Tocqueville (Volume 2 Preface - Pt. 1 Ch. 8)

I know that all these different elements exist and are powerful, but the theme of this book does not deal with them. I have not undertaken to account for all our inclinations and all out ideas, but only with to demonstrate how equality has modified both.

As I am firmly convinced that the democratic revolution occurring before our eyes is an irresistable fact and that it would be neither desirable nor wise to try to combat it, it may seem surprising that this book expresses such severe criticisms of the democratic societies created by this revolution.

My answer is simply that, being no enemy of democracy, I want to treat it with sincereity

Enemies never tell men the truth, and it is seldom that their friends do so. That is why I have done so.

It seems to me that many people are ready to advertise the new benefits which democracy promises to mankind, but that few are prepared to point out the distant perils with which it threatens them.

So my attention has been directed principally against these dangers, and thinking that I have seen them clearly, I have not played the coward and kept silent.

I hope that the impartiality for which my first book was credited…

will be found again in this work

To carry the argument further and to select the chief among these various features, and the one which includes almost all the others within itself, I should say that in most mental operations each American relies on individual effort and judgement.

So, of all countries in the world, America is the one in which the precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed. No one should be surprised at that.

The Americans never read Descartes’ work because their state of society distracts them from speculative inquiries

and they follow his precepts because this same state of society naturally leads them to adopt them

Men living in such a soicety cannot base beliefs on the opinions of the class to which they belong, for, one may almost say…

there are no more classes, and such as do still exist are composed of such changing elements that they can never, as a body, exercise real power over their members

So each man is narrowly shut up in himself, and from that basis makes the pretension to judge the world

this american way of relying on themselves along to control their judgement leads to other mental habits

seeing that they are successful in resolving unaided all the little difficulties they encounter in practical affairs they are easily led to the conclusion that everything in the world can be explained and that nothing passes beyonf the limits of intelligence

thus they are ready to deny anything which they cannot understand. hence they have little faith in anything extraordinary and an almost invincibly distaste for the supernatural

let us turn our attention for a momen to the chronological development. The 16th century reformers subjected some of the dogma of the ancient faith to individual readong, but they still refused to allow all the others to be discussed by it.

In the 17th century Bacon in natural sceince and Descartes in the philosophy strictly so called, abolished accepted formulas, destroyed the dominion of tradition, and upset the authority of masters

The 18th century philopher turned this same principle into a general rule and undertook to submit the object of all his beliefs to each man’s individual examination

it is surely clear that Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire all used the same method, and they differed only in the greater or less extent to which they held it should be applied

It follows that the 18th philosophic method is not just French but democratic and that explains its easy admision throughout Europe, which has been so greatly changed partly be its means.

The reason teh French turned the world upside down is not simply that they changed their ancient beliefs and modificed their ancient morality. The reason is that they were th efirst to generalize and call attention to a philosophic method by which all ancient things could be attacked and the way opened for everything new.

If I am asked why nowadays that method is more often and more stricly applied by the French than by the Americans, through libtery is as complete and of longer date among the latter, I reply that that is partly due to two circumstances that must first by understood.

It was religion that gave birth to the English colonies in America. One must never forget that. In the US religion is mingled with all the national customs and all those feeligns which the word fatherland evokes. Fro that reason it has peculiar power.

These is another circumstance equally potent in its influence. In America religion has, if one may put it so, defined its own limits. There the structure of religious life has remained entirely distinct from the political organization. It has therefore been easy to change ancient laws without shaking the foundations of ancient beliefs.

In this way Christianity has kept a strong hold over the minds of Americans, and - this is the point I wish to emphasize - its power is not just that of a philosophy which has been examined and accepted, but that of a religion believed in without discussion.

Consequently each man undertakes to be sufficient to himself and glories in the fact that his beliefs about everything are peculiar to himself.

No longer do ideas, but interests only, form the links between men, and it would seem that human opinions were no more than a sort of mental dust open to te wind on every side and unable to come together and take shape.

No philospher in the world, however great, can help believing a million things on trust from others or assuming the truth of many things besides those he has power.

It is true that any man accepting any opinion on trust from another puts his mind in bondage. But it is a salutary bondage, which allows him to make good use of freedom.

So somwhere and somehow authority is always bound to play a part in intellectual and moreal life.

Therefore we need not inquire about the existence of intellectual authority in democratic ages, but only where it resides and what its limits are.

The last chapter showed how standards of equality give men a sort of instictive incredulity about he supernatural..

and a very high and often thoroughly exaggerated conception of human reason

So in democracies public opinion has a stranger power of which aristocratic nations can form no concpetion.

It uses no persuasion to forwards its beliefs, but by some mightly pressure of the mind of all upon the intelligence of each it imposes its ideas and makes them penetrate men’s very souls.

I anticipate that it may easily become too great and that possibly it will confince the activity of private judgement within limits too narrow for the dignity and happiness of mankind…

I see clearly two tendences in equality

one turn's each man’s attention to new thoughts,

while the other would induce him freely to give up thinking at all

If democratic peoples substitued the absolute power of a majority for all the various powers that used excessively to impede or hold back the upsurge of individual thought, the evil itself would only have changed its form

For myself, if I feel the hand of power heavy on my brow, I am little concerned to know who it is that oppresses me; I am no better inclined to pass my head under the yoke because a million men hold it for me

The diety does not view the human race collectivelty. With one galnce he sees every human being separately and sees in each the resemblances that makes him like his fellows and the differences which isolate him from them.

It follows that God has no need of general ideas, that is to say, He never feels the necessity of giving the same label to a considerable number of analoguous objects in order to think about them more conveniently

It is not like that with man. If a human intelligence tried to examine and judge all the particular cases that came his way individually he would soon be lost in a wilderness of detail and not be able ot seeee anything at all. In this pass he has recourse to an imperfect though necessary procedure which aids the weakness that makes it necessary.

After a superficial inspectoin of a certain number of objects he notes that they resemble each other and gives them all the same name. After that he puts them on one side and continues on his way.

General ideas do not beat witness to the power of human intelligence but rather to its inadequacy, for there are no beings exactly alike in nautre, no identical facts, no laws whicih can be applied indisciminately in teh sme way to several objects at once.

General ideas have this excellent quality that they permit human minds to pass judgement quickly on a great number of things; but the conceptsions they convey are always incomplete, and what is gained in extent is always lost to exactitute

Members, therefore, of artistocratic societties never make grand generalizations about themselves, and that is enough to give them a habitual distrust and unconscious distaste for all generalizations

Contrariwise, the democratic citizen sees notihng but people more or less like himself around him, and so he cannot think about one branch of mankind without widening his view until it includes the whole

the views of the ancient world about slaves clearly demonstrates the truth of this proposition

moreoever, there is every indication that those of the ancients who has been slaves before they became free, several of whom wrote fine books which have been preserved, saw slavery in the same light

All the great writers of antiquity were either members of the aristocracy of masters or, at the least, saw the artistocracy in undisputed possesion before their eyes. Their minds roamed free in many directions but were blinkered there.

Jesus Christ has to come down to earth to make all members of the human race understand that they were naturally similar and equal

Merchants eagerly grasp all philosophic generalizations presetned ot them without looking closely into them, and the same is true about politics, science, and the arts. But only after examination will they accept those concerning trade, and even then they do so with reserve

Statesmen behave just the same when it comes to political generalizations. If, then, there is a subject concerning which a democracy is particuarly liable to commit itself blindly and extravegantely to genral ideas, the best possibly corrective is to make the citizens pay daily, practical attention to it

Fixed ideas about God and human naturea are indispensable to men for the conduct of daily life, and it is daily life that prevents them from aquiring them.

The difficulty seems unparalleled. Among the scineces some are useful to the crows are also within its capacities; others can be mastered only by the few and are not cultivated by the majority, who needs nothing beyond their more remote applications. B

But the sciences in question are essential to the daily life of all though their study is out of reach of most

General ideas respecting God and Human nature are therefore the ideas above all others which ought to be withdrawn from the habitual action of private judgement and in which there is most to gain and least to lose by recognizing an authority

This is especially true of men living in free countries. When a people’s religion is destroyed doubt invades the highest faculties of the mind and half paralyzes all of the rest.

Each man gets into the way of having nothing but confused and changing notions about the matters of greatest importance to himself and his fellows. Opinions are ill-defended or abandonded, and in despair of solving unaided the greatest problems of humanity destiny, men ignobly give up thinking about them

Such a state inevitably enervates the soul and relaxing the springs of the will, prepares a people for bondage

then now only will they let their freedom be taken from them, but often they actually hand it over themselves

when there is no authority in religion or in politics, men are soon frightened by the limitless independence with which thhey are faced.

They are worried and worn out by the constant restlessness of everything. With everyting on the move in the realm of the mind, they want the material order at least to be firm and stable, and as they cannot accept their ancient beliefs again, they hand themselves over to a master

For my part, I doubt whether man can support complete religious independence and entire political liberty at the same time. I am lead to think that if he has no faith he must obey, and if he is free he must believe.

The great usefulnesss of religions is even more apparent among egalitarian peoples than elsewhere

One must admit that equality while it brings great benefits to mankind opens the door, as I hope to show later

to very dangerous instincts. It tends to isolate men from each other to that each things only of himself

If ony finds a philopsphical 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 who along remains eternal in the midst of the continual flux…

and transformation of all that composes him, ony may be sure that Allsuch a system, although it destroys human individuality, or rather just democracies.

All their habits of mind prepare them to conceive it and put them on the way toward adopting it.

It naturally attracts their imagination and holds it fixed. It fosters the pride and soothes the laziness of their minds.

Of all the different philosophical systems used to explain the universe, I believe that pantheism is one of those most fitted to seduce the mind in democratic ages.

All those who still appreciate the true nature of man’s greatness should combine in the struggle against it.

Though man resembles the animals in many respects, one characteristic is peculiar to him alone: he improves himself and they do not.

Mankind could not fail to discover this diference from the beginning. So the idea of perfectibility is as old as the world; equality had no share in bringing it to birth, but it has given it a new character.

But when castes disappear and classes are brought together, when men are jumbled together and habits, customs, and laws, are changin, when new facts impinge and new truths are discovered…

when old conceptions vanish and new ones take their place, then the human mind imagines the possibility of an ideal but laways fugitive perfection.