The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• [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 12a

Why the Americans Erect Such Small and Such Large Monuments at the Same Time

I have just said that, in democratic centuries, the monuments of art tended to become more numerous and smaller. I hasten to point out the exception to this rule.

Among democratic peoples, individuals are very weak; but the State, which represents them all and holds them all in its hand, is very strong.b Nowhere do citizens appear smaller than in a democratic nation. Nowhere does the nation itself seem greater and nowhere does the mind more easily form a vast picture of it. In democratic societies, the imagination of men narrows when they consider themselves; it expands indefinitely when they think about the State. The result is that the same men who live meanly in cramped dwellings often aim at the gigantic as soon as it is a matter of public monuments.c

The Americans have laid out on the site that they wanted to make into the capital the limits of an immense city that, still today, is hardly more populated than Pontoise, but that, according to them, should one day contain a million inhabitants; already they have uprooted trees for ten leagues around, for fear that they might happen to inconvenience the future citizens of this imaginary metropolis. They have erected, in the center of the city, a magnificent palace to serve as the seat of Congress, and they have given it the pompous name of the Capitol.

Every day, the particular states themselves conceive and execute prodigious undertakings that would astonish the genius of the great nations of Europe.

Thus, democracy does not lead men only to make a multitude of petty works; it also leads them to erect a small number of very large monuments. But between these two extremes there is nothing. So a few scattered remnants of very vast structures tell nothing about the social state and institutions of the people who erected them.

I add, although it goes beyond my subject, that they do not reveal their greatness, their enlightenment and their real prosperity any better.

Whenever a power of whatever kind is capable of making an entire people work toward a sole undertaking, it will succeed with little knowledge and a great deal of time in drawing something immense from the combination of such great efforts; you do not have to conclude from that that the people is very happy, very enlightened or even very strong.d The Spanish found the city of Mexico full of magnificent temples and vast palaces; this did not prevent Cortez from conquering the Mexican Empire with six hundred foot soldiers and sixteen horses.

If the Romans had known the laws of hydraulics better, they would not have erected all these aqueducts that surround the ruins of their cities; they would have made better use of their power and their wealth. If they had discovered the steam engine, perhaps they would not have extended to the extreme limits of their empire those long artificial stone lines that are called roman roads.

These things are magnificent witnesses to their ignorance at the same time as to their grandeur.

People who would leave no other traces of their passage than a few lead pipes in the earth and a few iron rods on its surface could have been more masters of nature than the Romans.e

• 1.

  [a. ] In democratic societies, individuals are very weak, but the State is very great. The imagination narrows when you think about yourself; it expands immeasurably when you turn your attention to the State.

  In those societies, you see a small number of very small monuments and a multitude of very large ones.

  Example of the Americans proves it.

• 2.

  Nor do large monuments prove anything about the prosperity, the enlightenment and the real greatness of the nation.

  Example of the Mexicans and the Romans shows it (YTC, CVf, pp. 13–14).

[b. ] In a note: “It is their very weakness that makes its strength . . . “A piece from ambition could go well there.”

[c. ] “In democracies the State must take charge of large and costly works not only because these large works are beautiful, but also in order to sustain the taste for what is great and for perfection” (in rubish of the chapters on the arts,Rubish, 1).

In Beaumont’s papers you find this note drafted during the journey that they made together to England in 1835:

[d. ] Many men judge the state of the civilization of a people by its monuments, that is a very uncertain measure.

I will admit that it proves that these peoples were more aristocratic, but not that they were more civilized and greater.

Ruins of Palenque in Mexico. Mexicans who still knew only hieroglyphic writing and vanquished so easily by the Spanish (Rubish of the previous chapter, Rubish, 1).

In 1845, concerning French monuments, Tocqueville made the following reflection to his friend Milnes:

[e. ] The rubish continues:

In the rough drafts of the previous chapter: “They [large monuments (ed.)] are the product of centralization. Here introduce the thought that centralization is not at all the sign of high civilization. It is found neither at the beginning nor at the end of civilization, but in general at the middle” (rubish of chapters on the arts,Rubish, 1).

And in another place in the same jacket: “Large monuments prove nothing but the destruction of large monuments proves. Warwick castle, aristocratic. Cherbourg sea wall, democratic” (rubish of the previous chapter. Rubish, 1). It was during his stay in England in 1833 that Tocqueville visited the ruins of Warwick castle, setting for Kenilworth of Walter Scott. To his future wife, Mary Mottley, he sent a short account of his visit entitled Visit to Kenilworth (YTC, CXIb, 12, reproduced in OCB, VII, pp. 116–19).