The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Foreword
• Preface to the Liberty Fund Edition
• Preface to the First Edition
• Part I: Tocqueville’s Second Voyage to America, 1832–1840
• Chapter 1: The Writing of the First Part of the Democracy
• Chapter 2: An Expanding Task Resumed
• Part II: How to Account For America? Tocqueville Looks At Some Particular Causes Physiques
• Chapter 3: An Hypothesis Weighed and Rejected
• Chapter 4: Further Considerations of Environment
• Chapter 5: Was Race a Sufficient Explanation of the American Character?
• Chapter 6: The Transformation of a Continent
• Part III: Tocqueville and the Union: the Nature and Future of American Federalism
• Chapter 7: The Bond Between the States and the Central Government
• Chapter 8: A Prophet In Error
• Chapter 9: How Large Might a Republic Be?
• Part IV: Democracy, Centralization, and Democratic Despotisms
• Chapter 10: Centralization and Local Liberties
• Chapter 11: Where Would Power Accumulate?
• Chapter 12: Administrative Centralization and Some Remedies
• Chapter 13: Tocqueville’s Changing Visions of Democratic Despotism
• Part V: Democracy, the Individual, and the Masses
• Chapter 14: The Tyranny of the Majority
• Chapter 15: The Tyranny of the Majority: Some Paradoxes
• Chapter 16: Would Démocratie Usher In a New Dark Ages?
• Chapter 17: Démocratie and Egoïsme
• Chapter 18: From Egoïsme to Individualisme
• Part VI: What Tocqueville Meant By Démocratie
• Chapter 19: Some Meanings of Démocratie
• Chapter 20: Tocqueville’s Return to America
• Epilogue How Many Democracies ?
• Selected Bibliography

CHAPTER 16

Would Démocratie Usher in a New Dark Ages?

Particularly after 1835, Tocqueville’s concern about the tyranny of the majority reflected a growing interest in intellectual liberty. He worried that one probable result of advancing equality would be massive pressure on individuals to conform in matters of thought and opinion to the views of the many. A related, but even more serious possible consequence, he feared, would be the suppression of innovative thinking altogether. Without new ideas or the freedom to express them, what would then become of cultural progress? For Tocqueville, even the possibility of such a disastrous development evoked some troubling questions for the future.

When describing the results of the New Despotism, of equality without liberty, Tocqueville usually wrote of men falling “below the level of humanity” (au-dessous du niveau de l’humanité) or of “barbarism” (la barbarie).1 But from a very early period in the making of the Democracy, he also worried about another sort of “barbarism.” In November 1831, after reflecting for several months on the many effects of America’s pervasive equality, he asked in one of his travel notebooks: “Why, as civilisation spreads, do outstanding men become fewer? Why, when attainments are the lot of all, do great intellectual talents become rarer? Why, when there are no longer lower classes, are there no more upper classes? ... America clearly poses these questions. But who can answer them?”2

Such doubts were not unusual. Tocqueville probably knew even before going to the New World that, in the opinion of many of his contemporaries, democracy was incompatible with civilization.3 The queries of November 1831 reveal that, even then, he too suspected that democracy might usher in an era of intellectual and cultural stagnation.

Between 1832 and 1835, Tocqueville’s fears about democracy’s threat to civilization resurfaced in several of his drafts. He titled one page, for example, “Influence of Démocratie on moeurs and ideas,” and wrote beneath: “Influence of the progress of equality on human intelligence. Disappearance of intellectual classes, of theoretical talents; possible return toward barbarism by this path.”4

His concern even led him to compare the irresistible march of democracy to the barbarian invasions of Rome. “What new order will come out of the debris of that which is falling? Who can say? The men of the fourth century, witnesses of the invasions of the Barbarians, gave themselves over, like us, to a thousand conjectures; but no one had the idea to foresee the universal erection of the feudal system which, in all of Europe, was the result of this invasion.”5 Pursuing his analogy, he explained: “I spoke above of the men who were present at the ruin of the Roman empire. Let us fear that a similar fate awaits6 us. But this time the Barbarians will not come out of the frozen lands of the North; they will rise up in the hearts of our fields and in the very midst of our cities.”7 Although the potential barbarians of the nineteenth century differed from their predecessors of the fourth, they too threatened to plunge the West into a Dark Age. In an unusually emotional peroration, Tocqueville begged his compatriots: “Let us save ourselves from a new invasion of Barbarians. The Barbarians are already at our gates and we amuse ourselves with discoursing. They are all around us ... There is that to fear.”8

In 1835, however, none of these fragments would appear, and the first half of the Democracy would consequently largely fail to disclose Tocqueville’s grave doubts about the survival of Western culture in the face of democracy’s advance. He would candidly concede that America possessed neither individuals dedicated to higher intellectual pursuits nor classes interested in supporting such endeavors.9 He would note that the enormous power exercised in America by majority opinion inhibited freedom of thought and particularly literary genius,10 and he would even admit that démocratie retarded the development of certain branches of knowledge. “So democracy ... harms the progress of the art of government ... Moreover, this does not apply only to the science of administration. Democratic government ... always assumes the existence of a very civilized and knowledgeable society.”11

But the work would contain no indication that these flaws had serious implications for the future of Western civilization as a whole. One ironic comment in the working manuscript would even argue that Europeans should be relieved to find no commanding intellects in America: “So in America we come upon none of those great intellectual centers which shoot forth heat and light at the same time. I do not know if perhaps we should not thank Heaven; America already carries an immense weight in the destinies of the world; and perhaps only great writers are lacking for her to overthrow violently all the old societies of Europe.”12

By stressing the singularity of the American nation, Tocqueville would also find a way in 1835 partially to excuse the cultural deficiencies of the United States. The first colonists had come not as ignorant savages, he would remind his readers, but as intelligent men firmly grounded in European learning, and, if necessary, the men of the New World could always borrow ideas and techniques from the Old. Furthermore, and most important, although the American republic lacked outstanding men of the arts and sciences, the citizenry as a whole exhibited an uncommonly high level of education, experience, and intelligence.13

So in 1835, by scrupulously maintaining his focus on the United States and its unique situation,14 Tocqueville would largely avoid the difficult task of generalizing about the effects of démocratie on cultural progress. Unable to soothe his own anxiety and unwilling once again to offer unnecessary support to the enemies of democracy, he apparently chose temporarily to conceal his doubts.

There was yet another possible reason for his silence. Beaumont had already decided to include a lengthy discussion of “Literature and Fine Arts” in his novel, Marie.15 Perhaps Tocqueville, though willing to offer some isolated observations about intellectual and cultural life in America, felt reluctant in 1835 to compete with Gustave’s work by presenting a fully developed analysis of his own. Once again Beaumont’s book may have inhibited Tocqueville as he established the dimensions of the 1835 Democracy.

Between 1835 and 1840, while drafting the second half of the Democracy, Tocqueville continued his musings about the probable effects of démocratie on civilization. One possible way out of his quandary would have been to unearth and present to his readers a flourishing American cultural life; the threat to civilization would have been considerably less cogent if even the world’s most democratic society stimulated artistic and literary activities.

In fact, such a demonstration would not have been especially difficult. Even before the late 1830s some European commentators had made a reasonable case for American cultural vigor, based largely on the works of Washington Irving and especially James Fenimore Cooper,16 writers whose names and achievements were familiar to both Tocqueville and Beaumont.17 Developments in New England as Tocqueville drafted the last two volumes of his work would have strengthened the argument considerably if he had been adequately aware of them.18

But evidently he, like Beaumont, felt that mention of Cooper, or Irving, or Channing, or any other literary figure would not really satisfy his doubts.19 Such men were too much the exceptions in American society. Instead, he chose once again to couple an admission of American poverty in arts and letters with a denial that the United States proved anything in general about the effects of democracy on culture. “Thus the Americans are in [a wholly] exceptional situation.”20

Having dismissed America as unique, he finally turned to a broader examination of the cultural influence of democracy. In an unenlightened society, he declared, the rise of démocratie would indeed be a condemnation to continued darkness. An unpublished essay drafted during the writing of the 1840 Democracy explained the reasons for his conclusion:

So among the semicivilized démocratie and culture were incompatible; a society composed of barbarians would be either democratic and perpetually ignorant or aristocratic and progressively civilized. But what about nations already enlightened? “It is very necessary,” Tocqueville cautioned, “to guard against confusing a democratic people, enlightened and free, with another which would be ignorant and enslaved.”33 “I take the European peoples such as they appear to my eyes with their ancient traditions, their acquired enlightenment, their liberties,” he wrote in the manuscript of the 1840 Democracy, “and I wonder if by becoming democratic they run the risk of falling back into a sort of barbarism.”34 He had returned to the fundamental question.

A tentative “Ordre des idées” appeared in an early outline of the chapter on the aptitude of democratic nations for arts and sciences.35 “Prove first that there will always be some men in our democracies who will love the sciences, letters, and the arts. This proven, it will be easy for me to establish that a democracy will furnish to those men all that they need. In order to know what to say here it is necessary to amalgamate the reproaches that people make to Démocratie when they accuse it of extinguishing enlightenment.”36

As a first step, Tocqueville theorized that some inherent human quality drove men everywhere toward the affairs of the mind. “There is in the very nature of man a natural and permanent disposition which pushes his soul despite habits, laws, usages ... toward the contemplation of elevated and intellectual things. This natural disposition is found in democracies as elsewhere.”37 He even argued in one draft that démocratie supplied more than the usual stimulation to those who pursued activities of the mind and spirit. In democracies the inborn tendency toward higher things was strengthened “by a sort of reaction to the material and the ordinary which abounds in these societies.”38

But would such intellectual impulses be given a chance to bear fruit? The key once again was free institutions. In the “Rubish,” discarded drafts of the 1840 volumes, he wrote:

So the hope for democratic nations rested with whichever free institutions (such as local liberties and associations) brought men together in the pursuit of public business.42 Only then would issues be discussed, ideas stimulated, and intellectual life preserved. Moreover, the energies excited among democratic peoples by such civic and political activities would inevitably spill over into intellectual ventures. “Give a democratic people enlightenment and liberty,” Tocqueville declared in his working manuscript, “and I do not doubt that you will see them carry over into the study of the sciences, letters, and the arts the same feverish activity that they show in all the rest.”43

Another draft revealed that this idea grew particularly out of Tocqueville’s knowledge of French history during the years following the French Revolution. Describing the effects of the revolution, he wrote: “Minds strongly stirred and put into motion by politics, afterwards throw themselves impetuously into all other channels. Free institutions, always in action, produce something analogous in a sustained way. They excite a certain chronic agitation in the human mind which sets it going for all things.”44

So in democratic times and among cultured peoples, there would be men endowed with the essential intellectual interests and capacities and activated by the necessary drives and energies. After some hesitation and a brief but interesting theoretical investigation, Tocqueville, with the enlightened nations of Europe specifically in mind, was thus finally able to conclude that, assuming free institutions, “Equality of conditions seems to me very appropriate for precipitating the march of the human mind.”45

But most of these more optimistic reflections occurred in various drafts or “Rubish” of the 1840 volumes. The published text would be considerably more ambivalent. Especially in the chapter entitled “Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rarer,” which once again considered the probable effects of equality on intellectual innovation, Tocqueville’s conclusions would be much gloomier. Equality of conditions and similar viewpoints, a busy preoccupation with mundane matters, a belief in intellectual equality, the isolation of individuals, the power of public opinion, and the authority of the mass, he would then argue, all joined to discourage new insights and ideas.46

This passage, in addition to a sense of foreboding and a conclusion much more pessimistic than previous ones, also offered an example of Tocqueville’s use of a mental tool which would occasionally appear in the pages of the 1840 Democracy: époque de transition (or de passage). By his repeated resorts to this concept, Tocqueville underscored his assumption that France (and Europe) in the 1830s was between more stable periods, that the early nineteenth century was primarily an intermediate stage, an époque de transition, and was therefore particularly prone to a wide variety of ills too often attributed by the unthinking to démocratie itself. At every possible opportunity in his last two volumes, Tocqueville reminded his countrymen that France, especially, was in the midst of this painful process of becoming democratic (was between two worlds) and that, to a great extent, this uncomfortable state of flux, rather than démocratie, accounted for the severity of his nation’s social, political, and moral problems. The idea of époque de transition thus allowed him not only partially to explain France’s lamentable condition, but also to disarm certain uncompromising critics of the trend toward equality and to maintain his hope for some better, more settled future of democratic maturity.

In 1840, Tocqueville thus remained uncertain about exactly how démocratie would influence intellectual development. In some passages he seemed to foresee the possibility, given free institutions in times of equality, of a unique cultural flowering. Elsewhere he remained pessimistic and predicted a pervasive mental stagnation. But at least he had finally faced the dilemma which he had posed years earlier. Although Tocqueville had not dismissed the possible deleterious effects of démocratie on cultural progress, his attitude by 1840 was different from the one expressed in earlier, more emotional drafts. Gone were his intense fears of barbarian ascendancy and of the immediate, catastrophic collapse of civilization. After an initial delay—possibly once again caused, in part, by an unwillingness to intrude upon areas marked out by Beaumont—further thought had persuaded Tocqueville that Europe, under the onslaught of advancing equality, would not necessarily go the way of Rome.

[1. ]For examples of the former, see Democracy (Mayer), p. 314 [1835] and p. 694 [1840]; for an example of the latter, ibid., p. 705 [1840].

[2. ]6 November 1831, Pocket Notebook 3, Mayer, Journey, p. 160. Also consult Tocqueville’s reflections after speaking with Charles Carroll, 5 November 1831, Non-Alph. Notebooks 2 and 3, ibid., pp. 86–87. Compare with Tocqueville’s musings of 1831 the following questions from Beaumont’s Marie (1835): “Is the world of the spirit subject to the same laws as physical nature? That great minds appear, is it necessary that the masses be ignorant to serve as their shadow? Do not great personalities shine above the vulgar as high mountains, their crests glittering with snow and light, tower over dark precipices?” (Bt. Marie [Chapman], p. 105).

[3. ]Rémond, Etats-Unis, 1:266, 283–305, especially pp. 301–5. Note that proponents of this view often cited the American republic as proof of their contention.

[4. ]Drafts, Yale, CVb, Paquet 13, p. 32. In the 1835 Democracy, Tocqueville would not include any chapter on this idea; only when he drafted the second part of his project (1840) would he develop it.

[5. ]Alternative written above “this invasion”: “the fall of Rome.” Neither phrase is crossed out (Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 3, p. 28).

[6. ]The copyist noted that one word was illegible; possibly “awaits.”

[7. ]Drafts, Yale, CVh, Paquet 3, cahier 3, p. 28.

[8. ]Drafts, Yale, CVb, Paquet 13, pp. 28–29.

[9. ]Democracy (Mayer), pp. 55–56, 301–5.

[10. ]Ibid., pp. 254–56.

[11. ]Ibid., p. 208. A related statement, one which says a great deal about Tocqueville’s personal attitudes toward démocratie, appeared in the working manuscript: “Democratic government [is] the chef-d’oeuvre of civilization and knowledge”; “Administrative Instability in the United States,” Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 2.

[12. ]“Administrative Instability in the United States,” Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 2.

[13. ]Democracy (Mayer), pp. 301–5.

[14. ]Tocqueville purposely devoted his first two volumes primarily to America rather than to démocratie in general.

[15. ]Bt., Marie (Chapman), pp. 105–16; also see p. 95.

[16. ]Rémond, Etats-Unis, 1:286–87, 300–301.

[17. ]See Beaumont’s treatment of these and other figures in Marie (Chapman), pp. 95, 111–12 note, 115–16. Also consult Pierson’s discussion of efforts by the companions to see a lesser-known American writer, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, Pierson, Toc. and Bt., pp. 349–50 and notes.

[18. ]Particularly significant would have been the rise of the Transcendentalists from 1836 forward. In 1841 a still-valuable work written in defense of American cultural and literary vitality did indeed appear in France: Eugène Vail, De la littérature et des hommes de lettres des Etats-Unis d’Amérique.

[19. ]Cf. Bt., Marie (Chapman), pp. 111–12 note.

[20. ]Democracy (Mayer), p. 455; also see pp. 454–58.

[21. ]Copyist’s note: “on leaf forming [the] jacket.” The chapters alluded to may be found in the first book of the 1840 volumes, “Influence of Democracy on the Intellectual Movements in the United States,” chapters 9–11 and 13–15; see especially chapter 9, “Why the Example of the Americans Does Not Prove That a Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude or Taste for Science, Literature, or the Arts,” Democracy (Mayer), pp. 454–58.

[22. ]Alternative crossed out: “It is necessary for men to make a prodigious effort by themselves in order to take the first step.”

[23. ]Alternative crossed out: “I think that it is more difficult for a savage.”

[24. ]Alternatives for “interests”: “needs,” “works,” and “cares.” All crossed out.

[25. ]Alternative deleted: “of physical nature.”

[26. ]Alternative deleted: “equality of conditions.”

[27. ]Alternative crossed out: “mind.”

[28. ]Alternative not crossed out: “enlightenment” (lumières).

[29. ]Alternative not crossed out: “over his peers.”

[30. ]Alternative deleted: “societies.”

[31. ]Alternative for the remainder of this sentence, deleted: “and I think that it is by losing their liberty that men have acquired the means to reconquer it.”

[32. ]Drafts, Yale, CVk, Paquet 7, cahier 1, pp. 18–20. Cf. Democracy (Mayer), pp. 456–57.

[33. ]“Why the Example of the Americans Does Not Prove that a Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude or Taste for Science, Literature or the Arts,” Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 3. This sentence is written in the margin and is not crossed out.

[34. ]Ibid.; this sentence is written on an extra sheet of paper enclosed within the manuscript.

[35. ]Cf. Democracy (Mayer), pp. 433–36 and especially pp. 454–58.

[36. ]Drafts, Yale, CVa, Paquet 8, cahier unique, p. 8.

[37. ]Tocqueville’s own omission; Drafts, Yale, CVk, Paquet 7, cahier 1, p. 5.

[38. ]Ibid.

[39. ]For elaboration of this idea, see the following two chapters.

[40. ]Page partially destroyed by water and mildew.

[41. ]“On the Use Which the Americans Make of Associations in Civil Life,” Drafts, Yale, CVg, “Rubish,” tome 3. Cf. Democracy (Mayer), pp. 513–17.

[42. ]See the chapter entitled “On the Use Which the Americans Make of Associations in Civil Life,” Democracy (Mayer), pp. 513–17; especially pp. 514, 517.

[43. ]“... Aptitude or Taste for Science, Literature, or the Arts,” Original Working Ms., Yale, CVIa, tome 3. Cf. Democracy (Mayer), p. 458. Note however that in 1840 Tocqueville would also insist that the intellectual and cultural fruits of a democracy, though abundant, would be different from those of an aristocracy. And if equality reigned without liberty, Tocqueville foresaw probable intellectual and cultural disaster; see for example, ibid., p. 436.

[44. ]Drafts, Yale, CVa, Paquet 8, cahier unique, pp. 47–48, dated June 1838. In the margin of this remark, Tocqueville wrote “good to develop,” and in 1840 he would expand upon the idea but neglect to indicate how it had been inspired.

[45. ]Drafts, Yale, CVk, Paquet 7, cahier 1, p. 20. Note in these remarks Tocqueville’s interchangeable use of the terms “democracy,” “free institutions,” and “equality of conditions.”

[46. ]Consult Democracy (Mayer), pp. 640–45.

[47. ]Ibid.