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• [democracy In America a (1840), Volume Iii]
• Foreword B *
• First Part: Influence of Democracy On the Intellectual Movement In the United States
• Chapter 1 A: of the Philosophical Method of the Americans * B
• Chapter 2 A: of the Principal Source of Beliefs Among Democratic Peoples B
• Chapter 3 A: Why the Americans Show More Aptitude and Taste For General Ideas Than Their Fathers the English
• Chapter 4 A: Why the Americans Have Never Been As Passionate As the French About General Ideas In Political Matters
• Chapter 5 A: How, In the United States, Religion Knows How to Make Use of Democratic Instincts B
• Chapter 6 A: of the Progress of Catholicism In the United States
• Chapter 7: What Makes the Minds of Democratic Peoples Incline Toward Pantheism a
• Chapter 8 A: How Equality Suggests to the Americans the Idea of the Indefinite Perfectibility of Man B [tn 7]
• Chapter 9 A: How the Example of the Americans Does Not Prove That a Democratic People Cannot Have Aptitude and Taste For the Sciences, Literature, and the Arts B
• Chapter 10 A: Why the Americans Are More Attached to the Application of the Sciences Than to the Theory B
• Chapter 11 A: In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts B
• Chapter 12 A: Why the Americans Erect Such Small and Such Large Monuments At the Same Time
• Chapter 13 A: Literary Physiognomy of Democratic Centuries
• Chapter 14 A: of the Literary Industry B
• Chapter 15 A: Why the Study of Greek and Latin Literature Is Particularly Useful In Democratic Societies
• Chapter 16 A: How American Democracy Has Modified the English Language B
• Chapter 17 A: of Some Sources of Poetry Among Democratic Nations B
• Chapter 18 A: Why American Writers and Orators Are Often Bombastic B
• Chapter 19 A: Some Observations On the Theater of Democratic Peoples B
• Chapter 20 A: of Some Tendencies Particular to Historians In Democratic Centuries B
• Chapter 21 A: of Parliamentary Eloquence In the United States B
• Second Part: Influence of Democracy On the Sentiments of the Americans a
• Chapter 1 A: Why Democratic Peoples Show a More Ardent and More Enduring Love For Equality Than For Liberty B
• Chapter 2 A: of Individualism In Democratic Countries
• Chapter 3: How Individualism Is Greater At the End of a Democratic Revolution Than At Another Time a
• Chapter 4 A: How the Americans Combat Individualism With Free Institutions B
• Chapter 5 A: of the Use That Americans Make of Association In Civil Life B
• [of the Manner In Which American Governments Act Toward Associations] T
• Chapter 6 A: of the Relation Between Associations and Newspapers B
• Chapter 7 A: Relations Between Civil Associations and Political Associations B
• Chapter 8 A: How the Americans Combat Individualism By the Doctrine of Interest Well Understood B
• Chapter 9 A: How the Americans Apply the Doctrine of Interest Well Understood In the Matter of Religion B
• Chapter 10 A: of the Taste For Material Well-being In America B
• Chapter 11 A: of the Particular Effects Produced By the Love of Material Enjoyments In Democratic Centuries B
• Chapter 12 A: Why Certain Americans Exhibit So Excited a Spiritualism B
• Chapter 13 A: Why the Americans Appear So Restless Amid Their Well-being
• Chapter 14 A: How the Taste For Material Enjoyments Is United, Among the Americans, With the Love of Liberty and Concern For Public Affairs
• Chapter 15 A: How From Time to Time Religious Beliefs Divert the Soul of the Americans Toward Non-material Enjoyments B
• Chapter 16 A: How the Excessive Love of Well-being Can Harm Well-being B
• Chapter 17 A: How, In Times of Equality and Doubt, It Is Important to Push Back the Goal of Human Actions B
• Chapter 18 A: Why, Among the Americans, All Honest Professions Are Considered Honorable B
• Chapter 19 A: What Makes Nearly All Americans Tend Toward Industrial Professions
• Chapter 20 A: How Aristocracy Could Emerge From Industry B

chapter 1a

Of the Philosophical Method of the Americans*b

I think that in no country in the civilized world is there less interest in philosophy than in the United States.

The Americans have no philosophical school of their own, and they worry very little about all those that divide Europe; they hardly know their names.

It is easy to see, however, that nearly all the inhabitants of the United States direct their minds in the same way, and conduct them according to the same rules; that is to say, they possess, without ever having taken the trouble to define its rules, a certain philosophical method that is common to all of them.

To escape from the spirit of system, from the yoke of habits, from the maxims of family,c from the opinions of class, and, to a certain point, from the prejudices of nation; to take tradition only as information, and present facts only as a useful study for doing otherwise and better; to seek by yourself and in yourself alone the reason for things, to strive toward the result without allowing yourself to be caught up in the means, and to aim for substance beyond form: such are the principal features that characterize what I will call the philosophical method of the Americans.d

If I go still further and, among these various features, look for the principal one and the one that can sum up nearly all the others, I discover that, in most operations of the mind, each American appeals only to the individual effort of his reason.

So America is one of the countries of the world where the precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed.e That should not be a surprise.

Americans do not read the works of Descartes, because their social state diverts them from speculative studies, and they follow his maxims because the same social state naturally disposes their mind to adopt them.f

Amid the constant movement that reigns within a democratic society,g the bond that links generations together weakens or breaks; each man easily loses track of the ideas of his ancestors, or is hardly concerned about them.

Nor can the men who live in such a society draw their beliefs from the opinions of the class to which they belong, for there are so to speak no longer any classes, and those that still exist are composed of elements so fluid, that the corps can never exercise a true power over its members.h

As for the action that the intelligence of one man can have on that of another, it is necessarily very limited in a country where citizens, having become more or less similar, all see each other at very close range; and, not noticing in any one of them the signs of incontestable greatness and superiority, they are constantly brought back to their own reasonj as the most visible and nearest source of truth. Then it is not only confidence in a particular man that is destroyed, but the taste to believe any man whatsoever on his word.

So each person withdraws narrowly into himself and claims to judge the world from there.

The custom that the Americans have of only taking themselves as guide for their judgment leads their mind to other habits.

Since they see that they manage without help to solve all the small difficulties that their practical life presents, they easily conclude that everything in the world is explicable, and that nothing goes beyond the limits of intelligence.

Thus, they readily deny what they cannot understand; that gives them little faith in the extraordinary and an almost invincible distaste for the supernatural.

Since they are accustomed to relying on their own witness, they love to see the matter that they are dealing with very clearly; so in order to see it more closely and in full light, they rid it as fully as they can of its wrapping; they push aside all that separates them from it, and clear away everything that hides it from their view. This disposition of their mind soon leads them to scorn forms, which they consider as useless and inconvenient veils placed between them and the truth.

So the Americans did not need to draw their philosophical method from books, they found it within themselves. I will say the same about what happened in Europe.

This same method became established and popularized in Europe only as conditions there became more equal and men more similar.

Let us consider for a moment the train of events:

In the XVIth century, the men of the Reformationk subject some of the dogmas of the ancient faith to individual reason; but they continue to exclude all the others from discussion.m In the XVIIth, Bacon, in the natural sciences, and Descartes, in philosophy strictly speaking, abolish accepted formulas, destroy the rule of traditions and overthrow the authority of the master.n

The philosophers of the XVIIIth century, finally generalizing the same principle, undertake to submit to the individual examination of each man the object of all his beliefs.o

Who does not see that Luther, Descartesp and Voltaire used the same method, and that they differ only in the greater or lesser use that they claimed to make of it?

Why did the men of the Reformation enclose themselves so narrowly in the circle of religious ideas? Why did Descartes want to use it only in certain matters, although he made his method applicable to everything, and declare that only philosophical and not political things must be judged by oneself? How did it happen that in the XVIIIth century general applications that Descartes and his predecessors had not noticed or had refused to see were all at once drawn from that same method? Finally, why in that period did the method we are speaking about suddenly emerge from the schools to penetrate society and become the common rule of intelligence, and why, after becoming popular among the French, was it openly adopted or secretly followed by all the peoples of Europe?

The philosophical method in question was able to arise in the XVIth century, to take shape and become general in the XVIIth; but it could not be commonly adopted in either one of the two. Political laws, the social state, the habits of the mind that flow from these first causes, were opposed to it.

It was discovered in a period when men began to become equal and similar to each other. It could only be generally followed in centuries when conditions had finally become nearly similar and men almost the same.

So the philosophical method of the XVIIIth century is not only French, but democratic,q which explains why it was so easily accepted everywhere in Europe, whose face it so much contributed to changing. It is not because the French changed their ancient beliefs and modified their ancient mores that they turned the world upside down; it is because they were the first to generalize and bring to light a philosophical method by the aid of which you could easily attack all things old and open the way to all things new.

If someone now asks me why, today, this same method is followed more rigorously and applied more often among the French than among the Americans, among whom equality is nonetheless as complete and older, I will answer that it is due in part to two circumstances that must first be made clear.

It is religion that gave birth to the Anglo-American societies: that must never be forgotten; so in the United States religion merges with all national habits and all sentiments that the country brings forth; that gives it a particular strength.r

To this powerful reason add this other one, which is no less so: in America, religion has so to speak set its own limits; the religious order there has remained entirely distinct from the political order, so that they were able to change ancient laws easily without shaking ancient beliefs.

So Christianity retained a great dominion over the mind of the Americans, and, what I want to note above all, it reigns not only as a philosophy that you adopt after examination, but also as a religion that you believe without discussion.

In the United States, Christian sects vary infinitely and are constantly changing, but Christianity itself is an established and irresistible fact that no one attempts to attack or defend.

The Americans, having admitted the principal dogmas of the Christian religion without examination, are obliged to receive in the same way a great number of moral truths that arise from it and are due to it. That confines the work of individual analysis within narrow limits, and excludes from it several of the most important human opinions.s

The other circumstance that I spoke about is this: The Americans have a democratic social state and a democratic constitution, but they have not had a democratic revolution. They arrived on the soil that they occupy more or less as we see them. That is very important.

There are no revolutions that do not turn ancient beliefs upside down, enervate authority and cloud common ideas. So every revolution has more or less the effect of leaving men to themselves and of opening before the mind of each one of them an empty and almost limitless space.

When conditions become equal following a prolonged struggle between the different classes that formed the old society, envy, hatred and contempt for neighbor, pride and exaggerated confidence in self, invade, so to speak, the human heart and for some time make it their domain. This, apart from equality, contributes powerfully to divide men, to make them mistrust each other’s judgment and seek enlightenment only within themselves alone.t

Each person then tries to be self-sufficient and glories in having beliefs that are his own. Men are no longer tied together except by interests and not by ideas, and you would say that human opinions no longer form anything other than a kind of intellectual dust that swirls on all sides, powerless to come together and settle.

Thus, the independence of mind that equality suggests is never so great and never appears so excessive as at the moment when equality begins to become established and during the painful work that establishes it. So you must carefully distinguish the type of intellectual liberty that equality can provide, from the anarchy that revolution brings. These two things must be considered separately, in order not to conceive exaggerated hopes and fears about the future.

I believe that the men who will live in the new societies will often make use of their individual reason; but I am far from believing that they will often abuse it.

This is due to a cause more generally applicable to all democratic countries and that, in the long run, must keep individual independence of thought within fixed and sometimes narrow limits.

I am going to speak about it in the chapter that follows.u

[a. ] “While rereading and recasting my manuscript, do, after each chapter, a small outline of what it contains; a kind of assets and liabilities of democracy; that will marvelously facilitate for me the final tableau, which it is immensely important to do well” (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 11–12).

Notebook F of the manuscript collection of Yale reproduces short summaries of each chapter. The first page bears the date April 1840. Here is the summary of this chapter:

• 1. That the Americans show by their actions that they have a philosophical method, even though they have neither philosophical school nor philosophical doctrine strictly speaking.
• 2. That this method consists principally of drawing your opinions only from within yourself, as Descartes indicates.
• 3. That it is principally from their social state that they have drawn this method and that it is the same cause that has made it adopted in Europe.
• 4. That the Americans have not made so great a use of this method as the French: 1. Because they got from their origin a more fixed religion. 2. Because they are not and have never been in revolution. 3. As a result of a still more general and powerful cause that I am going to develop in the following chapter and that in the long run must limit, among all democratic peoples, the intellectual independence given birth by equality (YTC, CVf, pp. 1–2).

The first draft of this chapter (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 42–82) contains some ideas that afterward will acquire sufficient importance to constitute independent chapters(chapters 2 to 8). Tocqueville clearly hesitated a great deal about the content of the first chapter, finding himself inclined to speak about individualism before everything else.

“Perhaps,” Tocqueville noted again in a rough draft, “begin the whole book with the chapters on individualism and the taste for material enjoyments. Nearly everything flows from there in ideas as well as in sentiments” (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 12).

It is probably on the advice of Kergorlay, who spent the autumn of 1838 at the Tocqueville château at the very time when the author worked on the revision of the first version of his manuscript, and who found the first two chapters remarkably well written, that Tocqueville changed his mind.

In another place:

Chapter 9 in the manuscript is now number 11, entitled: in what spirit the americans cultivate the arts.

Another note, probably prior, suggested: “Perhaps do a chapter on the influence of democracy on the moral sciences. I do not believe that the first chapter of the book corresponds to that” (YTC, CVa, p. 45).

[* ] In the beginning, the organization of the first chapters probably must have appeared as follows: (1) A long chapter on philosophical method, including a certain number of ideas that were later moved or that formed independent chapters, like the one on pantheism, which now bears number 7. (2) The origin of beliefs among democratic peoples.(3) A chapter on religion. (4) The influence of philosophical method on the relations of the father with his children, of the master with his servants, on woman and on habits. (5) The taste for general ideas. (6) Science and the arts.

[b. ] Chap. 1.

This first chapter treats a very abstract matter. Extreme efforts must be made to make it clear and perceptible, otherwise the reader would be discouraged.

In this chapter there are two ideas that I take up and leave alternately in a way that is fatiguing for the mind, it is that of an independent method and of the inclination and aptitude for general ideas.

Either these two ideas must be intimately linked with each other, or they must be separated entirely and treated individually.

Perhaps explain in a few words the meaning of the expressions: general ideas, generalization, method (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 42).

The jacket that contains the manuscript of the chapter bears this note: “ ≠There is no society without common ideas and no common ideas if on each point each person is abandoned to the solitary and individual effort of his reason. ≠”

[c. ] In the rough drafts and first versions: “. . . from the maxims of State” (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 21; another version, p. 43).

[d. ] In the margin, in pencil: “{And religion, Ampère?}”

Jean-Jacques Ampère, writer and historian with eclectic tastes, son of the famous physicist. Tocqueville met him in 1835 in the salon of Madame Récamier, with whom Ampère was in love for fifteen years. We know little about the beginning of the friendship between Tocqueville and Ampère, but we know that the author of the Democracy read several chapters of this volume to him and asked for his advice on several occasions. From 1841, the Tocqueville château sheltered in one of its towers a room of Ampère, always ready to receive him. Indefatigable traveler, Ampère ended several of his long journeys by a visit to the Tocquevilles.

Upon the death of the author, Ampère published a touching article on “his best friend”: “Alexis de Tocqueville,” Correspondant, 47, 1859, pp. 312–35. The correspondence of Tocqueville with Ampère has been published in volume XI of Œuvres complètes.

[e. ] “Although Descartes professes a great scorn for the crowd, his method is based on the idea of the equality of minds, for if I must rely on myself why would you not do the same?

“Protestantism itself already announced that society had become very democratic” (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 13).

“Descartes, the greatest democrat” (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 53).

A letter from Kergorlay dated 27 June 1834 (Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 1, pp. 384–89) suggests that the two friends had had the project of reading together the Discours de la méthode. It contains the first impressions of Kergorlay on reading this work.

[f. ] In the margin: “<Perhaps transfer here several of the things that I say in the chapter on revolutions. Here the foundations are found, they must be well secured before building.>”

[g. ] “A democratic people, society, time does not mean a people, society, time in which all men are equal, but a people, society, time in which there are no more castes, fixed classes, privileges, particular and exclusive rights, permanent riches, properties fixed in the hands of families, in which all men can constantly rise or descend and mingle together in all ways.

“When I mean it in the political sense, I say democracy.

“When I want to speak about the effects of equality, I say equality” (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 50–51).

[h. ] In the margin: “<They escape the rule of their own habits, for they change them constantly.>”

[k. ] In the margin of a first version belonging to the rough drafts: “The Protestant religion (perhaps religions should only be touched as little as possible for fear of burning my fingers)” (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 45).

[m. ] I suppose that knowing the language that our fathers spoke, I do not know their history. I open the books of the (three illegible words) of the XVIth century. I understand that there one preaches to men that each one of them has the right and the ability to choose the particular road that should lead to heaven. I am assured that half of the nations of Europe have adopted this new doctrine. That is enough. I do not need to be taught that a great political revolution has preceded and accompanied the religious revolution whose history is provided for me.

[v: That is enough. I already know without anyone telling me that in a nation in which intellectual equality is thus professed and accepted, a very great inequality in conditions cannot exist and that whatever the external appearances of political society may still be, men have already come very close to a common level]” (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 13–14).

[n. ] Fragment on a separate sheet of the manuscript:

[o. ] The manuscript says:

In a rough draft, the author specified:

The same idea appears at the beginning of his “Social and Political State of France Before and Since 1789” (OC, II, 1, p. 34).

[p. ] “Descartes was Catholic by his beliefs and Protestant by his method” (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 32).

[q. ] “It is not Luther, Bacon, Descartes, Voltaire that must be blamed. They only gave form or application; the substance emerged from the state of the world in their time” (Rubish, 1).

[r. ] All the peoples of Europe were born in centuries when the ardor of religious passions reigned, but American society was established especially in order to satisfy these very passions. It was created in order to obey rules prescribed by a positive belief and it is a direct product of faith. The influence of this premier fact grows weaker each day; it is still powerful; and if the Americans are dogmatic in the matter of religion that is not because their social state is democratic, but because their origin is Puritan.

Although philosophy and religion are two distinct things, there nevertheless exists between them a very close link that makes them in some way depend on each other. When the human mind has indeed stopped within the fixed limits of a religious belief, philosophy merges so to speak with religion or at least it becomes as exclusive and nearly as stable as religion itself. When on the contrary religious beliefs are shaken, philosophical systems proliferate.

The Americans do not concern themselves with proving by metaphysical reasons the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, they do not try to mark out the rules of human morality, and do not claim to discover the common principle that should govern the actions of man. They believe in the authenticity of a book in which God himself, addressing immortal creatures, took care to set down with his powerful hand the limit of good and evil.

[In the margin: This is very good and merits being kept; perhaps it should be placed where I show how aristocracy immobilizes the mind.]

(three illegible words) the greatest of the philosophical questions that have divided the world for six thousand years seem hardly to preoccupy the mind of the Americans.

This results from yet another cause than the one indicated above.

Although philosophical systems can in the long run exercise a powerful influence on the destinies of the human species, they seem to have only a very indirect connection with the fate of each man in particular; it follows that it can excite only a secondary interest in the latter. So men never feel carried toward philosophical studies by an actual and pressing need, they devote themselves to them for pleasure or in order to fill the leisure that the principal affairs of life leave to them. Now in {small} democratic countries generally and in particular in the United States, where so many various raw materials are offered to human activity, few men are found who can be concerned with philosophy, and the latter, should they be found, would lack a public that would be interested in their work and would encourage their efforts.

When a man incessantly pursues well-being or wealth, leads ships to the antipodes of the earth, cuts down forests each day, fills in swamps, transforms the wilderness, he willingly leaves to another the trouble of discovering the limits of free will and of trying to find out the origin of evil.

Of all the branches of human study, philosophy will be, if I am not mistaken, the one that will suffer most from the establishment of democracy. If men, whose social state and habits are democratic, wanted to occupy themselves with philosophy, I do not doubt that they would bring to this matter the boldness and freedom of mind that they display elsewhere. But it can be believed that rarely will they want to be concerned with it.

It is right moreover to distinguish two things with care.

A nation can have a philosophy of its own and have no philosophical system strictly speaking. When each of the men who compose a people proves individually by his actions that they all have a certain uniform way of envisaging human affairs, you can say that the people in general have a philosophy even though no one has yet taken on the task of reducing these common notions to a body of knowledge, of specifying these general ideas spread throughout the crowd and of linking them methodically together in a logical order.

When you study the life of the Americans you discover without difficulty that the greater part of all their principal actions are naturally linked to a certain small number of theoretical philosophical opinions to which each man indistinctly conforms his conduct.

Do you know why the inhabitant of the United States (illegible word) does not undertake to control the private conduct of his servants and scarcely reserves the right to counsel his children?

Do you understand why he (illegible word) lavishly (two illegible words) of himself . . .

[In the margin: Examples drawn from the American theory of the equality of men, of the doctrine of interest. Each one for himself.

I know that there is a multitude of American actions that have their driving power in these two doctrines, but they do not come back to me at this moment.

End in this way:

So the Americans have a [v: their] philosophy even though they do not have philosophers, and if they do not preach their doctrines in writings, they at least teach them by their actions.

Perfectibility. Nothing draws visible limits to man.

Another very fruitful principle for the Americans.

All philosophical doctrines that can have a close connection to human actions are very fixed in America. Purely theoretical opinions are intermingled with religious doctrines strictly speaking.]

The fact is that the Americans have allowed the Christian religion to direct the small actions of life, and they have adopted [v: have created for themselves] a democratic philosophy for most of the large ones (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 63–69).

[s. ] I am firmly persuaded that if you sincerely applied to the search for the true religion the philosophical method of the XVIIIth century, you would without difficulty discover the truth of the dogmas taught by Jesus Christ, and I think that you would arrive at Christianity by reason as well as by faith. So I am not astonished to see in the Americans sincere Christians, but at first glance, I am surprised by the manner in which they become so. Within Christianity the American mind is deployed with an entirely democratic independence, but it is very rare for it to dare to go beyond these limits that it does not seem to have imposed on itself (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 59– 60).

[t. ] General revolt against all authority. Attempt to appeal to individual reason in all things. General and salient character of the philosophy of the XVIIIth century, character essentially democratic.

But much more so when conditions are becoming equal than when conditions are equal. An intellectual anarchy that is revolutionary and not democratic. We see on this point more disorder than we will ever see.

The XVIIIth century exalted the individual (illegible word). It was revolution, not democracy.

Skepticism is found at the beginning of democratic centuries rather than in these centuries.

The philosophy of the XVIIIth century was revolutionary rather than democratic. Try to find out what was revolutionary in it and what was democratic (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 11–12).

[u. ] In the manuscript, you find here these two fragments:

[n. ] In the margin, in pencil: “Not only, but. Ampère.”