Excerpts from Alexis deToqueville, Democracy in America (1835, 1840)
Alexis deToqueville was a Frenchman whose family enjoyed power in France, but deToqueville
had come to believe that the decline of the aristocracy was inevitable. In the early 1830s he
traveled to America to observe its political development and the character of its peoples in hopes
of learning different models to apply to the ‘old world.’ In 1835 he published the first part of
Democracy in America, and in 1840 the second part appeared. His observations of ‘the American
character’ constitute one of the most influential pieces of literature from the nineteenth century.
Among the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general
equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by
giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar
habits to the governed.
I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no
less empire over civil society than over the government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, the ordinary practices of life, and
modifies whatever it does not produce.
The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from
which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.
…. [G]radually the . . . ranks mingle; the divisions which once severed mankind, are lowered; property is divided,
power is held in common, the light of intelligence spreads, and the capacities of all classes are equally cultivated; the state becomes
democratic, and the empire of democracy is slowly and peaceably introduced into the institutions and manners of the nation.
I can conceive a society in which all men would profess an equal attachment and respect for the laws of which they are the common
authors; in which the authority of the state would be respected as necessary, though not as divine; and the loyalty of the subject to the
chief magistrate would not be a passion, but a quiet and rational persuasion. Every individual being in the possession of rights which he
is sure to retain, a kind of manly reliance and reciprocal courtesy would arise between all classes, alike removed from pride and meanness.
The people, well acquainted with its true interests, would allow, that in order to profit by the advantages of society, it is necessary to
satisfy its demands. In this state of things, the voluntary association of the citizens might supply the individual exertions of the nobles, and
the community would be alike protected from anarchy and from oppression.
I admit that in a democratic state thus constituted, society will not be stationary; but the impulses of the social body may be regulated and
directed forward; if there be less splendor than in the halls of an aristocracy, the contrast of misery will be less frequent also; the
pleasures of enjoyment may be less excessive, but those of comfort will be more general; the sciences may be less perfectly cultivated, but
ignorance will be less common; the impetuosity of the feelings will be repressed, and the habits of the nation softened; there will be more
vices and fewer crimes.
In the absence of enthusiasm and of an ardent faith, great sacrifices may be obtained from the members of a commonwealth by an appeal to their
understandings and their experience: each individual will feel the same necessity for uniting with his fellow-citizens to protect his own
weakness; and as he knows that if they are to assist he must co-operate, he will readily perceive that his personal interest is identified with
the interest of the community.
The nation, taken as a whole, will be less brilliant, less glorious, and perhaps less strong; but the majority of the citizens will enjoy a
greater degree of prosperity, and the people will remain quiet, not because it despairs of melioration, but because it is conscious of the
advantages of its condition.
If all the consequences of this state of things were not good or useful, society would at least have appropriated all such as were useful and
good; and having once and for ever renounced the social advantages of aristocracy, mankind would enter into possession of all the benefits
which democracy can afford.
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 origin, 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.
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,
general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations
to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct
churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this
manner they found hospitals, prisons, and schools. If it is proposed to
inculcate some truth or to foster some feeling by the encouragement of a great
example, they form a society. Wherever at the head of some new undertaking you
see the government in France, or a man of rank in England, in the United States
you will be sure to find an association. . . .
.
. . Aristocratic communities always contain, among 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.
Among
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, become powerless
if they do not learn voluntarily to help one another. . . .
Conformity
and Autonomy
If
America has not as yet had any great writers, the reason is given in these
facts; there can be no literary genius without freedom of opinion, and freedom
of opinion does not exist in America. The Inquisition has never been able to
prevent a vast number of anti-religious books from circulating in Spain. The
empire of the majority succeeds much better in the United States, since it
actually removes any wish to publish them. Unbelievers are to be met with in
America, but there is no public organ of infidelity. Attempts have been made by
some governments to protect morality by prohibiting licentious books. In the
United States no one is punished for this sort of books, but no one is induced
to write them; not because all the citizens are immaculate in conduct, but
because the majority of the community is decent and orderly.
In
this case the use of the power is unquestionably good; and I am discussing the
nature of the power itself. This irresistible authority is a constant fact, and
its judicious exercise is only an accident.
The
tendencies that I have just mentioned are as yet but slightly perceptible in
political society, but they already exercise an unfavorable influence upon the
national character of the Americans. I attribute the small number of
distinguished men in political life to the ever increasing despotism of the
majority in the United States. . . .
When
the ranks of society are unequal, and men unlike each other in condition, there
are some individuals invested with all the power of superior intelligence,
learning, and enlightenment, whilst the multitude is sunk in ignorance and
prejudice. Men living at these aristocratic periods are therefore naturally
induced to shape their opinions by the superior standard of a person or a class
of persons, whilst they are averse to recognize the infallibility of the mass
of the people.
The
contrary takes place in ages of equality. The nearer the citizens are drawn to
the common level of an equal and similar condition, the less prone does each
man become to place implicit faith in a certain man or a certain class of men.
But his readiness to believe the multitude increases, and opinion is more than
ever mistress of the world. Not only is common opinion the only guide which
private judgment retains amongst a democratic people, but amongst such a people
it possesses a power infinitely beyond what it has elsewhere. At periods of
equality men have no faith in one another, by reason of their common
resemblance; but this very resemblance gives them almost unbounded confidence
in the judgment of the public; for it would not seem probable, as they are all
endowed with equal means of judging, but that the greater truth should go with
the greater number.
When
the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all
those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them;
but when he comes to survey the totality of his fellows, and to place himself
in contrast to so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his
own insignificance and weakness. The same equality which renders him
independent of each of his fellow-citizens taken severally, exposes him alone
and unprotected to the influence of the greater number. The public has
therefore among a democratic people a singular power, of which aristocratic
nations could never so much as conceive an idea; for it does not persuade to
certain opinions, but it enforces them, and infuses them into the faculties by
a sort of enormous pressure of the minds of all upon the reason of each.
In
the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made
opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity
of forming opinions of their own. Everybody there adopts great numbers of
theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics, without inquiry, upon public
trust; and if we look to it very narrowly, it will be perceived that religion
herself holds her sway there, much less as a doctrine of revelation than as a
commonly received opinion. . . .
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.
Mobility
and Materialism
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 is preponderant. From them it mounts into the higher
orders of society and descends into the mass of the people.
I
never met in America 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 that fate still obstinately withheld from
him. On the other hand, I never perceived among 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 is 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 has now become the predominant taste of the nation; the great
current of human passions runs in that channel and sweeps everything along in
its course. . . .
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….
It
is possible to conceive men arrived at a degree of freedom which should
completely content them; they would then enjoy their independence without
anxiety and without impatience. But men will never establish any equality with
which they can be contented. Whatever efforts a people may make, they will
never succeed in reducing all the conditions of society to a perfect level; and
even if they unhappily attained that absolute and complete depression, the
inequality of minds would still remain, which, coming directly from the hand of
God, will forever escape the laws of man. However democratic then the social
state and the political constitution of a people may be, it is certain that
every member of the community will always find out several points about him
which command his own position; and we may foresee that his looks will be
doggedly fixed in that direction. When inequality of conditions is the common
law of society, the most marked inequalities do not strike the eye: when
everything is nearly on the same level, the slightest are marked enough to hurt
it. Hence the desire of equality always becomes more insatiable in proportion
as equality is more complete.
Amongst
democratic nations men easily attain a certain equality of conditions: they can
never attain the equality they desire. It perpetually retires from before them,
yet without hiding itself from their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At
every moment they think they are about to grasp it; it escapes at every moment
from their hold. They are near enough to see its charms, but too far off to
enjoy them; and before they have fully tasted its delights they die. To these
causes must be attributed that strange melancholy which oftentimes will haunt
the inhabitants of democratic countries in the midst of their abundance, and
that disgust at life which sometimes seizes upon them in the midst of calm and
easy circumstances. Complaints are made in France that the number of suicides
increases; in America suicide is rare, but insanity is said to be more common
than anywhere else. These are all different symptoms of the same disease. The
Americans do not put an end to their lives, however disquieted they may be,
because their religion forbids it; and amongst them materialism may be said
hardly to exist, notwithstanding the general passion for physical
gratification. The will resists - reason frequently gives way. In democratic
ages enjoyments are more intense than in the ages of aristocracy, and
especially the number of those who partake in them is larger: but, on the other
hand, it must be admitted that man's hopes and his desires are oftener blasted,
the soul is more stricken and perturbed, and care itself more keen.