Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2)

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


Another truth is no less clear--that religions ought to assume fewer
external observances in democratic periods than at any others. In
speaking of philosophical method among the Americans, I have shown that
nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than
the idea of subjection to forms. Men living at such times are impatient
of figures; to their eyes symbols appear to be the puerile artifice
which is used to conceal or to set off truths, which should more
naturally be bared to the light of open day: they are unmoved by
ceremonial observances, and they are predisposed to attach a secondary
importance to the details of public worship. Those whose care it is to
regulate the external forms of religion in a democratic age should pay
a close attention to these natural propensities of the human mind, in
order not unnecessarily to run counter to them. I firmly believe in the
necessity of forms, which fix the human mind in the contemplation of
abstract truths, and stimulate its ardor in the pursuit of them, whilst
they invigorate its powers of retaining them steadfastly. Nor do I
suppose that it is possible to maintain a religion without external
observances; but, on the other hand, I am persuaded that, in the ages
upon which we are entering, it would be peculiarly dangerous to multiply
them beyond measure; and that they ought rather to be limited to as much
as is absolutely necessary to perpetuate the doctrine itself, which is
the substance of religions of which the ritual is only the form. *a
A religion which should become more minute, more peremptory, and more
surcharged with small observances at a time in which men are becoming
more equal, would soon find itself reduced to a band of fanatical
zealots in the midst of an infidel people.

[Footnote a: In all religions there are some ceremonies which are
inherent in the substance of the faith itself, and in these nothing
should, on any account, be changed. This is especially the case with
Roman Catholicism, in which the doctrine and the form are frequently so
closely united as to form one point of belief.]

I anticipate the objection, that as all religions have general and
eternal truths for their object, they cannot thus shape themselves
to the shifting spirit of every age without forfeiting their claim
to certainty in the eyes of mankind. To this I reply again, that the
principal opinions which constitute belief, and which theologians
call articles of faith, must be very carefully distinguished from the
accessories connected with them. Religions are obliged to hold fast to
the former, whatever be the peculiar spirit of the age; but they should
take good care not to bind themselves in the same manner to the
latter at a time when everything is in transition, and when the mind,
accustomed to the moving pageant of human affairs, reluctantly endures
the attempt to fix it to any given point. The fixity of external and
secondary things can only afford a chance of duration when civil society
is itself fixed; under any other circumstances I hold it to be perilous.

We shall have occasion to see that, of all the passions which originate
in, or are fostered by, equality, there is one which it renders
peculiarly intense, and which it infuses at the same time into the heart
of every man: I mean the love of well-being. The taste for well-being
is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic ages. It may be
believed that a religion which should undertake to destroy so deep
seated a passion, would meet its own destruction thence in the end; and
if it attempted to wean men entirely from the contemplation of the good
things of this world, in order to devote their faculties exclusively to
the thought of another, it may be foreseen that the soul would at length
escape from its grasp, to plunge into the exclusive enjoyment of present
and material pleasures. The chief concern of religions is to purify,
to regulate, and to restrain the excessive and exclusive taste for
well-being which men feel at periods of equality; but they would err in
attempting to control it completely or to eradicate it. They will not
succeed in curing men of the love of riches: but they may still persuade
men to enrich themselves by none but honest means.

This brings me to a final consideration, which comprises, as it were,
all the others. The more the conditions of men are equalized and
assimilated to each other, the more important is it for religions,
whilst they carefully abstain from the daily turmoil of secular affairs,
not needlessly to run counter to the ideas which generally prevail, and
the permanent interests which exist in the mass of the people. For as
public opinion grows to be more and more evidently the first and most
irresistible of existing powers, the religious principle has no external
support strong enough to enable it long to resist its attacks. This
is not less true of a democratic people, ruled by a despot, than in a
republic. In ages of equality, kings may often command obedience,
but the majority always commands belief: to the majority, therefore,
deference is to be paid in whatsoever is not contrary to the faith.

I showed in my former volumes how the American clergy stand aloof from
secular affairs. This is the most obvious, but it is not the only,
example of their self-restraint. In America religion is a distinct
sphere, in which the priest is sovereign, but out of which he takes
care never to go. Within its limits he is the master of the mind;
beyond them, he leaves men to themselves, and surrenders them to the
independence and instability which belong to their nature and their
age. I have seen no country in which Christianity is clothed with fewer
forms, figures, and observances than in the United States; or where
it presents more distinct, more simple, or more general notions to the
mind. Although the Christians of America are divided into a multitude of
sects, they all look upon their religion in the same light. This applies
to Roman Catholicism as well as to the other forms of belief. There
are no Romish priests who show less taste for the minute individual
observances for extraordinary or peculiar means of salvation, or who
cling more to the spirit, and less to the letter of the law, than the
Roman Catholic priests of the United States. Nowhere is that doctrine of
the Church, which prohibits the worship reserved to God alone from
being offered to the saints, more clearly inculcated or more generally
followed. Yet the Roman Catholics of America are very submissive and
very sincere.

Another remark is applicable to the clergy of every communion. The
American ministers of the gospel do not attempt to draw or to fix all
the thoughts of man upon the life to come; they are willing to surrender
a portion of his heart to the cares of the present; seeming to consider
the goods of this world as important, although as secondary, objects.
If they take no part themselves in productive labor, they are at least
interested in its progression, and ready to applaud its results; and
whilst they never cease to point to the other world as the great object
of the hopes and fears of the believer, they do not forbid him honestly
to court prosperity in this. Far from attempting to show that these
things are distinct and contrary to one another, they study rather to
find out on what point they are most nearly and closely connected.

All the American clergy know and respect the intellectual supremacy
exercised by the majority; they never sustain any but necessary
conflicts with it. They take no share in the altercations of parties,
but they readily adopt the general opinions of their country and their
age; and they allow themselves to be borne away without opposition in
the current of feeling and opinion by which everything around them is
carried along. They endeavor to amend their contemporaries, but they do
not quit fellowship with them. Public opinion is therefore never hostile
to them; it rather supports and protects them; and their belief owes its
authority at the same time to the strength which is its own, and to that
which they borrow from the opinions of the majority. Thus it is that, by
respecting all democratic tendencies not absolutely contrary to herself,
and by making use of several of them for her own purposes, religion
sustains an advantageous struggle with that spirit of individual
independence which is her most dangerous antagonist.




Chapter VI: Of The Progress Of Roman Catholicism In The United States

America is the most democratic country in the world, and it is at the
same time (according to reports worthy of belief) the country in which
the Roman Catholic religion makes most progress. At first sight this is
surprising. Two things must here be accurately distinguished: equality
inclines men to wish to form their own opinions; but, on the other hand,
it imbues them with the taste and the idea of unity, simplicity,
and impartiality in the power which governs society. Men living in
democratic ages are therefore very prone to shake off all religious
authority; but if they consent to subject themselves to any authority
of this kind, they choose at least that it should be single and uniform.
Religious powers not radiating from a common centre are naturally
repugnant to their minds; and they almost as readily conceive that there
should be no religion, as that there should be several. At the present
time, more than in any preceding one, Roman Catholics are seen to lapse
into infidelity, and Protestants to be converted to Roman Catholicism.
If the Roman Catholic faith be considered within the pale of the church,
it would seem to be losing ground; without that pale, to be gaining it.
Nor is this circumstance difficult of explanation. The men of our
days are naturally disposed to believe; but, as soon as they have any
religion, they immediately find in themselves a latent propensity which
urges them unconsciously towards Catholicism. Many of the doctrines and
the practices of the Romish Church astonish them; but they feel a secret
admiration for its discipline, and its great unity attracts them.
If Catholicism could at length withdraw itself from the political
animosities to which it has given rise, I have hardly any doubt but that
the same spirit of the age, which appears to be so opposed to it, would
become so favorable as to admit of its great and sudden advancement.
One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to
reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense
of logic. Thus there have ever been, and will ever be, men who, after
having submitted some portion of their religious belief to the principle
of authority, will seek to exempt several other parts of their faith
from its influence, and to keep their minds floating at random between
liberty and obedience. But I am inclined to believe that the number of
these thinkers will be less in democratic than in other ages; and that
our posterity will tend more and more to a single division into two
parts--some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others returning to
the bosom of the Church of Rome.




Chapter VII: Of The Cause Of A Leaning To Pantheism Amongst Democratic
Nations

I shall take occasion hereafter to show under what form the
preponderating taste of a democratic people for very general ideas
manifests itself in politics; but I would point out, at the present
stage of my work, its principal effect on philosophy. It cannot be
denied that pantheism has made great progress in our age. The writings
of a part of Europe bear visible marks of it: the Germans introduce it
into philosophy, and the French into literature. Most of the works of
imagination published in France contain some opinions or some tinge
caught from pantheistical doctrines, or they disclose some tendency to
such doctrines in their authors. This appears to me not only to proceed
from an accidental, but from a permanent cause.

When the conditions of society are becoming more equal, and each
individual man becomes more like all the rest, more weak and more
insignificant, a habit grows up of ceasing to notice the citizens to
consider only the people, and of overlooking individuals to think only
of their kind. At such times the human mind seeks to embrace a multitude
of different objects at once; and it constantly strives to succeed in
connecting a variety of consequences with a single cause. The idea
of unity so possesses itself of man, and is sought for by him so
universally, that if he thinks he has found it, he readily yields
himself up to repose in that belief. Nor does he content himself with
the discovery that nothing is in the world but a creation and a Creator;
still embarrassed by this primary division of things, he seeks to expand
and to simplify his conception by including God and the universe in one
great whole. If there be a philosophical system which teaches that all
things material and immaterial, visible and invisible, which the world
contains, are only to be considered as the several parts of an immense
Being, which alone remains unchanged amidst the continual change and
ceaseless transformation of all that constitutes it, we may readily
infer that such a system, although it destroy the individuality of
man--nay, rather because it destroys that individuality--will have
secret charms for men living in democracies. All their habits of
thought prepare them to conceive it, and predispose them to adopt it.
It naturally attracts and fixes their imagination; it fosters the pride,
whilst it soothes the indolence, of their minds. Amongst the different
systems by whose aid philosophy endeavors to explain the universe, I
believe pantheism to be one of those most fitted to seduce the human
mind in democratic ages. Against it all who abide in their attachment to
the true greatness of man should struggle and combine.




Chapter VIII: The Principle Of Equality Suggests To The Americans The
Idea Of The Indefinite Perfectibility Of Man

Equality suggests to the human mind several ideas which would not have
originated from any other source, and it modifies almost all those
previously entertained. I take as an example the idea of human
perfectibility, because it is one of the principal notions that the
intellect can conceive, and because it constitutes of itself a great
philosophical theory, which is every instant to be traced by its
consequences in the practice of human affairs. Although man has many
points of resemblance with the brute creation, one characteristic is
peculiar to himself--he improves: they are incapable of improvement.
Mankind could not fail to discover this difference from its earliest
period. The idea of perfectibility is therefore as old as the world;
equality did not give birth to it, although it has imparted to it a
novel character.

When the citizens of a community are classed according to their rank,
their profession, or their birth, and when all men are constrained to
follow the career which happens to open before them, everyone thinks
that the utmost limits of human power are to be discerned in proximity
to himself, and none seeks any longer to resist the inevitable law of
his destiny. Not indeed that an aristocratic people absolutely contests
man's faculty of self-improvement, but they do not hold it to be
indefinite; amelioration they conceive, but not change: they imagine
that the future condition of society may be better, but not essentially
different; and whilst they admit that mankind has made vast strides
in improvement, and may still have some to make, they assign to it
beforehand certain impassable limits. Thus they do not presume that they
have arrived at the supreme good or at absolute truth (what people
or what man was ever wild enough to imagine it?) but they cherish a
persuasion that they have pretty nearly reached that degree of greatness
and knowledge which our imperfect nature admits of; and as nothing
moves about them they are willing to fancy that everything is in its fit
place. Then it is that the legislator affects to lay down eternal laws;
that kings and nations will raise none but imperishable monuments; and
that the present generation undertakes to spare generations to come the
care of regulating their destinies.

In proportion as castes disappear and the classes of society
approximate--as manners, customs, and laws vary, from the tumultuous
intercourse of men--as new facts arise--as new truths are brought
to light--as ancient opinions are dissipated, and others take their
place--the image of an ideal perfection, forever on the wing, presents
itself to the human mind. Continual changes are then every instant
occurring under the observation of every man: the position of some
is rendered worse; and he learns but too well, that no people and
no individual, how enlightened soever they may be, can lay claim to
infallibility;--the condition of others is improved; whence he infers
that man is endowed with an indefinite faculty of improvement. His
reverses teach him that none may hope to have discovered absolute
good--his success stimulates him to the never-ending pursuit of
it. Thus, forever seeking--forever falling, to rise again--often
disappointed, but not discouraged--he tends unceasingly towards that
unmeasured greatness so indistinctly visible at the end of the long
track which humanity has yet to tread. It can hardly be believed
how many facts naturally flow from the philosophical theory of the
indefinite perfectibility of man, or how strong an influence it
exercises even on men who, living entirely for the purposes of action
and not of thought, seem to conform their actions to it, without knowing
anything about it. I accost an American sailor, and I inquire why the
ships of his country are built so as to last but for a short time;
he answers without hesitation that the art of navigation is every day
making such rapid progress, that the finest vessel would become almost
useless if it lasted beyond a certain number of years. In these words,
which fell accidentally and on a particular subject from a man of rude
attainments, I recognize the general and systematic idea upon which a
great people directs all its concerns.

Aristocratic nations are naturally too apt to narrow the scope of human
perfectibility; democratic nations to expand it beyond compass.




Chapter IX: The Example Of The Americans Does Not Prove That A
Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude And No Taste For Science,
Literature, Or Art

It must be acknowledged that amongst few of the civilized nations of
our time have the higher sciences made less progress than in the United
States; and in few have great artists, fine poets, or celebrated writers
been more rare. Many Europeans, struck by this fact, have looked upon it
as a natural and inevitable result of equality; and they have supposed
that if a democratic state of society and democratic institutions were
ever to prevail over the whole earth, the human mind would gradually
find its beacon-lights grow dim, and men would relapse into a period of
darkness. To reason thus is, I think, to confound several ideas which
it is important to divide and to examine separately: it is to mingle,
unintentionally, what is democratic with what is only American.

The religion professed by the first emigrants, and bequeathed by them
to their descendants, simple in its form of worship, austere and
almost harsh in its principles, and hostile to external symbols and to
ceremonial pomp, is naturally unfavorable to the fine arts, and only
yields a reluctant sufferance to the pleasures of literature. The
Americans are a very old and a very enlightened people, who have fallen
upon a new and unbounded country, where they may extend themselves at
pleasure, and which they may fertilize without difficulty. This state
of things is without a parallel in the history of the world. In America,
then, every one finds facilities, unknown elsewhere, for making or
increasing his fortune. The spirit of gain is always on the stretch, and
the human mind, constantly diverted from the pleasures of imagination
and the labors of the intellect, is there swayed by no impulse but the
pursuit of wealth. Not only are manufacturing and commercial classes to
be found in the United States, as they are in all other countries; but
what never occurred elsewhere, the whole community is simultaneously
engaged in productive industry and commerce. I am convinced that, if
the Americans had been alone in the world, with the freedom and the
knowledge acquired by their forefathers, and the passions which are
their own, they would not have been slow to discover that progress
cannot long be made in the application of the sciences without
cultivating the theory of them; that all the arts are perfected by one
another: and, however absorbed they might have been by the pursuit
of the principal object of their desires, they would speedily have
admitted, that it is necessary to turn aside from it occasionally, in
order the better to attain it in the end.

The taste for the pleasures of the mind is moreover so natural to the
heart of civilized man, that amongst the polite nations, which are least
disposed to give themselves up to these pursuits, a certain number of
citizens are always to be found who take part in them. This intellectual
craving, when once felt, would very soon have been satisfied. But at the
very time when the Americans were naturally inclined to require nothing
of science but its special applications to the useful arts and the means
of rendering life comfortable, learned and literary Europe was engaged
in exploring the common sources of truth, and in improving at the same
time all that can minister to the pleasures or satisfy the wants of man.
At the head of the enlightened nations of the Old World the inhabitants
of the United States more particularly distinguished one, to which they
were closely united by a common origin and by kindred habits. Amongst
this people they found distinguished men of science, artists of skill,
writers of eminence, and they were enabled to enjoy the treasures of the
intellect without requiring to labor in amassing them. I cannot consent
to separate America from Europe, in spite of the ocean which intervenes.
I consider the people of the United States as that portion of the
English people which is commissioned to explore the wilds of the New
World; whilst the rest of the nation, enjoying more leisure and less
harassed by the drudgery of life, may devote its energies to thought,
and enlarge in all directions the empire of the mind. The position of
the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed
that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their
strictly Puritanical origin--their exclusively commercial habits--even
the country they inhabit, which seems to divert their minds from the
pursuit of science, literature, and the arts--the proximity of Europe,
which allows them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into
barbarism--a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to
point out the most important--have singularly concurred to fix the mind
of the American upon purely practical objects. His passions, his wants,
his education, and everything about him seem to unite in drawing the
native of the United States earthward: his religion alone bids him turn,
from time to time, a transient and distracted glance to heaven. Let us
cease then to view all democratic nations under the mask of the American
people, and let us attempt to survey them at length with their own
proper features.

It is possible to conceive a people not subdivided into any castes or
scale of ranks; in which the law, recognizing no privileges, should
divide inherited property into equal shares; but which, at the same
time, should be without knowledge and without freedom. Nor is this an
empty hypothesis: a despot may find that it is his interest to render
his subjects equal and to leave them ignorant, in order more easily to
keep them slaves. Not only would a democratic people of this kind show
neither aptitude nor taste for science, literature, or art, but it would
probably never arrive at the possession of them. The law of descent
would of itself provide for the destruction of fortunes at each
succeeding generation; and new fortunes would be acquired by none. The
poor man, without either knowledge or freedom, would not so much as
conceive the idea of raising himself to wealth; and the rich man
would allow himself to be degraded to poverty, without a notion of
self-defence. Between these two members of the community complete and
invincible equality would soon be established.

No one would then have time or taste to devote himself to the pursuits
or pleasures of the intellect; but all men would remain paralyzed by
a state of common ignorance and equal servitude. When I conceive a
democratic society of this kind, I fancy myself in one of those low,
close, and gloomy abodes, where the light which breaks in from without
soon faints and fades away. A sudden heaviness overpowers me, and I
grope through the surrounding darkness, to find the aperture which will
restore me to daylight and the air.