some which are useful to the mass of mankind, and
which are within its reach; others can only be approached by the few,
and are not cultivated by the many, who require nothing beyond their
more remote applications: but the daily practice of the science I speak
of is indispensable to all, although the study of it is inaccessible to
the far greater number.

General ideas respecting God and human nature are therefore the ideas
above all others which it is most suitable to withdraw from the habitual
action of private judgment, and in which there is most to gain and least
to lose by recognizing a principle of authority. The first object and
one of the principal advantages of religions, is to furnish to each of
these fundamental questions a solution which is at once clear, precise,
intelligible to the mass of mankind, and lasting. There are religions
which are very false and very absurd; but it may be affirmed, that any
religion which remains within the circle I have just traced, without
aspiring to go beyond it (as many religions have attempted to do, for
the purpose of enclosing on every side the free progress of the human
mind), imposes a salutary restraint on the intellect; and it must be
admitted that, if it do not save men in another world, such religion is
at least very conducive to their happiness and their greatness in this.
This is more especially true of men living in free countries. When
the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the highest
portions of the intellect, and half paralyzes all the rest of its
powers. Every man accustoms himself to entertain none but confused
and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his
fellow-creatures and himself. His opinions are ill-defended and easily
abandoned: and, despairing of ever resolving by himself the hardest
problems of the destiny of man, he ignobly submits to think no more
about them. Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the
springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude. Nor does it
only happen, in such a case, that they allow their freedom to be wrested
from them; they frequently themselves surrender it. When there is no
longer any principle of authority in religion any more than in
politics, men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded
independence. The constant agitation of all surrounding things alarms
and exhausts them. As everything is at sea in the sphere of the
intellect, they determine at least that the mechanism of society should
be firm and fixed; and as they cannot resume their ancient belief, they
assume a master.

For my own part, I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time
complete religious independence and entire public freedom. And I am
inclined to think, that if faith be wanting in him, he must serve; and
if he be free, he must believe.

Perhaps, however, this great utility of religions is still more obvious
amongst nations where equality of conditions prevails than amongst
others. It must be acknowledged that equality, which brings great
benefits into the world, nevertheless suggests to men (as will be shown
hereafter) some very dangerous propensities. It tends to isolate them
from each other, to concentrate every man's attention upon himself; and
it lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification.
The greatest advantage of religion is to inspire diametrically contrary
principles. There is no religion which does not place the object of
man's desires above and beyond the treasures of earth, and which does
not naturally raise his soul to regions far above those of the senses.
Nor is there any which does not impose on man some sort of duties to
his kind, and thus draws him at times from the contemplation of himself.
This occurs in religions the most false and dangerous. Religious nations
are therefore naturally strong on the very point on which democratic
nations are weak; which shows of what importance it is for men to
preserve their religion as their conditions become more equal.

I have neither the right nor the intention of examining the supernatural
means which God employs to infuse religious belief into the heart of
man. I am at this moment considering religions in a purely human point
of view: my object is to inquire by what means they may most easily
retain their sway in the democratic ages upon which we are entering. It
has been shown that, at times of general cultivation and equality,
the human mind does not consent to adopt dogmatical opinions without
reluctance, and feels their necessity acutely in spiritual matters only.
This proves, in the first place, that at such times religions ought,
more cautiously than at any other, to confine themselves within their
own precincts; for in seeking to extend their power beyond religious
matters, they incur a risk of not being believed at all. The circle
within which they seek to bound the human intellect ought therefore to
be carefully traced, and beyond its verge the mind should be left in
entire freedom to its own guidance. Mahommed professed to derive from
Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious
doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories
of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general
relations of men to God and to each other--beyond which it inculcates
and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other
reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will
never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the
latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.

But in continuation of this branch of the subject, I find that in
order for religions to maintain their authority, humanly speaking, in
democratic ages, they must not only confine themselves strictly within
the circle of spiritual matters: their power also depends very much
on the nature of the belief they inculcate, on the external forms they
assume, and on the obligations they impose. The preceding observation,
that equality leads men to very general and very extensive notions, is
principally to be understood as applied to the question of religion. Men
living in a similar and equal condition in the world readily conceive
the idea of the one God, governing every man by the same laws, and
granting to every man future happiness on the same conditions. The idea
of the unity of mankind constantly leads them back to the idea of the
unity of the Creator; whilst, on the contrary, in a state of society
where men are broken up into very unequal ranks, they are apt to devise
as many deities as there are nations, castes, classes, or families, and
to trace a thousand private roads to heaven.

It cannot be denied that Christianity itself has felt, to a certain
extent, the influence which social and political conditions exercise
on religious opinions. At the epoch at which the Christian religion
appeared upon earth, Providence, by whom the world was doubtless
prepared for its coming, had gathered a large portion of the human race,
like an immense flock, under the sceptre of the Caesars. The men of whom
this multitude was composed were distinguished by numerous differences;
but they had thus much in common, that they all obeyed the same laws,
and that every subject was so weak and insignificant in relation to the
imperial potentate, that all appeared equal when their condition
was contrasted with his. This novel and peculiar state of mankind
necessarily predisposed men to listen to the general truths which
Christianity teaches, and may serve to explain the facility and rapidity
with which they then penetrated into the human mind. The counterpart of
this state of things was exhibited after the destruction of the
empire. The Roman world being then as it were shattered into a thousand
fragments, each nation resumed its pristine individuality. An infinite
scale of ranks very soon grew up in the bosom of these nations; the
different races were more sharply defined, and each nation was divided
by castes into several peoples. In the midst of this common effort,
which seemed to be urging human society to the greatest conceivable
amount of voluntary subdivision, Christianity did not lose sight of
the leading general ideas which it had brought into the world. But it
appeared, nevertheless, to lend itself, as much as was possible, to
those new tendencies to which the fractional distribution of mankind
had given birth. Men continued to worship an only God, the Creator and
Preserver of all things; but every people, every city, and, so to speak,
every man, thought to obtain some distinct privilege, and win the favor
of an especial patron at the foot of the Throne of Grace. Unable
to subdivide the Deity, they multiplied and improperly enhanced the
importance of the divine agents. The homage due to saints and angels
became an almost idolatrous worship amongst the majority of the
Christian world; and apprehensions might be entertained for a moment
lest the religion of Christ should retrograde towards the superstitions
which it had subdued. It seems evident, that the more the barriers are
removed which separate nation from nation amongst mankind, and citizen
from citizen amongst a people, the stronger is the bent of the human
mind, as if by its own impulse, towards the idea of an only and
all-powerful Being, dispensing equal laws in the same manner to every
man. In democratic ages, then, it is more particularly important not
to allow the homage paid to secondary agents to be confounded with the
worship due to the Creator alone.