Tocqueville 1532.03 LFeBk PDF

Alexis de Tocqueville
DE MOC R AC Y
I N A M E R ICA
Historical-Critical Edition of
De la démocratie en Amérique
s4s4s4s4s4
Edited by Eduardo Nolla
Translated from the French by James T. Schleifer
a bilingual french-english edition

volume 3
Indianapolis
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English translation, translator’s note, index, 䉷 2010 by Liberty Fund, Inc.
The French text on which this translation is based is De la démocratie en
Amérique, première édition historico-critique revue et augmentée. Edited by
Eduardo Nolla. Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin; 6, Place de la Sorbonne; Paris, 1990.
French edition reprinted by permission.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Cloth ISBNs Paperback ISBNs
(Set) 978-0-86597-719-8 978-0-86597-724-2
(Vol. 1) 978-0-86597-720-4 978-0-86597-725-9
(Vol. 2) 978-0-86597-721-1 978-0-86597-726-6
(Vol. 3) 978-0-86597-722-8 978-0-86597-727-3
(Vol. 4) 978-0-86597-723-5 978-0-86597-728-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805–1859.
[De la démocratie en Amérique. English & French]
Democracy in America: historical-critical edition of De la démocratie en Amérique/Alexis
de Tocqueville; edited by Eduardo Nolla; translated from the French by James T. Schleifer.
p. cm.
“A bilingual French-English edition.”
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-86597-719-8 (hc: alk. paper) isbn 978-0-86597-720-4 (hc: alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-86597-721-1 (hc: alk. paper) isbn 978-0-86597-722-8 (hc: alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-86597-723-5 (hc: alk. paper) isbn 978-0-86597-724-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-86597-725-9 (pbk.: alk. paper) isbn 978-0-86597-726-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-86597-727-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) isbn 978-0-86597-728-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. United States—Politics and government. 2. United States—Social conditions.
3. Democracy—United States. I. Nolla, Eduardo. II. Schleifer, James T., 1942–
III. Title.
jk216.t713 2009
320.973—dc22 2008042684
liberty fund, inc.

8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300
Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684
Contents
Translator’s Note xxi
Key Terms xxvi
Foreword xxviii
List of Illustrations xlv
Editor’s Introduction xlvii
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
(1835)
volume i
Introduction 3
Part I
chapter 1: Exterior Configuration of North America 33
chapter 2: Of the Point of Departure and Its Importance for

the Future of the Anglo-Americans 45
Reasons for Some Singularities That the Laws and Customs of the
Anglo-Americans Present 71
chapter 3: Social State of the Anglo-Americans 74

That the Salient Point of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans Is to
Be Essentially Democratic 75
viii
contents ix
Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans 89
chapter 4: Of the Principle of the Sovereignty of the People

in America 91
chapter 5: Necessity of Studying What Happens in the

Individual States before Speaking about the Government of
the Union 98
Of the Town System in America 99
Town District 103
Town Powers in New England 104
Of Town Life 108
Of Town Spirit in New England 110
Of the County in New England 114
Of Administration in New England 115
General Ideas on Administration in the United States 129
Of the State 135
Legislative Power of the State 136
Of the Executive Power of the State 139
Of the Political Effects of Administrative Decentralization in the
United States 142
chapter 6: Of the Judicial Power in the United States and Its

Action on Political Society 167
Other Powers Granted to American Judges 176
chapter 7: Of Political Jurisdiction in the United States 179
chapter 8: Of the Federal Constitution 186

Historical Background of the Federal Constitution 186
Summary Picture of the Federal Constitution 191
Attributions of the Federal Government 193
Federal Powers 195
Legislative Powers 196
[Difference between the Constitution of the Senate and That of the
House of Representatives]
contents x
Another Difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives 200
Of Executive Power 201
How the Position of the President of the United States Differs from That
of a Constitutional King in France 204
Accidental Causes That Can Increase the Influence of the Executive Power 209
Why the President of the United States, to Lead Public Affairs,
Does Not Need to Have a Majority in the Chambers 210
Of the Election of the President 211
Mode of Election 218
Election Crisis 222
Of the Re-election of the President 225
Of the Federal Courts 229
Way of Determining the Jurisdiction of the Federal Courts 234
Different Cases of Jurisdiction 236
The Federal Courts’ Way of Proceeding 241
Elevated Rank That the Supreme Court Occupies among the Great Powers
of the State 244
How the Federal Constitution Is Superior to the State Constitutions 246
What Distinguishes the Federal Constitution of the United States of
America from All Other Federal Constitutions 251
Of the Advantages of the Federal System in General, and of Its Special
Utility for America 255
What Keeps the Federal System from Being within the Reach of All
Peoples; And What Has Allowed the Anglo-Americans to Adopt It 263
volume ii
Part II
chapter 1: How It Can Be Strictly Said That in the United

States It Is the People Who Govern 278
chapter 2: Of Parties in the United States 279

Of the Remnants of the Aristocratic Party in the United States 287
contents xi
chapter 3: Of Freedom of the Press in the United States 289

That the Opinions Established under the Dominion of Freedom of the
Press in the United States Are Often More Tenacious than Those That
Are Found Elsewhere under the Dominion of Censorship 298
chapter 4: Of Political Association in the United States 302

Different Ways in Which the Right of Association Is Understood in
Europe and in the United States, and the Different Use That Is Made
of That Right 309
chapter 5: Of the Government of Democracy in America 313

Of Universal Suffrage 313
Of the Choices of the People and of the Instincts of American
Democracy in Its Choices 314
Of the Causes That Can Partially Correct These Democratic Instincts 318
Influence That American Democracy Has Exercised on Electoral Laws 322
Of Public Officials under the Dominion of American Democracy 324
Of the Arbitrariness of Magistrates under the Dominion of
American Democracy 327
Administrative Instability in the United States 331
Of Public Expenses under the Dominion of American Democracy 333
Of the Instincts of American Democracy in Determining the Salary
of Officials 340
Difficulty of Discerning the Causes That Lead the American Government
to Economy 343
[Influence of the Government of Democracy on the Tax Base and on the
Use of the Tax Revenues] 345
[Influence of Democratic Government on the Use of Tax Revenues] 346
Can the Public Expenditures of the United States Be Compared with
Those of France 349
Of the Corruption and Vices of Those Who Govern in Democracy;
Of the Effects on Public Morality That Result from That Corruption
and Those Vices 356
Of What Efforts Democracy Is Capable 360
Of the Power That American Democracy Generally Exercises over Itself 364
contents xii
Of the Manner in Which American Democracy Conducts the Foreign

Affairs of the State 366
chapter 6: What Are the Real Advantages That American
Society Gains from the Government of Democracy? 375
Of the General Tendency of Laws under the Dominion of American
Democracy, and Of the Instinct of Those Who Apply Them 377
Of Public Spirit in the United States 384
Of the Idea of Rights in the United States 389
Of the Respect for the Law in the United States 393
Activity That Reigns in All Parts of the Political Body in the United
States; Influence That It Exercises on Society 395
chapter 7: Of the Omnipotence of the Majority in the United

States and Its Effects 402
How the Omnipotence of the Majority in America Increases the
Legislative and Administrative Instability That Is Natural to Democracies 407
Tyranny of the Majority 410
Effects of the Omnipotence of the Majority on the Arbitrariness of
American Public Officials 415
Of the Power Exercised by the Majority in America over Thought 416
Effect of Tyranny of the Majority on the National Character of the
Americans; Of the Courtier Spirit in the United States 420
That the Greatest Danger to the American Republics Comes from the
Omnipotence of the Majority 424
chapter 8: Of What Tempers Tyranny of the Majority in the

United States 427
Absence of Administrative Centralization 427
Of the Spirit of the Jurist in the United States, and How It Serves as
Counterweight to Democracy 430
Of the Jury in the United States Considered as a Political Institution 442
chapter 9: Of the Principal Causes That Tend to Maintain the

Democratic Republic in the United States 451
Of the Accidental or Providential Causes That Contribute to Maintaining
the Democratic Republic in the United States 452
contents xiii
Of the Influence of Laws on Maintaining the Democratic Republic in the

United States 465
Of the Influence of Mores on Maintaining the Democratic Republic in
the United States 466
Of Religion Considered as a Political Institution, How It Serves
Powerfully to Maintain the Democratic Republic among the Americans 467
Indirect Influence Exercised by Religious Beliefs on Political Society in the
United States 472
Of the Principal Causes That Make Religion Powerful in America 478
How the Enlightenment, Habits, and Practical Experience of the
Americans Contribute to the Success of Democratic Institutions 488
That Laws Serve More to Maintain the Democratic Republic in the
United States than Physical Causes, and Mores More than Laws 494
Would Laws and Mores Be Sufficient to Maintain Democratic Institutions
Elsewhere than in America? 500
Importance of What Precedes in Relation to Europe 505
chapter 10: Some Considerations on the Present State and
Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of
the United States 515
Present State and Probable Future of the Indian Tribes That Inhabit the
Territory Possessed by the Union 522
Position That the Black Race Occupies in the United States; Dangers to
Which Its Presence Exposes the Whites 548
What Are the Chances for the American Union to Last? What Dangers
Threaten It? 582
Of Republican Institutions in the United States, What Are Their Chances
of Lasting? 627
Some Considerations on the Causes of the Commercial Greatness of the
United States 637
Conclusion 649
Notes 658
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
(1840)
volume iii
Part I: Influence of Democracy on the

Intellectual Movement in the United States
chapter 1: Of the Philosophical Method of the Americans 697
chapter 2: Of the Principal Source of Beliefs among

Democratic Peoples 711
chapter 3: Why the Americans Show More Aptitude and Taste

for General Ideas than Their Fathers the English 726
chapter 4: Why the Americans Have Never Been as Passionate

as the French about General Ideas in Political Matters 737
chapter 5: How, in the United States, Religion Knows How to

Make Use of Democratic Instincts 742
chapter 6: Of the Progress of Catholicism in the United States 754
chapter 7: What Makes the Minds of Democratic Peoples

Incline toward Pantheism 757
chapter 8: How Equality Suggests to the Americans the Idea of

the Indefinite Perfectibility of Man 759
chapter 9: 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 763
chapter 10: Why the Americans Are More Attached to the

Application of the Sciences than to the Theory 775
chapter 11: In What Spirit the Americans Cultivate the Arts 788
chapter 12: Why Americans Erect Such Small and Such Large
Monuments at the Same Time 796
xiv
contents xv
chapter 13: Literary Physiognomy of Democratic Centuries 800
chapter 14: Of the Literary Industry 813
chapter 15: Why the Study of Greek and Latin Literature Is

Particularly Useful in Democratic Societies 815
chapter 16: How American Democracy Has Modified the

English Language 818
chapter 17: Of Some Sources of Poetry among

Democratic Nations 830
chapter 18: Why American Writers and Orators Are

Often Bombastic 843
chapter 19: Some Observations on the Theater of

Democratic Peoples 845
chapter 20: Of Some Tendencies Particular to Historians in

Democratic Centuries 853
chapter 21: Of Parliamentary Eloquence in the United States 861
Part II: Influence of Democracy on the

Sentiments of the Americans
chapter 1: Why Democratic Peoples Show a More Ardent and

More Enduring Love for Equality than for Liberty 872
chapter 2: Of Individualism in Democratic Countries 881
chapter 3: How Individualism Is Greater at the End of a

Democratic Revolution than at Another Time 885
chapter 4: How the Americans Combat Individualism with

Free Institutions 887
chapter 5: Of the Use That Americans Make of Association

in Civil Life 895
contents xvi
chapter 6: Of the Relation between Associations

and Newspapers 905
chapter 7: Relations between Civil Associations and

Political Associations 911
chapter 8: How the Americans Combat Individualism by the

Doctrine of Interest Well Understood 918
chapter 9: How the Americans Apply the Doctrine of Interest

Well Understood in the Matter of Religion 926
chapter 10: Of the Taste for Material Well-Being in America 930
chapter 11: Of the Particular Effects Produced by the Love of

Material Enjoyments in Democratic Centuries 935
chapter 12: Why Certain Americans Exhibit So Excited

a Spiritualism 939
chapter 13: Why the Americans Appear So Restless Amid

Their Well-Being 942
chapter 14: How the Taste for Material Enjoyment Is United,

among the Americans, with the Love of Liberty and Concern for
Public Affairs 948
chapter 15: How from Time to Time Religious Beliefs Divert

the Soul of the Americans toward Non-material Enjoyments 954
chapter 16: How the Excessive Love of Well-Being Can

Harm Well-Being 963
chapter 17: How, in Times of Equality and Doubt, It Is

Important to Push Back the Goal of Human Actions 965
chapter 18: Why, among the Americans, All Honest Professions

Are Considered Honorable 969
chapter 19: What Makes Nearly All Americans Tend toward

Industrial Professions 972
chapter 20: How Aristocracy Could Emerge from Industry 980

contents xvii
volume iv
Part III: Influence of Democracy on
Mores Properly So Called
chapter 1: How Mores Become Milder as Conditions

Become Equal 987
chapter 2: How Democracy Makes the Habitual Relations of

the Americans Simpler and Easier 995
chapter 3: Why the Americans Have So Little Susceptibility in

Their Country and Show Such Susceptibility in Ours 1000
chapter 4: Consequences of the Three Preceding Chapters 1005
chapter 5: How Democracy Modifies the Relationships of

Servant and Master 1007
chapter 6: How Democratic Institutions and Mores Tend to

Raise the Cost and Shorten the Length of Leases 1020
chapter 7: Influence of Democracy on Salaries 1025
chapter 8: Influence of Democracy on the Family 1031
chapter 9: Education of Young Girls in the United States 1041
chapter 10: How the Young Girl Is Found Again in the Features
of the Wife 1048
chapter 11: How Equality of Conditions Contributes to

Maintaining Good Morals in America 1052
chapter 12: How the Americans Understand the Equality of

Man and of Woman 1062
chapter 13: How Equality Divides the Americans Naturally into

a Multitude of Small Particular Societies 1068
chapter 14: Some Reflections on American Manners 1071

contents xviii
chapter 15: Of the Gravity of Americans and Why It Does Not

Prevent Them from Often Doing Thoughtless Things 1080
chapter 16: Why the National Vanity of the Americans Is More

Anxious and More Quarrelsome than That of the English 1085
chapter 17: How the Appearance of Society in the United States

Is at the Very Same Time Agitated and Monotonous 1089
chapter 18: Of Honor in the United States and in

Democratic Societies 1093
chapter 19: Why in the United States You Find So Many

Ambitious Men and So Few Great Ambitions 1116
chapter 20: Of Positions Becoming an Industry among Certain

Democratic Nations 1129
chapter 21: Why Great Revolutions Will Become Rare 1133
chapter 22: Why Democratic Peoples Naturally Desire Peace

and Democratic Armies Naturally Desire War 1153
chapter 23: Which Class, in Democratic Armies, Is the Most

Warlike and the Most Revolutionary 1165
chapter 24: What Makes Democratic Armies Weaker than

Other Armies while Beginning a Military Campaign and More
Formidable When the War Is Prolonged 1170
chapter 25: Of Discipline in Democratic Armies 1176
chapter 26: Some Considerations on War in

Democratic Societies 1178
Part IV: Of the Influence That Democratic Ideas and

Sentiments Exercise on Political Society
chapter 1: Equality Naturally Gives Men the Taste for

Free Institutions 1191
contents xix
chapter 2: That the Ideas of Democratic Peoples in Matters of

Government Naturally Favor the Concentration of Powers 1194
chapter 3: That the Sentiments of Democratic Peoples Are

in Agreement with Their Ideas for Bringing Them to
Concentrate Power 1200
chapter 4: Of Some Particular and Accidental Causes That End

Up Leading a Democratic People to Centralize Power or That Turn
Them Away from Doing So 1206
chapter 5: That among the European Nations of Today the

Sovereign Power Increases although Sovereigns Are Less Stable 1221
chapter 6: What Type of Despotism Democratic Nations

Have to Fear 1245
chapter 7: Continuation of the Preceding Chapters 1262
chapter 8: General View of the Subject 1278
Notes 1286
Appendixes 1295
appendix 1: Journey to Lake Oneida 1295
appendix 2: A Fortnight in the Wilderness 1303
appendix 3: Sects in America 1360
appendix 4: Political Activity in America 1365
appendix 5: Letter of Alexis de Tocqueville

to Charles Stoffels 1368
appendix 6: Foreword to the Twelfth

Edition 1373
Works Used by Tocqueville 1376
Bibliography 1396
Index 1499
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volume 2
2f2f2f2f2f
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DEMOCRACY
IN AMERICA a
a. Introduction to the third volume./

Ideas about the plan of this volume./
Perhaps most of the things contained in this bundle will be useful for the large
final chapter in which I intend to summarize the subject./
Influence of democracy. Ter [three (ed.)]:
I. Ideas
II. Sentiments. This relates only to man in isolation.
III. Customs. They include the relationships of men with one another.
What is American or English without being democratic.
Great difficulty in disentangling what is democratic, commercial, English and
Puritan.
To explain in the foreword.
My principal subject is not America, but the influence of democracy on America. As
a result, the only one of the four causes set forth above that I must dwell upon se-
riously and at length is the democratic. Perhaps not because it is the principal one
(what I believe, moreover), but because it is the one that is most important for me
to show. I must speak about the others only: 1. To interest the class of readers who
want above all to know America, 2. To make myself clearly understood, 3. To show
that I am not exclusive and entirely given to a single idea.
[In the margin: I see all the other causes, but I am only looking at the democratic.]
If, among these various causes, I always choose by preference to deal with the dem-
ocratic cause, let me not therefore be accused of an exclusive mind.
I do not believe it necessary to treat the commercial, English and Puritan causes
separately. I only think that I must show in the course of the book that I know and
appreciate them.
To speak about the four causes only in the preface and only there give them their
respective places.
Important idea.
After finishing, look carefully at the places where I could point out how the things
produced by democracy help democracy in turn and indirectly.
[On the following page] Perhaps in the large final chapter.
Idea of democratic liberty and idea of religion.
689
foreword 690
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Foreword b
The Americans have a democratic social state that has naturally suggested
to them certain laws and certain political mores.c
In civil society as in political society, these two points of departure explain nearly
everything. And I must come back to that in a general way, either at the beginning
or at the end of the third volume (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 39–41).
b. Several notes and fragments indicate that Tocqueville had considered writing a long
preface that contained a good number of ideas present in the fourth and last part of the
book (it constituted a single chapter in the first drafts). Did the sheer size of the last
chapter lead him to sacrifice the preface? This preface was reduced to a foreword, and
certain ideas of the introduction (including the admission of his error concerning the
weakening of the federal bond) did not finally find their place in the first pages of this
volume.
Some notes of rough drafts that present a version of the foreword very similar to the
final version bear the date 5 February 1838. In the following months, however, Tocqueville
did not stop coming back to the idea of writing a long introduction to the second volume
and hesitated about whether to place certain fragments at the beginning or at the end
of the book.
“One of the principal ideas of the preface must be, it seems to me, to show in brief
all the dissimilarities that exist between the American democracy and ours. Democracy
pushing men further in certain directions in America than it does among us (sciences,
arts), in certain others pushing them not as far (religion, good morals)” (YTC, CVk, 1,
p. 48).
Note relative to the preface of my great work.
It must be shown how recent events justify most of the things that I said.
Indians.
Texas.
Negroes.
The necessity of having troops in the cities.
Ultra-democratic tendencies.
Admit my error. The weakening of the federal bond (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 39).
c. First paragraphs of the book in a rough draft:
The work which appears at this moment (illegible word) the public is not an entirely
new work. It is the second and last part of a book that I published five years ago on
democracy in the United States.
foreword 691
This same social state has, moreover, given birth among them to a mul-
titude of sentiments and opinions that were unknown in the old aristocratic
societies of Europe. It has destroyed or modified relationships that formerly
existed and established new ones. The appearance of civil society has been
no less changed than the physiognomy of the political world.
I dealt with the first subject in the work that I published five years
ago on American democracy. The second is the subject of the present
book. These two parts complement one another and form only a single
work.d
I must immediately warn the reader against an error that would be very
prejudicial to me.
Seeing me attribute so many diverse effects to equality, he could conclude
When there are no more castes, distinct features, particular and exclusive rights,
permanent riches, entailed estates, citizens differ little from each other by their con-
ditions, and they constantly change conditions; they naturally adopt certain laws, and
contract certain habits of government that are appropriate to them.
This same equality and these same causes influence not only their political ideas
and habits, but also all their habits and all their ideas. The men who live in this dem-
ocratic social state conceive new opinions; they adopt new mores; they establish re-
lationships among themselves that did not exist or modify those that already existed.
The appearance of civil society is not less changed than the physiognomy of the
political world.
[To the side, with a bracket that includes the two previous paragraphs: Louis would
say that only about the Americans.]
⫽The object of the book that I published five years ago was to show the first effects
of equality; this one wants to depict the second. The two parts united form a single
whole.⫽
It is this second portion of the subject that I wanted to treat in the present book.
I am assuredly very far from claiming to have seen everything on so vast a ground.
I am even certain that I have discovered only a small part of what it includes.
The Revolution that reduced to dust the aristocratic society in which our fathers
lived is the great event of the time. It has changed everything, modified everything,
altered everything. [v: hit everything].
[In the margin, with a bracket that includes the two previous paragraphs] To delete,
I think (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 35–36).
d. “The first book more American than democratic. This one more democratic than
American” (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 53).
foreword 692
that I consider equality as the unique cause of all that happens today.e This
would assume a very narrow view on my part.
There is, in our time, a host of opinions, sentiments, instincts that owe
their birth to facts foreign or even contrary to equality. Thus, if I took the
United States as an example, I would easily prove that the nature of the
country, the origin of the inhabitants, the religion of the first founders,
their acquired enlightenment, their previous habits, exercised and still ex-
ercise, independently of democracy, an immense influence on their way of
thinking and feeling. Different causes, also distinct from the fact of equal-
ity, would be found in Europe and would explain a great part of what is
happening there.
I recognize the existence of all these different causes and their power,
but talking about them is not my subject. I have not undertaken to show
e. In Preface, I believe.
Explain somewhere what I understand by centuries of equality [v: democratic cen-
turies]. It is not that chimerical time when all men will be perfectly similar and equal,
but those:
1. When a great number among them will be in (two illegible words) and when a
greater number will fall either above or below, but not far from the common measure.
2. Those when there will be no more permanent classification, caste, class, any
insurmountable barrier or even one very difficult to surmount, so that if all men are
not equal, they can all aspire to the same point; some being able (illegible word) to
fear falling, others to hope to rise, so that a common measure makes itself (illegible
word) against which all men measure themselves in advance, which spreads the sen-
timent of equality even within unequal conditions.
—22 June 1838 (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 45–46).
In another place, he explains:
Two close but distinct propositions:
1. I cannot show all that equality does and will do.
2. I do not claim to link everything to equality, but only to show where equality
acts (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 53).
“Idea of the preface or of the last chapter./
“That democracy is not the cause of everything, but that it mixes with everything,
and has a part in all the causes” (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 42).
foreword 693
the reason for all our inclinations and all our ideas; I have only wanted to
show to what extent equality had modified both.f
You will perhaps be surprised that, since I am firmly of the opinion that
the democratic revolution we are witnessing is an irresistible fact against
which it would be neither desirable nor wise to struggle, I have often ended
up addressing such harsh words in this book to the democratic societies
created by this revolution.
I will simply reply that it is because I was not an adversary of democracy
that I have wanted to be candid about it.g
Men do not receive the truth from their enemies, and their friends hardly
ever offer the truth to them; that is why I have spoken it.
I have thought that many would take it upon themselves to announce
the new good things that equality promises to men, but that few would dare
to point out from a distance the perils with which it threatens them. So it
f. Principal object. Somewhere.

I want to make everyone understand that a democratic social state is an invincible
necessity in our time.
Dividing then my readers into enemies and friends of democracy, I want to make
the first understand that for a democratic social state to be tolerable, for it to be able
to produce order, progress, in a word, to avoid all the evils that they anticipate, at
least the greatest ones, they must at all costs hasten to give enlightenment and liberty
to the people who already have such a social state.
To the second, I want to make them understand that democracy cannot give the
happy fruits that they expect from it except by combining it with morality, spiritu-
alism, beliefs . . .
I thus try to unite all honest and generous minds within a small number of com-
mon ideas.
As for the question of knowing if such a social state is or is not the best that
humanity can have, may God himself say so. Only God can say (YTC, CVk, 2,
pp. 55–56).
g. “I am profoundly persuaded that you can succeed in making democratic peoples
into prosperous, free, powerful, moral and happy nations. So I do not despair of the
future, but I think that peoples, like men, in order to make the most of their destiny,
need to know themselves, and that to master events, it is above all necessary to master
yourself ” (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 33).
“Idea of bringing democracy to moderate itself. Idea of the book” (YTC, CVk, 1,
p. 39).
foreword 694
is principally toward these perils that I have directed my attention, and,

believing that I have clearly discerned them, I have not had the cowardice
to say nothing about them.h
I hope that you will find again in this second work the impartialityj that
seemed to be noted in the first. Placed in the middle of the contradictory
opinions that divide us, I have tried to eradicate temporarily in my heart
the favorable sympathies or contrary instincts that each one of them in-
spires in me. [I have wanted to live alone in order to keep my mind free.]
If those who read my book find a single sentence that aims to flatter one
of the great parties that have agitated our country, or one of the small fac-
tions that bother and enervate it today, may those readers raise their voices
and accuse me.
The subject that I have wanted to embrace is immense; for it includes
most of the sentiments and ideas that the new state of the world brings
forth. Such a subject assuredly exceeds my powers;k while treating it, I have
not succeeded in satisfying myself.
But, if I have not been able to achieve the goal that I set, readers will at
least do me the justice of granting that I have conceived and followed my
enterprise in the spirit that could make me worthy to succeed in it.m
h. In a first version of this paragraph, Tocqueville added: “<Far from wanting to stop
the development of the new society, I am trying to produce it>” (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 44).
j. “This in the preface.
“I am often obliged to repeat myself because I want to divide what is indivisible, the
soul. The same soul constantly produces an idea and a sentiment. Place there the already
completed piece in which I compare the soul to a milieu whose ideas and sentiments are
like beams . . .” (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 30).
k. “Not only do I not claim to have seen everything in my subject, but I am certain
I have seen only a very small part. The democratic revolution is the great event of our
days, it spreads to everything, it modifies or changes everything. There is nothing that
cannot or perhaps should not be dealt with while speaking about it. I have said all that
I have seen clearly, leaving to those more skillful or to men enlightened by a longer ex-
perience to portray the rest” (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 47).
m. Ideas of the preface or of the last chapter:
In order to make myself well understood I have constantly been obliged to depict
extreme states, an aristocracy without a mixture of democracy, a democracy without
a mixture of aristocracy, a perfect equality which is an imaginary state. Then I come
to attribute to one or the other of the two principles more complete effects than those
that they generally produce because, in general, they are not alone. In my words, the
foreword 695
reader must distinguish what my true opinion is, from what is said in order to make
it well understood (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 51).
To say in the preface, if not in the book.
Idea of races.
I do not believe that there are races destined for liberty and others for servitude,
some for happiness and enlightenment, others for misfortunes and ignorance. These
are cowardly doctrines.
Doctrines, however. Why? That is due to the natural vice of the human mind in
democratic times [and of the heart that makes these peoples tend toward materialism.
This idea of the invisible influence of race is an essentially materialistic idea], apart
from the weakening of beliefs.
That the generative idea of this book is directly the opposite, since I begin invin-
cibly at this point that whatever the tendencies of the social state, men can always
modify them and ward off the bad tendencies while appropriating the good (YTC,
CVk, 1, p. 37).
s4s4s4s4s4
first part a
Influence of Democracy
on the Intellectual Movement
in the United States
a. The rough drafts indicate that in the beginning the first chapter included a large
portion of the ideas that now constitute the following chapters: the taste for general ideas,
general ideas in politics and certain considerations from chapter V on religion. Chapters
VI and VII are not in the summary of chapters copied in notebook CVf, which suggests
that they were included when the work of writing was already well advanced.
Concerning the other chapters of the first part, a note mentions:
A chapter IV was found here in which I explained at length the influence that the
philosophical method of the Americans exercised on the relationships of father and
children, of master and servant, on women, the customs of societies.
This spoiled the subject and treated it incompletely, for all these things have a
particular character under democracy not only because of the philosophical doctrine
given birth by equality, but also for a thousand other causes that cannot, consequently,
be treated here.
I believe however that for the mind of the reader, tired by the long theory that
precedes, to rest in applications, I would do [well (ed.)] in a very short chapter to
point out how in fact the philosophical method of the Americans can influence (not
cause) all these things (YTC, CVj, I, pp. 91–92).
In a letter to Beaumont of 14 June 1836 (Correspondance avec Beaumont, OC, VIII, 1,
p. 160), Tocqueville announced his intention to finish the first part before his departure
for Switzerland in mid-July, which allows us reasonably to date the first version of this
part to the summer of 1836. It is in November 1838, when he begins the revision of his
manuscript, that Tocqueville, in another letter to Beaumont (ibid., pp. 325–26) alludes
to the confusion of the first two chapters and the necessity to review them. In the fol-
lowing letter (ibid., p. 328), he says he has thrown the first one hundred pages of the
manuscript into the fire and entirely rewritten them. Another letter of the same month
to Francisque de Corcelle confirms these statements (Correspondance avec Corcelle, OC,
XV, 1, p. 105).
696
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1a
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 pan-
theism, 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.
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 mar-
velously 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 Tocque-
ville château at the very time when the author worked on the revision of the first version
697
philosophical method 698
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.
of his manuscript, and who found the first two chapters remarkably well written, that
Tocqueville changed his mind.
In another place:
Of all the chapters that precede the IXth where I am now (December 1838), there is
not a single one in which I have not felt the need to assume that the reader knew
either what leads democratic peoples to individualism, or what leads them to the taste
for material enjoyments. The experience of these eight chapters tends to prove that
the two chapters on individualism and material enjoyments should precede the
others.
L[ouis (ed.)]. thinks that whatever logical interest there might be in beginning with
the two chapters above, I must persevere in placing the chapter on method at the
beginning. That, he says, opens the subject very grandly and makes it immediately
seen from a very elevated perspective (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 11).
Chapter 9 in the manuscript is now number 11, entitled: in what spirit the amer-
icans 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).
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, gen-
eralization, 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.⫽”
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 your-
self 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 prin-
cipal 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 indi-
vidual 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.
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 correspon-
dence 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).
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 su-
periority, they are constantly brought back to their own reasonj as the most
“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.>”
j. “Imagine men entirely equal in knowledge, in enlightenment, in reason; ration-
alism1 comes into the world.
visible and nearest source of truth. Then it is not only confidence in a par-
ticular 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 dif-
ficulties that their practical life presents, they easily conclude that every-
thing 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:
“Rationalism, general ideas: two things produced by equality, but distinct.

“Necessity that religions have in democratic centuries of winning over common
opinion.
“1. I use this modern word without understanding it well. The most natural mean-
ing to give it is the independence of individual reason” (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 10–11).
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 ex-
clude 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
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 un-
derstand 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:
Read the preliminary portion of the Novum Organum entitled subject and plan, p.
263 and following, and compare the manner in which Bacon explains his method
concerning the physical senses to the manner in which Descartes, more or less at the
same time, conceived and explained his method concerning the moral sciences, and
you will be astonished to see to what degree the two methods are identical and how
these new truths occur in the same way to these two minds.
This is obviously not the result of chance, but indicates a general direction of the
human mind in this period. Bacon and Descartes, like all great revolutionaries, made
ideas that were already spread in all minds clear and systematic./
They gave the general formula applicable to all the particular truths that each per-
son began to find at hand everywhere./
Bacon, 1561–1626.
The Novum Organum (instrument) was published in 1620./
“Our method,” says Bacon (p. 264), “submits to examination what ordinary logic
adopts on the faith of others and by deferring blindly to authority. [ . . . (ed.) . . . ]
Instead of rushing, so to speak, as is commonly done, toward the most elevated
principles and the most general propositions in order then to deduce middle prop-
ositions, it begins on the contrary with natural history and particular facts and
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
climbs only imperceptibly and with an extreme slowness up the ascending ladder,
to entirely general propositions and to principles of the first order./
“The seat of human understanding,” he says below, “must be rid of all received
opinions and methods, then the mind must be turned in an appropriate way toward
the facts that must enlighten it; finally, when it is sufficiently prepared, these facts
must be presented to it.”/
Obviously not only is a new scientific method introduced there, but also a great
revolution of the human mind is begun or rather legalized, theorized.
From the moment when observation, the detailed and analytical observation of
facts, is the condition of all scientific progress, there is no longer a means to have
anything other than individual and formed beliefs in scientific matters. Received or
dogmatic beliefs are chased from that entire portion of the human mind.
Tocqueville takes this quotation from the preface of Bacon’s work which is enti-
tled: “Spirit, Subject, Purpose, and Plan of the Work.”
o. The manuscript says:
If I put aside the opinions of the French philosophers of the XVIIIth century and
their actions, which must be considered as fortuitous accidents caused by the partic-
ular state of their country, in order to envisage only the fundamental principles that
constituted their method, I discover that the same rules that directed their minds lead
that of the Americans today. I see that in the period when they wrote the old aris-
tocratic society among us was finally dissolving; this makes me see clearly that the
philosophical method of the XVIIIth century is not only French but democratic, and
that is why it was so easily adopted in all of Europe and why it contributed so pow-
erfully to changing the face of Europe. I do not claim that this method could only
arise in democratic centuries, but I am saying that men who live during these centuries
are particularly disposed by their social state to find and to accept this method, and
that it is only during that time that it can become usual and popular.
If someone asks me why, today . . .
In a rough draft, the author specified:
The first use that the French philosophers made of their liberty was to attack all
religions with a kind of fury and particularly the Christian religion. I believe that this
must be considered as a pure accident, a fact particular to France, the result of ex-
traordinary circumstances that might never have been found and that already to a
great extent no longer exist.
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
I am persuaded that the revolutionary influence (two illegible words) France is due
much less [to (ed.)] its very ideas than to the philosophical method that provided
them. It is not because they shook Christianity in their country, changed their laws,
modified their mores that they turned Europe upside down. It is because they were
the first to point out to the human mind a new method by the aid of which you
could easily attack all things old and open the way to all things new.
And if someone asks me why foreign peoples so readily conformed to the new
method that the French brought to light, I will answer that like the French, although
to a lesser degree, they were naturally disposed by their social state to adopt it (YTC,
CVj, 1, pp. 54–56).
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).
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 par-
ticular strength.r
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 pas-
sions 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 con-
nection 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?
To this powerful reason add this other one, which is no less so: in Amer-
ica, 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 Amer-
icans, 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
Do you understand why he (illegible word) lavishly (two illegible words) of him-
self . . .
[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 phi-
losophers, 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 dem-
ocratic 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 dis-
cover 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 other circumstance that I spoke about is this:

The Americans have a democratic social state and a democratic con-
stitution, 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 be-
tween 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
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, char-
acter 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).
not by ideas, and you would say that human opinions no longer form any-
thing 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 coun-
tries 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
u. In the manuscript, you find here these two fragments:

two good fragments that will perhaps be necessary to put to use.
[In the margin: To join to the chapter on method./
This piece would have been excellent in the chapter on method if before showing
why democratic peoples have an independent individual reason, I had shown why
aristocratic peoples do not have it. To see. ]
In the Middle Ages it was believed that all opinions had to follow from authority.
Philosophy, this natural antagonist of authority, had itself, in those times, taken the
form of authority; it had taken on the characteristics of a religion. After creating
certain opinions by the free and individual force of some minds, it imposed these
opinions without discussion and by repressing the force that had given birth to it (see
what Aristotle was in the Middle Ages and until the beginning of the XVIIth century
when the Parlement of Paris forbid under penalty of death either to uphold or to
teach any maxim against ancient and approved authors.)
In the XVIIIth century the extreme of the opposite state was reached, that is to
say that people claimed to appeal for all things only to individual reason and to chase
dogmatic beliefs away entirely, and just as in the Middle Ages the form and the ap-
pearance of a religion was given to philosophies, in the XVIIIth century the form
and the appearance of philosophy was given to religions.
Today the movement still continues in minds of a second order, but the others
understand and accept that received beliefs and discovered beliefs, authority and lib-
erty, individualism and social force are needed at the very same time. The whole
question is to decide the limits of these two things.
My whole mind must be bent to that.
24 April 1837.
The other fragment says:
There is no society possible without social conventions, that is to say without a si-
multaneous agreement of the majority of citizens on certain beliefs, ideas or certain
customs that you accept once in order to follow them forever.
There are conventions of this type in democracies as elsewhere, but at the same
time that the social state and mores become more democratic, the number of these
conventions becomes less. Agreement is reached on very general ideas that place wider
and wider limits on the independence of each person and allow variety in a multitude
of particular cases and secondary facts to be introduced progressively. It is like a circle
that is constantly growing larger and in which individual liberty expands in propor-
tion and becomes agitated.
I will take as an example what is happening in the United States in the matter of
religion. It is clear that the Americans to [sic ] accept the truth of the Christian religion
without discussing it.
They have in a way moved the limits of discussion back to the extreme limits of
Christianity, but there the spirit of innovation must stop and it stops in fact as if by
itself, by a type of tacit and general agreement; while within the interior of Chris-
tianity the individual independence given birth by democracy is exercised without
constraint and there is no interpretation of the Gospel so strange that does not find
. . . [interrupted text (ed.)]
[To the side: Good sentence to introduce in the chapter on philosophical method,
in the place where I speak about the religion of the Americans.]
On a strip of paper: “D[emocratic (ed.)] method.
“The democratic tendency that consists of getting to the substance of things without
paying attention to the form; in fact, through the formality, [this] is clearly seen in the
civil code. Marriage is perfected by consent and only in consent; sale by the desire to
sell. . . .”
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 2a
Of the Principal Source of Beliefs among
Democratic Peoples b
a. 1. That man cannot do without dogmatic beliefs:

1. Without dogmatic beliefs there are no common ideas and consequently no com-
mon action; so they are necessary to society.
2. The individual can have neither the time nor the strength of mind necessary to
develop opinions that are his own on all matters. If he undertook it, he would never
have anything except vague and incomplete notions. So dogmatic beliefs are necessary
to the individual.
2. Therefore, there will always be beliefs of this type. It is only a matter of finding
their sources.
3. It is in humanity and not above or beyond that democratic men will place the
arbiter of their beliefs.
4. Within the interior of humanity, it is to the mass alone that each individual
hands over the care of forming for him opinions that he cannot form for himself on
a great number of matters.
5. So intellectual authority will be different, but it will perhaps not be less.
6. Far from fearing that it is disappearing, it must instead be feared that it is be-
coming too great (YTC, CVf, pp. 2–3).
b. New sources of beliefs. Authority. Sources of beliefs among democratic peoples.
To put in, before or after the chapters in which I treat the influence of equality on
philosophy and religion.
Religion—authority.
Philosophy—liberty.
What is happening in the United States in the matter of religion is proof of this.
(Illegible word) difficulty for men to stop at common ideas. Remedy for that in
the future. This difficulty is something more revolutionary than democratic.
The same ideas from this chapter recur two or three times in the course of the
work, among others in associations and above all in revolutions; I must try to treat
them completely here, with verve and without being concerned about what I said
elsewhere; because that is their natural and principal place. But afterward it would
711
the principal source of beliefs 712
Dogmatic beliefs are more or less numerous, depending on the times. They
are born in different ways and can change form and object; but you cannot
make it so that there are no dogmatic beliefs, that is to say, opinions that
men receive on trust and without discussion. If each person undertook to
form all his opinions himself and to pursue truth in isolation, along paths
opened up by himself alone, it is improbable that a great number of men
would ever unite together in any common belief.c
be necessary to compare this chapter to those I named above, so as to avoid monotony

as much as possible, particularly with the chapter on revolutions. There is the danger.
I believe however that it can be avoided by painting with moderation in this chapter
the natural and true state of democratic peoples relative to beliefs and in the chapter
on revolutions by showing (illegible word) and more (illegible word) the exaggeration
and the danger of the same tendencies (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 1–2).
The first title of the second chapter had been: of particular causes that in
america can harm the free development and the generalization of
thought (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 33–42, 82–88). The principal cause, Tocqueville wrote, is
the rule of the majority. This idea reappears at the end of the chapter, but without the
development and the attention it had received in the rough drafts.
c. Note to reread before reworking this chapter. Capital.
The weakening of beliefs is much more general and more complete during the
democratic revolution than when democracy is settled.
Since a multitude of beliefs is then renounced, general confidence in beliefs is
shaken.
By belief I mean an opinion that you have not had the time to examine yourself
and that you accept on trust because it has been transmitted to you, and because those
more clever profess it or because the crowd follows it.
Dogmatic beliefs are supports necessary for the weakness [of (ed.)] men. There is
no human mind that is able to find [prove? (ed.)] by itself all the truths that it needs
to live. A belief is an instrument that you have not fabricated yourself, but that you
use because you lack the time to look for something better.
You cannot hide the fact that equality of conditions, democracy . . . is essentially
contrary to dogmatic beliefs, that is a capital idea, which I must face throughout this
chapter, clarify, explain and carefully delimit in my mind (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 2).
Wilhelm Hennis (“La ‘nueva ciencia politica’ de Tocqueville,” Revista de estudios po-
liticos 22, 1981, pp. 7–38) notes that Tocqueville is more like Rousseau than he is a Car-
tesian because he accepts the necessity of dogmatic beliefs and because he places the
grandeur of man in the coincidence of the sentiment of liberty with religious sensibility.
Now, it is easy to see that no society is able to prosper without similar

beliefs, or rather none can continue to exist in such a way; for, without
common ideas, there is no common action, and, without common action,
there are still men, but not a social body. So for society to exist, and, with
even more reason, for this society to prosper, all the minds of the citizens
must always be brought and held together by some principal ideas; and that
cannot happen without each one of them coming at times to draw his opin-
ions from the same source and consenting to receive a certain number of
ready-made beliefs.d
If I now consider man separately, I find that dogmatic beliefs are no
less indispensable for him to live alone than to act in common with his
fellows.e
But to us this anti-cartesianism seems instead to be a sign of Pascal’s influence. Like the
author of the Pensées, Tocqueville believes that, at the time of his fleeting passage in the
world, man must accept certain general ideas that he is incapable of proving or of dis-
covering by himself and that all free human action finds itself within the circle limited
by these truths. As Tocqueville wrote to Kergorlay in 1841: “Experience teaches me more
and more that the success and the grandeur of this world reside much more in the good
choice of these general and generative ideas than in the skillfulness that allows you each
day to get yourself out of the small difficulties of the moment” (Correspondance avec
Kergorlay, OC, XIII, 2, p. 100).
Luiz Dı́ez del Corral has more than once demonstrated the influence of Pascal on
Tocqueville (as in “El liberalismo de Tocqueville. (La influencia de Pascal.),” Revista de
Occidente 3, no. 26 (1965): 133–53). See also Luis Dı́ez del Corral, El pensamiento polı́tico
de Tocqueville (Madrid: Alianza, 1989); and Aurelian Craiutu, Liberalism Under Siege
(Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003).
d. “I know only two states bearable for peoples as for men: dogmatic beliefs [v: ig-
norance] or advanced knowledge, between these two extremes are found doubt and all
miseries” (YTC, CVa, p. 41).
e. [In the margin: Beccaria said that authority, society, was the portion of liberty that
individuals left to the mass in order to retain a more complete and more assured
enjoyment of (illegible word).]
By philosophy I mean all that the individual discovers by the individual effort of
his reason.
By religion I mean all that he accepts without discussing it. So philosophy and
religion are two natural antagonists. Depending on whether the one or the other
predominates in humanity, men tend toward an intellectual individualism without
limits, or tend toward having only common opinions and ending at intellectual slav-
ery. These two results are impractical and bad. Philosophy is needed and religions are
needed.1
If man was forced to prove to himself all the truths that he uses every
day, he would never finish doing so; he would wear himself out with pre-
liminary demonstrations without advancing; as he has neither the time,
because of the short span of his life, nor the ability, because of the limi-
tations of his mind, to act in this way, he is reduced to holding as certain
a host of facts and opinions that he has had neither the leisure nor the power
to examine and to verify by himself, but that those more clever have found
or that the crowd adopts. On this foundation he builds himself the struc-
ture of his own thoughts. It is not his will that leads him to proceed in this
manner; the inflexible law of his condition compels him to do so.
There is in this world no philosopher so great that he does not believe
It is clear that the democratic social state must make philosophy as I (illegible
word) it predominate.
You must not hide from the fact that when you dogmatically teach a child or a
man a doctrine, you are taking away from him the part of liberty that he could have
applied to discovering this doctrine himself. From this perspective you put him into
slavery. But it is a slavery often necessary for the preservation of the liberty that you
leave to him. Thus the beautiful definition of Beccaria is found again.
[In the margin: When a philosophical opinion, after being discovered by the in-
dividual reason of one man, spreads by the authority of the name of this man, such
a philosophy is temporarily in the state of religion.
I would say as much about all political, scientific, economic doctrines that reign
in the same manner.]
When men associate for whatever object, each one gives up a certain portion of
his freedom to act and to think that the association can use. Outside of the associ-
ation, each one regains his individual independence and occupied [sic ] his mind or
his body with what pleases him. Men make associations of all types.
They make some very durable ones that they call societies; they make some very
temporary ones by the aid of which they gain a certain precise object that they had
in view. A religion (the word is taken here in the common sense) is an association in
which you give up your liberty in a permanent way. Associations of this type are
necessary.
If man was forced to prove by himself . . .
1. These two principles are arranged in each century and among each people in
various proportions; that is nearly the entire history of humanity (YTC, CVj, 1,
pp. 3–5).
The library of the Tocqueville château had a copy of Beccaria, Traité des délits et des
peines (Philadelphia [Paris], 1766), translated by Morellet. The contractualist principle
that Tocqueville refers to above appears in the second chapter of the edition cited (pp.
6–9).
a million things on the faith of others, and who does not assume many
more truths than he establishes.f
This is not only necessary but desirable. A man who would undertake
to examine everything by himself would only be able to give a little time
and attention to each thing; this work would keep his mind in a perpetual
agitation that would prevent him from penetrating any truth deeply and
from settling reliably on any certitude. His intelligence would be indepen-
dent and weak at the very same time. So, among the various subjects of
human opinions, he must make a choice and adopt many beliefs without
discussing them, in order to go more deeply into a small number that he
has reserved to examine for himself.g
[<In this manner he is misled more, but he deceives himself less.>]
It is true that every man who receives an opinion on the word of others
f. “The great Newton himself resembles an imbecile more by the things that he does
not know than he differs from one by the things that he knows” (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 36).
In a note destined for the introduction, Tocqueville had written:
Preface.
There is no man in the world who has ever found, and it is nearly certain that none
will ever be met who will find the central ending point for, I am not saying all the
beams of general truth, which are united only in God alone, but even for all the beams
of a particular truth. Men grasp fragments of truth, but never truth itself. This ad-
mitted, the result would be that every man who presents a complete and absolute
system, by the sole fact that his system is complete and absolute, is almost certainly
in a state of error or falsehood, and that every man who wants to impose such a system
on his fellows by force must ipso facto and without preliminary examination of his
ideas be considered as a tyrant and an enemy of the human species.
[To the side: They intercept some beams from time to time, but they never hold
the light in their hand.]
The idea is not mine, but I believe it good. 8 March 1836.
Not to accept or to disregard a fact because the cause escapes you is a great weakness
and a great foolishness in the moral and political sciences, as in all the others (YTC,
CVk, 1, pp. 46–47).
g. In the margin, in pencil: “To reexamine. Ampère.”
puts his mind into slavery; but it is a salutary servitude that allows making
a good use of liberty.h
[That is noticeable above all in dogmatic beliefs whose subject is religion.
Religion, by providing the mind with a clear and precise solution to a
great number of metaphysical and moral questions as important as they
are difficult to resolve, leaves the mind the strength and the leisure to pro-
ceed with calmness and with energy in the whole area that religion aban-
dons to it; and it is not precisely because of religion, but with the help of
the liberty and the peace that religion gained for it, that the human mind
has often done such great things in the centuries of faith.]j
So, no matter what happens, authority must always be found somewhere
in the intellectual and moral world. Its place is variable, but it necessarily
h. Uncertainty of human judgments./

The one who receives an idea is almost always more convinced of its correctness
and absolute truth than the one who conceived and produced it. This appears at first
view contrary to good sense and even to experience, but it is so.
The work to which the one who conceived the idea devoted himself in order to
make it ready to appear before the public, almost always made him discover certain
weak, obscure or even incomplete sides that escape others. The reader or the listener
who sees the result of the operation without seeing the operation itself, notices at first
the plausible and likely side that is presented to him and, without being concerned
about the other side, he seizes the former and holds on to it firmly. I am persuaded
that everything considered skepticism is more common among those who teach
where certitude is to be found than among those who go to the latter to find certitude.
27 December 1835 (YTC, CVa, pp. 54–55).
And in another place:
A doctrine must never be judged by the one who professes it, but by those who accept
it.
[In the margin: That a doctrine must not be judged by the teacher, but by the
disciples.]
The most harmful doctrines can lead the man who invented them to very beautiful
practical consequences; because, apart from his doctrine, he has the strength of mind,
the imagination, the ambition and the energy that made him discover the doctrine
and bring it to light. His disciples have nothing more than the doctrine and in them
it bears its natural fruits.
29 December 1836 (YTC, CVa, p. 34).
j. “I would readily compare dogmatic beliefs to algebraic quantities by the aid of
which you simplify the operations of life” (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 5–6).
has a place. Individual independence can be greater or lesser; it cannot be

limitless. Thus, the question is not to know if an intellectual authorityk
exists in democratic centuries, but only to know where its repository is and
what its extent will be.
I showed in the preceding chapter how equality of conditions made men
conceive a kind of instinctive unbelief in the supernatural, and a very high
and often exaggerated idea of human reason.
So men who live during these times of equality are not easily led to place
the intellectual authority to which they submit outside and above human-
ity. It is in themselves or their fellows that they ordinarily look for the
sources of truth. That would be enough to prove that a new religion cannot
be established during these centuries, and that all attempts to bring it to
life would be not only impious, but also ridiculous and unreasonable. You
can predict that democratic peoples will not easily believe in divine mis-
sions, that they will readily scoff at new prophets and that they will want
to find the principal arbiter of their beliefs within the limits of humanity
and not beyond.
When conditions are unequal and men dissimilar, there are some indi-
viduals very enlightened, very learned, very powerful because of their in-
telligence, and a multitude very ignorant and very limited. So men who
live in times of aristocracy are naturally led to take as guide for their opin-
ions the superior reason of one man or of one class, while they are little
disposed to recognize the infallibility of the mass.
k. Two effects of authority:

1. More time and freedom of mind to examine and go deeper into the questions
that you reserve for yourself.
2. More assurance in holding your own in the portion that you reserved for yourself
and in defending yourself there against external attacks than if you did not have one
certain and firmly established point.
Not only are you strong on beliefs that you have received, but you are also more
confident about beliefs that you formed yourself. The soul acquired the habit of
firmly believing and energetically defending all its beliefs, the dogmatic ones as much
as the philosophical ones (Rubish, 1).
The contrary happens in centuries of equality.m

As citizens become more equal and more similar, the tendency of each
blindly to believe a certain man or a certain class decreases. The disposition
to believe the mass increases, and more and more it is opinion that leads
the world.
Not only is common opinion the sole guide that remains for individual
reason among democratic peoples; but also it has among these peoples an
infinitely greater power than among any other. In times of equality, men,
m. Influence that equality of conditions exercises on philosophy.

The further I go the more I am persuaded that equality of conditions pushes man
with an unequaled energy to lose sight of the individual, his dignity, his strength, his
value . . . , in order to think no longer of anything except the mass. This single given
fact influences nearly all the points of view that men have about humanity in that
time. The trace [of it (ed.)] has been found everywhere.
In democracy you see only yourself and all.
After the influence that equality exercises on philosophical method, say what it
exercises on philosophy itself.
[To the side: Question of realists and nominalists, to examine when I treat the
influence of equality on philosophy. You tend more and more today to lose sight of
the individual in order to see only humanity, that is to say, to become, I believe, realist.
See Revue des deux mondes of May 1837, literary review of the year]” (YTC, CVj,
1, p. 7).
It concerns A.C.T., “Mouvement de la presse française en 1836,” Revue des deux mondes,
4th series, X, 1837, pp. 453–98. On page 456, an account is given of the edition done by
Victor Cousin of the works of Abelard and of his definition of the words realist and
nominalist.
In 1840, Tocqueville writes, on the same question, to his English translator:
I believe that the realists are wrong. But above all I am sure that the political tendency
of their philosophy, dangerous in all times, is very pernicious in the time in which
we live. The great danger of democratic ages, be sure of it, is the destruction or the
excessive weakening of the parts of the social body in the presence of the whole. Ev-
erything today that raises up the idea of the individual is healthy. Everything that
gives a separate existence to the species and enlarges the notion of the type is dan-
gerous. The mind of our contemporaries runs in this direction by itself. The doctrine
of the realists introduced into the political world pushes toward all the abuses of
democracy; it is what facilitates despotism, centralization, scorn for particular rights,
the doctrine of necessity, all the institutions and all the doctrines that allow the social
body to trample men underfoot and that make the nation all and the citizens nothing
(Letter to Henry Reeve of 3 February 1840, Correspondance anglaise, OC, VI, 1,
pp. 52–53).
because of their similarity, have no faith in each other; but this very simi-
larity gives them an almost unlimited confidence in the judgment of the
public; for it does not seem likely to them that, since all have similar en-
lightenment, truth is not found on the side of the greatest number.n
When the man who lives in democratic countries compares himself in-
dividually to all those who surround him, he feels with pride that he is equal
to each of them; but, when he comes to envisage the ensemble of his fellows
and to place himself alongside this great body, he is immediately over-
whelmed by his own insignificance and weakness.
This same equality that makes him independent of each one of his fellow
citizens in particular, delivers him isolated and defenseless to the action of
the greatest number.o
So the public among democratic peoples has a singular power the idea
of which aristocratic nations would not even be able to imagine. It does
not persuade, it imposes its beliefs and makes them penetrate souls by a
kind of immense pressure of the mind of all on the intelligence of each.
In the United States, the majority takes charge of providing individuals
with a host of ready-made opinions, and thus relieves them of the obli-
gation to form for themselves opinions that are their own. A great number
of theories in matters of philosophy, morality and politics are adopted in
this way by each person without examination on faith in the public; and,
n. In the margin: “Before having this entire part of my discussion printed, I must
reread the analogous things that I say in the chapter on revolutions and consider for myself
what I should leave there or transfer here.”
o. 1. Absence of those intermediate authorities between his own reason and the col-
lective reason of his fellows leaves nothing else as guide except the mass.
2. Each individual, finding himself isolated and weak, finds himself overwhelmed
in the presence of the mass.
3. It is only during democratic centuries that you clearly conceive the idea of the
mass [{human species}], when you follow it without hesitating, you believe it without
discussion and beliefs penetrate souls by a kind [of (ed.)] immense pressure of the
mind of the greatest number [v: of all] on the intelligence of each (Rubish, 1).
if you look very closely, you will see that religion itself reigns there much
less as revealed doctrine than as common opinion.p
p. When you look very closely, you see that equality of conditions produces three
things:
1. It isolates men from one another, prevents the reciprocal action of their intel-
ligence and allows their minds to diverge in all directions.
2. It gives to nearly all men the same needs, the same interests, the same sights, so
that in the long run, without knowing it or wanting it, they find themselves having
on a host of points the same ideas and the same tastes.
3. It creates the moral power of the majority (I saw in another place its political
power). Man, feeling very weak, seeing around him only beings equally weak and
similar to him, the idea of the collective intelligence of his fellows easily overwhelms
him. That gives to common opinion a power over minds that it never attains to the
same degree among aristocratic peoples. Among the latter, where there are individuals
very enlightened, very learned, very powerful due to their intelligence and a crowd
of others very ignorant, very limited, you readily trust the superior reason of a man,
but you believe little in the infallibility of the mass. It is the time of prophets.
Faith in common opinion is the faith of democratic nations. The majority is the
prophet; you believe it without reasoning. You follow it confidently without discus-
sion. It exerts an immense pressure on individual intelligence. The moral dominion
of the majority is perhaps called to replace religions to a certain point or to perpetuate
certain ones of them, if it protects them. But then religion would live more like
common opinion than like religion. Its strength would be more borrowed than its
own. All this can be supported by the example of the Americans.
Men will never be able to deepen all their ideas by themselves. That is contrary to
their limited nature. The most (illegible word) and the most free genius believes a
million things on the faith of others. So moral authority no matter what you do must
be found somewhere in the moral world. Its place is variable, but a place is necessary
for it. Man needs to believe dogmatically a host of things, were it only to have the
time to discuss a few others of them. This authority is principally called religion in
aristocratic centuries. It will perhaps be named majority in democratic centuries, or
rather common opinion.
[In the margin: Somewhere make the state of transition felt in which each person
is pulling in his direction and forms purely individual opinions, beliefs, ideas.]
As men become more equal, the disposition to believe in one man decreases, the
disposition to believe in the mass increases, and is more and more the opinion that
leads the world.
Religion is an authority (illegible word) [prior? (ed.)] to humanity, but manifested
by one man or one class of men to all the others, who submit to it. Common opinion
is an authority that is not prior to humanity and that is exercised by the generality
of men on the individual.
The source of these two authorities is different, but their effects come together.
I know that, among Americans, political laws are such that the ma-
jority governs society as a sovereign;q that greatly increases the dominion
that it naturally exercises over intelligence. For there is nothing more fa-
miliar to man than recognizing a superior wisdom in the one who op-
presses him.r
Common opinion like religion gives ready made beliefs and relieves man from the
unbearable and impossible obligation to decide everything each day by himself. These
beliefs were originally discussed, but they are no longer discussed and they penetrate
minds by a kind of pressure of all on each.
[In the margin: I spoke elsewhere about the political and violent dominion of the
majority. Here, I am speaking about its moral and peaceful dominion. To say that.]
It is very difficult to believe that equality does not weaken the first of these au-
thorities, but you can think that it will make up for it in part by the second, and that
the moral power of common opinion will be called upon to limit much more than
is supposed the errors of individual reason. This will be a change of power rather
than a destruction of power (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 8–10).
q. The manuscript says “governs despotically.”
r. Of particular causes that can harm the free development and generalization of
thought in America./
I showed in the preceding chapter that dogmatic and traditional opinions main-
tained in the matter of religion limited the innovative mind of the Americans in
several directions so to speak. There is another cause perhaps less powerful, but more
general that threatens to stop and already hinders the free development of thought
in the United States. This cause, which I already pointed out in another part of this
work, is nothing other than the (illegible word) power that the majority exercises in
America.
A religion is a power whose movements are regulated in advance and that moves
within a known sphere, and many people believe that within this sphere its effects
are beneficial, and that a dogmatic religion better manages to obtain the desirable
effects of a religion than one that is rational. The majority is a (illegible word) power
that moves in a way haphazardly and can spread successively to everything. Religion
is law, the omnipotence of the majority is arbitrariness.
Religion leads the human mind to stop by itself and makes obedience the free
choice of a moral and independent being.
The majority forces the human mind to stop, despite what they have [sic ] and by
forcing it constantly to obey ends by taking away from it even the desire to be free
to act for itself.
In the United States, the pernicious influence that omnipotence of the majority
exercises over thought makes itself noticeable above all in politics. It is principally
on political questions that public opinion has formed until now; but the laws of the
Americans are such that the majority, in whatever direction it decided to head, would
make its omnipotence equally felt. Its own will and not the constitution of the coun-
try limits it.
You cannot hide from the fact that the Americans have, in that, allowed them-
selves to be carried away by the usual tendency of democratic peoples. In democ-
racies, whatever you think, the majority and the power that represents it are always
provided with a rough power and no matter how little the laws favor instead of
combat this tendency, it is nearly impossible to say where the limits of tyranny will
be. Now, despotism, whoever imposes it, always produces a kind of dullness of the
human mind. Freed from the opinions of family and of class, the human mind
bends itself to the will of the greatest number. I say that among purely aristocratic
peoples the interest of class, the habits of family, the customs of profession, the
maxims of the State . . . form as so many barriers that enclose within them the
imagination of man.
If in place of these (two illegible words) that hinder and slow the progress of the
human mind, democratic peoples substituted the uncontrolled power of the majority,
it is easy to see that the evil would only have changed character. You could say that
the human mind is oppressed in another way, but you could not maintain that it is
free. Men would not have found the means to live independently; they would only
have discovered, a difficult thing, a new mode of servitude.
In aristocracies the power that curbs the imagination of man is one and the prej-
udices of all types that are born and maintained within an aristocracy take certain
paths and prevent the imagination from proceeding in that direction, but they do
[not (ed.)] attack intellectual liberty in its principle and in an absolute way; in de-
mocracies constituted in the manner that I spoke about above, the majority hangs in
a way over the human mind, it curbs in a permanent and general way all its springs
of action and by means of bending men to its will ends by taking away from each
one of them the habit and the taste to think for themselves. So it could happen, if
you were not careful, that democracy, under the dominion of certain laws, would
harm the liberty of thought that the democratic social state favors, and after escaping
from the interests of class and the traditions of family the human mind would chain
itself to the will of the greatest number.
I think that is something that should make all those who see in human liberty a
holy thing and who do not hate the despot, but despotism, reflect deeply. For me,
when I feel the hand of power pressing on my head, knowing who is oppressing me
matters little to me [and I (ed.)] do not feel more inclined to (illegible word) [put
(ed.)] my head in the yoke because a million hands present it to me.
[two illegible lines]
I say that among democratic peoples I clearly notice two contrary tendencies. One
leads men toward new and general thoughts, the other could reduce them, so to speak,
to not thinking.
So if I found myself suddenly charged with giving laws to a democratic people, I
would try to distinguish these two tendencies clearly and make them not cancel each
other out or at least make it so that the second does not become preponderant. With
This political omnipotence of the majority in the United States in-

creases, in fact, the influence that the opinions of the public would have
without it on the mind of each citizen there; but it does not establish it.
The sources of this influence must be sought in equality itself, and not in
this purpose, I would attempt not to destroy the dominion of the majority, but to
moderate its use and I would work hard to get it to limit itself after overturning all
rival powers. In this way, in order to provide not a complete picture but an example,
if I lived among a democratic people, I would prefer to see it adopt the monarchical
constitution rather than the republican form, I would prefer that you instituted two
legislative assemblies rather than one, an irremovable judiciary rather than elected
magistrates, provincial powers rather than a centralized administration. For all of
these institutions can be combined with democracy, without altering its essence. As
the social state becomes more democratic I would attach more value to gaining all or
a few of these things, and by acting in this way I would have in view not only, as I
said in another part of this work, to save political liberty, but also to protect the general
progress of the human mind. If you say that such maxims will not be popular, I will
attempt to console myself with the hope that they are true.
I understand that you serve the cause of democracy, but I want you to do so as a
moral and independent being who retains the use of his liberty even as he lends his
support. That you see in the majority the most bearable of all powers, I understand,
but I would like you to be its counselor and not its courtier, and I would want you
to say to it just as Massillon said to the young king, Louis XV, Sire [interrupted text
(ed.)]” (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 33–42).
The library of the Tocqueville château contained a 1740 edition, in five volumes, of the
sermons of Massillon. Tocqueville is perhaps referring to the following passage from the
second part of the sermon on the Incarnation:
The liberty, Sire, that princes owe to their peoples is the liberty of laws. You are the
master of the life and the fortune of your subjects; but you can dispose of them only
according to the laws. You know only God alone above you, it is true; but the laws
must have more authority than yourself. You do not command slaves, you command
a free and quarrelsome nation, as jealous of liberty as of its liberty.
Another note mentions:
“Chap. II. Of the particular causes that can harm the free development and the gen-
eralization of thought in America.
The pieces of Massillon, on which you can draw, are found:
Petit carême. 1. Sermon of Palm Sunday, first and third part. 2. Sermon of the Incar-
nation, second part.
You could still look for and, in any case, knit together separate sentences. There would
be nothing improper about that” (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 33).
the more or less popular institutions that equal men can give themselves.
It is to be believed that the intellectual dominion of the greatest number
would be less absolute among a democratic people subject to a king, than
within a pure democracy; but it will always be very absolute, and, whatever
the political laws may be that govern men in centuries of equality, you can
predict that faith in common opinion will become a sort of religion whose
prophet will be the majority.
Thus intellectual authority will be different, but it will not be less; and,
far from believing that it must disappear, I foresee that it would easily be-
come too great and that it might well be that it would finally enclose the
action of individual reason within more narrow limits than are suitable for
the grandeur and happiness of the human species. I see very clearly in equal-
ity two tendencies: one that leads the mind of each man toward new
thoughts and the other that readily reduces him to thinking no more. And
I notice how, under the dominion of certain laws, democracy would ex-
tinguish the intellectual liberty that the democratic social state favors, so
that after breaking all the obstacles that were formerly imposed on it by
classes or men, the human mind would bind itself narrowly to the general
wills of the greatest number [volontés générales du plus grand nombre—
Trans. ].s
If, in place of all the diverse powers that hindered or slowed beyond
measure the rapid development of individual reason, democratic peoples
substituted the absolute power of a majority, the evil would only have
changed character. Men would not have found the means to live indepen-
dently; they would only have discovered, a difficult thing, a new face of
servitude. I cannot say it enough: for those who see liberty of the mind as
s. Liberty and authority will always divide the intellectual world into two parts. These
two parts will be more or less unequal depending on the centuries./
Authority can be exercised in the name of one certain power or in the name of
another; but authority itself will continue to exist.
[In the margin: If men had only dogmatic beliefs, they would remain immobile.
If they had only non-dogmatic beliefs, they would live in an ineffectual agitation.
On the one hand, despotism; on the other, anarchy.] (Rubish, 1).
a holy thing, and who hate not only the despot but also despotism, there
is in that something to make them reflect deeply. For me, when I feel the
hand of power pressing on my head, knowing who is oppressing me matters
little to me, and I am no more inclined to put my head in the yoke, because
a million arms present it to me.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 3a
Why the Americans Show
More Aptitude and Taste for General Ideas
Than Their Fathers the English
God does not consider the human species in general. He sees at a single
glance and separately all the beings who make up humanity, and he notices
a. 1. What is the strength and the weakness of general ideas. Result greater, less exact.
2. That general ideas arise principally from enlightenment.
3. This is not sufficient to explain why the Americans and above all the French,
who are not more enlightened than the English, show much more aptitude and taste
for general ideas than the latter.
Apart from the common cause of enlightenment, these other causes must therefore
be recognized:
1. When men are (illegible word) [similar? (ed.)] their similarity leads them to con-
ceive ideas about themselves applicable to the entire species, which gives them the
habit and the taste for general ideas in all things.
2. Men being equal and weak, you do not see individuals who force them to march
along the same path. So a great cause must be imagined that acts separately but in
the same way on each one of them. That also leads to general ideas.
3. When men have escaped from the spirit of class, profession, (illegible word) in
order to search for truth by themselves, they are led to study the very nature of man.
New form of general idea.
4. All men of democracies are very busy practically. That gives them a great taste
for general ideas, which produce great results in little time.
5. Writers of democratic centuries, like all the other men of those centuries, want
quick successes and present enjoyments. That leads them vigorously toward general
ideas.
4. Also, aristocratic peoples do not esteem general ideas enough and do not make
enough use of them; democratic peoples are always ready to abuse them and to be-
come excessively impassioned about them (YTC, CVf, pp. 3–5).
726
aptitude and taste for general ideas 727
each of them with the similarities that bring each closer to the others and
the differences that isolate each.
So God does not need general ideas; that is to say he never feels the
necessity to encompass a very great number of analogous objects within
the same form in order to think about them more comfortably.
It is not so with man. If the human mind undertook to examine and to
judge individually all the particular cases that strike it, it would soon be lost
amid the immensity of details and would no longer see anything; in this
extremity, it resorts to an imperfect, but necessary procedure that helps its
weakness and proves it.b
b. The human mind naturally has the taste for general ideas because its soul is an
emanation of God, the most generalizing being in the universe. So it is only by a kind
of constraint that you keep the human mind contemplating particular cases. And if
it sees a way to escape by some path, it rushes in that direction; and, the more re-
strained it is in all the other directions, the more violently it does so.
That is why when aristocratic societies become enlightened without yet ceasing to
be aristocratic, you find minds who force their bonds and, in a way losing sight of
earth, go far away from the real world in order to create the most general principles
in matters of politics, morality, and philosophy.
During this time real society continues to follow its routine existence; and while
castes, professions, religions, fortunes divide and classify men, interests, ideas, an en-
tirely imaginary society is in a way built in the air outside of real society; it is an
entirely imaginary society in which the human (illegible word) [v: mind], no longer
limited by the desire for application, subjects everything to general principles and
common rules.
So you must not judge the state of a people by a few adventurous minds that appear
within it. For it could happen that they might be all the more given to generalizing
the less the people itself is given to doing so, and that the impossibility of establishing
anything that pleases them in the real world might be what pushes them so energet-
ically into entirely imaginary regions. I doubt that More would have written his Uto-
pia if he had been able to realize a few of his dreams in the government of England,
and I think that the Germans of today would not abandon themselves with so much
passion to the search for general truth in philosophy if they were allowed to generalize
a few of their ideas in politics.
When some men put forward very general ideas, it is not proof therefore that
the social state is already democratic; it is only an indication that it is beginning to
become so.
But if you find among an entire people a visible tendency to apply the same rules
to everything, if you see it, while still remaining in the practical and the real, try hard
to extend the same moral, intellectual, political condition to all men at once, do not
After considering a certain number of matters superficially and noticing

that they are alike, the human mind gives them all the same name, puts
them aside and goes on its way.
General ideas do not attest to the strength of human intelligence, but
rather to its insufficiency, for there are no beings exactly the same in nature:
no identical facts; no rules applicable indiscriminately and in the same way
to several matters at once.c
hesitate any longer and say without fear that here the revolution is accomplished, and
it is from now on no longer a matter of destroying democracy, but only of regulat-
ing it.
The state of slavery in which the woman lives among savage tribes, her complete
separation from men and her imprisonment among Orientals, her inferiority and
more or less great subjugation among the civilized peoples of Europe can provide
arguments about what I have said concerning the intellectual effects of aristocracy.
The aristocracy of sex is the most natural, the most complete and the most uni-
versal that is known. And the greater and more exclusive it is, the more it tends to
specialize and to (illegible word) the circle of human ideas.
In the Orient there are the thoughts of men and the thoughts of women. In Europe
you imagine ideas that apply at the same time to the two types that compose the
human species.
By mixing the sexes in activities and in pleasures you thus give to the intelligence
of men and of women something more daring and more general.
That also suffices to explain well the differences that are noticeable in the march
of intelligence in the west and in the east (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 27–29).
Cf. conversation with Clark of 9 August 1833 (Voyage en Angleterre, OC, V, 2, p. 25).
c. Earlier version in a rough draft:
. . . at once. When man says that something is, he assumes a fact that he knows does
not exist but that he uses, lacking anything better; he leaves better clarification for
later when he has the time, just as the algebraist expresses by “a” or by “b” certain
quantities whose value he will examine later (three illegible words).
So general ideas are only means by the aid of which men advance toward truth,
but without ever finding it. You can even say that, to a certain extent, by following
this path they are moving away from it.
For if they limited themselves to examining certain matters individually they (two
illegible words) the former, while by considering them together he cannot have any-
thing except a confused and inexact idea of everything.
General ideas are not any less the most powerful instruments of thought, but you
must know how to use them.
That men often form general ideas out of laziness as much as out of weakness and
need (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 15).
General ideas are admirable in that they allow the human mind to make
rapid judgements about a great number of matters at the same time; but,
on the other hand, they never provide it with anything other than incom-
plete notions, and they always make it lose in exactitude what it gains in
breadth.
As societies grow older, they acquire knowledge of new facts and
each day, almost without knowing it, they take hold of a few particular
truths.
As man grasps more truths of this nature, he is naturally led to conceive
a greater number of general ideas. You cannot see a multitude of particular
facts separately, without finally discovering the common bond that holds
them together. Several individuals make the notion of the species emerge;
several species lead necessarily to that of the genus. So the older and more
extensive the enlightenment of a people, the greater will always be their
habit of and taste for general ideas.
But there are still other reasons that push men to generalize their ideas
or move them away from doing so.
The Americans make much more frequent use than the English of gen-
eral ideas and delight much more in doing so; that seems very strange at
first, if you consider that these two peoples have the same origin, that they
lived for centuries under the same laws and that they still constantly com-
municate their opinions and their mores to one another. The contrast seems
even much more striking when you concentrate your attention on our Eu-
rope and compare the two most enlightened peoples that live there.d
d. It is possible that certain .-.-.- a natural genius that leads them to generalize their
ideas. Great writers have said so and yet I still doubt it. I see nothing in the physical
constitution of man that disposes him to one order of ideas rather than to another,
and nothing in historical facts leads me to believe that this particular disposition of
the mind is inherent in one of the human races rather than in the others. I see that
the peoples most avid for general ideas and the best disposed to discern them have
not always shown the same taste for seeking them and the same facility for discerning
them. So I reject a reason that analysis cannot grasp and that, supposedly applicable
to all times, explains only what is happening today (Rubish, 1).
You would say that among the English the human mind tears itself away
from the contemplation of particular facts only with regret and pain in
order to return from there to causes, and that the human mind generalizes
only in spite of itself.
It seems, on the contrary, that among us the taste for general ideas has
become a passion so unrestrained that it must be satisfied in the slightest
thing. I learn each morning upon waking that a certain general and eternal
law has just been discovered that I had never heard of until then [and <I
am assured> that I obey with all the rest of my fellows some primary causes
of which I was unaware]. There is no writer so mediocre for whom it is
enough in his essay to discover truths applicable to a great kingdom and
who does not remain discontent with himself if he has not been able to
contain humanity within the subject of his discourse.e
e. There are several causes that make men form general ideas.
A man by dint of research discovers numerous and new connections among diverse
matters, beings, facts, . . . and he draws a general idea from it.
Another discovers a certain number of connections among other matters. He
knows that the general idea that these connections (illegible word) bring forth is in-
exact, but he wants to go further and he uses it as an imperfect means that nonetheless
helps him reach the truth.
These are the learned, considered, philosophical ways to create general ideas. Gen-
eral ideas created in this way attest to the vigor of the human mind.
But most men do not set about doing it in this way. After an inattentive and short
examination, they believe they have discovered a common connection among certain
matters. To continue research is long and tiresome. To examine in detail if the matters
that you are comparing are truly alike and to what degree would be difficult. So you
hasten to pronounce. If you considered most of the general ideas that are current
among men you would see that most do not attest to the vigor of the human mind,
but to its laziness.
[In the margin] Men do in the matter of government what they do in the fact of
language. They notice at first only particular cases, then when they begin to know
general ideas, they want to generalize too much; as they become more learned, they
complicate their sciences and establish classifications, distinctions that they had not
at first noticed. Thus with government. The idea of centralization belongs to the
middle age of human intelligence (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 16–17).
And in the rubish of the end of volume IV:
The man who puts forth general ideas is exposed to two great dangers from the per-
spective of criticism.
Such a dissimilarity between two very enlightened peoples astonishes

me. If finally I turn my mind toward England and notice what has been
happening for half a century within that country, I believe I am able to
assert that the taste for general ideas is developing there as the ancient con-
stitution of the country is becoming weaker.
So the more or less advanced state of enlightenment alone is not suffi-
cient to explain what suggests love of general ideas to the human mind or
turns it away from them.
When conditions are very unequal, and inequalities are permanent, in-
dividuals become little by little so dissimilar that you would say that there
are as many distinct humanities as there are classes; you see only one of
them at a time, and, losing sight of the general bond that gathers all within
the vast bosom of the human species, you envisage only certain men and
not man.
So those who live in these aristocratic societies never conceive very gen-
eral ideas relative to themselves, and that suffices to give them a habitual
distrust of these ideas, and an instinctive disgust for them.
The man who inhabits democratic countries, on the contrary, sees near
He is exposed to the danger common to all those who put forth ideas which is that
they are false and it is noticed. He is also exposed to another danger which is particular
to the subject.
The more general an idea (and I suppose it true as well as general), the more it
allows particular cases to escape. A very great number of particular cases opposed to
a general idea would prove that the idea is false, but a few particular cases do not prove
it. The one who raises against the maker of a general idea a certain number of par-
ticular cases does not therefore prove absolutely that this idea is false, but he advances
the beginning of embarrassing [doubtful reading (ed.)] evidence.
Now, since this beginning of evidence exists against all general ideas true or false,
it is like a weapon at the disposal of all narrow or ill-intentioned minds. General ideas
can be appreciated in a competent manner only by very enlightened and very im-
partial minds. There is the evil.
Special ideas leave less room for partiality and require much less enlightenment in
those who judge them” (Rubish, 2, in a jacket belonging to the bundle of the last part
that is entitled some rubish that do not fall into one section of this
chapter rather than into another).
him only more or less similar beings; so he cannot consider whatever part
of the human species, without having his thought widen and expand to
embrace the whole. All the truths that are applicable to himself seem to
him to apply equally or in the same way to each one of his fellow citizens
and of his fellow men.f Having contracted the habit of general ideas in the
one area of his studies that concerns him most and that interests him more,
he transfers this same habit to all the others, and this is how the need to
find common rules in everything, to encompass a great number of matters
within the same form, and to explain an ensemble of facts by a sole cause,
becomes an ardent and often blind passion of the human mind.g
Nothing shows the truth of what precedes better than the opinions of
antiquity relative to slaves.
The most profound and far-reaching geniuses of Rome and of Greece
were never able to reach this idea so general, but at the same time so simple,
f. In democracies, since men are all more or less equal and similar to each other,
subject to sensations little different, and provided with analogous ideas, it is nearly
always found that what is applicable to one is applicable at the same time and in the
same way to all the others.
So democratic nations are led naturally and so to speak without wanting to be
toward conceiving general ideas in what interests them the most, which is themselves.
They thus contract the general taste for generalization of ideas and carry it into all
the inquiries of the mind.
In this way the smallest democratic people will be closer to searching for and find-
ing the general rights that belong to the human species than the greatest nation whose
social state is aristocratic.
There is only a step for the human mind between believing that all the citizens of
a small republic must be free and considering that each man has an equal right to
liberty (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 22–23).
g. The Americans are a democratic people who since its birth was able to act in all
ways; the French form a democratic people who for a long time was able only to
think. Now I know nothing that leads men more vigorously toward general theories
than a social state that disposes them naturally to discover new ideas and a political
constitution that forbids them from rectifying these ideas by practice and from testing
them by experience.
In this sense, I think that the institutions of democracy prudently introduced are,
everything considered, the best remedy that you can set against the errors of the
democratic mind (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 71).
of the similarity of men and of the equal right to liberty that each one of
them bears by birth; and they struggled hard to prove that slavery was in
nature and that it would always exist. Even more, everything indicates that
those of the ancients who had been slaves before becoming free, several of
whom have left us beautiful writings, themselves envisaged servitude in the
same way.
All the great writers of antiquity were part of the aristocracy of masters,
or at least they saw this aristocracy established without dispute before their
eyes; so their minds, after expanding in several directions, were limited in
that one, and Jesus Christ had to come to earth in order to make it under-
stood that all members of the human species were naturally similar and
equal.h
In centuries of equality, all men are independent of each other, isolated
and weak; you see none whose will directs the movements of the crowd in
h. Proofs of the limits that the classification of ranks puts on the free development
of thought.
Plato and Aristotle were born in the middle of democratic republics. Cicero saw
the greatest part of the human species gathered under the same laws. These are ample
reasons that should have made general thoughts come to the mind of these great men.
Neither those men, however, nor any other of antiquity was able to discover the so
simple idea of the equal right to liberty that each man [has (ed.)] by birth.
The slavery that has not existed for so many centuries appeared to them in the
nature of things, and they seemed to consider it as a necessary and eternal condition
of humanity.
Even more, nothing indicates that the men of that time who had been slaves before
becoming free and several of whom were great writers, had considered from a dif-
ferent perspective the servitude from which they had suffered so much. How to ex-
plain this?
All the ancients who have left us writings were part of the aristocracy of masters,
or at least they saw this aristocracy established without dispute among the men of
their time. Their minds, so expansive in so many directions, were limited on that one
and J[esus (ed.)]. C[hrist (ed.)]. had to come to earth in order to consider the general
value of man and to make it understood that similar beings could and must be equal.
When I see Aristotle make the power of Alexander serve the progress of the natural
sciences, ransack all of Asia weapons in hand in order to find unknown animals and
plants, and when I notice that after studying nature at such great cost he ended up
finally by discovering slavery there, I feel myself led to think that man would do better
to remain at home, not to study books and to look for truth only in his own heart
(YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 30–31).
a permanent fashion; in these times, humanity always seems to march by

itself. So in order to explain what is happening in the world, you are reduced
to searching for some general causes that, acting in the same way on each
one of our fellows, therefore lead them all voluntarily to follow the same
route. That also naturally leads the human mind to conceive general ideas
and causes it to contract the taste for them.
I showed previously how equality of conditions brought each man to
search for truth by himself. It is easy to see that such a method must im-
perceptibly make the human mind tend toward general ideas.
When I repudiate the traditions of class, of profession and of family,
when I escape from the rule of example in order, by the sole effort of my
reason, to search for the path to follow, I am inclined to draw the grounds
of my opinions from the very nature of man, which brings me necessarily
and almost without my knowing, toward a great number of very general
notions.j
Everything that precedes finally explains why the English show much
less aptitude and taste for the generalization of ideas than their sons, the
Americans, and above all than their neighbors, the French, and why the
English today show more of such aptitude and taste than their fathers
did.k
The English have for a long time been a very enlightened and at the same
time very aristocratic people; their enlightenment made them tend con-
stantly toward very general ideas, and their aristocratic habits held them in
very particular ideas. From that this philosophy, at the very same time bold
j. In the margin: “⫽All this portion seems to me of contestable truth and to delete⫽.”
k. “The (illegible word) reason for the difference.
“1. In practical life.
“2. The second . . . in physical nature; although I am in general little in favor of
arguments based on the physical nature of peoples, I believe nonetheless that I am able
to make use of them here” (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 69–70).
and timid, broad and narrow, that dominated in England until now, and
that still keeps so many minds there restricted and immobile.m
Apart from the causes that I showed above, you find still others, less
apparent, but no less effective, that produce among nearly all democratic
peoples the taste and often the passion for general ideas.
These sorts of ideas must be clearly distinguished. There are some that
are the product of a slow, detailed, conscientious work of intelligence, and
those enlarge the sphere of human knowledge.
m. First version in a rough draft:

The English have for a long time been one of the most enlightened and most aris-
tocratic people of the globe. I think that the singularities that you notice in their
opinions must be attributed to the combination of these two causes. Their enlight-
enment made them tend toward general ideas, while their aristocratic habits held
them within the circle of particular ideas. From that this philosophy at the very same
time bold and timid, broad and narrow, liberated and addicted to routine that char-
acterizes the march of the human mind in England. Certainly, the country that pro-
duced the two Bacons, the great Newton {Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham}, that
country is not naturally sterile in men who can conceive general ideas and put them
within reach of the common people, but these extraordinary men lacked a public.
They opened wide roads where they marched alone; mores and laws formed like in-
tellectual barriers that separated their minds from that of the crowd, and if they were
able to open their country to new and general ideas in the particular matters that they
treated, they did not succeed in giving it the taste for new and general ideas in all
matters. The various causes that I have just enumerated can exist without the social
state and institutions having yet become democratic, and I do not claim that lacking
the auxiliary causes they cannot develop more or less power. I am only saying that
democracy places men in a situation favorable to the conception of new and general
ideas and that uniting with other causes, it pushes them vigorously toward them. If
the Americans were neither enlightened nor free, I doubt that they would have very
general and very bold ideas, but I am sure that their social state coming to be com-
bined with their enlightenment and their liberty has singularly helped them to con-
ceive these sorts of ideas.
[In the margin] There is only one aristocracy in America, that of skin. See the
consequences: more narrow ideas . . .” (YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 80–81).
You find a variant of this fragment in YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 31–32, where Tocqueville adds
(p. 32): “In America there is less freedom of mind in the slave countries. Among equal
men, there cannot be lasting classification.”
There are others that arise easily from a first rapid effort of the mind,
and that lead only to very superficial and very uncertain notions.
Men who live in centuries of equality have a great deal of curiosity and
little leisure; their life is so practical, so complicated, so agitated, so active,
that little time remains for them to think. The men of democratic centuries
love general ideas, because they exempt them from studying particular
cases; they contain, if I can express myself in this way, many things within
a small volume and in little time produce a great result. So when, after an
inattentive and short examination, they believe they notice among certain
matters a common relationship, they push their research no further, and,
without examining in detail how these diverse matters are similar or dif-
ferent, they hasten to arrange them according to the same formula, in order
to move on.
One of the distinctive characteristics of democratic centuries is the taste
that all men there feel for easy success and present enjoyments. This is found
in intellectual careers as in all others. Most of those who live in times of
equality are full of an ambition intense and soft at the same time; they want
to gain great successes immediately, but they would like to excuse them-
selves from great efforts. These opposing instincts lead them directly to the
search for general ideas, by the aid of which they flatter themselves to por-
tray very vast matters at little cost, and to attract the attention of the public
without difficulty.
And I do not know if they are wrong to think this way; for their readers
are as much afraid to go deeper as they themselves are and ordinarily seek
in the works of the mind only easy pleasures and instruction without work.
If aristocratic nations do not make enough use of general ideas and often
show them an ill-considered scorn, it happens, on the contrary, that dem-
ocratic peoples are always ready to abuse these sorts of ideas and to become
impassioned excessively for them.n
n. In the margin: “I believe that in this matter what can be said most generally true
is this.”
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 4a
Why the Americans Have Never Been as
Passionate as the French about General Ideas
in Political Matters
[<I showed in the preceding chapter that equality of conditions suggested

to the human mind the taste for general ideas. I do not want to abandon
this subject without pointing out here in passing how the great liberty that
the Americans enjoy prevents them from giving themselves blindly to this
very taste in politics.>]
I said before that the Americans showed a less intense taste than the
a. Chapter 4 (a).1
Why the Americans have never been as passionate as the French about political
theories.
The Americans have never shown the same passion as the French for political
theories.
That comes from the fact that they have always done politics in a practical way.
On this point their liberty combatted the excessive taste for general ideas to which
their equality, all by itself, would have given birth. This seems contrary to what I said
in the preceding chapter, that it was the practical life of democratic peoples that sug-
gested the love of theory to them. These two things are reconciled, however, by means
of a distinction.
The busy life of democratic peoples gives them in fact the taste for theories, but
not in the thing with which they are occupied.
It is even enough to make them occupy themselves with something in order to
make them accept general ideas relative to this thing only after examination (YTC,
CVf, pp. 5–6).
1. ⫽The chapters marked (a) are those that still leave me most unsatisfied and that
must principally attract my attention at a last reading⫽ (YTC, CVf, p. 1).
In the jacket that contains the manuscript of the chapter: “This chapter leaves me
with something to be desired, I do not know what.”
737
general ideas in political matters 738
French for general ideas. That is above all true for general ideas relative to
politics.
Although the Americans introduce infinitely more general ideas into leg-
islation than the English, and although they concern themselves much
more than the latter with adjusting the practice of human affairs to the
theory, you have never seen in the United States political bodies as in love
with general ideas as were our own Constituent Assembly and Convention;
never has the entire American nation had a passion for these sorts of ideas
in the same way that the French people of the XVIIIth century did, and
never has it shown so blind a faith in the goodness and in the absolute truth
of any theory.
This difference between the Americans and us arises out of several
causes, but principally this one:
The Americans form a democratic people that has always run public
affairs by themselves, and we are a democratic people that, for a long time,
has only been able to think about the best way to conduct them.
Our social state already led us to conceive very general ideas in matters
of government, while our political constitution still prevented us from rec-
tifying these ideas by experience and from discovering little by little their
inadequacy; while among the Americans these two things constantly bal-
anced and mutually corrected each other.
It seems, at first view, that this is strongly opposed to what I said pre-
viously, that democratic nations drew from the very agitation of their prac-
tical life the love that they show for theories. A closer examination reveals
that there is nothing contradictory there.b
Men who live in democratic countries are very avid for general ideas,
because they have little leisure and because these ideas excuse them from
wasting their time in examining particular cases; that is true, but it must
be extended only to the matters that are not the habitual and necessary
b. “This in not a contradiction, but it is due to the fact that the Americans are not
only equal but are republican” (Rubish, 1).
object of their thoughts.c Tradesmen will grasp eagerly and without looking
very closely all the general ideas that are presented to them relative to phi-
losophy, politics, the sciences and the arts; but they will accept only after
examination those that have to do with commerce and accept them only
with reservation.
The same thing happens to statesmen, when it is a matter of general
ideas relative to politics.
So when there is a subject on which it is particularly dangerous for dem-
ocratic peoples to give themselves to general ideas blindly and beyond mea-
sure, the best corrective that you can employ is to make them concern them-
selves with it every day and in a practical way; then it will be very necessary
for them to enter into details, and the details will make them see the weak
aspects of the theory.
c. Let us consider Germany.

The human mind there shows itself excessively (illegible word) and generalizing
as regards philosophy and above all metaphysics, regular and specialized, enslaved, in
nearly all the rest. What causes that?
In America, on the contrary, where the human mind is regular as regards philos-
ophy, it is bold and generalizing in all the rest.
Wouldn’t the result be that equality of conditions leads to bold and general ideas
only in matters of civil and political society and exercises only an imperceptible in-
fluence on all the rest?
Or rather isn’t there a hidden reason that makes it so that bold and general ideas
in philosophy can occur to a mind that does not conceive the others?
Or rather finally must you search for the explanation for all of that in the facts and
say:
First of all, that it is not correct that in the United States the common mind is routine
as regards philosophy. If you give the name philosophy to the principles that direct
human actions, even if the principles were not reduced to theory and science, the Amer-
icans certainly have a philosophy and even a very new and very bold philosophy.
Secondly, equality of conditions is already very great; that the philosophical move-
ment that you are speaking about has above all been noticeable since a half-century
ago when equality of conditions really came about. That its consequences come about
only in philosophy because it is suppressed by force everywhere else and that it brings
them about all the more vigorously there because it can bring them about only there.
Philosophy is in fact only the complete exercise of thought, separate from the practice
of action (YTC, CVa, pp. 36–37).
See the first chapter of book III of the Old Regime (OC, II, 1, pp. 193–201), where, using
the same reasoning, Tocqueville explains the appearance of the French pre-revolutionary
intellectuals and their passion for general ideas in politics.
The remedy is often painful, but its effect is certain.

In this way democratic institutions, which force each citizen to be oc-
cupied in a practical way with government, moderate the excessive taste for
general theories in political matters that equality suggests.d
d. Usefulness of varying the means of government. Ideas too general as regards gov-
ernment are a sign of weakness in the human mind, like ideas too particular. Be-
longing to the middle age of intelligence. Danger of allowing a single social principle
to take without objection the absolute direction of society.
General idea that I wanted to make emerge from this work.
[In the margin: Perhaps use here the piece on general ideas.]
.-.-.-.-.-.-.- men ordinarily {judge} ideas much more perfect, more effective and
more beautiful in proportion to their being more simple, and that it [sic ] can be
reduced much more easily to a single fact.
This judgment arises in part from our weakness. Complications tire the human
mind, and it willingly rests [v: with a kind of pride] in the idea of a single cause
producing by itself alone an infinity of great effects. If however we cast our eyes on
the work of the being par excellence, of the creator of man, of his eternal model, of
God, we are surprised by the strange complications that present themselves to our
sight. We are obliged to renounce our (illegible word) of beauty and to place perfec-
tion in the grandeur of the result and not in the simplicity of the means.
God ties together a multitude of bones, muscles, nerves, each of which has a sepa-
rate and distinct function. The first elements are themselves the products of a mul-
titude of primary causes. In the middle of this machine so complicated, he places an
intelligence that resides there without being part of it. An invisible bond unites all
these things and makes them all work toward a unique end. This assemblage feels,
thinks, acts, it is man, it is the king of the world after the one who created it.
The same diversity is found in all the works of the Creator. . . .
Man himself is only a means, among the millions of means that God uses to reach
the great end that he proposes, the government of the universe. God indicates as
much to us. .-.-.-.- great results can be obtained only with the help of a great diversity
of efforts, with variety of chosen means. If your machine can function as well with
one wheel as with two, only make one; but make ten if that is useful for the object
that you have in view. If the machine thus composed produces what you must expect
from it, it is no less beautiful than if it were simpler.
The error of men comes from believing that you can produce very great things
with very simple means. If you could do it, they would be right to put the idea of
beauty partially in the simplicity of means.
[v: So God, if I can express myself in this way, puts the idea of grandeur and
perfection not in executing a great number of things with the help of a single means,
but in making a multitude of diverse means contribute to the perfect execution of a
single thing.]
Theoretical .-.-.-.-.- have more connection to practice than you think. This opinion
that you can achieve a very great result with the help of a single means and that you
should aim for that, this opinion applied to the matter of government has exercised
a strange and fatal influence on the fate of humanity. It has singularly facilitated and
still facilitates every day the establishment of despotism on the earth. What is more
simple than (illegible word) organized government of a (illegible word)? What is more
complicated than liberty?
If men had enough strength of mind to combine easily a great number of means,
they would succeed better in this way.
It is their weakness and not their strength that leads them to the idea of (illegible
word).
Not able to do something very well with a great number of means, they hope to
do it more or less well with the help of one single means.
The human mind, not being able to coordinate a great number of means, got the
idea that it was glorious to employ only a single one of them (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 37–
41).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 5a
How, in the United States, Religion Knows
How to Make Use of Democratic Instincts b
a. 1. I showed that dogmatic beliefs were necessary; the most necessary and the most
desirable are dogmatic beliefs in the matter of religion. Reasons to believe.
[In the margin: To change the title. Put one that places it more clearly under the
rubric of ideas and operations of the mind.]
1. Fixed ideas on God and human nature are necessary to all men and every day
to each man, and it is found that there are only a few, if any, men who are capable
by themselves of fixing their ideas on these matters. It is a science necessary to all at
each moment and inaccessible to the greatest number. That is unique. So it is in these
matters that there is the most to gain and the least to lose by having dogmatic beliefs.
2. These beliefs particularly necessary to free peoples.
3. Id. to democratic peoples.
2. So I am led to seek humanly how religions could most easily assert themselves
during the centuries of equality that we are entering.
Development of this:
1. Necessity that religions be based on the idea of a unique being imposing at the
same time the same rules on each man.
2. Necessity of extricating religion from forms, practices, figures, as men become
more democratic.
3. Necessity of not insisting on remaining immobile in secondary things.
4. Necessity of trying to purify and regulate the love of well-being, without at-
tempting to destroy it.
5. Necessity of gaining the favor of the majority.
3. All this proved by the example of America (YTC, CVf, pp. 6–7).
b. Twice there must be the question of religion in this book.
1. The first principally in a separate chapter placed I think after the first in which
I would examine philosophically the influence of democracy on religions.
742
religion and democratic instincts 743
I established in one of the preceding chapters that men cannot do without

dogmatic beliefs, and that it was even much to be desired that they had
such beliefs. I add here that, among all dogmatic beliefs, the most desirable
seem to me to be dogmatic beliefs in the matter of religion; that very clearly
follows, even if you want to pay attention only to the interests of this world
alone.
[⫽Religions have the advantage that they provide the human mind with
the clear and precise answer to a very great number of questions.⫽]
There is hardly any human action, no matter how particular you assume
it to be, that is not born out of a very general idea that men have conceived
of God, of God’s relationships with humanity, of the nature of their soul
and of their duties toward their fellows. You cannot keep these ideas from
being the common source from which all the rest flows.c
[Experience has proved that they were necessary to all men and that each
man needed them daily in order to solve the smallest problems of his
existence.]
So men have an immense interest in forming very fixed ideas about God,
their soul, their general duties toward their creator and toward their fellows;
for doubt about these first points would leave all their actions to chance
and would condemn them in a way to disorder and impotence.
So this matter is the one about which it is most important for each one
of us to have fixed ideas, and unfortunately it is also the one on which it
is most difficult for each person, left to himself and by the sole effort of
his reason, to come to fix his ideas.
Only minds very emancipated from the ordinary preoccupations of life,
2. The second incidentally somewhere in the second volume where I would say
more oratorically how it is indispensable in democracies in order to immaterialize
man (Rubish, 1).
See Agnès Antoine, “Politique et religion chez Tocqueville,” in Laurence Guellec,Tocque-
ville et l’esprit de la démocratie ([Paris:] Presses de Sciences Po, 2005), pp. 305–17; and
also by the same author, L’impensé de la démocratie (Paris: Fayard, 2003).
c. In the margin: “<What is most important is not so much that they are correct, it
is that they are clear and fixed.>”
very perceptive, very subtle, very practiced are able with the help of a great
deal of time and care to break through to such necessary truths.
Yet we see that these philosophers themselves are almost always sur-
rounded by uncertainties; at each step the natural light that illumines them
grows dark and threatens to go out, and despite all their efforts they still
have been able to discover only a small number of contradictory notions,
in the middle of which the human mind has drifted constantly for thou-
sands of years, unable to grasp the truth firmly or even to find new errors.
Such studies are far beyond the average capacity of men, and, even if most
men were capable of devoting themselves to such studies, it is clear that
they would not have the leisure to do so.
Fixed ideas about God and human nature are indispensable for the daily
practice of their life, and this practice prevents them from being able to
acquire those ideas.
That seems unique to me. Among the sciences, there are some, useful
to the crowd, that are within its grasp; others are only accessible to a few
persons and are not cultivated by the majority, which needs only the most
remote of their applications. But the daily practice of this science is indis-
pensable to all, even though its study is inaccessible to the greatest number.
General ideas relative to God and to human nature are, therefore, among
all ideas, those most suitable to remove from the habitual action of indi-
vidual reason, and for which there is the most to gain and the least to lose
by recognizing an authority.
The first object, and one of the principal advantages of religions, is to
provide for each of these primordial questions a clear, precise answer, in-
telligible to the crowd and very enduring.
There are very false and very absurd religions. You can say however that
every religion that remains within the circle that I have just pointed out
and that does not claim to go outside of it, as several have tried to do in
order to stop the free development of the human mind in all directions,
imposes a salutary yoke on the intellect; and it must be recognized that, if
religion does not save men in the other world, it is at least very useful to
their happiness and to their grandeur in this one.
This is above all true of men who live in free countries.
When religion is destroyed among a people, doubt takes hold of the
highest portions of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Each per-
son gets accustomed to having only confused and changing notions about
the matters that most interest his fellows and himself. You defend your
opinions badly or you abandon them, and, since you despair of being able,
by yourself, to solve the greatest problems that human destiny presents, you
are reduced like a coward to not thinking about them.
Such a state cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens the motivating forces
of will and prepares citizens for servitude.
Then not only does it happen that the latter allow their liberty to be
taken, but they often give it up.
When authority no longer exists in religious matters, any more than in
political matters, men are soon frightened by the sight of this limitless in-
dependence. This perpetual agitation [<and this continual mutation>] of
all things disturbs and exhausts them. Since everything shifts in the intel-
lectual world, they at least want everything to be firm and stable in the
material order, and, no longer able to recapture their ancient beliefs, they
give themselves a master.
For me, I doubt that man can ever bear complete religious independence
and full political liberty at the same time; and I am led to think that, if he
does not have faith, he must serve, and, if he is free, he must believe.
I do not know, however, if this great utility of religions is not still
more visible among peoples where conditions are equal, than among all
others.
It must be recognized that equality, which introduces great advantages
into the world, nevertheless suggests, as will be shown below, very danger-
ous instincts to men; it tends to isolate them from one another and to lead
each one of them to be interested only in himself alone.
It opens their souls excessively to love of material enjoyments.
The greatest advantage of religions is to inspire entirely opposite
instincts. There is no religion that does not place the object of the de-
sires of men above and beyond the good things of the earth, and that
does not naturally elevate his soul toward realms very superior to those
of the senses. Nor is there any religion that does not impose on each
man some duties toward the human species or in common with it, and
that does not in this way drag him, from time to time, out of contem-
plation of himself. This is found in the most false and most dangerous
religions.
So religious peoples are naturally strong precisely in the places where
democratic peoples are weak; this makes very clear how important it is for
men to keep their religion while becoming equal.
I have neither the right nor the will to examine the supernatural means
that God uses to make a religious belief reach the heart of man. At this
moment I am envisaging religions only from a purely human viewpoint. I
am trying to find out how they can most easily retain their dominion in
the democratic centuries that we are entering.d
I have shown how, in times of enlightenment and equality, the human
mind agreed to receive dogmatic beliefs only with difficulty and strongly
felt the need to do so only as regards religion [<and dogmatic beliefs are
readily adopted in the form of common opinions>]. This indicates first of
all that, in those centuries, religions must be more discreet than in all other
centuries in staying within the limits that are appropriate to them and must
not try to go beyond them; for, by wanting to extend their power beyond
religious matters, they risk no longer being believed in any matter. So they
must carefully draw the circle within which they claim to stop the human
mind, and beyond that circle they must leave the mind entirely free to be
abandoned to itself.
Mohammed made not only religious doctrines, but also political max-
ims, civil and criminal laws, and scientific theories descend from heaven
and placed them in the Koran. The Gospel, in contrast, speaks only of the
general relationships of men with God and with each other. Beyond that,
it teaches nothing and requires no belief in anything. That alone, among
d. “If God allowed me to lift the veil of the future, I would refuse to do so; I would
be afraid to see the human race in the hands of clerks and soldiers” (Rubish, 1). The same
idea appears in another draft: “I would be afraid to see the entire society in the hands of
soldiers. A bureaucratic, military organization. The soldier and the clerk. Symbol of fu-
ture society” (YTC, CVa, p. 50). Cf. note a of p. 1245.
a thousand other reasons, is enough to show that the first of these two
religions cannot long dominate during times of enlightenment and de-
mocracy, whereas the second is destined to reign during these centuries as
in all others.e
If I continue this same inquiry further, I find that for religions to be able,
humanly speaking, to persist in democratic centuries, they must not only
carefully stay within the circle of religious matters; their power also depends
a great deal on the nature of the beliefs that they profess, on the external
forms that they adopt, and on the obligations that they impose.
What I said previously, that equality brings men to very general and very
vast ideas, must principally be understood in the matter of religion. Men
similar and equal easily understand the notion of a single God, imposing
on each one of them the same rules and granting them future happiness at
the same cost. The idea of the unity of the human race leads them con-
stantly to the idea of the unity of the Creator, while in contrast men very
separate from each other and strongly dissimilar readily come to make as
many divinities as there are peoples, castes, classes and families, and to mark
out a thousand particular roads for going to heaven.
You cannot deny that Christianity itself has not in some way been sub-
e. Tocqueville explained in a letter to Richard Milnes (Lord Houghton), dated 29

May 1844:
You seem to me only like Lamartine to have come back from the Orient a bit more
Moslem than is suitable. I do not know why some distinguished minds show this
tendency today. For my part, I have experienced from my contact with Islam (you
know that through Algeria we touch each day on the institutions of Mohammed)
entirely opposite effects. As I got to know this religion better, I better understood
that from it above all comes the decadence that before our eyes more and more affects
the Moslem world. Had Mohammed committed only the mistake of intimately join-
ing a body of civil and political institutions to a religious belief, in a way to impose
on the first the immobility that is in the nature of the second, that would have been
enough to doom his followers in a given time at first to inferiority and then to in-
evitable ruin. The grandeur and holiness of Christianity is in contrast to have tried
to reign only in the natural sphere of religions, abandoning all the rest to the free
movements of the human mind.
With the kind permission of Trinity College, Cambridge (Houghton papers, 25/200).
jected to the influence exercised by the social and political state on religious
beliefs.
At the moment when the Christian religion appeared on earth, Provi-
dence, which without doubt prepared the world for its coming, had gath-
ered together a great part of the human species, like an immense flock under
the scepter of the Caesars. The men who made up this multitude differed
a great deal from one another, but they nevertheless had this point in com-
mon, they all obeyed the same laws; and each of them was so weak and so
small in relation to the greatness of the prince, that they all seemed equal
when compared to him.
It must be recognized that this new and particular state of humanity had
to dispose men to receive the general truths that Christianity teaches, and
it serves to explain the easy and rapid way in which it then penetrated the
human mind.f
f. The history of religions clearly shows the truth of what I said above that general
ideas come easily to the human mind only when a great number of men are placed
in an analogous situation.
Since the object of religion is to regulate the relationships that should exist between
man and the Creator, there is nothing that seems more natural than general ideas
.-.-.-.-.- until the Roman Empire, however, you saw almost as many religions and
gods as peoples. The idea of a religious doctrine applicable to all men came only when
nearly all men had been subjected in the same manner to the same power.
I would say something more as well. You can conceive that all men should adore
the same God, without accepting that all men are equal in the eyes of God. Chris-
tianity says these two things. So it is not only based on a general idea but on a very
democratic idea, which is an additional nuance. I believe that Christianity comes from
God and that it is not a particular state of humanity that gave birth to it; but it is
obvious that it had to find great opportunities for spreading at a period when nearly
all the human species, like an immense flock, was mixed and mingled under the scep-
ter of the Caesars, and when subjects, whoever they were, were so small in relation
to the greatness of the prince, that when you came to compare them to him, the
differences that could exist among them seemed nearly imperceptible.
⫽You wonder why nearly all the peoples of modern Europe present a physiognomy
so similar? It is because the same revolution that occurs within each State among
citizens, takes place within the interior of Europe among peoples. Europe forms more
and more a democracy of nations; each [nation (ed.)] being nearly equal to the others
by its enlightenment, its social state, its laws, it is not surprising that all envisage the
The counter-proof came about after the destruction of the Empire.

The Roman world was then broken so to speak into a thousand pieces;
each nation reverted to its original individuality. Soon, within the interior
of these nations, ranks became infinitely graduated; races became marked;
castes divided each nation into several [enemy] peoples. In the middle of
this common effort that seemed to lead human societies to subdivide them-
selves into as many fragments as it was possible to imagine, Christianity
did not lose sight of the principal general ideas that it had brought to light.
But it seemed nonetheless to lend itself, as much as it could, to the new
tendencies given birth by the splitting up of the human species. Men con-
tinued to adore only a single God, creator and sustainer of all things; but
each people, each city, and so to speak each man believed in the ability to
gain some separate privilege and to create particular protectors next to the
sovereign master. Not able to divide Divinity, his agents at least were mul-
tiplied and enlarged beyond measure; the homage due to angels and saints
became for most Christians a nearly idolatrous worship, and it could be
feared at one time that the Christian religion was regressing toward the
religions that it had vanquished.
It seems clear to me that the more the barriers that separated nations
within humanity and citizens within the interior of each people tend to
disappear, the more the human mind heads as if by itself toward the idea
of a single and omnipotent being, dispensing equally and in the same way
the same laws to each man. So particularly in these centuries of democracy,
it is important not to allow the homage given to secondary agents to be
confused with the worship due only to the Creator.
[So you can foresee in advance that every religion in a democratic century
that comes to establish intermediary powers between God and men and
indicates certain standards of conduct to certain men will come to clash
same matters in the same way.⫽ (Rubish, 1. Another version of the same passage exists
in YTC, CVj, 1, pp. 85–87).
In the copy from CVj, 1 (p. 86), next to the third paragraph, in the margin, you read:
“Is the social state the result of ideas or are the ideas the result of the social state?”
with the irresistible tendencies of intelligence; it will not acquire authority

or will lose the authority that it had acquired at a time when the social state
suggested opposite notions.]
Another truth seems very clear to me; religions must attend less to ex-
ternal practices in democratic times than in all others.
I have shown, in relation to the philosophical method of the Americans,
that nothing revolts the human mind more in times of equality than the
idea of submitting to forms. Men who live during these times endure rep-
resentations impatiently; symbols seem to them puerile artifices that you
use to veil or keep from their eyes truths that it would be more natural to
show them entirely naked and in full light of day; the trappings of cere-
monies leave them cold, and they are naturally led to attach only a secon-
dary importance to the details of worship.
Those who are charged with regulating the external form of religions in
democratic centuries must pay close attention to these natural instincts of
human intelligence, in order not to struggle needlessly against them.
I firmly believe in the necessity of forms;g I know that they fix the human
mind in the contemplation of abstract truths, and forms, by helping the
mind to grasp those truths firmly, make it embrace them with fervor. I do
not imagine that it is possible to maintain a religion without external prac-
tices, but on the other hand I think that, during the centuries we are en-
tering, it would be particularly dangerous to multiply them inordinately;
that instead they must be restricted and that you should retain only those
that are absolutely necessary for the perpetuation of the dogma itself, which
is the substance of religions,1 of which worship is only the form. A religion
that would become more minutely detailed, more inflexible and more bur-
dened by small observances at the same time that men are becoming more
equal, would soon see itself reduced to a troop of passionate zealots in the
middle of an unbelieving multitude.
g. The manuscript says: “I do not deny the utility of forms.” See note r for p. 1270.
1. In all religions, there are ceremonies that are inherent in the very substance of belief
and that must be carefully kept from changing in any way. That is seen particularly in Ca-
tholicism, where form and foundation are often so closely united that they are one.
I know that some will not fail to object that religions, all having general
and eternal truths as their object, cannot bend in this way to the changing
instincts of each century, without losing the character of certitude in the
eyes of men. I will answer here again that you must distinguish very care-
fully between the principal opinions that constitute a belief and that form
what theologians call the articles of faith, and the incidental notions that
are linked to them. Religions are obliged always to hold firm in the first,
whatever the particular spirit of the times; but they must very carefully keep
from binding themselves in the same way to the second, during centuries
when everything changes position constantly and when the mind, accus-
tomed to the moving spectacle of human affairs, reluctantly allows itself
to be fixed. Immobility in external and secondary things does not seem to
me a possibility for enduring except when civil society itself is immobile;
everywhere else, I am led to believe that it is a danger.
We will see that, among all the passions to which equality gives birth or
favors, there is one that it makes particularly intense and that it deposits at
the same time in the heart of all men; it is the love of well-being. The taste
for well-being forms like the salient and indelible feature of democratic
ages.
It can be believed that a religion that undertook to destroy this funda-
mental passion would in the end be destroyed by it; if a religion wanted to
drag men away entirely from the contemplation of the good things of this
world in order to deliver them solely to the thought of those of the other,
you can predict that souls would finally escape from its hands and go far
from it to plunge into material and present pleasures alone.
The principal business of religions is to purify, to regulate and to limit
the overly ardent and overly exclusive taste for well-being that men feel in
times of equality; but I believe that religions would be wrong to try to
overcome it entirely and to destroy it. Religions will not succeed in turning
men away from love of riches; but they can still persuade them to enrich
themselves only by honest means.h
h. “I believe religious beliefs necessary for all democratic peoples, but I believe them
necessary for the Americans more than for all others. In a society constituted like the
American republics, the only non-material conceptions [v: the only non-material tastes]
come from religion” (YTC, CVa, p. 5).
This leads me to a final consideration that, in a way, includes all the

others. As men become more similar and more equal, it is more important
for religions, while still keeping carefully out of the daily movement of
affairs, not unnecessarily to go against generally accepted ideas and the per-
manent interests that rule the mass; for common opinion appears more and
more as the first and most irresistible of powers; outside of it there is no
support strong enough to allow resistance to its blows for long.j That is no
less true among a democratic people, subjected to a despot, than in a re-
public. In centuries of equality, kings often bring about obedience, but it
is always the majority that brings about belief; so it is the majority that must
be pleased in everything not contrary to faith.
[It would be wrong to attribute only to the Puritan origin of Americans
the power that religion retains among them; there are many other causes
as well. The object of what precedes was to make the reader better under-
stand the principal ones.]k I showed, in my first work, how American priests
stand aside from public affairs. This is the most striking example, but not
the only example, of self-restraint. In America, religion is a world apart
where the priest reigns but which he is careful never to leave; within its
limits, he leadsm minds; outside he leaves men to themselves and abandons
them to the independence and to the instability that are appropriate to their
nature and to the time. I have not seen a country where Christianity was
less enveloped by forms, practices and images than in the United States,
and where it presented more clear, more simple and more general ideas to
the human mind. Although the Christians of America are divided into a
j. “In democratic centuries religion needs the majority, and to gain this majority its
genius must not be contrary to the democratic genius” (Rubish, 1).
k. I have already pointed out two great causes for the power of religious beliefs in
America:
1. The Puritan origin.
2. The separation of church and State.
These two causes are very powerful, but they are not democratic; the ones that
remain for me are democratic (Rubish, 1).
m. The manuscript says: “he subjugates.”
multitude of sects, they all see their religion from this same perspective.
This applies to Catholicism as well as to the other beliefs. There are no
Catholic priests who show less taste for small individual observances, ex-
traordinary and particular methods of gaining your salvation [indulgences,
pilgrimages and relics], or who are attached more to the spirit of the law
and less to its letter than the Catholic priests of the United States; nowhere
is the doctrine of the Church that forbids giving the saints the worship that
is reserved only for God taught more clearly and followed more. Still, the
Catholics of America are very dutiful and very sincere.
Another remark is applicable to the clergy of all communions. American
priests do not try to attract and fix the entire attention of man on the future
life; they willingly abandon a part of his heart to the cares of the present;
they seem to consider the good things of this world as important, though
secondary matters. If they themselves do not participate in industry, they
are at least interested in its progress and applaud it, and, while constantly
pointing out the other world to the faithful man as the great object of his
fears and of his hopes, they do not forbid him to seek well-being honestly
in this one. Far from showing him how the two things are separate and
opposite, they pay particular attention instead to finding in what place they
touch and are connected.
All American priests know the intellectual dominion exercised by the
majority and respect it. They support only necessary struggles against the
majority. They do not get involved in party quarrels, but they willingly
adopt the general opinions of their country and their time, and they go
along without resistance with the current of sentiments and ideas that car-
ries everything along around them. They try hard to correct their contem-
poraries, but do not separate from them. So public opinion is never their
enemy; instead it sustains and protects them, and their beliefs reign si-
multaneously with the strengths that are their own and those that they bor-
row from the majority.
In this way, by respecting all the democratic instincts that are not con-
trary to it and by using several of those instincts to help itself, religion
succeeds in struggling with advantage against the spirit of individual in-
dependence that is the most dangerous of all to religion.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 6a
Of the Progress of Catholicism
in the United States
America is the most democratic country on earth, and at the same time the
country where, according to trustworthy reports,b the Catholic religion is
making the most progress. This is surprising at first view.
Two things must be clearly distinguished. Equality disposes men to want
to judge by themselves; but, from another side, it gives them the taste and
the idea of a single social power, simple and the same for all. So men who
live in democratic centuries are very inclined to avoid all religious authority.
But, if they consent to submit to such an authority, they at least want it to
be unitary and uniform; religious powers that do not all lead to the same
center [or in other words national churches] are naturally shocking to their
a. This chapter, which bears the number Vbis in the manuscript, as well as the one
that follows, are not included in the list of notebook CVf. In the manuscript the first
title is: how the progress of equality has favored the progress of
catholicism.
On the jacket of the manuscript you find this note: “Ask for some figures from Mr.
Wash perhaps.” Probably this concerns Robert Walsh, American journalist, founder of
the National Gazette. Tocqueville and Beaumont met him in Philadelphia (George W.
Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 475–76, 537).
b. Several conversations with Americans had persuaded Tocqueville of the rapid in-
crease of Catholicism in the United States. This fact has been contested by certain Amer-
ican critics. On this subject, it can be recalled that, in his first letters from America,
Tocqueville noted that if the lower classes tended toward Catholicism, the upper classes
converted instead to Unitarianism (cf. alphabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIa, and Voyage,
OC, V, 1, pp. 230–32. YTC, BIIa contains a note on conversions in India copied from
the Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register, 4, April 1831, p. 316. It is not reproduced in
Voyage ).
754
of the progress of catholicism 755
intelligence, and they imagine almost as easily that there is no religion as

that there are several.c
You see today, more than in earlier periods, Catholics who become un-
believers and Protestants who turn into Catholics. If you consider Ca-
tholicism internally, it seems to lose; if you look at it from the outside, it
gains. That can be explained.
Men today are naturally little disposed to believe; but as soon as they
have a religion, they find a hidden instinct within themselves that pushes
them without their knowing toward Catholicism. Several of the doctrines
and practices of the Roman Church astonish them;d but they experience
a secret admiration for its government, and its great unity attracts them.
If Catholicism succeeded finally in escaping from the political hatreds
to which it gave birth, I hardly doubt that this very spirit of the century,
which seems so contrary to it, would become very favorable to it,e and that
it would suddenly make great conquests.
It is one of the most familiar weaknesses of human intelligence to want
to reconcile contrary principles and to buy peace at the expense of logic.
c. “Two very curious conversations could be done, one with a Protestant minister,
the other with a Catholic priest. They would be made to uphold on all points opposed
[sic ] to what they are in the custom of upholding elsewhere.
“These conversations would have to be preceded by a portrait of these two men and
of their institutions. Very piquant details would result from all of that for the French
public above all” (YTC, CVa, p. 55. See the appendix bearing the title sects in
america).
d. The manuscript says: “repulse them.”
e. The chapter finishes in this way in the manuscript:
“and that it would end by being the only religion of all those who would have a
religion.
“I think that it is possible that all men who make up the Christian nations will in the
long run come to be no longer divided except into two parts. Some will leave Christianity
entirely and others will go into the Roman Church.”
In 1843, Tocqueville had a very different secret opinion about the relation between
Catholicism and democracy.
“Catholicism,” he wrote to Francisque de Corcelle, “which produces such admirable
effects in certain cases, which must be upheld with all one’s power because in France
religious spirit can exist only with it, Catholicism, I am very afraid, will never adopt the
new society. It will never forget the position that it had in the old one and every time
that [it] is given some powers, it will hasten to abuse them. I will say that only to you.
But I say it to you, because I want to have you enter into my most secret thought”
Correspondance avec Corcelle, OC, XV, 1, p. 174.
of the progress of catholicism 756
So there have always been and will always be men who, after submitting a
few of their religious beliefs to an authority, will want some other religious
beliefs to elude it, and will allow their minds to float haphazardly between
obedience and liberty. But I am led to believe that the number of the latter
will be fewer in democratic centuries than in other centuries, and that our
descendants will tend more and more to divide into only two parts, some
leaving Christianity entirely, others going into the Roman Church.
s4s4s4s4s4
chapter 7
What Makes the Minds of Democratic Peoples
Incline toward Pantheism a
I will show later how the predominant taste of democratic peoples for very
general ideas is found again in politics; but now I want to point out its
principal effect in philosophy.
It cannot be denied that pantheism has made great progress in our time.
The writings of a portion of Europe clearly carry its mark. The Germans
introduce it into philosophy, and the French into literature. Among the
works of the imagination that are published in France, most contain some
opinions or some portrayals borrowed from pantheistic doctrines, or allow
a sort of tendency toward those doctrines to be seen in their authors. This
does not appear to me to happen only by accident, but is due to a lasting
cause.b
As conditions become more equal and each man in particular becomes
more similar to all the others, weaker and smaller, you get used to no longer
envisaging citizens in order to consider only the people; you forget indi-
viduals in order to think only about the species.
In these times, the human mind loves to embrace all at once [and to mix
up in the same view] a host of diverse matters; it constantly aspires to be
able to connect a multitude of consequences to a single cause.
a. In the first page of the manuscript: “⫽Very small chapter done afterward and that
I think should be placed after general ideas. Think more whether it must be included
and where to place it. Perhaps it is too unique to be separate.⫽”
It carries the number 3bis in the manuscript, and the first paragraph clearly indicates
that at the moment of drafting it followed the current chapter 4, consecrated to general
ideas in politics. The jacket of the chapter in the manuscript also contains a rough draft
of the chapter.
b. In the margin, in pencil: “[illegible word]. Ampère.”
757
pantheism 758
The mind is obsessed by the idea of unity, looking for it in all directions,
and, when it believes unity has been found, it embraces it and rests there.
Not only does the human mind come to discover in the world only one
creation and one creator, this first division of things still bothers it, and it
readily tries to enlarge and to simplify its thought by containing God and
the universe in a single whole. If I find a philosophical system according
to which the things material and immaterial, visible and invisible that the
world contains are no longer considered except as the various parts of an
immense being that alone remains eternal amid the continual change and
incessant transformation of everything that composes it, I will have no dif-
ficulty concluding that such a system, although it destroys human individ-
uality, or rather because it destroys it, will have secret charms for men who
live in democracy; all their intellectual habits prepare them for conceiving
it and set them on the path to adopt it. It naturally attracts their imagination
and fixes it; it feeds the pride of their mind and flatters its laziness.c
Among the different systems by the aid of which philosophy seeks to
explain the world, pantheism seems to me the one most likely to seduce
the human mind in democratic centuries.d All those who remain enamored
of the true grandeur of man must join forces and struggle against it.
c. Religious .-.-.-.-.-.- of a unique being regulating all men by the same laws is an
essentially democratic idea. It can arise in other centuries, but it can have its complete
development only in these centuries. Example of that in the Christianity of the Mid-
dle Ages when populations, without losing the general idea of a unique god, split up
the divinity in the form of saints. So in democratic centuries a religion that wants to
strike minds naturally must therefore get as close as possible to the idea of unity, of
generality, of equality” (With the notes of chapter 5. Rubish, 1).
d. “Democracy, which brings about the idea of the unity of human nature, brings
men back constantly to the idea of the unity of the creator./
“Household gods, particular saints of a family, patrons of cities and of kingdoms, all
that is aristocratic.
“To accept all these different celestial powers, you must not believe all to be of the
same species.
[With a bracket that includes the last two paragraphs: Hic. ]” (In the rubish of chapter
5. Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 8a
How Equality Suggests to the Americans the
Idea of the Indefinite Perfectibility of Man b [TN 7]
Equality suggests several ideas to the human mind that would not have
occurred to it otherwise, and it modifies nearly all those that the mind al-
ready had. I take for example the idea of human perfectibility, because it
is one of the principal ones that intelligence can conceive and because it
a. A note from the rubish of the foreword indicates that Tocqueville had thought of
having this chapter followed by the one on interest well understood:
After showing how a democratic social state could give birth in the human mind to
the idea of indefinite perfectibility, my intention was to show how this same social
state brings men to adopt the doctrine of interest well understood as principal rule
of life.
I would have thus pointed out to the reader the two principal ideas that in America
[added: it seems to me] guide most of the actions of the Americans.
But I am finding unforeseen difficulties that force me to divide my work (With
notes of the foreword. Rubish, 1).
b. 1. The idea of human perfectibility is as old as man. But equality gives it a new
character.
2. Among aristocratic peoples where everything is immobile and appears eternal,
where men are fixed in castes, classes or professions that they cannot leave, the idea
of perfectibility appears to the human mind only in a confused form and with very
narrow limits.
3. In democratic societies where each man can try on his behalf to ameliorate his
lot, where everything changes constantly and gives rise to infinite attempts, where
each individual comparing himself to the mass has a prodigious idea of the form
[strength? (ed.)] of the latter, the idea of perfectibility besets the human mind and
assumes immense proportions.
4. This shown by America (YTC, CVf, pp. 7–8).
Translator’s Note 7: For this title and chapter, I have used the cognate indefi-
nite, a more literary term still carrying the sense of without limit or not limited, rather
than using either unlimited or infinite.
759
idea of the indefinite perfectibility of man 760
constitutes by itself alone a great philosophical theory whose consequences

are revealed each moment in the conduct of affairs.
Although man resembles animals in several ways, one feature is particular
only to him alone; he perfects himself, and they do not perfect themselves.
The human species could not fail to discover this difference from the be-
ginning. So the idea of perfectibility is as old as the world; equality did not
give birth to it, but equality gave it a new character.
When citizens are classed according to rank, profession, birth, and when
all are compelled to follow the path on which chance placed them, each
man believes that near him he sees the furthest limits of human power, and
no one tries any more to struggle against an inevitable destiny. It is not that
aristocratic peoples absolutely deny man the ability to perfect himself. They
do not judge it to be indefinite; they conceive of amelioration, not change;
they imagine the condition of society becoming better, but not different;
and, while admitting that humanity has made great progress and that it can
still make more progress, they enclose humanity in advance within im-
passable limits.
So they do not believe they have reached the supreme good and absolute
truth (what man or what people has been so foolish ever to imagine that?),
but they like to persuade themselves that they have almost attained the
degree of grandeur and knowledge that our imperfect nature entails; and
since nothing stirs around them, they readily imagine that everything is in
its place.c That is when the lawmaker claims to promulgate eternal laws,
when peoples and kings want to erect only enduring monuments and when
the present generation assumes the task of sparing future generations the
trouble of regulating their own destiny.
c. Certitude:
I imagine that after long debating a point with others and with yourself, you reach
the will to act, but not certitude. Discussion can show clearly what must be done,
but almost never with utter certainty what must be believed. It always raises more
new objections than the old ones it destroys. Only it draws the mind from the fog in
which it rested and, allowing it to see different probabilities distinctly, forces it to come
to a decision.
[On the side: June 1838.] (YTC, CVa, p. 47).
As castes disappear, as classes come closer together, as common practices,

customs, and laws vary because men are mixed tumultuously together, as
new facts arise, as new truths come to light, as old opinions disappear and
as others take their place, the image of an ideal and always fleeting perfec-
tion presents itself to the human mind.
Continual changes then pass before the eyes of each man at every mo-
ment. Some changes worsen his position, and he understands only too well
that a people or an individual, however enlightened, is not infallible. Other
changes improve his lot, and he concludes that man, in general, is endowed
with the indefinite ability to improve. His failures make him see that no
one can claim to have discovered absolute good; his successes inflame him
in pursuing the absolute good without respite. Therefore, always searching,
falling, getting up again, often disappointed, never discouraged, he tends
constantly toward this immense grandeur that he half sees vaguely at the
end of the long course that humanity must still cover.
[When conditions are equal each man finds himself so small next to the
mass that he imagines nothing equivalent to the efforts of the latter. The
sentiment of his own weakness leads him each day to exaggerate the power
of the human species.]
You cannot believe how many facts flow naturally from this philosoph-
ical theory that man is indefinitely perfectible,d and the prodigious influ-
d. I am so sure that everything in this world has its limit that not to see the limit of
something seems to me to be the most certain sign of the weakness of the human
mind.
A man is endowed with an intelligence superior to that of the common man. He
has beautiful thoughts, great sentiments; he takes extraordinary actions. How would
I take hold of him in order to bring him back to the common level?
He deems that a certain truth that strikes his view is applicable in all times and to
all men, or he judges that one of his fellows whom he admires is worthy to be admired
and merits being imitated in everything.
That is enough to make me see his limits and to indicate to me where he comes
back into the ordinary conditions of humanity.
He would place the limit of the true and the good elsewhere than where I place it
myself; from that I would not conclude that he fails at everything at this point; I would
instead feel disposed to believe that I am wrong myself.
ence that it exercises on even those who, occupied only with acting and not
with thinking, seem to conform their actions to it without knowing it.
I meet an American sailor, and I ask him why the vessels of his country
are constituted so as not to last for long, and he answers me without hes-
itation that the art of navigation makes such rapid progress each day, that
the most beautiful ship would soon become nearly useless if it lasted beyond
a few years.e
In these chance words said by a coarse man and in regard to a particular
fact, I see the general and systematic idea by which a great people conducts
all things.
Aristocratic nations are naturally led to compress the limits of human
perfectibility too much, and democratic nations to extend them sometimes
beyond measure.
But if he puts the limit nowhere, I have no further need to discuss it and I regard
it as established that he is wrong.
5 April 1836. (YTC, CVa, pp. 35–36).
e. Note of Tocqueville in the manuscript: “This answer was given to me, but it con-
cerned only steamboats.”
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 9a
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
a. On the jacket containing the chapter: “The first part of the chapter seems good to
me. The second does not satisfy me. The evidence does not grab my mind. Something,
I do not know what, is missing./
“Perhaps it will be necessary to have the courage to delete this section entirely in order
to arrive immediately at the chapter on details.” See note a of pp. 696–97.
The cover of the rubish of this chapter bears this note: “Very considerable and suf-
ficiently finished fragments of the chapter as it was before the revision of September
1838” (Rubish, 1). Tocqueville already had worked on the chapters on art, science and
literature in June 1836.
Bonnel (YTC, CVf, p. 1) remarks that a copy of the Journal des débats of 2 April 1838
exists inside a jacket on which Tocqueville wrote: “Journal to reread when I treat the
direction that equality gives to the fine arts.” The number of the Journal des débats cited
contains the second part of the review, by Philarète Chasles, of the work of E. J. De-
lécluze, Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Léopold Robert (Paris: Rittner and Goupil, 1838);
the first had been published March 18. This book contains a commentary on the indus-
trialization of art that could have interested Tocqueville.
b. 1. The Americans have made little progress in the sciences, letters and arts.
2. This is due to causes that are more American than democratic.
1. Puritan origin.
2. Nature of the country that leads too vigorously to the sole search for riches.
3. Proximity of scientific and literary Europe and of England in particular.
3. Why other democratic peoples would be different.
1. A people who would be ignorant and (illegible word) at the same time as dem-
ocratic, not only would not cultivate the sciences, letters and the arts, but also would
never come to cultivate them. The law would constantly undo fortunes without cre-
ating new ones. Since ignorance and (illegible word) benumb souls, the poor man
would not even have the idea of bettering his lot and the rich man of defending
himself against the approach of poverty. Equality would become complete and in-
vincible and no one would ever have either the time or the taste for devoting them-
763
the sciences, literature, and the arts 764
It must be recognized that, among the civilized people of today, there are
few among whom the advanced sciences have made less progress than in
the United States, and who have provided fewer great artists, illustrious
poets and celebrated writers.c
Some Europeans, struck by this spectacle, have considered it as a natural
and inevitable result of equality, and they have thought that, if the dem-
ocratic social state and institutions came at some time to prevail over all the
selves to the works and pleasures of the mind. But it isn’t the same with a people who
become democratic while remaining enlightened and free. Why:
1. Since each man conceives the idea of the better and has the liberty to strive
toward it, a general effort is made toward wealth. Since each man is reduced to his
own strength, he attains wealth depending on whether he has greater or lesser nat-
ural abilities. And since natural inequality is very great, fortunes become very un-
equal and the law of inheritance has no effect other than preventing the perpetu-
ation of wealth in families. From the moment when inequality of fortunes exists,
there are men of leisure, and from the moment when men have leisure, they tend
by themselves toward the works and pleasures of the mind.
In an enlightened and free democratic society, men of leisure will have neither the
usual wealth, nor the perfect tranquillity, nor the interests that the members of an
aristocracy have, but they are much more numerous.
2. Not only is the number of those who can occupy their intelligence greater, but
also the pleasures and the works of the mind are followed by a crowd of men who
would in no way be involved in them in aristocratic societies.
[In the margin:
1. Utility of knowledge which appears to all and which arouses all to attempt to
acquire some knowledge.
2. Perpetual mixture of all classes, all men continually growing closer together,
emulation, ambition, envy that make even the worker claim to give his mind some
culture.
3. From the moment when the crowd is led to the works of the mind, a multitude
devotes itself to them with ardor in order to gain glory, power, wealth. Democratic
activity shows itself there as elsewhere. Production is immense.
Conclusion. Enlightened and free democratic societies do not neglect the sciences,
the arts, letters; they only cultivate them in their own way] (YTC, CVf, pp. 8–10).
c. “To begin the chapter by: It must be recognized . . . something moderate, supple,
and not too intensely satirical. I must not put the Americans too low, if afterward I want
to raise up other democratic peoples” (Rubish, 1).
earth,d the human mind would see the enlightenment that illuminates it
darken little by little, and man would fall back into the shadows.
d. Passage that began the chapter, in a jacket of the rubish that carries this explanation:
⫽Portion of the chapter relating to the particular reasons that turn Americans away
from the sciences, literature and the arts.⫽/
Portions of the old chapter./
.-.-.-.-.-.- the frontiers of the United States toward the Northwest still meet here
and there in nearly inaccessible places and on the banks of raging torrents against
whose course European boats or canoes are unable to go, small groups of beavers half
destroyed, remnants of a great amphibious population that formerly extended over
the major part of the continent. Although reduced to a very small number, these
industrious animals have kept their habits, I could almost say their civilization and
their laws.
You see them as in the past devote themselves to different types of industry with
surprising dexterity and marvelous harmony. They make bridges, raise large dams
that make the rivers meander and, after establishing the walls of the dwelling ac-
cording to a methodical and uniform plan, they take care to isolate it in the middle
of a lake created by their efforts.
That is where, in a secure and tranquil refuge, the generations succeed each other
obscurely, amid a profound peace and an unbroken well-being.
Although the most perfect harmony seems to reign within this small society, you
cannot find there, if the accounts of the voyageurs do not mislead us, the trace of a
hierarchical order; each one there is busy without letup with his affairs, but is always
ready to lend his aid.
One day civilized man, this destroyer or this ruler of all beings, comes to pass
by and the amphibious republic [v: nation] disappears forever without leaving a
trace.
[In the margin: See the description of Buffon. Order, property, comfort, work in
common and the division of property, public granaries, internal peace, union of all
to repulse external violence.]
Ill-humored observers have been found who wanted to see in this republic of
beavers a fairly faithful symbol of the republic of the United States.
Americans have concentrated, it is true, in a surprising way on material concerns
.-.-.-.- to man only to have him more easily discover the means to satisfy the needs
of the body.
It is not that the inhabitant of the United States is a coarse [v: unpolished] being,
but among the products of civilization, he has chosen what was most defined, most
material, most positive in order to appropriate it for himself. He has devoted himself
to the study of the sciences only to look immediately for the useful applications; in
letters, he saw only a powerful means to create individual affluence and social well-
being; and he cultivated the arts much less to produce objects of value than to decorate
and beautify the existence of the rich. You could say that he wanted to develop the
Those who reason in this way confuse, I think, several ideas that it would
be important to separate and to examine apart. Without wanting to, they
mix what is democratic with what is only American.e
The religion that the first emigrants professed and that they handed
down to their descendants, simple in its worship, austere and nearly prim-
itive in its principles, enemy of external signs and of the pomp of cere-
monies, is naturally little favorable to the fine arts and permits literary plea-
sures only reluctantly.
[⫽At their arrival on the shores of the New World, these men were at
first assailed by such great needs and threatened by such great dangers, that
they had to dedicate all the resources of their intelligence to satisfying the
first and overcoming the second.⫽]
The Americans are a very ancient and very enlightened people, who en-
countered a new and immense country in which they can expand at will,
and that they make fruitful without difficulty. That is without example in
intellectual power of man only to make it serve the pleasures of his physical nature
and that he has employed all the resources of the angel only to perfect the animal
[variant in the margin: ⫽beast⫽].
Among the Europeans who from their arrival in the United States have been struck
by this spectacle, there are several who have seen in this tendency of the American
mind a necessary and inevitable result of democracy and who have thought that if
democratic institutions succeeded in prevailing over all the earth the human mind
. . .” (rubish, 1).
In the rubish influence of democracy on literature, Tocqueville com-
ments: “To make fun of those who believe that democracy will lead us to live like the
beavers. Perhaps true if it had started with societies.
“[To the side: Democracy without liberty would perhaps extinguish the enlighten-
ment of the human mind. You would then have only the vices of the system.]”
Cf. Pensée 257 of Pascal (Lafuma edition). Also see Correspondance avec Kergorlay, OC,
XIII, 1, p. 389.
The library of the Tocqueville château contained at least two works of Buffon: Histoire
naturelle générale et particulière, 1769, 13 vols.; and Histoire naturelle des oiseaux, 1770, 4
vols. (YTC, AIe).
e. In the margin: “<The Americans have appeared to concentrate on the material cares
of life and they have seemed to believe that intelligence was given to man only to allow
him more easily to discover the means to satisfy the needs of the body.>” On this subject,
see Teddy Brunius, Alexis de Tocqueville, the Sociological Aesthetician (Uppsala: Almqvist
and Wicksell, 1960).
the world. So in America, each man finds opportunities unknownelsewhere

to make or to increase his fortune. Greed is always in good condition there,
and the human mind, distracted at every moment from the pleasures of
the imagination and the works of intelligence, is drawn only into the pur-
suit of wealth. Not only do you see in the United States, as in all other
countries, industrial and commercial classes; but, what has never been seen,
all men there are busy at the same time with industry and with commerce.
I am persuaded however that, if the Americans had been alone in the
universe, with the liberties and enlightenment acquired by their fathers and
the passions that were their own, they would not have taken long to discover
that you cannot make progress for long in the application of the sciences
without cultivating the theory; that all the arts improve by their interaction,
and however absorbed they might have been in the pursuit of the principal
object of their desires, they would soon have recognized that to reach it
better, they had to turn away from it from time to time.
The taste for pleasures of the mind is, moreover, so natural to the heart
of civilized man that, among the cultured nations that are least disposed
to devote themselves to it, there is always a certain number of citizens who
develop it. This intellectual need, once felt, would have soon been satisfied.
But, at the same time that the Americans were led naturally to ask of
science only its particular applications, of the arts only the means to make
life easy, learned and literary Europe took care of going back to the general
sources of truth, and perfected at the same time all that can work toward
the pleasures of man as well as all that must serve his needs.f
f. To the side: “⫽America forms like one part of the middle classes of England.⫽”
In the rubish, inside the jacket that is entitled portions of the old chapter:
Among all the classes which made up the English nation there was particularly one
that, placed above the people by its comfort and below the nobles by the mediocrity
of its fortune, possessed the tranquil tastes [v: the love of well-being], the simple
habits, the incomplete enlightenment, the good practical and [blank (ed.)] sense
that in nearly all countries. .-.-.-.-.- middle classes. It was the middle classes that
provided to the population of the United States its principal and so to speak its
only elements.
At the head of the enlightened nations of the Old World, the inhabitants
of the United States particularly singled out one with whom a common
origin and analogous habits closely united them. They found among this
people famous scientists, skilled artists, great writers, and they could reap
the rewards of intelligence without needing to work to accumulate them.
I cannot agree to separate America from Europe, despite the Ocean that
divides them. I consider the people of the United States as the portion of
the English people charged with exploiting the forests of the New World,
while the rest of the nation, provided with more leisure and less preoccu-
pied by the material cares of life, is able to devote itself to thought and to
develop the human mind in all aspects.
[<⫽So I think that democracy must no more be judged by America than
the different nations of Europe by one of the commercial and manufac-
turing classes that are found within them.⫽>]
So the situation of the Americans is entirely exceptional, and it may be
believed that no democratic people will ever be put in the same situation.
Their entirely Puritan origin, their uniquely commercial habits, even the
country that they inhabit and that seems to divert their intelligence from
the study of the sciences, letters and the arts; the proximity of Europe, that
allows them not to study them without falling back into barbarism; a thou-
sand particular causes, of which I have been able to show only the principal
ones, had to concentrate the American mind in a singular way in the con-
cern for purely material things. The passions, needs, education, circum-
stances, everything seems in fact to combine to bend the inhabitant of the
Scarcely transported to the shores of the New World, these men were at first as-
sailed by great needs and threatened by great dangers against which they had at first
to direct their entire attention in order to satisfy the first and to ward off the second.
After these first obstacles had been conquered, it was found that the country they
inhabited offered such incredible possibilities to human industry that there was no
one there who could not aspire to comfort and many to wealth, so that the human
mind, diverted from the pursuit of the sciences, distracted from the pleasures of the
mind, insensitive to the attractions of the arts, found itself as if carried away despite
itself by a rapid torrent toward only the acquisition of wealth [v: well-being]” (Rub-
ish, 1).
United States toward the earth. Religion alone makes him, from time to
time, turn a fleeting and distracted gaze toward heaven.
So let us stop seeing all democratic nations with the face of the American
people, and let us try finally to consider them with their own features.g
g. Fragment in the manuscript:

“⫽If those who think that the sciences, letters and the arts cannot prosper among
democratic peoples assumed the existence of the three principal circumstances that
I am going to talk about, I would perhaps share their sentiment.
I imagine a people newly emerged from the uncivilized state, among whom con-
ditions remained equal and political power is concentrated in the hands of one man.
That among a democratic nation of this type the human mind would be stopped in
its development, curbed and as if struck by a sort of intellectual paralysis, I accept
without difficulty.⫽
[In the margin: Here take if possible a confident, simple, short, broken, didactic
style. Free myself from the oratorical form.
Read Beaumont’s piece.
Under democracies that come after an aristocratic order, that are enlightened
and free, the sciences, literature and the arts develop, but they develop in a certain
way./
America itself can provide us with illuminating details on this point.
(Note) The underlined sentence must not be lost from view and try to bind myself
to it.
This chapter on general ideas must be short and followed by separate small chapters
on the sciences, letters and the arts. Mix America as much as possible with all of that.]
⫽But why imagine an imaginary democracy when we can easily conceive of a real
one? What good is it to go back to the origin of the world⫽ when what is happening
before our eyes is enough to enlighten us?
I take the European peoples such as they appear before my eyes, with their aris-
tocratic traditions, their acquired enlightenment, their liberties, and I wonder if by
becoming democratic they risk, as some would like to persuade us, falling back into
a kind of barbarism.
There exists at the bottom of the human heart a natural taste for things of the
mind and the enjoyments of the imagination, as well as an instinctive tendency to-
ward the pleasures of the senses. The mind of man left to itself leans from one side
toward the limited, the material and the commercial, the useful, from the other it
tends without effort toward the infinite, the non-material, the great and the beautiful.
So when men have once tasted, as among us, the intellectual and delicate pleasures
that civilization provides, I cannot believe that he [sic ] will ever get sick of them.
Legislation, social state can direct in a certain way the natural tendency that leads men
there, but not destroy it.
[To the side, with a bracket that includes the last two paragraphs: ⫽All of that is
perhaps too metaphysical, too long . . .⫽]
You can imagine a people among whom there would be neither caste,
nor hierarchy, nor class; where the law, recognizing no privileges, would
divide inheritances equally; and who, at the same time, would be deprived
of enlightenment and liberty. This is not an empty hypothesis: a despot
can find it in his interest to make his subjects equal and to leave them ig-
norant, in order to keep them slaves more easily.
Not only would a democratic people of this type show neither aptitude
nor taste for the sciences, literature and the arts, but also you may believe
that it will never show them.
The law of inheritance would itself undertake in each generation to de-
stroy fortunes, and no one would create new ones. The poor man, deprived
of enlightenment and liberty, would not even conceive the idea of rising
toward wealth, and the rich man would allow himself to be carried along
toward poverty without knowing how to defend himself. A complete and
Give a democratic people enlightenment and liberty and you will see them, you
can be sure, bring to the study of the sciences, letters and the arts the same feverish
activity that they show in all the rest.
[In the margin: The first idea is this one:
A people who has acquired the habit of literary pleasures cannot get out of the
habit completely. There will always remain at least a large number of men who will
keep it and there will be utility and profit in satisfying the latter.
The second:
Among an enlightened and free people equality cannot fail to have limits. Many
rich men, men of leisure who perhaps would not by themselves conceive the pleasures
of the imagination but who take to those that they see being enjoyed.]”
Beaumont commented on the study of the sciences in America in Marie, I, pp. 247–48.
Some years later, Tocqueville had partially changed his opinion. In a letter dating
probably from 1856 and perhaps addressed to Mignet, he asserted:
Under the spell that your reading cast on me yesterday, I forgot to make a small
observation to you that has recurred to me since and [that (ed.)] I do not want to
leave absolutely in silence. It concerns the very amusing portrait that you do of the
Americans, above all of their scorn for letters. I know that you do not speak there in
your name; nonetheless, I believe that a small correction from you would do well in
that place. I am talking above all of the accusation of being indifferent to letters. You
know that since then they have made, even in this direction, very notable progress.
They begin to count among civilized nations, even in the sciences that relate to pure
theory, like metaphysics. A single parenthesis by you on this subject will reestablish
equity without reducing any of the charm of the tableau (Private archives).
invincible equality would soon be established between these two citizens.

No one would then have either the time or the taste for devoting himself
to the works and pleasures of the mind. But everyone would live benumbed
in the same ignorance and in an equal servitude.
When I come to imagine a democratic society of this type, I immediately
think I feel myself in one of these low, dark and suffocating places, where
lights, brought in from outside, soon grow dim and are extinguished. It
seems to me that a sudden weight overwhelms me, and that I am dragging
myself along among the shadows around me in order to find the exit that
should lead me back to the air and daylight. But all of this cannot apply
to men already enlightened who remain free after destroying the particular
and hereditary rights that perpetuated property in the hands of certain in-
dividuals or certain bodies.
[<In democratic societies of this type equality encounters necessary lim-
its that it cannot go beyond.>]
When the men who live within a democratic society are enlightened,
they discover without difficulty that nothing either limits them or fixes their
situation or forces them to be content with their present fortune.
So they all conceive the idea of increasing it, and, if they are free, they
all try to do so, but all do not succeed in the same way. The legislature, it
is true, no longer grants privileges, but nature gives them. Since natural
inequality is very great, fortunes become unequal from the moment when
each man makes use of all his abilities in order to grow rich.
The law of inheritance is still opposed to the establishment of rich fam-
ilies, but it no longer prevents the existence of the rich. It constantly leads
citizens back toward a common level from which they constantly escape;
they become more unequal in property the more their enlightenment in-
creases and the greater their liberty is.
In our time a sect celebrated for its genius and its extravagances arose; it
claimed to concentrate all property in the hands of a central power and to
charge the latter with distributing it afterward, according to merit, to all
individuals. You were shielded in this way from the complete and eternal
equality that seems to threaten democratic societies.
There is another simpler and less dangerous remedy; it is to grant privi-
lege to no one, to give everyone equal enlightenment and an equal inde-
pendence, and to leave to each man the care of making his place for himself.
Natural inequality will soon appear and wealth will pass by itself toward
the most able.h
So [enlightened] and free democratic societies will always contain within
them a multitude of wealthy or well-to-do men. These rich men will not
be bound as closely together as members of the old aristocratic class; they
will have different instincts and will hardly ever possess a leisure as secure
and as complete; but they will be infinitely more numerous than those who
composed this class could have been. These men will not be narrowly con-
fined within the preoccupations of material life and they will be able, al-
though to varying degrees, to devote themselves to the works and pleasures
of the mind. So they will devote themselves to them; for, if it is true that
the human mind leans from one side toward the limited, the material and
the useful, from the other, it rises naturally toward the infinite, the non-
material and the beautiful. Physical needs attach the mind to the earth, but,
as soon as you no longer hold it down, it stands up by itself.
Not only will the number of those who can interest themselves in the
works of the mind be greater, but also the taste for intellectual enjoyments
will descend, from one person to the next, even to those who, in aristocratic
societies, seem to have neither the time nor the capacity to devote them-
selves to those enjoyments.
When there are no more hereditary riches, privileges of class and pre-
rogatives of birth, and when each man no longer draws his strength except
from himself, it becomes clear that what makes the principal difference
among the fortunes of men is intelligence. All that serves to fortify, to ex-
pand and to embellish intelligence immediately acquires a great value.
h. ⫽Give all citizens equal means [v: instruction and liberty] to achieve wealth and
prevent wealth acquired by the individual efforts of one of them from then going to
accumulate by itself and being transmitted without difficulty to all of his descen-
dants, and you will very naturally approach the goal toward which the Saint-
Simonians claim to go, without using the dangerous and impractical means that they
indicate. Leave men alone. They will class themselves according to their capacity, just
watch that nothing prevents them from doing so.⫽
[In the margin] These ideas are capital. They clarify my mind and clearly show me
the place where it is necessary to build (Rubish, 1. A nearly identical passage exists on
the page that carries the number 8).
The utility of knowledge reveals itself with an extremely particular clar-

ity to the very eyes of the crowd. Those who do not appreciate its charms
value its effects and make some efforts to achieve it.
In enlightened and free democratic centuries, men have nothing that
separates them or anything that keeps them in their place; they go up or
go down with a singular rapidity. All classes see each other constantly, be-
cause they are very close. They communicate and mingle every day, imitate
and envy each other; that suggests to the people a host of ideas, notions,
desires that they would not have had if ranks had been fixed and society
immobile. In these nations, the servant never considers himself as a com-
plete stranger to the pleasures and works of the master, the poor to those
of the rich; the man of the country tries hard to resemble the man of the
city, and the provinces, the metropolis.
Thus, no one allows himself easily to be reduced to the material cares
of life alone, and the most humble artisan casts, from time to time, a few
eager and furtive glances into the superior world of intelligence. People do
not read in the same spirit and in the same way as among aristocratic peo-
ples; but the circle of readers expands constantly and ends by including all
citizens.j
From the moment when the crowd begins to be interested in the works
of the mind, it discovers that a great means to acquire glory, power or wealth
is to excel in a few of them. The restless ambition given birth by equality
[v: democracy] immediately turns in this direction as in all the others. The
number of those who cultivate the sciences, letters and the arts becomes
immense. A prodigious activity reveals itself in the world of the mind; each
man seeks to open a path for himself there and tries hard to attract the eye
of the public. Something occurs there analogous to what happens in the
United States in political society; works are often imperfect, but they are
j. So I am persuaded that conditions, by becoming more equal among us, will only
extend the circle of those who know and value literary pleasures. The whole question
is knowing whether or not they will lose on the side of purity of taste what they gain
on the side of numbers.
But I am far from believing that among democratic peoples who have enlight-
enment and liberty, the number of men of leisure will be as small as is supposed
(Rubish, 1).
innumerable; and, although the results of individual efforts are ordinarily

very small, the general result is always very great.
So it is not true to say that men who live in democratic centuries are
naturally indifferent to the sciences, letters and the arts; only it must be
recognized that they cultivate them in their own way, and that they bring,
from this direction, qualities and defects that are their own.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 0a
Why the Americans Are More Attached to the
Application of the Sciences Than to the Theory b
a. 1. Among democratic peoples, each man wants to judge by himself; no one likes
to believe anyone on his word; no one talks a lot of fine words. All these instincts are
found again in the scientific world, and give to the sciences among the latter peoples
a free, sure, experimental, but less lofty course.
2. Three distinct parts of the sciences, one purely theoretical, another (illegible
word) theoretical but close to application, a last absolutely applied.
The Americans excel in the last two and neglect the first one, why:
1. Meditation is needed to make progress in the most theoretical portion of the
sciences. The perpetual movement that reigns in democratic societies does not allow
devoting oneself to it. It takes away the time and also the desire. In societies where
nearly everyone is constantly in action, there is little esteem for meditation.
2. It is the lofty and disinterested love of truth that pushes the human mind toward
the abstract portion of the sciences. These great scientific passions show themselves
more rarely in democratic centuries than in others, why:
1. Because the social state does not lead to great passions in general, and does not
keep souls on so lofty a tone.
2. Because men who live in democratic societies are constantly in a hurry to enjoy,
are discontent with their position and, aspiring to change it, are not led to value the
sciences except as means to go by the easiest and shortest roads to wealth. So they
reward scientists in this spirit and push them constantly in this direction.
[In the margin: I know something more striking, clearer, better finally than this
deduction, but my mind refuses to grasp it.]
3. In democratic centuries, the government must exercise all its efforts to sustain
the theoretical study of the sciences. Practical study develops by itself.
4. If men turned entirely away from theory to occupy themselves only with the
practical, they could again become by themselves nearly barbarous. Example of China
(YTC, CVf, pp. 11–12).
b. Order of ideas./
775
application of the sciences 776
If the democratic social state and democratic institutions do not stop the
development of the human mind, it is at least incontestable that they lead
it in one direction rather than another. Their efforts, limited in this way,
are still very great, and you will pardon me, I hope, for stopping a moment
to contemplate them.
When it was a matter of the philosophical method of the Americans, I
made several remarks that we should benefit from here.
Equality develops in every man the desire to judge everything by himself;
it gives him, in everything, the taste for the tangible and the real, scorn for
traditions and forms. These general instincts make themselves seen prin-
cipally in the particular subject of this chapter.
Those who cultivate the sciences among democratic peoples are always
afraid of being lost in utopias. They distrust systems; they love to stay very
close to the facts and to study them by themselves; since they do not allow
themselves to be easily impressed by the name of any one of their fellows,
they are never inclined to swear on the word of the master; but, on the
contrary, you see them constantly occupied with searching for the weak
part of his doctrine. Scientific traditions have little sway over them; they
never stop for long in the subtleties of a school, and they spin out a lot of
fancy words with difficulty; they enter as much as they can into the principal
parts of the subject that occupies them, and they love to explain them in
1. Three parts in each science: high, middle, low.

This proved by the science of laws.
These three parts hold together but can be cultivated separately.
2. Equality leads men to neglect the first, in order to occupy themselves only with
the other two. Why:
1. No meditation possible in the middle of democratic movement.
2. Great political liberty that deprives science of great geniuses and great passions.
This is not necessarily democratic.
First a distinction must be made between nations that possess great political liberty
and those that do not have it. This is a great question: political genius and scientific
genius are so different that you can say that one only inflames the other without
diverting it.
3. Two types of scientific passions, one disinterested and lofty, the other mercantile
and low (Rubish, 1).
common language. The sciences then have a freer and more certain, but
less lofty allure.c
The mind can, it seems to me, divide science into three parts.
The first contains the most theoretical principles, the most abstract no-
tions, the ones whose application is unknown or very distant.
The second is made up of general truths that, though still pure theory,
lead nevertheless by a direct and short path to application.
The processes of application and the means of execution fulfilld the
third.e
c. “Under democracy the sciences get rid of useless words, of empty formulas. Efforts
of the Americans to get out of the judicial routine of the English. Code of Ohio.
See Beaumont, G. B. Q.” (Rubish, 1). Cf. Marie, I, pp. 247–48.
d. Note in the margin: “Louis thinks that this piece should be modified a bit and do
three classes of scientists instead of three classes of sciences. For, in fact, he says, there
are only two of them.”
e. At the end of the chapter, you find a jacket with the title: “Development that
seemed too long to me, but which is good in itself.”:
An example would make my thought easier to grasp: I would choose the science that
I know best which is that of the laws. The distinctions that I have just indicated are
found in the science of laws and I believe, without being able to assert it in so positive
a way, that you should see at least the trace of those distinctions in all of the laws and
principally in those that are called exact, because of the rigorous manner in which
they proceed.
There is a science of laws whose object is lofty, speculative, general. The former
works hard to find the rules by which human societies exist and to determine the laws
that various peoples must impose on themselves in order to reach the goal that they
propose for themselves.
There is a science of laws that, taking hold of a particular body of laws, or even
of the higher portion of a body of laws, demonstrates what general principles dom-
inate there and shows the economy that reigns and the overall view that is revealed.
There is a last one that enters into the administrative or judicial detail of the pro-
cesses by which the legislator wanted to have his plans carried out, learns how political
assemblies or the courts interpreted their will, and that teaches the art of making
good the rights of each citizen with the aid of the laws.
A class of scholars is attached to each of these portions of the science to whom
you give the name writers on law, legal experts, jurists (examine these definitions in
the best authors).
If you now come to examine how these different men are related to each other,
you discover that in the long run the legal expert and the jurist cannot do without
Each one of these different portions of science can be cultivated sepa-

rately, even though reason and experience make it known that none of them
can prosper for long when it is separated absolutely from the other two.
In America, the purely applied part of the sciences is admirably culti-
vated, and the theoretical portion immediately necessary to application is
carefully attended to; in this regard the Americans reveal a mind always
clear, free, original and fruitful; but there is hardly anyone in the United
States who devotes himself to the essentially theoretical and abstract por-
tion of human knowledge. In this the Americans show the excess of a ten-
dency that will be found, I think, although to a lesser degree, among all
democratic peoples.f
the writer on law, but that at a given moment they can easily act and prosper inde-
pendently of him.
If men limited themselves to studying the whole and the detail of existing laws
without ever going as far as the general theory of laws, it is clear that by degrees they
would reach the point of seeing in the legislation of their country only a collection
of formulas that they would end up using without exactly understanding their sense,
and that they would not take long to become miserably lost in the maze of the sub-
tleties of the school. That is how you can truthfully say that there is a necessary re-
lation between Montesquieu and the least bailiff of the kingdom, in such a way that
the enlightenment of the first gives light by a far and distant reflection to the works
of the second.
But men do not need to return every day to the philosophy of law in order to know
the laws in force; without having sought what the legislator must have wanted, they
are able to understand what he wanted. They are able to apply the general wills [vo-
lontés générales—Trans.] to the particular case and draw from legal science its most
useful consequences. Therefore each one of these different portions of the science
of laws can be cultivated separately, although each cannot prosper in the long run
when it is separated absolutely from the others. Coming back now to my subject, I
want to know if democracy tends to develop the various parts of science in the same
way.
In America, where the practical portion of human knowledge and the theoretical
portion immediately necessary for application are admirably cultivated, there is so to
speak no example of anyone interested in the essentially theoretical and general part.
I think that you would not do justice by attributing this to democracy alone. The
Americans are pushed exclusively toward application by powerful causes that are due
neither to the social state nor to the political constitution. I have carefully enumerated
them above.
[In the margin] Quid.
f. Now in all free governments, a great number of men are involved in politics, and
Nothing is more necessary to the cultivation of the advanced sciences,

or of the higher portion of the sciences, than meditation; and nothing is
less appropriate to meditation than the interior of a democratic society.
There you do not find, as among aristocratic peoples, a numerous class that
remains at rest because it finds itself well-off, and another that does not stir
because it despairs of being better-off. Each man is in motion; some want
to attain power, others to take hold of wealth. Amid this universal tumult,
this repeated clash of contrary interests, this continual march of men to-
ward fortune, where to find the calm necessary for profound intellectual
syntheses? How to fix your thoughts on some point, when around you ev-
erything moves, and you yourself are dragged along and tossed about each
day by the impetuous current that drives everything?g
in free governments whose social state is democratic, there is hardly anyone who
is not occupied by it. So among nations subject to these governments it must be
expected that a kind of public scorn for the higher speculations of science and a
kind of instinctive repulsion for those who devote themselves to them will be
established.
I imagine that a people constituted like the Germans of today, among whom great
civil liberty would be found, where enlightenment would be very widespread, where
communal independence would not be unknown, but where great political liberty
would not exist, would be in a more fortunate position than another to cultivate and
to perfect the theoretical portion of the sciences; and I would not be surprised if, of
all the countries of Europe, Germany soon became for this reason the principal center
of higher human knowledge.
Despotism is hardly able to maintain what it finds existing, and by itself alone it
has never produced anything great. So I am not talking about an enslaved nation,
but about a people who would not be entirely master of itself.
Great political liberty seems to me so precious a thing in itself and so necessary to
the guarantee of all other liberties that, as long as it does not disappear at the same
time from all the countries of the earth, I am more or less sure of never inhabiting a
country where it will not exist; but I cannot believe that, following the ordinary course
of societies, great political liberty must favor the development of the general and
theoretical part of the sciences. I recognize in it a thousand other advantages, but not
that one (Rubish, 1).
g. “Of all branches of human studies, philosophy will be, if I am not mistaken, the
one that will suffer most from the establishment of democracy. If the men whose social
state and habits are democratic wanted to concern themselves with philosophy, I do not
doubt that they would bring to this matter the boldness and the freedom of mind that
The type of permanent agitation that reigns within a tranquil and al-
ready constituted democracy must be clearly distinguished from the tu-
multuous and revolutionary movements that almost always accompany the
birth and development of a democratic society.
When a violent revolution takes place among a very civilized people, it
cannot fail to give a sudden impulse to sentiments and to ideas.
This is true above all of democratic revolutions, that, by moving at once
all of the classes that make up a people, give birth at the same time to
immense ambitions in the heart of each citizen.
If the French suddenly made such admirable progress in the exact sci-
ences, at the very moment when they finally destroyed the remnants of the
old feudal society, this sudden fertility must be attributed, not to democ-
racy, but to the unparalleled revolution that accompanied its development.
What occurred then was a particular fact; it would be imprudent to see in
it the indication of a general law.
Great revolutions are not more common among democratic peoples
than among other peoples; I am even led to believe that they are less so.
But within these nations there reigns a small uncomfortable movement, a
sort of incessant rotation of men that troubles and distracts the mind with-
out enlivening or elevating it.
Not only do men who live in democratic societies devote themselveswith
difficulty to meditation, but also they naturally have little regard for it. The
democratic social state and democratic institutions lead most men to act
constantly; now, the habits of mind that are appropriate to action are not
always appropriate to thought. The man who acts is often reduced to being
content with approximation, because he would never reach the end of his
plan if he wanted to perfect each detail. He must rely constantly on ideas
that he has not had the leisure to study in depth, for he is helped much
more by the expediency of the idea that he is using than by its rigorous
correctness; and everything considered, there is less risk for him in making
use of a few false principles, than in taking up his time establishing the
they display elsewhere. But you can believe that they will rarely want to concern them-
selves with it” (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 66).
truth of all his principles. The world is not controlled by long, learned
proofs. The rapid view of a particular fact, the daily study of the changing
passions of the crowd, the chance of the moment and the skill to grab hold
of it, decide all matters there.
So in centuries when nearly everyone acts, you are generally led to attach
an excessive value to the rapid flights and to the superficial conceptions of
the mind, and, on the contrary, to depreciate excessively its profound and
slow work.
This public opinion influences the judgment of the men who cultivate
the sciences; it persuades them that they can succeed in the sciences without
meditation, or turns them away from those sciences that require it.h
There are several ways to study the sciences. You find among a host of
men a selfish, mercenary and industrial taste for the discoveries of the mind
that must not be confused with the disinterested passion that is aroused in
the heart of a small number; there is a desire to utilize knowledge and a
pure desire to know. I do not doubt that occasionally, among a few, an
ardent and inexhaustible love of truth is born that feeds on itself and gives
constant delight without ever being able to satisfy itself. It is this ardent,
proud and disinterested love of the true that leads men to the abstract
sources of truth in order to draw generative ideas from there.
If Pascalj had envisaged only some great profit, or even if he had been
h. The taste for well-being makes a multitude ask the sciences loudly for applications
and recompenses with money and with glory those who find them.
And acting on the soul of scientists the multitude leads them to take their research
in this direction and even makes them incapable of directing it elsewhere by taking
from them the taste for non-material things that is the principal motivating force of
the soul (Rubish, 1).
j. Different motives that can push men toward science.
Material interest.
Desire for glory.
Passion to discover the truth. Personal satisfaction that is impossible to define or
to deny its effects.
Perhaps the greatest scientists are due uniquely to this last passion. For will is not
enough to bring action; the mind must rush forward by itself toward the object; it
must aspire.
moved only by the sole desire for glory, I cannot believe that he would ever
have been able to summon up, as he did, all the powers of his intelligence
to reveal more clearly the most hidden secrets of the Creator. When I see
him, in a way, tear his soul away from the midst of the cares of life, in order
to give it entirely to this inquiry, and, prematurely breaking the ties that
hold the soul to the body, die of old age before reaching forty years of age,
I stop dumbfounded; and I understand that it is not an ordinary cause that
can produce such extraordinary efforts.
The future will prove if these passions, so rare and so fruitful, arise and
develop as easily amid democratic societies as within aristocratic ones. As
for me, I admit that I find it difficult to believe.
In aristocratic societies, the class that leads opinion and runs public af-
fairs, being placed above the crowd in a permanent and hereditary way,
naturally conceives a superb idea of itself and of man. It readily imagines
glorious enjoyments for man and sets magnificent ends for his desires. Ar-
istocracies often undertake very tyrannical and very inhuman actions, but
they rarely conceive low thoughts; and they show a certain proud disdain
for small pleasures, even when they give themselves over to them; that gives
all souls there a very lofty tone. In aristocratic times, you generally get very
vast ideas about the dignity, power and grandeur of man. These opinions
influence those who cultivate the sciences, like all the others; it facilitates
the natural impulse of the mind toward the highest regions of thought and
naturally disposes the mind to conceive the sublime and nearly divine love
of truth.
So the scientists of these times are carried toward theory, and it even
often happens that they conceive an ill-considered scorn for application.
“Archimedes,” says Plutarch,k “had a heart so noble that he never deigned
Imagine Newton or Pascal in the middle of a democracy.

The soul is given a less lofty tone in democracies. It envisages the things of life
from a lower perspective (in the rubish the influence of democracy on lit-
erature, Rubish, 1).
k. This fragment appears in the rubish with this bibliographic reference: “Plutarch,
Vie de Marcellus, p. 269, vol. III, translation of Augustus.” The quotation, longer in the
to leave any written work on how to erect all of these war machines [<for
which he gained glory and fame, not for human knowledge but rather for
divine wisdom>]; and considering all of this science of inventing and mak-
ing machines and generally any art that brings some utility when put into
practice, as vile, low and mercenary, he used his mind and his study to write
only things whose beauty and subtlety were in no way mixed with neces-
sity.” Such is the aristocratic aim of the sciences.
It cannot be the same among democratic nations.
[Among these peoples, the opinions of the class that governs and the
general mores of the nation hardly ever raise the human mind toward the-
ory; on the contrary they draw it every day toward application.]
Most of the men who compose these nations are very greedy for material
and present enjoyments; since they are always discontent with the position
that they occupy, and always free to leave it, they think only about the means
to change their fortune or to increase it. [Men naturally have the desire to
take pleasure quickly and easily, but that is particularly true of those who
live in democracies.
This sentiment to which scientists themselves are not strangers leads
them to look for the consequences of a principle already known rather than
to find a new principle; their work is at the very same time easier and better
understood.
The same sentiment makes the public attach much more value to ap-
plications than to abstract truths.]m For minds so disposed, every new
method that leads to wealth by a shorter road, every machine that shortens
work, every instrument that reduces the costs of production, every dis-
covery that facilitates and increases pleasures, seems the most magnificent
effort of human intelligence. It is principally from this side that demo-
cratic peoples are attached to the sciences, understand them and honor
draft, contains a phrase that is missing from the book: “. . . so noble <and an under-
standing so profound in which there was a hidden treasure of so many geometric in-
ventions>” (Rubish, 1).
m. This fragment is found on a separate sheet of the manuscript.
them.n In aristocratic centuries [v.: societies], people particularly demand

enjoyments of the mind from the sciences; in democratic ones, those of
the body.
Depend on the fact that the more a nation is democratic, enlightened
and free, the larger the number of these self-seeking men who appreciate
scientific genius will grow, and the more discoveries immediately applicable
to industry will yield profit, glory and even power to their authors; for, in
democracies, the class that works takes part in public affairs, and those who
serve it have to look to it for honors as well as for money.
You can easily imagine that, in a society organized in this manner, the
human mind is led imperceptibly to neglect theory and that it must, on
the contrary, feel pushed with an unparalleled energy toward application,
or at least toward the portion of theory necessary to those who do
applications.
An instinctive tendency raises the human mind in vain toward the high-
est spheres of intelligence; interest leads it back toward the middle ones.
That is where it puts forth its strength and restless activity, and brings forth
miracles. These very Americans, who have not discovered a single one of
the general laws of mechanics, have introduced to navigation a new ma-
chine that is changing the face of the world.
Certainly, I am far from claiming that the democratic peoples of today
are destined to see the transcendent light of the human mind extinguished,
or even that they must not kindle new light within their midst. At the age
of the world in which we find ourselves and among so many lettered nations
that are tormented incessantly by the ardor of industry, the ties that bind
the different parts of science together cannot fail to be striking; and the
very taste for application, if it is enlightened, must lead men not to neglect
theory. In the middle of so many attempts at application, so many exper-
iments repeated each day, it is often nearly impossible for very general laws
n. “So if it happens in the United States that there is no innovation in philosophy,

in literature, in science, in the fine arts, that does not come from the fact that the social
state of the Americans is democratic, but rather from the fact that their passions are
exclusively commercial” (YTC, CVj, 1, p. 91).
not to happen to appear; so that great discoveries would be frequent, even

though great inventors were rare.
I believe moreover in high scientific vocations. If democracy does not
lead men to cultivate the sciences for their own sake, on the other hand
it immensely increases the number of those who cultivate the sciences. It
cannot be believed that, among so great a multitude, there is not born
from time to time some speculative genius inflamed by the sole love of
truth. You can be sure that the latter will work hard to penetrate the most
profound mysteries of nature, whatever the spirit of his country and of
his time. There is no need to aid his development; it is enough not to
stop it. All that I want to say is this: permanent inequality of condi-
tions leads men to withdraw into proud and sterile research for abstract
truths; while the democratic social state and democratic institutions
dispose them to ask of the sciences only their immediate and useful
applications.
This tendency is natural and inevitable. It is interesting to know it, and
it can be necessary to point it out.
If those who are called to lead the nations of today saw clearly and from
a distance these new instincts that will soon be irresistible, they would un-
derstand that with enlightenment and liberty, the men who live in demo-
cratic centuries cannot fail to improve the industrial portion of the sciences,
and that henceforth all the effort of the social power must go to sustain the
theoretical sciences and to create great scientific passions.
Today, the human mind must be kept to theory, it runs by itself toward
application, and instead of leading it back constantly toward the detailed
examination of secondary effects, it is good to distract it sometimes in order
to raise it to the contemplation of first causes.
Because Roman civilization died following the invasion of the barbar-
ians, we are perhaps too inclined to believe that civilization cannot die
otherwise.
If the light that enlightens us ever happened to go out, it would grow
dark little by little and as if by itself. By dint of limiting yourself to ap-
plication, you would lose sight of principles, and when you had entirely
forgotten the principles, you would badly follow the methods that derive
from them; no longer able to invent new methods, you would employ with-
out intelligence and without art the learned processes that you no longer
understood.
When the Europeans reached China three hundred years ago, they found
all the arts at a certain degree of perfection, and they were astonished that,
having arrived at this point, the Chinese had not advanced more. Later they
discovered the vestiges of some advanced knowledge that had been lost.
The nation was industrial; most of the scientific methods were preserved
within it; but science itself no longer existed. That explained to the Eu-
ropeans the singular type of immobility in which they found the mind of
the people. The Chinese, while following the path of their fathers, had
forgotten the reasons that had guided the latter. They still used the formula
without looking for the meaning; they kept the instrument and no longer
possessed the art of modifying and of reproducing it. So the Chinese could
not change anything. They had to give up improvement. They were forced
to imitate their fathers always and in all things, in order not to throw them-
selves into impenetrable shadows, if they diverged for an instant from the
road that the latter had marked. The source of human knowledge had
nearly dried up; and although the river still flowed, it could no longer swell
its waves or change its course.
China had subsisted peacefully for centuries however; its conquerors
had taken its mores; order reigned there. A sort of material well-being was
seen on all sides. Revolutions there were very rare, and war was so to speak
unknown.o
So you must not feel reassured by thinking that the barbarians are still
far from us; for if there are some peoples who allow light to be wrested from
their hands, there are others who trample it underfoot themselves.p
o. With a note, in the manuscript: “<Louis says that he is afraid that this last piece,
although good, appears a bit exaggerated given the current state of our notions on China.
It now seems certain, he says, that if the Chinese have declined, they have at least never
been as advanced as I suppose and as was supposed in Europe sixty years ago.>”
p. In the rubish:
Louis said to me today (1 June 1838) that what had struck him as more obvious and
more clear in the question of the sciences was that the applied sciences or the theo-
retical part of the sciences most necessary to application had, in all times, been cul-
tivated among men as the taste for material enjoyments, for individual improvements
increased, while the cultivation of the advanced sciences had always been joined with
a certain taste for intellectual pleasures which found pleasure in encountering great
truths, even if they were useless.
This seemed to him applicable to aristocratic peoples like the English or the men
of the Middle Ages, in the period of the Renaissance, although some were occupied
in this period with the things of heaven; it is clear however that there was a reaction
toward the things of the earth. But he admitted that democracy drove this taste and
that it could thus be considered as the mediate cause of this scientific impulse whose
immediate cause would be the taste for material enjoyments./
It seems clear to me that I do not make the taste for material well-being suggested
by this social and political state play a large enough role among the causes that lead
democracies toward the applied sciences. It is however the greatest, the most incon-
testable, the truest reason. I have not precisely omitted it, but under-played it. This
gap must be repaired. See note (a, b, c).
To cite England. The taste for well-being taking hold of the democratic classes
would give these classes, thanks to liberty and commercial possibilities, a great pre-
ponderance, allowing them in a way to give their spirit to the nation, while letting
the aristocratic classes subsist in its midst. What follows for [the (ed.)] sciences.
Still more intense taste; class that feels it still more preponderant in America. Prac-
tical impulse of the sciences still more exclusive.
[In the margin: Another point of view that is not sufficiently appreciated.
Peoples who have strongly devoted themselves to the application of something,
very practically occupied with something, find neither the time nor the taste to be
occupied with theory. I said something similar while talking about the sciences among
free peoples. But I was talking only about taste.
It is clear that an aristocracy, like a democracy, can be constantly occupied in a
practical way with something and neglect all the rest. It is the case of the Romans
who were so devoted to the conquest of the world that they were not able to think
about the sciences. They have left nothing on that. While the Greeks more divided
made great scientific progress./
How many things are explained by the taste for material well-being!!] (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 1a
In What Spirit the Americans
Cultivate the Arts b
I believe it would be wasting my time and that of my readers, if I applied

myself to showing how the general mediocrity of fortune, the lack of su-
perfluity, the universal desire for well-being and the constant efforts made
by each person to gain well-being for himself, make the taste for the useful
a. 1. Democratic institutions and the democratic social state make the human mind
tend toward the useful rather than toward the beautiful as regards art. I set forth this
idea without proving it. The rest of the chapter comments on it or adds to it.
2. 1. In aristocracies, artisans, apart from the desire to earn money, have their in-
dividual reputation and the reputation of their corps to maintain. The aim of the
arts is to make a small number of masterpieces, rather than a large number of im-
perfect works. It is no longer so when each profession no longer forms one corps and
constantly changes members.
2. In aristocracies, consumers are few, very rich and very demanding. In de-
mocracies, they are very many, in straitened circumstances and nearly always with
more needs than means. Thus the nature of the producer and of the consumer com-
bine to increase the production of the arts and to decrease their merit.
3. An analogous tendency of the arts in democratic times is to simulate in their
products a richness that is not there.
4. In the fine arts in particular, the democratic social state and democratic in-
stitutions make the aim the elegant and the pretty rather than the great; the repre-
sentation of the body rather than that of the soul; they turn away from the ideal and
concentrate on the real (YTC, CVf, pp. 12–13).
b. “Among the fine arts I clearly see something to say only about architecture, sculp-
ture, painting. As for music, dance . . . , I see nothing” (in the rubish of chapter 5.
Rubish, 1).
Tocqueville seems not to have appreciated the musical evenings that he attended in
the United States. In his correspondence, he speaks of “caterwauling music” and “un-
bearable squealings.” Beaumont thought it good to delete these commentaries from his
edition of Tocqueville’s complete works.
788
how the americans cultivate the arts 789
predominate over the love of the beautiful in the heart of man. Democratic
nations, where all these things are found, will therefore cultivate the arts
that serve to make life comfortable in preference to those whose object is
to embellish it; they will by habit prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they
will want the beautiful to be useful.c
But I intend to go further, and, after pointing out the first feature, to
outline several others.
It happens ordinarily, in centuries of privilege, that the exercise of nearly
all the arts becomes a privilege and that each profession is a world apart
where no one is at liberty to enter. And, even when industry is free, the
immobility natural to aristocratic nations makes all those who are occupied
by the same art end up nevertheless forming a distinct class, always com-
posed of the same families, all of whose members know each other and a
class in which public opinion and corporate pride soon arise. In an indus-
trial class of this type, each artisan has not only his fortune to make, but
also his reputation to keep. It is not only his interest that regulates his be-
havior, or even that of the buyer, but that of the corps, and the interest of
the corps is that each artisan produces masterpieces. So in aristocratic cen-
turies, the aim of the arts is to make the best possible, and not the most
rapid or the cheapest.d
c. What makes the taste for the useful predominate among democratic peoples./
[In the margin: Perhaps to philosophy. What makes the doctrine of the useful
predominate.
Utilitarians. ]
This idea is necessary, but perhaps it has already been treated either under this title
or under another. It must be treated separately. It is too important to be found only
accidentally in my book. The preeminence granted in all things to the useful is in
fact one of the principal and fertile characteristics of democratic centuries.
There are many things that make the taste for the useful predominate in these
centuries: the middling level of fortunes, the lack of superfluity, the lack of imagi-
nation or rather the perpetual straining for the production of well-being. There is
imagination in the ordinary sense of the word only in the upper and lower classes;
the middle ones do not have it.
There are still many other causes. Look for them.
12 April 1838 (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 10).
d. You find in aristocratic societies as well as in democracies men who cultivate the
useful arts, and who even excel if not in all at least in several of them. It suffices to
When on the contrary each profession is open to all, when the crowd
enters and leaves each constantly, and when its different members, because
of their great number, become unknown, indifferent and nearly invisible
to each other, the social bond is destroyed, and each worker, led back to
himself, seeks only to earn the greatest amount of money possible at the
least cost. There is nothing more than the will of the consumer to limit
him. Now it happens that, at the same time, a corresponding revolution
makes itself felt among the last.
In countries where wealth, like power, is concentrated in a few hands
and remains there, the use of most of the wealth of this world belongs to
always the same small number of individuals; necessity, opinion, the mod-
eration of desires exclude all others.
Since this aristocratic class keeps itself immobile at the point of grandeur
where it is placed, without narrowing or expanding, it always experiences
the same needs and feels them in the same way. The men who compose it
draw naturally from the superior and hereditary position that they occupy
the taste for what is very well made and very lasting.
That gives a general turn to the ideas of the nation as regards the arts.
It often happens, among these peoples, that the peasant himself prefers
to do entirely without the objects that he covets than to acquire them
imperfect.
So in aristocracies, workers labor only for a limited number of buyers,
who are very difficult to satisfy. The gain that they expect depends prin-
cipally on the perfection of their works.
This is no longer so when, all privileges being destroyed, ranks mingle
and all men constantly go down and rise up the social scale.
You always find, within a democratic people [⫽and particularly in the
period when they finally come to be so⫽], a host of citizens whose patri-
mony divides and decreases. They have contracted, in better times, certain
see a few of the engraved breast-plates that the warriors of the Middle Ages left for
us, and the gothic churches that still seem to thrust into the sky from the heart of
our cities, in order to understand that the armorers and the masons of those times
were often skilled men.
But they did not bring to their works the same spirit as the artisans of today (Rub-
ish, 1).
needs that they continue to have after the ability to satisfy them no longer
exists, and they try restlessly to find if there is not some indirect means to
provide for them.
On the other hand, you always see in democracies a very large number
of men whose fortune grows, but whose desires grow very much faster than
their fortune and who greedily eye the goods that their fortune promises
them, before it delivers them. These men try to open in all directions shorter
paths to these nearby enjoyments. The result of the combination of these
two causes is that in democracies you always meet a multitude of citizens
whose needs are beyond their resources and who would readily agree to
being satisfied incompletely rather than renouncing entirely the object of
their covetous desire.
The worker easily understands these passions because he shares them
himself. In aristocracies, he tried to sell his products very expensively to a
few; now he understands that there would be a more expedient means to
become rich, it would be to sell his products inexpensively to all [<for he
begins to discover that a small profit that is repeated every day would be
preferable to a considerable gain that you can expect only rarely.>
That sets his mind on a new path. He no longer tries to make the best
possible but at the lowest price.].
Now, there are only two ways to arrive at lowering the price of mer-
chandise.
The first is to find better, shorter and more skillful means of producing
e
it. The second is to fabricate in greater quantity objects more or less similar,
but of less value. Among democratic peoples, all the intellectual abilities
of the worker are directed toward these two ends.
He tries hard to invent procedures that allow him to work, not only
better, but faster and at less cost, and if he cannot manage to do so, to reduce
the intrinsic qualities of the thing that he is making without making it
entirely inappropriate to its intended use. When only the rich had watches,
e. “Democracy leads toward the useful arts not so much because it decreases the num-
ber of those who could have demands to make on the fine arts as because it takes away
from the latter even the taste to seek the beautiful in the arts” (in rubish of the chap-
ters on the arts, Rubish, 1).
nearly all were excellent. Now hardly any are made that are not mediocre,
but everyone has them. Thus, democracy not only tends to direct the hu-
man mind toward the useful arts, it leads artisans to make many imperfect
things very rapidly, and leads the consumer to content himself with these
things.
It isn’t that in democracies art is not capable, as needed, of producing
marvels. That is revealed sometimes, when buyers arise who agree to pay
for time and effort. In this struggle of all the industries, amid this immense
competition and these innumerable trials, excellent workers are formed
who get to the furthest limits of their profession. But the latter rarely have
the opportunity to show what they know how to do; they carefully mod-
erate their efforts. They stay within a skillful mediocrity that is self-assessing
and that, able to go beyond the goal that it sets for itself, aims only for the
goal that it attains. In aristocracies, in contrast, workers always do all that
they know how to do, and, when they stop, it is because they are at the
limit of their knowledge.
When I arrive in a country and I see the arts provide some admirable
products, that teaches me nothing about the social state and political con-
stitution of the country.f But if I notice that the products of the arts there
f. That the perfection of certain products of the arts is not a proof of civilization./
The Mexicans that Cortés conquered so easily had reached a high degree of per-
fection in the manufacture of cotton. Their fabrics and the colors with which they
covered them were admirable, p. 64.
In India cotton fabrics and particularly muslins have always been made and are
still made whose softness, brilliance, and toughness, Europeans, with all the perfec-
tion of their arts, are still not able to imitate, p. 61.
India, however, is still in a state of semi-barbarism.
The fact is that the perfection of an isolated art proves nothing, only that the people
who cultivate it have emerged from the state of a hunting or pastoral people. In this
state nothing can be perfected.
Another curious fact that Baines’ book provides me with is that the beautiful mus-
lins of Dana were in all their splendor only while India had kings and an aristocracy.
They have been in decline since, because of a lack of orders, p. 61 (Rubish, 1).
Edward Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London: H. Fisher,
R. Fisher and P. Jackson, 1835). Reprinted in New York by Augustus M. Kelly, 1966
(Reprints of Economics Classics).
are generally imperfect, in very great number and at a low price, I am

sure that, among the people where this is occurring, privileges are becom-
ing weak, and the classes are beginning to mingle and are soon going to
blend.g
Artisans who live in democratic centuries not only seek to put their useful
products in the reach of all citizens, they also try hard to give all their prod-
ucts shining qualities that the latter do not have.
In the confusion of all classes, each man hopes to be able to appear to
be what he isn’t and devotes great efforts to succeeding in doing so. De-
mocracy does not give birth to this sentiment, which is only too natural to
the heart of man; but it applies it to material things. The hypocrisy of virtue
exists in all times; that of luxury belongs more particularly to democratic
centuries.
In order to satisfy these new needs of human vanity, there is no impos-
ture to which the arts do not resort; industry sometimes goes so far in this
direction that it ends by harming itself. The diamond has already been so
perfectly imitated that it is easy to make a mistake. Once the art of pro-
ducing false diamonds has been invented so that you can no longer distin-
guish false from true ones, both will probably be abandoned, and they will
again become stones.
This leads me to talk about those arts that are called, par excellence, the
fine arts.
I do not believe that the necessary effect of the democratic social state
and democratic institutions is to decrease the number of men who cultivate
the fine arts. [<I even think that their number increases with democracy>];
but these causes powerfully influence the manner in which they are culti-
vated. Since most of those who had already contracted the taste for the fine
arts have become poor, and, on the other hand, many of those who are
not yet rich have begun, by imitation, to conceive the taste for the fine
arts, the quantity of consumers in general increases, and very rich and
g. “So democracy draws a multitude of mediocre products from the arts, but these
products are sufficient for the well-being of a multitude of our fellows, while more per-
fect works would serve only a small number” (in rubish of the chapters on the
arts, Rubish, 1).
very refined consumers become more rare. Something analogous to what

I already demonstrated when I talked about the useful arts then occurs in
the fine arts. They multiply their works and reduce the merit of each one
of them.
No longer able to aim at the great, you seek the elegant and the pretty;
you tend less to reality than to appearance.
In aristocracies you do a few great paintings, and, in democratic coun-
tries, a multitude of small pictures. In the first, you raise bronze statues,
and, in the second, you cast plaster statues.
When I arrived for the first time in New York by the part of the Atlantic
Ocean called the East River, I was surprised to notice, along the river bank,
at some distance from the city, a certain number of small palaces of white
marble,h several of which were of a classical architecture; the next day, able
to consider more closely the one that had particularly attracted my atten-
tion, I found that its walls were of white-washed brick and its columns of
painted wood. It was the same for all the buildings that I had admired the
day before.
The democratic social state and democratic institutions give as well, to
all the imitative arts, certain particular tendencies that are easy to point out.
[<I know that here I am going back to ideas that I have already had the
occasion to explain in relation to poetry, but the fault is due less to me than
to the subject that I am treating. I am talking about man and man is a simple
being, whatever effort is made to split him up in order to know him better.
It is always the same individual that you envisage in various lights. All that
I can do is only to point out the result here, leaving to the memory of the
reader the trouble of going back to the causes.>]j They often divert them
from portraying the soul in order to attach them only to portraying the
h. “. . . an incredible multitude of country houses, as large as little boxes but as care-

fully worked . . . I was so struck by how comfortable these small houses had to be and
by the good effect that they produced on the landscape, that I will try to obtain the design
or the plan of one or two of the prettiest ones. Perhaps Émilie would make use of it for
Nacqueville. I already know that they are not expensive.” (Extract of the letter from
Tocqueville to his mother, of 26 April–19 May 1831, YTC, BIa2.) Pocket notebook 1 in
fact contains the plan of one of these houses (YTC, BIIa, pp. 2–3).
j. In the margin: “To delete if I put this piece before poetry.”
body; and they substitute the representation of movements and sensations

for that of sentiments and ideas; in the place of the ideal, finally, they put
the real.
I doubt that Raphael made as profound a study of the slightest mech-
anisms of the human body as the artists of today. He did not attribute the
same importance as they to rigorous exactitude on this point, for he claimed
to surpass nature. He wanted to make man something that was superior to
man; he undertook to embellish beauty itself.
David and his students were, on the contrary, as good anatomists as pain-
ters. They represented marvelously well the models that they had before
their eyes, but rarely did they imagine anything beyond; they followed na-
ture exactly, while Raphael sought something better than nature. They left
us an exact portrait of man, but the first gave us a glimpse of divinity in
his works.
You can apply to the very choice of subject what I said about the manner
of treating it.
The painters of the Renaissance usually looked above themselves, or far
from their time, for great subjects that left a vast scope to their imagination.
Our painters often lend their talent to reproducing exactly the details of
the private life that they have constantly before their eyes, and on all sides
they copy small objects that have only too many originals in nature.k
k. They hasten [to (ed.)] depict battles before the dead are buried and they enjoy
exposing to our view scenes that we witness every day.
I do not know when people will tire of comparing the democracy of our time with
what bore the same name in antiquity. The differences between these two things reveal
themselves at every turn. For me, I do not need to think about slavery or other reasons
that lead me to regard the Greeks as very aristocratic nations despite some democratic
institutions that are found in their midst. I agree not to open Aristotle to finish per-
suading me. It is enough for me to contemplate the statues that these peoples have
left. I cannot believe that the man who made the Belvedere Apollo emerge from mar-
ble worked in a democracy.
[In the margin. Next to the last paragraph.] To delete. That I think raises useless
objections (in the rubish of the chapter that follows, Rubish, 1).
For his part, Beaumont had written: “There exists, in the United States, a type of painting
that prospers: these are portraits; it is not the love of art, it is self-love” (Marie, I, p. 254).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 2a
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
a. 1. 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 mul-
titude of very large ones.
Example of the Americans proves it.
2. Nor do large monuments prove anything about the prosperity, the enlighten-
ment 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).
796
small and large monuments 797
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 con-
tain 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 prodi-
gious 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 rem-
nants of very vast structures tell nothing about the social state and insti-
tutions 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 peo-
ple work toward a sole undertaking, it will succeed with little knowledge
and a great deal of time in drawing something immense from the combi-
In Beaumont’s papers you find this note drafted during the journey that they made
together to England in 1835:
Aristocracy. Democracy.
Public institutions./
One thing strikes me when I examine the public institutions in England: it is the
extreme luxury of their construction and maintenance. In the United States I saw
the government of democracy do most of its institutions with an extreme economy.
Example: prisons, hospitals. It seems to me that these institutions cannot be done
more cheaply. In England it is entirely the opposite: the government or the admin-
istration appears to try to construct everything at the greatest possible expense. What
magnificence in the construction of Milbank! What luxury in the slightest details!!
20 million francs spent to hold 2,000 prisoners! And Beldlan [Bedlam (ed.)]! for 250
of the insane, 2 million 500 thousand francs (cost of construction), 200,000 pounds
sterling. Isn’t it the spirit of aristocracies to do everything with grandeur, with luxury,
with splendor, and with great expenditures! And Greenwich! And Chelsea!
(14 May [1835], London) (YTC, Beaumont, CX).
nation 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 hun-
dred 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.
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:
France has the appearance of noticing since only ten years ago, that it is still covered
with masterpieces of the Middle Ages. The idea of repairing them, of completing
them, of preserving them above all from complete ruin preoccupies a great number
of cities, several of which have already made great sacrifices. Do not conclude from
it that society is returning to old ideas and institutions. It is the sign of precisely the
opposite. Nothing indicates better that the Revolution is finished and that the old
society is dead. As long as the war between the old France and the new France pre-
sented for the first the least chance of success, the nation treated the monuments of
the Middle Ages like adversaries; it destroyed them or left them to perish; it saw in
them only the physical representation of the doctrines, beliefs, mores and laws that
were hostile to it. In the middle of this preoccupation, it did not even notice their
beauty. It is because it no longer fears anything from what they represent that it is
attached to them as if to great works of art and to curious remnants of a time that
no longer exists. The archeologist has replaced the party man (Paris, letter of 14 April
1845. With the kind permission of Trinity College, Cambridge. Houghton papers,
25/201).
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
e. The rubish continues:

Large monuments belong to the middle state of civilization rather than to a very
advanced civilization. Man ordinarily erects them when his thoughts are already great
and his knowledge is still limited and when he does not yet know how to satisfy it
except at great expense.
On the other hand, the ruins of a few large monuments cannot teach us if the
social state of the people who erected them was aristocratic or democratic since we
have just seen that democracy happens to build similar ones.
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).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 3a
Literary Physiognomy of Democratic Centuries
When you enter the shop of a bookstore in the United States, and when
you go over the American books that fill their shelves, the number of works
appears very large, while that of known authors seems in contrast very
small.b
a. 1. The Americans do not have literature so to speak. All their literary works come
to them from England, or are written according to English taste.
2. This is due to particular and temporary causes and must not prevent us from
searching for what the literature natural to democracy is.
3. All ranks are marked and men immobile in their places, literary life like political
existence is concentrated in an upper class. From that fixed rules, traditional literary
habits, art, delicacy, finished details, taste for style, for form . . .
4. When ranks are mixed, men of talent and writers have diverse origins, a different
education, they constantly change, only a little time can be given to the pleasures of
the mind. . . . From that, absence of rules, scorn for style, rapidity, fertility, liberty.
5. There is a moment when the literary genius of democracy and that of aristocracy
join, short and brilliant period, French literature of the XVIIIth century (YTC, CVf,
pp. 14–15).
b. In the Rubish, under the title influence of democracy on literature, the
chapter begins in this way: “⫽I am speaking about America and America does not yet
so to speak have literature, but the subject attracts me and holds me. I cannot pass by
without stopping⫽. When you enter . . .” (Rubish, 1).
Another title of the chapter, still in the Rubish, was this one: general ideas on
the effect produced by equality on literature. The initial plan of Tocque-
ville probably included this sole chapter that, becoming too long, was subsequently di-
vided. The rough drafts of this chapter and of those that follow, up to chapter 18, are
found in several jackets; the contents do not always coincide with the title.
The reflections of Tocqueville on literature have given rise to various commentaries:
Katherine Harrison, “A French Forecast of American Literature,” South Atlantic Quar-
800
literary physiognomy 801
First you find a multitude of elementary treatises intended to give the

first notion of human knowledge. Most of these works were written in
Europe. The Americans reprint them while adapting them to their use.
Next comes a nearly innumerable quantity of books on religion, Bibles,
sermons, pious stories, controversies, accounts of charitable institutions.
Finally appears the long catalogue of political pamphlets: in America, par-
ties, to combat each other, do not write books, but brochures that circulate
with an unbelievable rapidity, live for a day and die.c
terly 25, no. 4 (1926): 350–56; Donald D. Kummings, “The Poetry of Democracies:
Tocqueville’s Aristocratic Views,” Comparative Literature Studies 11, no. 4 (1974): 306–
19; Reino Virtanen, “Tocqueville on a Democratic Literature,” French Review 23, no. 3
(1950): 214–22; Paul West, “Literature and Politics. Tocqueville on the Literature of De-
mocracies,” Essays in Criticism 12, no. 3 (1972): 5–20; Françoise Mélonio and José-Luis
Dı́az, editors, Tocqueville et la littérature (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne,
2005).
c. “For these statistical details look in Beaumont” (Rubish, 1).
Cf. Marie, I, pp. 238–58. Beaumont always showed a more intense interest than
Tocqueville in literature. At the time of their voyage in England in 1835, it is Beaumont
who questioned J. S. Mill on the relationship between literature and democracy.
Literature./
Democracy./
Conversation with John Mill, 18 June 1835. London./
Question. Up to now I consider democracy as favorable to the material well-being
of the greatest number, and from this perspective I am a partisan of it. But a shadow
exists in my mind; a doubt troubles me. I do not know if the tendency of democracy
is not anti-intellectual; it gives to the greatest number physical well-being; up to a
certain point it is even a source of morality for all those whose condition it renders
middling, either by destroying great wealth, which corrupts, or by bringing an end
to great poverty, which degrades and debases; it also spreads more general, more uni-
form instruction. There are its benefits; but to what point is it not contrary to the
taste for literature, to the development of the advanced sciences, to speculative stud-
ies, to intellectual meditations? In order to devote oneself to the love of literature
and the pleasures of the mind, leisure is necessary, and who possesses leisure if not
the rich? The man who works to live, does he find the leisure to think? Does he have
the time, the taste and the ability for it? Isn’t it to be feared that at the same time that
common instruction spreads among the greatest number, advanced instruction will
be abandoned, that the taste for literature will be lost, and that only useful books will
be read? that no one will be interested in theories and speculation? that you will think
only of application, and no longer of invention?
Amid all of these obscure productions of the human mind appear the
more remarkable works of only a small number of authors who are known
by Europeans or who should be.d
Answer. I believe that the tendency of democracy is diametrically opposed to the

fear that you express. Here we see, as an argument in favor of democracy, the impulse
that it gives to the taste for letters and intellectual things. It is true that as democracy
spreads, the number of those who work in order to exist increases; at the same time
the number of persons with leisure decreases. But it is precisely on this fact that we
base our belief. We consider it as a fact established by experience that the men who
work the most are those who read and think more; while idle men neither read nor
think. The man who does nothing and whose whole life is leisure rarely finds the time
to do anything. For him, reading is a trial, and three quarters and a half of the rich
do not read a volume a year; they are moreover constantly busy with little nothings,
with small interests of luxury, dress, horses, wealth, frivolous cares that are distractions
rather than occupations. For them it is such a great difficulty to expand their mind
for a single instant that writing the least letter seems a trial, reading the least work is
an onerous burden (YTC, Beaumont, CX).
d. “<⫽These are the works of Mr. Irving, the novels of Mr. Cooper, the eloquent
treatises of Doctor Channing⫽>” (Rubish, 1).
Unpublished travel note from small notebook A:
Books interesting and good to buy:
1. Stories of American Life, by American Writers, edited by Mary Russell Mitford
(Colburn and Bentley: London, 1831), 3 vols. A worthwhile review is given in West-
minster Review, April 1831, page 395. They include portrayals of three types: 1. His-
torical life or life sixty years ago. 2. Border life that is the life of the outer settlements.
3. City life which embraces pictures of masses as they exist at this moment in New
York, Philadelphia and the great towns (small notebook A, YTC, BIIa).
Tocqueville does not appear to have read this book.
Tocqueville and Beaumont would have been able to have a conversation with the
writer Catherine Maria Sedgwick, of whom they had heard a great deal spoken. But,
impatient to reach Boston, they just missed her at Stockbridge (George W. Pierson,
Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, pp. 349–50). Tocqueville seems to have read the
letters of Cooper. In travel notebook E, you read: “Find Cooper’s letters” (YTC, BIIa,
different reading in Voyage, OC, V, 1, p. 65). It probably concerns James Fenimore
Cooper, Notions of the Americans; Picked Up By a Travelling Bachelor (London: Henry
Colburn, 1828), 2 vols.
In an unpublished note (alphabetic notebook A, YTC, BIIa) you find the following
list: “Living American writers: Verplank—Paulding—Hall—Stone—Neal—Barker—
Willis—Miss Sedgwick.” It concerns the authors who are included in the book edited
by Mary Russell Mitford, and who are cited in the preface of the work.
Although today America is perhaps the civilized country in which there

is least involvement with literature,e a large number of individuals is found
there who are interested in things of the mind and who make them, if not
their whole life’s work, at least the attraction of their leisure. But it is En-
gland that provides to the latter most of the books that they demand.f
Nearly all of the great English works are reproduced in the United States.
The literary genius of Great Britain still shines its light into the depths of
the forests of the New World. There is scarcely a pioneer’s cabin where you
do not find a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I recall having read for the
first time the feudal drama of Henry V in a log house.g
In Marie (I, pp. 392–93) Beaumont cites the following American authors: Miss Sedg-
wick, James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Jared Sparks, Robert Walsh, Edward
Livingston, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Edward Everett, and William Ellery Channing.
Reino Virtanen has suggested that Channing’s Remarks on National Literature perhaps
influenced the writing of these chapters on literature. See concerning Channing, Reino
Virtanen, “Tocqueville and William Ellery Channing,” American Literature, 22, 1951,
pp. 21–28; and “Tocqueville and the Romantics,” Symposium 13, no. 2 (1959): 167–85.
William Ellery Channing, The Importance and Means of a National Literature (Edin-
burgh: Thomas Clark, 1835), 31 pages, claims that the United States does not yet have
literature and proposes means to create one.
Tocqueville could as well have been influenced by an article by Philarète Chasles,
published under the title “De la littérature dans l’Amérique du Nord,” which appeared
in the Revue des deux mondes, volume III, 1835, pp. 169–202.
e. “The Americans are in the most unfavorable position for having a literature. A new
people that each day finds at its disposal the literary works of an ancient people./
Democracy produces a host of bad works; but it does not prevent good ones” (Rub-
ish, 1).
f. “Look in all the dictionaries for democracy, you will not find there the word eru-
dition” (Rubish, 1).
g. I remember that one day, the pioneer was absent, and while awaiting his return, I
took one of these volumes, isolated product of a genius of another hemisphere. Hav-
ing opened it by chance, I fell upon the first part of the drama of Henry V [v: VI].
Time and the overly active curiosity of my hosts had almost destroyed the rest. During
this reading I soon lost sight of the sentiment [of (ed.)] all that surrounded me and
all the great characters evoked by the poet arose little by little around me. I thought
I saw them with their language, their beliefs, their passions, their prejudices, their
virtues and their vices.
All the memories of the heroic times of our history assailed me at the same time;
Not only do the Americans go each day to draw upon the treasures of
English literature, but also you can truthfully say that they find the literature
of England on their own soil.h Among the small number of men who are
busy in the United States composing works of literature, most are English
in content and above all in form. In this way they carry to the middle of
democracy the ideas and the literary practices that are current within the
aristocratic nation that they have taken as a model. They paint with colors
borrowed from foreign mores; almost never representing in its reality the
country where they were born, they are rarely popular there.
my imagination filled suddenly with the pomp of feudal society; I saw high turrets,
a thousand banners waving in the air; I heard the sound of armor, the burst of clar-
ions, the heavy step of caparisoned war horses. I contemplated for a moment all this
mixture of misery and wealth, of strength and weakness, of inequality and grandeur
that marked the Middle Ages, and then I opened my eyes and saw myself in my small
log cabin built yesterday in the middle of a flowering wilderness that recalled the first
days of the world and was inhabited by the descendants of these same Europeans
who had become the obscure and peaceful citizens of a democratic republic. I felt
gripped, passing my view alternately over these two extreme points of human destiny
that I had before me. I was astonished by the immense space that stretched between
[them (ed.)] and that humanity had had to cover.
Do you desire to see in all their clarity the extreme mobility and the strange detours
of human destiny? Do you want, in a way, to see the raging and irresistible torrent
of time flow before your eyes? Go sit down next to the hearth of the American pioneer
and there read Shakespeare in the shadow of the virgin forest.
[In the margin] Read the books of Mr. Irving [that (ed.)] have all the merits and
all the defects of a translation” (Rubish, 1).
h. In a first version:
<⫽Mr. Fenimore Cooper borrowed his principal scenes from wild nature and not
from democratic forms. He portrayed America as it no longer is, with colors foreign
to the America of today. Mr. W. Irving is English in content as well as in form; he
excels at representing with finesse and grace scenes borrowed from the aristocratic life
of England. He is happy amid old feudal ruins and never borrows> anything from
the country where he was born. The writers I am speaking about, despite their talent
and the quarrelsome patriotism that they often try to use to enhance their efforts in
the eyes of their fellow citizens, do not excite more real sympathies in the United
States than if they were born in England. Thus, they live as little as they can in the
country that they praise to us, and in order to enjoy their glory they come to Europe⫽
(Rubish, 1).
[Read the books of Mr. W. Irving; there you will only find soft and pale
reflections of a fire that is no longer seen and no longer felt {there you will
find the qualities and the defects of a translation}].
The citizens of the United States themselves seem so convinced that
books are not published for them, that before settling on the merit of one
of their writers, they ordinarily wait for him to have been appreciated in
England. This is how, in the case of paintings, you willingly leave to the
author of the original the right to judge the copy.j
So the inhabitants of the United States do not yet have, strictly speaking,
literature. The only authors that I recognize as Americans are journalists.
The latter are not great writers, but they speak the language of the country
and make themselves heard. I see only foreigners in the others. They are
for the Americans what the imitators of the Greeks and the Romans were
for us in the period of the renaissance of letters, an object of curiosity, not
generally speaking of sympathy. They amuse the mind [<of a few>] and
do not act on the mores [<of all>].
I have already said that this state of things was very far from being due
only to democracy, and that it was necessary to look for the causes in several
particular circumstances independent of democracy.
If the Americans, while still keeping their social state and their laws, had
another origin and found themselves transported to another country, I do
not doubt that they would have a literature. As they are, I am sure that in
the end they will have one; but it will have a character different from the
one that shows itself in the American writings of today, one that will be its
own. It is not impossible to sketch this character in advance.
I suppose an aristocratic people among whom letters are cultivated [some
of this type are found in the world]; the works of the mind, as well as the
affairs of government, are regulated there by a sovereign class. Literary life,
j. First version: “America is moreover, taken in mass and despite its efforts to appear
independent, still in relation to Europe in the position of a secondary city relative to the
capital, and you notice, in its smallest ways of acting, this mixture of pride and servility
that is nearly always found in the conduct of the provinces vis-à-vis their capital” (Rub-
ish, 1).
like political existence, is concentrated nearly entirely in this class or in those

closest to it. This is enough for me to have the key to all the rest.
When a small number of always the same men are involved at the same
time in the same matters, they easily agree and decide in common on certain
principal rules that must guide each one of them. If the matter that attracts
their attention is literature, the works of the mind will soon be subjected
by them to a few precise laws that you will no longer be allowed to avoid.
If these men occupy a hereditary position in the country, they will nat-
urally be inclined not only to adopt a certain number of fixed rules for
themselves, but also to follow those that their ancestors imposed on them-
selves; their set of laws will be rigorous and traditional at the same time.
Since they are not necessarily preoccupied with material things, since
they have never been so, and since their fathers were not either, they were
able over several generations to take an interest in works of the mind. They
understood literary art and in the end they love it for itself and take a
learned pleasure in seeing that you conform to it.
That is still not all; the men I am speaking about began their life and
finish it in comfort or in wealth; so they have naturally conceived the taste
for studied enjoyments and the love of refined and delicate pleasures.
In addition, a certain softness of mind and heart that they often contract
amid this long and peaceful use of so many worldly goods, leads them to
avoid in their very pleasures whatever could be found too unexpected and
too intense. They prefer to be amused than to be intensely moved; they
want to be interested, but not carried away.k
k. Do you want to clarify my thought by examples? Compare modern literature to

that of antiquity.
What fertility, what boldness, what variety in our writings! What wisdom, what
art, what perfection, what finish in those of the Greeks and Romans!
What causes the difference? I think of the large number of slaves who existed
among the ancients, of the small number of masters, of the concentration of power
and wealth in a few hands. This begins to enlighten me, but does not yet satisfy me,
for the same causes are more or less found among us. Some more powerful reason is
necessary. I discover it finally in the rarity and expense of books and the extreme
difficulty of reproducing and circulating them. Circumstances, coming to concen-
Now imagine a great number of literary works executed by the men I

have just described or for them, and you will easily conceive of a literature
where everything is regulated and coordinated in advance. The least work
will be meticulous in its smallest details; art and work will be seen in ev-
erything; each genre will have particular rules that it will not be free to
depart from and that will isolate it from all the others.
The style will seem almost as important as the idea, form as content; the
tone will be polished, moderate, elevated. The mind will always have a no-
ble bearing, rarely a brisk pace, and writers will be more attached to per-
fection than to production.
It will sometimes happen that the members of the lettered class, since
they live only with each other and write only for themselves, will entirely
lose sight of the rest of the world; this will throw them into the affected
and the false; they will make small literary rules for their sole use, which
will imperceptibly turn them away from good sense and finally take them
away from nature.
By dint of wanting to speak in a way other than common they attain a
sort of aristocratic jargonm that is hardly less removed from fine language
than the dialect of the people.
Those are the natural pitfalls of literature in aristocracies.
Every aristocracy that sets itself entirely apart from the people becomes
powerless. That is true in letters as well as in politics.1
trate the taste for pleasures of the mind in a very small number, formed a small literary
aristocracy of the elite within a large political aristocracy” (Rubish, 1).
m. Note in the manuscript: “Language of Bensserade and of Voiture. Hôtel de Ram-
bouillet. Novel of Scudéry.
“Some affected.
“Others coarse.” Tocqueville had probably read P. L. Rœderer, Mémoire pour servir à
l’histoire de la société polie en France (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1835).
1. All of this is true above all in aristocratic countries that have been subject to the power
of a king for a long time and peacefully.
When liberty reigns in an aristocracy, the upper classes are constantly obliged to make use
of the lower ones; and, by using them, they become closer to them. That often makes something
of the democratic spirit penetrate within them. Moreover, among a privileged corps that gov-
erns, there develops an energy and habit of enterprise, a taste for movement and noise, that
cannot fail to influence all literary works.
Now let us turn the picture around and consider the reverse side.
Let us take ourselves to a democracy whose ancient traditions and present
enlightenment make it sensitive to the enjoyments of the mind. Ranks are
mixed and confused; knowledge like power is infinitely divided and, if I
dare say so, scattered in all directions.
Here is a confused crowd with intellectual needs to satisfy. These new
amateurs of the pleasures of the mind have not all received the same edu-
cation; they do not possess the same enlightenment, they do not resemble
their fathers, and at every instant they differ from themselves; for they are
constantly changing place, sentiments and fortune. So the mind of each
one of them is not linked with that of all the others by common traditions
and habits, and they have never had either the power, or the will, or the
time to agree among themselves.
It is, however, from within this incoherent and agitated multitude that
authors arise, and it is this multitude that distributes profits and glory to
the latter.
It is not difficult for me to understand that, things being so, I must
expect to find in the literature of such a people only a small number of
those rigorous conventions that readers and writers recognize in aristo-
cratic centuries. If it happened that the men of one period fell into agree-
ment on a few, that would still prove nothing for the following period for,
among democratic nations, each new generation is a new people. So
among these nations, letters can be subjected to strict rules only with dif-
ficulty, and it is nearly impossible that they might ever be subjected to
permanent rules.
In democracies, all the men who occupy themselves with literature are
far from having received a literary education, and, of those among them
able to have some smattering of literature, most follow a political career or
embrace a profession from which they can turn away only for moments to
sample surreptitiously the pleasures of the mind. So they do not make these
pleasures the principal charm of their existence; but they consider them as
a temporary and necessary relaxation amid the serious work of life. Such
men can never acquire sufficiently advanced knowledge of literary art to
sense its niceties; the small nuances escape them. Having only a very short
time to give to letters, they want to turn it entirely to account. They love
books that can be obtained without difficulty, that are quickly read, that
do not require learned research to be understood. They demand easy things
of beauty that reveal themselves and that can be enjoyed at once; above all
they must have the unexpected and the new. Accustomed to a practical,
contentious, monotonous existence, they need intense and rapid emotions,
sudden insights, striking truths or errors that immediately draw them out
of themselves and introduce them suddenly and as if by violence into the
middle of the subject.n
What more do I need to say about it? And, without my explaining it,
who does not understand what is about to follow?
Taken as a whole, the literature of democratic centuries cannot present,
as in the time of aristocracy, the image of order, regularity, science and art;
form will ordinarily be neglected and sometimes scorned. Style will often
appear bizarre, incorrect, overdone and dull, and almost always bold and
vehement. Authors will aim for rapidity of execution rather than for per-
fection of details. Short writings will be more frequent than big books, spirit
more frequent than erudition, imagination more frequent than depth. A
rough and almost wild strength of thought will reign, and often there will
be a very great variety and singular fertility in production. They will try to
astonish rather than please, and will strive more to carry passions away than
to charm taste.o
Writers will undoubtedly be found here and there who would like to
take another path, and, if they have superior merit, they will succeed in
being read, despite their faults and qualities. But these exceptions will be
n. “Metaphysics. Perhaps mystical by spirit of reaction” (Rubish, 1).

o. In the manuscript:
<Per[haps (ed.)] here piece B while removing what I say about style a few lines
higher?>
B. Men who live in aristocracies have for style, as in general for all forms, a su-
perstitious respect and an exaggerated love. It happens that they value experience and
turns of phrase as much as thought. Those who live in democratic countries are on
the contrary led to neglect style too much. Sometimes they show an imprudent scorn
for it. There are some of them who think themselves philosophers in that and who
are often nothing but coarse ignoramuses.
rare, and even those who, in the whole of their work, depart in this way
from common practice, will always return to it in some details.p
I have just portrayed two extreme states; but nations do not go suddenly
from the first to the second; they arrive there only gradually and through
infinite nuances. During the passage that leads a lettered people from one
to the other, a moment almost always occurs when as the literary genius of
democracies meets that of aristocracies, both seem to want to reign in agree-
ment over the human mind.
Those are transient, but very brilliant periods:q then you have fertility
without exuberance, and movement without confusion [liberty in order].
Such was French literature of the XVIIIth century.r
p. “Irving is a model of aristocratic graces.

“Irving must not be considered as an image of democratic literature, but his great
success in America proves that democracies themselves are sensitive to great literary merit,
whatever it may be” (Rubish, 1).
In another place:
The success of Mr. W. Irving in the United States is a proof of this. I know of nothing
more firm and more gracious than the spirit of this author. Nothing more polished
than his works. They form a collection of small tableaux painted with an infinite [v:
admirable] delicacy. Not only has this particular merit not prevented Mr. Irving from
gaining a great reputation in America, but evidently he owes it to this merit alone,
for it would be difficult to find any other one in him (Rubish, 1).
q. “The most favorable moment for the development of the sciences, of literature
and of the arts is when democracy begins to burst into the midst of an aristocratic society.
Then you have movement amid order. Then humanity moves very rapidly, but like an
army in battle, without breaking ranks and without discipline losing anything to ardor”
(Rubish, 1).
r. In a letter of 31 July 1834 intended for Charles Stoffels and devoted to literature,
Tocqueville formulated the following remarks concerning style:
Buffon assuredly said something false when he claimed that style was the whole man,
but certainly style makes a great part of the man. Show me books that have remained,
having as sole merit the ideas that they contained. They are few. I do not even know
of an example to cite, if not perhaps a few books whose style was of an extreme
simplicity; this negative defect does not repulse the reader in an absolute way like the
opposite vice. You find that the principal quality of style is to paint objects and to
make them perceptible to the imagination. I am of the same opinion, but the diffi-
culty is not seeing the goal but attaining it. It is this very desire to put the thought
in relief that preoccupies all those who are involved in writing today and that makes
most of them fall into such great extravagances. Without having myself a style that
satisfies me in any way, I have however studied a great deal and meditated for a long
time about the style of others, and I am persuaded of what I am about to say to you.
There is in the great French writers, whatever the period from which you take them,
a certain characteristic turn of thought, a certain way of seizing the attention of
readers that belongs to each of them. I believe that you come to the world with this
particular character; or at least I admit that I see no way to acquire it; for if you want
to imitate the particular technique of an author, you fall into what painters call pas-
tiches; and if you do not want to imitate anyone, you are colorless. But there is a
quality common to all writers; it serves in a way as the basis of their style; it is on this
foundation that they each then place their own colors. This quality is quite simply
good sense. Study all the writers left to us by the century of Louis XIV, that of Louis
XV, and the great writers from the beginning of ours, such as Madame de Staël and
M. de Chateaubriand, and you will find among all good sense as the base. So what
is good sense applied to style? That would take a very long time to define. It is the
care to present ideas in the simplest and easiest order to grasp. It is the attention given
to presenting at the same time to the reader only one simple and clear point of view
whatever the diversity of the matters treated by the book, so that the thought is [not
(ed.)] so to speak on two ideas. It is the care to use words in their true sense, and as
much as possible in their most limited and most certain sense, in a way that the reader
always positively knows what object or what image you want to present to him. I
know men so clever that, if you quibble with them on the sense of a sentence, they
immediately substitute another one without so to speak changing a single word, each
of them being almost appropriate for the thing. The former men can be good dip-
lomats, but they will never be good writers. What I also call good sense applied to
style is to introduce into the illustrations only things comparable to the matter that
you want to show. This is better understood by examples. Everyone makes illustra-
tions while speaking, as M. Jourdain made prose; the illustration is the most powerful
means to put into relief the matter that you want to make known; but still it is nec-
essary that there is some analogy with the matter, or at least that you understand
clearly what type of analogy the author wants to establish between them. When Pas-
cal, after depicting the grandeur of the universe, ends with this famous piece: “The
world is an infinite sphere whose circumference is everywhere and whose center is
nowhere,” the soul is gripped by this image, and however gigantic the idea that it
presents, the mind conceives it at the first stroke; the object that Pascal uses for his
comparison is familiar; the reader knows perfectly the ordinary dimensions of it and
the form; with modifications made by the writer, it becomes however an admirable
object of comparison with the universe that extends without end around you like an
immense circle whose center you think you occupy wherever you go. Pascal’s thought
makes (illegible word) so to speak and grasps in an exact and (illegible word) fashion
what the mind itself cannot conceive. I do not know why I cited this example. I could
have cited thousands of others. In the most innocent, most skillful or most delicate
ideas of great writers you always see a foundation of good sense and reason that forms
the base. I have allowed myself to go on speaking about this part of style more than
I would go beyond my thought, if I said that the literature of a nation

is always subordinated to its social state and political constitution. I
know that, apart from these causes, there are several others that give cer-
tain characteristics to literary works; but the former seem to me the prin-
cipal ones.
The connections that exist between the social and political state of a
people and the genius of its writers are always very numerous; whoever
knows the one is never completely ignorant of the other.
others because that is where most of the writers of our time err and that is what makes
a jargon of P. L. Courrier [Courier (ed.)] be called their style. . . . If you want to write
well, you must above all read, while studying from the viewpoint of style those who
have written the best. The most useful, without comparison, seem to me to be the
prose writers of the century of Louis XIV. Not that you must imitate their turn,
which is dated, but the base of their style is admirable. There, sticking out, you find
all the principal qualities that have distinguished good styles in all centuries (YTC,
CIc).
The ideas explained in these chapters scarcely differ from those of Chateaubriand,
Sainte-Beuve or La Harpe. Tocqueville’s literary tastes always included the classics of the
XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, such as Pascal, Bossuet and Bourdaloue. In 1838, his read-
ings included Rabelais, Plutarch, Cervantes, Machiavelli, Fontenelle, Saint-Evremond
and the Koran. See Charles de Grandmaison, “Séjour d’Alexis de Tocqueville en Tou-
raine,” Correspondant, 114, 1879, p. 933; and the conversation with Senior on literature
in Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior
(London: H. S. King and Co., 1872), I, pp. 140–43.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 4a
Of the Literary Industry b
Democracy not only makes the taste for letters penetrate the industrial
classes, it introduces the industrial spirit into literature.
[In aristocratic centuries you often take literature as a career, and in the
others as a trade.]
In aristocracies, readers are particular and few; in democracies, it is less
difficult to please them, and their number is prodigious. As a result, among
aristocratic peoples, you can hope to succeed only by immense efforts, and
these efforts which can bring a great deal of glory cannot ever gain much
money; while among democratic nations, a writer can hope to obtain with-
a. Democracy not only makes the taste for letters penetrate the industrial classes, it
introduces the industrial spirit into literature.
Since readers are very numerous and very easy to satisfy because of the absolute
need that they have for something new, you can make your fortune by constantly
producing a host of new but imperfect works. You thus easily enough attain a small
glory and a great fortune.
Democratic literatures for a small number of great writers swarm with sellers of
ideas (YTC, CVf, p. 15).
b. On the jacket of the chapter: “Small chapter that seems to me too short (given its
merit) and that must, I believe, be combined or even destroyed.” In the manuscript you
also find a draft of the chapter, but no rubish exists for it. The central idea of this
chapter, as Reino Virtanen (“Tocqueville and the Romantics,” Symposium 13, no. 2, 1959,
p. 180) has remarked, recalls the article of Sainte-Beuve, “De la littérature industrielle,”
Revue des deux mondes, 19, 1839, pp. 675–91. Cf. Marie, I, p. 248.
813
of the literary industry 814
out much cost a mediocre fame and a great fortune.c For that, he does not
have to be admired; it is enough that he is enjoyed.d
The always growing crowd of readers and the continual need that they
have for something new assures the sales of a book that they hardly value.
In times of democracy, the public often acts toward authors like kings
ordinarily do toward their courtiers; it enriches them and despises them.
What more is needed for the venal souls who are born in courts, or who
are worthy to live there?
Democratic literatures always swarm with these authors who see in let-
ters only an industry,e and, for the few great writers that you see there, you
count sellers of ideas by the thousands.
c. In the draft: “It would be very useful to know what Corneille, Racine and Voiture
gained from their works.”
d. In the draft:
Not only do the Americans make few books, but also most of their books seem written
solely with profit in view. You would say that in general their authors see in literature
only an industry and cultivate letters in the same spirit that they clear virgin forests.
That is easily understood.
[In the margin: This must probably be deleted, for the Americans cannot present
the image of opposites.
If in literature they are subject to the aristocratic genius of the English, as I said
previously, how can they present the vices of the literary genius of democracies?
That is not yet clear however.]/
The fault comes in the word literature. The Americans do not have literature, but
they have books and what I am saying about their books is true.
e. In the draft: “Authors desire money more than in aristocratic centuries because
money is everything./
“They earn money more easily because of the multitude of readers./
“And the less they aim for perfection, the more of it they earn.”
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 5a
Why the Study of Greek and
Latin Literature Is Particularly Useful in
Democratic Societies
What was called the people in the most democratic republics of antiquity
hardly resembled what we call the people. In Athens, all citizens took part
in public affairs; but there were only twenty thousand citizens out of more
than three hundred fifty thousand inhabitants; all the others were slaves
and fulfilled most of the functions that today belong to the people and even
to the middle classes.
So Athens, with its universal suffrage, was, after all, only an aristocratic
republic in which all the nobles had an equal right to government.
a. 1. That the ancient societies always formed true aristocracies, despite their dem-
ocratic appearance.
2. That their literature was always in an aristocratic state, because of the rarity of
books.
3. That their authors show, in fact, very much in relief the qualities natural to those
who write in times of aristocracy.
4. That it is therefore very appropriate to study them in democratic times.
5. That does not mean that everyone must be thrown into the study of Greek and
Latin.
What is good for literature can be inappropriate for social and political needs.
In democratic centuries it is important to the interest of individuals and to the
security of the State that studies are more industrial than literary.
But in these societies there must be schools where one can be nourished by ancient
literature.
A few (illegible word) universities and literary (illegible word) would do better for
that than the multitude of our bad colleges (YTC, CVf, p. 16).
815
study of greek and latin literature 816
You must consider the struggle of the patricians and the plebeians of
Rome in the same light and see in it only an internal quarrel between the
junior members and the elders of the same family. All belonged in fact to
the aristocracy and had its spirit.b
It must be noted, moreover, that in all of antiquity books were rare and
expensive, and that it was highly difficult to reproduce them and to circulate
them. These circumstances, coming to concentrate in a small number of
men the taste and practice of letters, formed like a small literary aristoc-
racy of the elite within a larger political aristocracy. Also nothing indicates
that, among the Greeks and the Romans, letters were ever treated like an
industry.
So these peoples, who formed not only aristocracies, but who were also
very civilized and very free nations, had to give to their literary productions
the particular vices and special qualities that characterize literature in aris-
tocratic centuries.
It is sufficient, in fact, to cast your eyes on the writings that antiq-
uity has left to us to discover that, if writers there sometimes lacked va-
riety and fertility in subjects, boldness, movement and generalization in
thought, they always demonstrated an admirable art and care in details;
nothing in their works seems done in haste or by chance; everything is
b. [In the margin: To put in the preface when I show the difficulty of the subject.
New state.
Incomplete state.]
It is sufficient to read the Vies des hommes illustres of Plutarch to be convinced that
antiquity was and always remained profoundly aristocratic in its laws, in its ideas, in
its mores [v: opinions], that what was understood by the people of that time does
not resemble the people of today, and that the rivalry of plebeians and patricians in
Rome compared to what is happening today between the rich and the poor must be
considered only as internal quarrels between the elders and the junior members of
an aristocracy.
[To the side: that even the democracy of Athens never resembled that of America
[v: never could give the idea of the democratic republic].
This idea has been introduced in the chapters on literature and is good there]
(YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 37–38).
In March and April 1838, Tocqueville read Plutarch. In his letters to Beaumont, Corcelle
and Royer-Collard, he admits that he finds in Plutarch a grandeur of spirit that pleases
him and makes him forget the moral meanness of the time in which he lives. Various
parts of the manuscript retain traces of this reading.
study of greek and latin literature 817
written for connoisseurs, and the search for ideal beauty is shown con-
stantly. There is no literature that puts more into relief the qualities that
are naturally lacking in writers of democracies than that of the ancients.
So no literature exists that is more appropriate to study in democratic
centuries. This study is, of all, the most appropriate for combatting the
literary defects inherent in these centuries; as for their natural qualities,
they will arise all by themselves without the need to learn how to acquire
them.
Here I must make myself clear.
A study can be useful to the literature of a people and not be appropriate
for their social and political needs.
If you persisted stubbornly in teaching only literature in a society where
each man was led by habit to make violent efforts to increase his fortune
or to maintain it, you would have very polished and very dangerous citizens;
for since the social and political state gives them needs every day that edu-
cation would never teach them to satisfy, they would disturb the State, in
the name of the Greeks and the Romans, instead of making it fruitful by
their industry.
It is clear that in democratic societies the interest of individuals, as well
as the security of the State, requires that the education of the greatest num-
ber be scientific, commercial, and industrial rather than literary.
Greek and Latin must not be taught in all schools; but it is important
that those destined by their nature or their fortune to cultivate letters, or
predisposed to appreciate them, find schools where they can perfectly
master ancient literature and be thoroughly penetrated by its spirit. A few
excellent universities would be worth more to achieve this goal than a mul-
titude of bad colleges where superfluous studies done badly prevent nec-
essary studies from being done well.
All those who have the ambition to excel in letters, among democratic
nations, must be nourished often by the works of antiquity. It is a healthy
regimen.
It is not that I consider the literary productions of the ancients as irre-
proachable. I think only that they have special qualities that can serve mar-
velously to counterbalance our particular defects. They support us as we
lean over the edge.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 6a
How American Democracy Has
Modified the English Language b
If what I have said previously concerning letters in general has been well
understood by the reader, he will easily imagine what type of influence the
democratic social state and democratic institutions can exercise on language
itself, which is the first instrument of thought.
a. 1. Modification that English has experienced in America.

2. Democratic cause of that:
1. Democratic peoples constantly change their words, because among them things
are constantly shifting. Thus, great number of new words, character of democratic
languages.
2. Character of these new words. Most of them are related to the needs of industry,
to the science of administration.
3. Origin of these words. Little of learned etymologies. Some borrowings made
from living languages. Above all, gain from itself.
Three means of gaining from itself: 1. Put forgotten terms back into use. 2. Make
expressions belonging to a science or to a profession enter into general circulation
with a figurative meaning. 3. Give to a word in use an uncommon meaning. That is
the most widely used and easiest method, but also the most dangerous. By doubling
the meaning of a word in this way, you make it uncertain which one you are leaving
aside for it and which one you are giving to it.
4. What makes dialects and patois disappear with democratic institutions.
5. What makes all artificial and conventional classifications of words disappear as
well in the same period.
6. Why democracy multiplies abstract words, generalizes their use and leads to the
abuse of them (YTC, CVf, p. 17).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript: “The review of this chapter was extremely tiring
for me; I do not know if this explains why I currently consider the chapter as too long
and boring and miss the original draft, fragments of which I will find moreover in the
rubish.
“Read this chapter to men of the world and study their impressions.”
818
the english language 819
American authors live more, truly speaking, in England than in their

own country, since they constantly study English writers and take them
daily as models. It is not like this for the population itself; the latter is sub-
jected more immediately to the particular causes that can have an effect on
the United States. So you must pay attention not to the written language,
but to the spoken language, if you want to see the modifications that the
idiom of an aristocratic people can undergo while becoming the language
of a democracy.c
Educated Englishmen, and judges more competent to appreciate these
fine nuances than I am able to be myself,d have often assured me that the
c. In the margin: “⫽So the language of a people is an excellent indicator for judging
their social state, just as knowledge of the social state is sufficient to judge the state of
the language in advance.⫽”
d. They said that the Americans showed even more propensity than the English for
making new words; that when the Americans made a new word, they never looked
for its root in learned languages; that they borrowed it from foreign languages or even
from their own language by changing the meaning of an already known word or by
making a word move from the real meaning to the figurative meaning. These educated
Englishmen added that most of these borrowings were made from the vocabulary of
artisans, of businessmen, of political men rather than from that of philosophers, so
that language had a kind of tendency to become materialized. Finally, they said that
the Americans often used indiscriminately the same words in very diverse circum-
stances; so that the Americans employed on a solemn occasion an expression that the
English would have used only in the most ordinary cases and vice versa.
Letter to Mr. Hall (on letter paper, Rubish, 1).
The letter to Basil Hall, from which Tocqueville drew this fragment, is found in the
library of Princeton University and says this:
Château de Baugy, 19 June 1836./
I cannot thank you enough, Sir, for the letter you kindly sent me on the 4th of
this month. I accept with a great deal of gratitude all that it contains of flattery and
usefulness. Your opinions on America and on England will always carry a great weight
in my view and I love knowing them, even when they do not exactly conform to
mine. Controversy between men who esteem one another can only be very profitable.
I will prove that your letter pleased me greatly by answering it at great length. I would
like my response to engage you in continuing a correspondence to which I attach
great value.
You reproach me for having said: that the interests of the poor were sacrificed in
England to those of the rich. I confess that this thought, explained in so few words,
thrown out in passing, without commentaries, is of a nature to present a much more
absolute meaning than the one I meant to give it, and my intention has always been
to modify it, when I could get to reviewing my work. What I wanted to say principally
is that England is a country in which wealth is the required preliminary for a host of
things that elsewhere you can gain without it. So that in England there is a host of
careers that are much more closed to the poor than they are in several other countries.
This would still demand a great number of explanations in order to be well under-
stood. I am obliged to set them aside for the moment when I will have the pleasure
of seeing you again. For now, I move to a subject that has a more current interest for
me, which is America.
You find that I have portrayed too favorably the domestic happiness of the Amer-
icans. As it is very important for me to clarify this delicate point to which I will be
obliged to return in my two last volumes, you will allow me, I hope, to submit a few
observations to you. I have not claimed that a great tenderness reigned in the interior
of households in the United States; I wanted to say that a great deal of order and
purity reigned there, an essential condition for the order and tranquillity of political
society itself. I believed that came in part from the principles and the character that
American women brought to the conjugal union, and it is in this sense that I said
that women exercised a great indirect influence on politics. It seemed to me that in
the United States more than in any other country that I know, it was acknowledged
and regulated by unanimous consent that the woman once married devoted herself
entirely to her husband and to her children, and that is what made me say that nowhere
had a higher and more just idea of conjugal happiness been imagined. The extreme purity
of morals in marriage seems to me, after all, the first of all the conditions for this
happiness, although it is not the only one, and on this point America seems to me to
have the advantage even over England. I proved by my conduct the high idea that I
have of English women; but if virtue is, as I do not doubt, the general rule for them,
this rule seems to me to allow still fewer exceptions on the other side of the Atlantic.
Here is my comment on this subject: I never heard a thoughtless remark said in the
United States about a married woman; American books always assume chaste women;
foreigners themselves, whose tongues would not be bound by custom, confess that
there is nothing to say about them. I have even met some of them corrupt enough
to be distressed by it, and their regret seemed to me the most complete demonstration
of the fact. The same unanimity is not seen in England. I met young fools in England
who hardly spared the honor of their female compatriots. I saw moralists who com-
plained that the morality of women, principally in the lower classes, was not as great
as formerly. Finally, your writers themselves sometimes assume that conjugal faith is
violated. All of that does not exist, to my knowledge, in America. But I see myself
that I have allowed myself to be carried much too far in my demonstration. I hope
that you will see in what precedes only the extreme desire to enlighten myself on a
subject that is infinitely important for me to know.
I will answer almost nothing on what you tell me about the Anglican Church. I
do not know England well enough to be able to discuss with you the degree of political
utility that your church can have. What I want to say is that in general I believe the
union of church and State, not harmful to the State, but harmful to the church. I
enlightened classes of the United States differed notably, in their language,

from the enlightened classes of Great Britain.e
have seen too closely among us the fatal consequences of this union not to be afraid
that something analogous is happening among you. Now, that is a result that you
must try to avoid at all cost, for religion is, in my eyes, the first of all the political
guarantees, and I do not see any good that can compensate men for the loss of beliefs.
I thank you very much for taking the trouble to inform me about the idiom of
the Americans. This subject has interested me greatly recently, and I want to talk
about it with you at greater length since you have assured me that my questions would
not bother you.
In the United States I met very well bred Englishmen who made the following
remarks to me. They struck me all the more at the moment when they were made to
me because I had observed something analogous in the modifications that the French
language has undergone during the past one hundred years. They said then that the
Americans had still more propensity than the English for making new words, that
when they made a new word they never looked for its root in learned languages, that
they borrowed it from foreign languages or even from their own language by changing
the meaning of an already known word or by making a word move from the real
meaning to the figurative meaning. They added that most of these borrowings were
made from the language of various industries, that they were taken from the vocab-
ulary of artisans, of businessmen, of political men rather than from that of philos-
ophers, so that the language had a tendency to become materialized, in a way. I do
not know, Sir, if I am making myself understood. A long conversation would be
necessary to explain what I am forced to put into a few lines. Also I am counting
more on your sagacity than on my clarity. These same persons also said that it often
happened that the Americans used indiscriminately the same words in very diverse
circumstances, so that they employed on a solemn occasion an expression that the
English would have used only in the most ordinary cases and vice versa.
Does all of that seem well founded to you? If this scribbling suggests some ideas
to you and you would be good enough to share them with me, I will be very obliged
to you. And now, Sir, it only remains for me to ask you to excuse my detestable
writing—that you will perhaps decipher with difficulty—and to accept the assurance
of my most profound consideration.
[signed: Alexis de Tocqueville.]
P. S. If your article appears in the review, I will be very pleased to see it, but believe,
Sir, that this circumstance will add nothing to the gratitude that I feel at your having
written it.
With the kind permission of Princeton University (General Manuscripts [Misc.] Col-
lection, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Uni-
versity Library). The article of Basil Hall cited in the postscript is “Tocqueville on the
State of America,” Quarterly Review, 57, 1836, pp. 132–62.
e. In the margin: “⫽Canada.⫽”
They not only complained that the Americans had put many new words
into use; the difference or the distance between the two countries was
enough to explain that; but they also complained that these new words were
particularly borrowed either from the jargon of parties, or from the me-
chanical arts, or from the language of business. They added that old English
words were often taken by the Americans in a new sense. Finally, they said
that the inhabitants of the United States frequently intermingled styles in
a singular way, and that they sometimes put together words that, in the
language of the mother country, were customarily kept apart. [This is how
they happened, for example, to introduce a familiar or common expression
into the pomp of a speech.]
These remarks, which were made to me at various times by men who
seemed to me to merit belief, led me to reflect upon this subject, and my
reflections brought me, by theory, to the same place that they had reached
by practice.
In aristocracies, where everything remains at rest, language must natu-
rally share that rest. Few new words are made, because few new things hap-
pen; and if you did new things, you would try hard to portray them with
known words whose meaning has been fixed by tradition.
If it happens that the human mind there finally stirs by itself, or that
enlightenment, penetrating from outside, awakens it, the new expressions
that are created have a learned, intellectual and philosophical character that
indicates that they do not to owe their birth to a democracy. When the fall
of Constantinople made the sciences and letters flow back toward the West
[and when the enlightenment of antiquity after being revived in Italy fi-
nally penetrated among us], the French language found itself almost all at
once invaded by a multitude of new words, all of which had their roots in
Greek and Latin. You then saw in France an erudite neologism, which was
practiced only by the enlightened classes, and whose effects were never felt
by the people or only reached them in the long run.
All the nations of Europe successively presented the same spectacle. Mil-
ton alone introduced into the English language more than six hundred
words, almost all drawn from Latin, Greek and Hebrew.f
f. M. de Chateaubriand says in his comments on Milton, 1, V, that the latter created

The perpetual movement that reigns within a democracy tends on the

contrary constantly to renew the face of language like that of public affairs.
Amid this general agitation and this competition of all minds, a great num-
ber of new ideas are formed; old ideas are lost or reappear; or they become
subdivided into infinite small nuances.
So words are often found there that must go out of use, and others that
must be brought into use.
Democratic nations moreover love movement for itself. That is seen in
language as well as in politics. Even when they do not need to change words,
they sometimes feel the desire to do so.
The genius of democratic peoples shows itself not only in the great num-
ber of new words that they put into use, but also in the nature of the ideas
that these new words represent.
Among these peoples, the majority makes the law in the matter of lan-
guage, as in everything else. Its spirit reveals itself there as elsewhere. Now,
five to six hundred new words, nearly all drawn from Greek, Hebrew and Latin. Good
example of learned neologism./
Consubstantiality, word created or at least recognized and brought to light by the
Council of Nice [Nicea (ed.)] in the fourth century to combat Arius.
Transubstantiation, word created in the XVIth century by the adversaries of Luther
who wanted to express by [that (ed.)] that the bread of the host changed substance
and became the body of Jesus Christ. See Histoire des variations, v. 1, p. 113.
Constitutionality, word created by the French Revolution expressing likewise a new
idea. Examples of new words that different causes can invent in all times (Rubish, 1).
In the margin of the manuscript, Tocqueville notes another example of neologism:
“comfortable—English.”
Cf. Chateaubriand, Essai sur la littérature anglaise (Paris: Charles Gosselin and Furne,
1836), I, pp. 8–9. Tocqueville authorized Henry Reeve, the English translator of his book,
to delete the reference to Milton, which the latter considered inaccurate. Reeve finally
left it, probably because Tocqueville had informed him that it was already too late to
eliminate it from the French edition (Correspondance anglaise, OC, VI, 1, pp. 54–57).
During the summer of 1836, which he spent in Switzerland, Tocqueville read The
Prince, the History of Florence and some letters of Machiavelli, the Complete Works of
Plato and the Histoire des variations of Bossuet (the library of the Tocqueville château
contains an edition published in Paris in 1730).
the majority is occupied more with public affairs than studies, more with
political and commercial interests than with philosophical speculation or
literature. Most of the words created or accepted by the majority will bear
the mark of these habits; they will serve principally to express the needs of
industry, the passions of parties or the details of public administration.
Language will expand constantly in that way, while on the contrary it will
little by little abandon the terrain of metaphysics and theology.
As for the source from which democratic nations draw their new
words and the manner in which they set about to fabricate them, it is easy
to say.
Men who live in democratic countries hardly know the language that
was spoken in Rome and in Athens, and they do not bother about going
back to antiquity in order to find the expression they are lacking. If they
sometimes resort to learned etymologies, it is ordinarily vanity that makes
them search the content of the dead languages, and not erudition that
brings certain words naturally to their minds. It even happens sometimes
that it is the most ignorant among them who make the most use of such
etymologies. The entirely democratic desire to go beyond your sphere of-
ten leads men in democracies to want to enhance a very coarse profession
by a Greek or Latin name. The lower an occupation and the more removed
from knowledge, the more pompous and erudite is the name. This is
how our tightrope walkers have transformed themselves into acrobats and
funambulists.
Lacking dead languages, democratic peoples willingly borrow words
from living languages; for they communicate constantly among themselves,
and the men of different countries willingly imitate each other, because
they resemble each other more each day.
But democratic peoples look principally to their own language for the
means to innovate. From time to time, they take up in their vocabulary
forgotten expressions that they bring to light again, or they take from a
particular class of citizens a term that is its own in order to bring the term
into the regular language with a figurative meaning; a multitude of ex-
pressions that at first belonged only to the special language of a party or a
profession thus find themselves brought into general circulation.
The most usual expedient that democratic peoples employ to innovate
with regard to language consists of giving an uncommon meaning to an

expression already in use. This method is very simple, very quick and very
easy. Knowledge is not needed to use it well; and ignorance even facilitates
its use. But it makes language run great risks. By doubling the meaning of
a word in this way, democratic peoples sometimes make it doubtful which
meaning they are leaving aside and which one they are giving to it.
An author begins by turning a known expression a little bit away from
its original meaning and after having modified it in this way, he adapts it
as well as he can to his subject. Another appears who pulls the meaning in
another direction; a third carries it with him along a new path; and since
there is no common arbiter, no permanent tribunal that can definitely settle
the meaning of the word, the latter remains in a variable situation. As a
result, writers almost never have an air of being attached to a single thought;
instead they always seem to aim at the middle of a group of ideas, leaving
to the reader the trouble of judging which one is hit.
This is an unfortunate consequence of democracy. I would prefer that
you sprinkled the language with Chinese, Tartar or Huron words, than to
make the meaning of French words uncertain. Harmony and homogeneity
are only the secondary beauties of language. There is much more conven-
tion in this kind of thing, and you can, if necessary, do without them. But
there is no good language without clear terms.g
Equality necessarily brings several other changes to language.
In aristocratic centuries, when each nation tends to hold itself apart from
all the others and loves to have a physiognomy that is its own, it often
happens that several peoples who have a common origin become very for-
eign to each other, so that, without ceasing to be able to understand each
other, they no longer all speak in the same way.
In these same centuries, each nation is divided into a certain number of
classes that see each other little and do not mingle; each one of these classes
invariably takes on and keeps intellectual habits that belong only to it, and
adopts by preference certain words and certain terms that pass afterward
g. In the margin, concerning this paragraph: “<To delete, I think.>”

from generation to generation like inheritances. You then find in the same
idiom a language of the poor and a language of the rich, a language of
commoners and a language of nobles, a learned language and a vulgar lan-
guage. The more profound the divisions and the more insurmountable the
barriers, the more this must be so. I would readily bet that, among the castes
of India, language varies prodigiously, and that almost as much difference
is found between the language of a pariah and that of a Brahmin as between
their forms of dress.
When, on the contrary, men no longer held in their place see each other
and communicate constantly, when castes are destroyed, and when classes
are renewed and mixed together, all the words of a language are mingled.
Those words that cannot suit the greatest number perish; the rest form a
common mass from which each person draws more or less haphazardly.
Nearly all the different dialects that divided the idioms of Europe are no-
ticeably tending to disappear; there are no patois in the New World, and
they are disappearing daily in the Old World.h
This revolution in the social state influences style as well as language.
Not only does everyone use the same words, but they also get accustomed
to employing each of them indiscriminately. The rules that style had cre-
ated are almost destroyed. You hardly find expressions that, by their nature,
seem vulgar, and others that appear refined. Since individuals from various
ranks bring with them, to whatever station they rise, expressions and terms
that they have used, the origin of words is lost like that of men, and a
confusion is developed in language as in society.
I know that in the classification of words rules are found that are not
due to one form of society rather than to another, but that derive from the
h. In America there is no class which speaks the language in a very delicate and very
studied manner, but you do not find a patois. The same remark applies to Canada.
That is due to several causes, but among others to equality of conditions which, by
giving to all men an analogous education, by mixing them together constantly, has
had to provide them necessarily with similar forms of language.
We see the same revolution taking place in Europe and above all in France. The
patois are disappearing as conditions become equal (Rubish, 1).
very nature of things. There are expressions and turns which are vulgar
because the sentiments that they must express are truly low, and others
which are elevated because the objects that they want to portray are natu-
rally very high.
Ranks, by mingling, will never make these differences disappear. But
equality cannot fail to destroy what is purely conventional and arbitrary in
the forms of thought. I do not even know if the necessary classification
which I pointed out above will not always be less respected among a dem-
ocratic people than among another; because, among such a people, there
are no men whose education, enlightenment and leisure permanently dis-
pose them to study the natural laws of language and who make those laws
respected by observing them themselves.
I do not want to abandon this subject without portraying democratic
languages with a last feature that will perhaps characterize them more than
all the others.
I showed previously that democratic peoples had the taste and often the
passion for general ideas; that is due to qualities and defects that are their
own. This love of general ideas shows itself, in democratic languages, in
the continual use of generic terms and abstract words, and by the manner
in which they are used. That is the great merit and the great weakness of
these languages.j
Democratic peoples passionately love generic terms and abstract words,
because these expressions enlarge thought and, by allowing many objects
to be included in a little space, aid the work of the mind.k
j. In the margin: “<Perhaps make this into a small chapter having this title: why equal-
ity multiplies the number of abstract words, generalizes their use and leads to the abuse
of them.
“Probably do so.>”
k. General and abstract terms./
Due to the need to give yourself latitude while speaking either to yourself or to
others; to the fear of responsibility; to the need to give yourself latitude to the right
and to the left of the point where you are placed. Result of life in a changing, un-
certain, agitated time, as a democratic time always is, and of the softness of souls in
that same time./
All our impressions turn vague when you approach a moral question; they float
A democratic writer will willingly say in an abstract way the capable for
capable men, and without getting into details about the things to which
this capacity applies. He will speak about actualities in order to depict all
at once the things that are happening at this moment before his eyes, and
he will understand by the word eventualities all that can happen in the uni-
verse beginning from the moment when he is speaking.
Democratic writers constantly create abstract words of this type, or
they take the abstract words of language in a more and more abstract
sense.
Even more, to make discourse more rapid, they personify the object of
the abstract words and make it act like a real individual. They will say that
the force of things wants the capable to govern.m
I cannot do better than to explain my thought by my own example.
I have often used the word equality in an absolute sense; I have, as well,
personified equality in several places, and in this way I have happened to
say that equality did certain things or refrained from certain others. You
can maintain that the men of the century of Louis XIV would not have
spoken in this way; it would never have occurred to the mind of any one
of them to use the word equality without applying it to a particular thing,
and they would rather have renounced using it than agree to making equal-
ity into a living person.
These abstract words that fill democratic languages and that you use
between praise and blame. Which comes from the softness of souls that demands
little effort from others and requires little from yourself (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 23).
Madame de Staël already complained about the uncontrolled creation of abstract words
in Chapter VII of the second part of her De la littérature (Paris: Charpentier, 1842),
p. 501. La Harpe had done the same.
m. “At the time of the last insurrection of the Greeks against the Turks, a minister
[v: orator], having to speak of Greece and not knowing if he had to designate it as a
province in revolt or as a free State, took it into his head to call it a locality. An aristocratic
language would never have provided such an expedient to politics” (Rubish, 1). See René
Georgin, “Tocqueville et le langage de la démocratie,” Vie et langage 17, no. 201 (1968):
740–44; and Laurence Guellec, Tocqueville et les langages de la démocratie (Paris: Honoré
Champion, 2004).
for the slightest reason without connecting them to any particular fact,
enlarge and veil thought. They make the expression more rapid and the
idea less clear. But, as regards language, democratic peoples prefer obscu-
rity to labor.
I do not know, moreover, if vagueness does not have a certain secret
charm for those who speak and write among these peoples.
Men who live there, since they are often left to the individual efforts of
their intellect, are almost always tormented by doubt. Moreover, since their
situation changes constantly, they are never held firmly to any one of their
opinions by the very immobility of their fortune.
So the men who inhabit democratic countries often have vacillating
thoughts; they must have very broad expressions in order to contain them.
Since they never know if the idea they express today will suit the new sit-
uation that they will have tomorrow, they naturally conceive the taste for
abstract terms. An abstract word is like a box with a false bottom; you put
the ideas that you want into it, and you take them out without anyone
seeing.
[I am so persuaded of the influence that the social state and political
institutions of a people exercise on its language, that I think that you could
easily succeed in discovering these first facts solely by inspecting the words
of the language, and I am astonished that this idea has not been applied
more often and more perfectly to the idioms that we know without know-
ing the men who use or have used them.]
Among all peoples, generic and abstract words form the basis of lan-
guage; so I am not claiming that you find these words only in democratic
languages. I am only saying that the tendency of men, in times of equality,
is particularly to augment the number of words of this type, always to take
them singly in their most abstract sense, and to use them for the slightest
reason, even when the needs of speech do not require it.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 7a
a. 1. Definition of poetry. Search for and portrayal of the ideal. Object of the chapter.
Try to find out if among the actions, sentiments and ideas of democratic peoples,
some are found that lend themselves to the ideal and can serve as source of poetry.
2. Democratic peoples have naturally less taste for the ideal because of the passions
that bind them constantly to the pursuit of the real.
3. Moreover there are several subjects proper to the portrayal of the ideal that they
are lacking.
1. Religions are shaken.
2. They become simplified
3. Men take no further interest in the past.
4. They find with difficulty material for the ideal in the present because they are
all small and see each other very clearly.
4. So most of the American [ancient? (ed.)] sources of poetry are drying up, but
others are opening.
1. Men of democratic centuries readily take an interest in the future.
2. If individuals are small, society seems [blank (ed.)] to them and lends itself to
poetry. Each nation sees itself.
3. The human species is seen and it can be portrayed.
4. There is no complete divinity, but the figure of God is greater and clearer and
his place relative to the whole of human affairs is more recognizable.
5. The external man does not lend himself [to poetry (ed.)] but poets descend into
the realm of the soul and there they find the sentiments of not just one man in
particular, but of man in general to portray; equality brings forth the image of man
in general and is interested in him.
Thus democracy does not make all the subjects that lend themselves to the ideal
disappear. It makes them less numerous and greater (YTC, CVf, pp. 18–19).
In the rubish of these chapters you find this as well:
Poetry of democracy./
Future of democracy, sole poetic idea of our time. Immense, indefinite idea. Pe-
riod of renewal, of total change in the social system of humanity. This idea alone
throws more poetry into souls than there was in the century of Louis XV and in that
of Louis XIV.
It is only the past or the future that is poetic. The present very rarely is. There was
nevertheless a great deal of poetry in the present in the Middle Ages. Facts to explain
(Rubish, 1).
830
sources of poetry 831
Of Some Sources of Poetry

among Democratic Nations b
b. On a jacket that accompanies that of the chapter:

Piece that began the chapter and that must be deleted, I believe, as written in an
affected style and above all verbiage./
I would like to portray the influence that democratic institutions exercise in the
United States on the poetic genius of man, but beyond the fact that the subject is
placed outside of the ordinary circle of my thoughts, a first difficulty stops me.
I do not know if anyone up to now has taken care to provide an uncontested
definition of the thing I am attempting to speak about. No one can deny that poetry
⫽has not⫽ obtained great power over the imagination of men; but who has ever said
clearly what poetry was; how many different and often dissimilar things we have gath-
ered under this very name!
[In the margin: Show in a more striking way what is useful in poetry. The Ro-
mans./
It is not sufficiently understood that men cannot do without poetry./
Poetry and poetic faculty to distinguish. Taste for the ideal./
I want to examine not only if democracy leads men to do works of poetry but also
if it suggests poetic ideas to them./
The one is not the necessary consequence of the other, for a people can have a
great number of poetic ideas and not have the time or the art of writing or the taste
for reading. But in general you can say that these two things go together.]
A small rhymed epigram is a work of poetry; a long epic in verse is as well. I see
enormous differences between these two productions of the human mind, but they
have something similar in the form. I understand that it is to form that the word
begins to be attached, and I conclude from it that poetry consists of carefully en-
closing the idea in a certain number of syllables symmetrically arranged. But no. I
hear that these verses are poetic and that those are not. Some grant that there is poetry
in a prose work and others contend that they find no trace of it in a long poem. So
poetry rests not only in the form of the thought, but also in the thought itself. It can
reside in the two things united or inhabit each one of them separately. So what de-
finitively is poetry? This could become the topic for a dissertation, with which I do
not intend to fatigue the reader. So instead of trying to find out what language has
wanted to include in the word poetry, I will say what I include in it myself and I will
fix the meaning that I give to it in the present chapter.
On a page bearing the title of poetry in america, you read this first beginning of
the chapter: “I often wondered while traveling across the United States if, amid this
people exclusively preoccupied by the material cares of life [v: commercial enterprises],
among so many mercantile speculations, a single poetic idea would be found, and I be-
lieved I recognized several of them that appeared to me eminently to have this character.”
Several very different meanings have been given to the word poetry. It
would tire readers to try to find out which one of these different meanings
is most suitable to choose; I prefer to tell them immediately which one I
have chosen.
Poetry, in my view, is the search for and the portrayal of the ideal.c
The poet is the one who, by taking away a part of what exists, adding
some imaginary features to the picture, and combining certain real circum-
stances that are not found together, completes, enlarges nature. Thus, the
aim of poetry will not be to represent truth, but to embellish it and to offer
a higher image to the mind.d
Verse will seem to me like the ideal of beauty for language, and in this
sense it will be eminently poetic; but in itself alone, it will not constitute
poetry.
[<Poetry always takes as the subject of its portraits beings who are really
found in nature or who at least live in the imagination of the men to whom
it is addressed. It changes, enlarges, embellishes what exists; it does not
create what does not exist, and if it attempts to do so, it can still amuse or
surprise, but it no longer rouses and becomes the puerile game of an idle
imagination.>]e
I want to find out if, among the actions, sentiments and ideas of dem-
ocratic peoples, some are found that lend themselves to the imagination of
the ideal and that must, for this reason, be considered as natural sources of
poetry.
It must first be recognized that the taste for the ideal and the pleasure
that is taken in seeing its portrayal are never as intense and as widespread
among a democratic people as within an aristocracy.
[In democratic societies the human mind finds itself constantly bound
c. “The greatest proof of the misery of man is poetry. God cannot make poetry; he
sees everything clearly” (rubish of these chapters, Rubish, 1).
d. “You idealize a small object, you are poetic without being great.
“You represent a great thing in its natural state, you are great or sublime, but not
poetic” (Rubish, 1).
e. “I will go still further and without limiting the name of poet to writers I will readily
agree to extend it to all those who undertake to offer images to men, provided that they
represent by them something superior to what is. Raphael will seem to me to merit this
title as well as Homer” (rubish of these chapters, Rubish, 1).
by the small details of real [v: present] life. That results not only from the
fact that all men work, but above all from the fact that they carry out all
their works with fervor and I could almost say with love.]f
Among aristocratic nations, it sometimes happens that the body acts as
if by itself, while the soul is plunged into a repose that weighs it down.
Among these nations, the people themselves often show poetic tastes, and
their spirit sometimes soars above and beyond what surrounds them.g
But, in democracies, the love of natural enjoyments, the idea of some-
thing better, competition, the charm of impending success, are like so many
spurs that quicken the steps of each man in the career that he has embraced
and forbid him from standing aside from it for a single moment. The prin-
cipal effort of the soul goes in this direction. Imagination is not extin-
guished, but it devotes itself almost exclusively to imagining the useful and
to representing the real.
Equality not only diverts men from portraying the ideal; it decreases the
number of subjects to portray.
[You cannot deny that equality [v: democracy], while becoming estab-
lished among men, does not make a great number of these subjects that
lent themselves to the portrayal of the ideal disappear from their view,
and does not in this way dry up several of the most abundant sources of
poetry.]
Aristocracy, by holding society immobile, favors the steadiness and du-
ration of positive religions, as well as the stability of political institutions.
Not only does it maintain the human spirit in faith, but it disposes it to
adopt one faith rather than another. An aristocratic people will always be
inclined to place intermediary powers between God and man.
You can say that in this aristocracy shows itself very favorable to poetry.
When the universe is populated with supernatural powers that do not fall
within the senses, but are discovered by the mind, imagination feels at ease,
f. In the margin: “<This sentence is found word for word, I believe, in revolutions.
Vary it in one place or the other. The idea is necessary to both.>”
g. In the margin: “<While the middle classes, although they have more leisure, show
it almost not at all. From that you can see clearly that it is less the constraint of work
that stops the poetic impulse than the spirit that is brought to work.>”
and poets, finding a thousand diverse subjects to portray, find innumerable

spectators ready to be interested in their portraits.
In democratic centuries, on the contrary, it sometimes happens that
beliefs go drifting away like the laws. Doubt then brings the imagination
of poets back to earth and encloses them within the visible and real
world.h
Even when equality does not shake religions, it simplifies them; it diverts
attention from secondary agents in order to bring it principally to the sov-
ereign master.
Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation of the
past, and fixes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men a sort of
instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In that, aristocracy is very much
more favorable to poetry, for things ordinarily enlarge and become obscure
as they become more distant; and from this double perspective they lend
themselves more to the portrayal of the ideal.
After removing the past from poetry, equality partially removes the
present.
Among aristocratic peoples, a certain number of privileged individuals
exist, whose existence is so to speak above and beyond the human condi-
tion; power, wealth, glory, spirit, delicacy and distinction in all things seem
to belong by right to the latter. The crowd never sees them very closely, or
does not follow them in detail; there is little that you have to do to make
the portrayal of these men poetic.
On the other hand, there exists among these same peoples ignorant,
humble and subservient classes; and the latter lend themselves to poetry by
the very excess of their coarseness and misery, as the others do by their
refinement and their grandeur. Moreover, since the different classes that
make up an aristocratic people are very separated from each other and know
each other badly, imagination can always, while representing them, add
something to or subtract something from the real.
In democratic societies, where men are all very small and very similar,
h. “Doubt itself prosaic in detail is immensely poetic over all. Byron proved it very
well. What poetry in the why and the how of man in face of God and of nature.
“Audacious doubt is eminently democratic” (rubish of these chapters, Rub-
ish, 1).
each one, while viewing himself, sees all the others at the same instant. So
poets who live in democratic centuries cannot ever take one man in par-
ticular as the subject of their portrait; for a subject with mediocre great-
ness, which you also see clearly on all sides, will never lend itself to the
ideal.
Therefore equality, while becoming established on the earth, dries up
most of the ancient sources of poetry.
Let us try to show how it finds new ones.
When doubt depopulated heaven and when the progress of equality re-
duced each man to better known and smaller proportions, poets, not yet
imagining what they could put in place of these great subjects that with-
drew with aristocracy, turned their eyes toward inanimate nature. Losing
heroes and gods from view, they undertook at first to portray rivers and
mountains.
That gave birth in the last century to the poetry that was called, par
excellence, descriptive.
Some have thought that this embellished portrayal of the material and
inanimate things which cover the earth was poetry appropriate to demo-
cratic centuries; but I think that is a mistake. I believe that it only represents
a period of transition.
I am persuaded that in the long run democracy diverts the imagi-
nation from everything that is external to man, in order to fix it only
on man.j
Democratic peoples can be very amused for a moment by considering
nature; but they get really excited only by the sight of themselves. Here
alone are the natural sources of poetry to be found among these peoples,
and it may be believed that all poets who do not want to draw upon these
sources will lose all sway over the souls of those whom they claim to charm,
and will end by no longer having anything except cold witnesses to their
transports.
j. “Democracy diverts the human mind from the contemplation of external objects
in order to concentrate it on itself. ‘Man is the most beautiful study of man’, Pope said.
That is true for all peoples, but there is no more evident truth for a democratic people.
Almost the whole of its literature is contained in this single expression” (Rubish, 1).
I have demonstrated how the idea of the progress and of the indefinite
perfectibility of the human species was appropriate to democratic ages.
Democratic peoples hardly worry about what has been, but they readily
dream about what will be, and their imagination has no limits in this di-
rection; it expands and grows without measure.
This offers a vast opening to poets and allows them to move their por-
trayal far away from what is seen. Democracy, which closes the past to po-
etry, opens the future.
[⫽In democratic centuries poets cannot take as the subject of their por-
trait a hero or a prince.⫽]
Since all the citizens who make up a democratic society are nearly equal
and similar, poetry cannot attach itself to any one of them; but the nation
offers itself to its brush. The similarity of all individuals, which makes each
one of them separately inappropriate for becoming the subject of poetry,
allows poets to include them all in the same image and to consider finally
the people itself. Democratic nations see their own figure more clearly than
all others and this great figure lends itself marvelously to the portrayal of
the ideal.
I will easily acknowledge that the Americansk do not have poets; I cannot
admit as well that they do not have poetic ideas.m
Some in Europe are very much interested in the American wilderness,
but the Americans themselves hardly think about it. The wonders of in-
animate nature leave them indifferent, and so to speak they see the admi-
rable forests that surround them only at the moment when they fall under
their blows.n Their sight is filled with another spectacle. The American
k. “I cited this example of America not only because America is the particular object
of my discourse, but also because I believe that in this it provides me with insights about
what must happen among democratic peoples in general” (Rubish, 1).
m. Milton, democratic poet./
“Byron idem./
“The one is democratic because he drew his generative idea from Christianity.
“The other by the natural impulse of his time” (rubish of these chapters,
Rubish, 1).
n. “There is until now only a single writer who has felt and could produce this ad-
mirable poetry of wild nature such as the wilderness of America reveals to us, and this
great poet is not American” (Rubish, 1).
people see themselves marching across this wilderness, draining swamps,

straightening rivers, populating empty areas, and subduing nature. [Every
day they notice their size growing and their strength increasing, and they
already perceive themselves in the future leading as absolute masters the
vast continent that they have made fruitful and cleared.] This magnificent
image of themselves does not only present itself now and then to the imag-
ination of the Americans; you can say that it follows each one of them in
the least as well as in the principal of his actions, and that it remains always
hovering in his mind.
You cannot imagine anything so small, so colorless, so full of miserable
interests, so anti-poetical, in a word, than the life of a man in the United
States; but among the thoughts that direct him one is always found that is
full of poetry, and that one is like a hidden nerve which gives vigor to all
the rest.o [You must not be astonished by this for how could you think that
men who do such great things would be entirely devoid of great ideas?]p
In aristocratic centuries, each people, like each individual, is inclined to
hold itself immobile and separate from all the others.
In democratic centuries the extreme mobility of men and their impatient
desires make them constantly change place, and make the inhabitants of
different countries mingle together, see and hear each other, and borrow
from each other. So it is not only the members of the same nation who
become similar; nations themselves assimilate, and all together form in the
eye of the beholder nothing more than a vast democracy in which each
o. “So I do not fear that democratic peoples lack poetry, but I am afraid that this
poetry aims for the gigantesque rather than for grandeur. For it, I fear the influence of
their poets more than their timidity, and I am afraid that the sublime there may be
several times closer still to the ridiculous than anywhere else” (rubish of these
chapters, Rubish, 1).
p. In a first draft, this paragraph followed: “⫽The sight of what is happening in the
United States makes me reflect on democratic peoples in general, and these new reflec-
tions modify the opinion that I had had formerly that democracies could not fail to
extinguish the poetic genius of man and to substitute for the empire of the imagination
that of good sense. That is true, but to a lesser degree than I had believed at first. So I
think that there is a kind of poetry within reach of democratic peoples, and I am per-
suaded that great writers who will be born among them will not fail to see it and to take
hold of it⫽” (Rubish, 1).
citizen is a people. That brings to light for the first time the figure of the
human species.
All that relates to the existence of the human species taken as a whole,
its vicissitudes, its future becomes a very fertile mine for poetry.q
Poets who lived in aristocratic ages made admirable portraits by taking
as subjects certain incidents in the life of a people or of a man; but not
one of them ever dared to include in his tableau the destinies of the hu-
man species, while poets who write in democratic ages can undertake to
do so.
At the same time that each person, raising his eyes above his country,
finally begins to notice humanity itself, God reveals himself more and more
to the human mind in his full and entire majesty.
If in democratic centuries faith in positive religions is often shaky and
beliefs in intermediary powers, whatever name you give them, grow dim,
men on the other hand are disposed to conceive a much more vast idea of
Divinity itself, and the intervention of the divine in human affairs appears
to them in a new and greater light.
Seeing the human species as a single whole, they easily imagine that the
same design rules over its destinies, and in the actions of each individual,
they are led to recognize the mark of this general and constant plan by
which God leads the species.r
This can also be considered as a very abundant source of poetry that
opens in these centuries.
Democratic poets will always seem small and cold if they try to give
bodily forms to gods, demons or angels, and try to make them descend
from heaven to quarrel over the earth.
But, if democratic poets want to connect the great events that they are
relating to the general designs of God for the universe, and, without show-
q. Note on the other side of the jacket that contains the rubish of the chapter: “In
aristocracy, the detail of man poetic. Homer portrays Achilles. In democracy, humanity
independently of the particular forms that it can take in certain places and in certain
times. Byron, Childe Harold, Chateaubriand, René” (Rubish, 1).
r. “What is more poetic than the Discours sur l’histoire universelle of Bossuet? Only
God and the human species are present there, however” (Rubish, 1).
ing the hand of the sovereign master, cause his thought to be entered into,
they will be admired and understood, for the imagination of their com-
patriots itself follows this road.s
You can equally foresee that poets who live in democratic ages will por-
tray passions and ideas rather than persons and actions. [and that they will
apply themselves to relating the general features of human passions and
ideas rather than those that depend on a time and on a country.t
This is easy to understand.]
Language, dress and the daily actions of men in democracies are resistant
to the imagination of the ideal. These things are not poetic in themselves,
and they would moreover cease to be so, because they are too well known
by all those to whom you undertook to speak about them. That forces poets
constantly to penetrate below the external surface that the senses reveal to
them, in order to glimpse the soul itself. Now there is nothing that lends
s. We have had today (22 April 1837) an interesting conversation on poetry.

We all fell into agreement that the intervention of the divinity in human affairs
was essentially poetic by nature and particularly necessary to epic poetry.
The discussion turned on the means of making the intervention of the divinity
felt today, of making it perceptible.
By common agreement we abandoned mythological divinities, personified pas-
sions . . . , as operatic machines that chilled the spectator.
I maintained that today you had equally to avoid using saints, demons and angels,
since the spirit of the century was drawn more and more to grasp the idea of the
entirely intellectual and non-material action of the divinity on souls, without inter-
mediaries in whom you scarcely believe. But the difficulty arose of making this action,
conceived by the mind alone, felt and making this invisible agent seen in the very
play of human passions.
Charles [Stoffels? (ed.)] maintained that man was so made that you could never
make him conceive of the intervention of the divinity without visible agents. I main-
tained the opposite, but without being able to develop my thought practically.
[In the margin: Humanitarian poetry.
Poem of man. Human destiny.
Jocelyn. Human condition.
This merits being carefully examined (rubish of these chapters, Rubish, 1).
t. “Sensual poetry. Arabs.
Appropriate to democratic peoples” (rubish of these chapters, Rubish, 1).
itself more to portraying the ideal than man envisaged in this way in the
depths of his non-material nature.u
I do not need to travel across heaven and earth to find a marvelous subject
full of contrast, of grandeur and infinite pettiness, of profound obscurities
and singular clarity, capable at the same time of giving birth to pity, ad-
miration, contempt, terror. I have only to consider myself. Man comes out
of nothing, passes through time, and goes to disappear forever into the
bosom of God. You see him only for a moment wandering at the edge of
the two abysses where he gets lost.
If man were completely unaware of himself, he would not be poetic; for
what you have no idea about you cannot portray. If he saw himself clearly,
his imagination would remain dormant and would have nothing to add to
the picture. But man is revealed enough for him to see something of him-
self, and hidden enough for the rest to disappear into impenetrable shad-
ows, into which he plunges constantly and always in vain, in order finally
to understand himself.v
u. In the manuscript, you find in place of this sentence two paragraphs that repeat
ideas present in other places of the chapter.
v. Miseries of man./
[In the margin: To put perhaps with sentiments. Transition.
Put somewhere because good.
Human will.
In preface probably when I say that I am speaking about the difficulty of the
subject.]
If you examine the conduct of men, you easily discover that tastes direct them
much more than opinions or ideas.
Where does the instinctive, almost physical sensation that we call taste come from?
How is it born, is it supported? Where does it take us and push us? Who knows?
Thus man does not know even the principal motive of his own actions and when,
tired of looking for truth in the entire universe, he comes back toward himself, ob-
scurity seems to redouble as he approaches and wants to understand himself.
[In the margin: This text is better.
And when, tired of looking for what makes his fellows act, he tries hard at least
to untangle what pushes himself, he still does not know what to believe. He travels
across the entire universe and he doubts. He finally comes back toward himself and
obscurity seems to redouble as he approaches himself more and wants to under-
stand himself.]
9 March 1836 (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 12–13).
So among democratic peoples, you must not wait for poetry to live by
legends, for it to be nourished by traditions and ancient memories, for it
to try to repopulate the universe with supernatural beings in whom readers
and poets themselves no longer believe, or for it coldly to personify virtues
and vices that you can see in their own form. It lacks all these resources;
but man remains for it, and that is enough. Human destinies, man, taken
apart from his time and country and placed in front of nature and God,
with his passions, his doubts, his unprecedented prosperity and incompre-
hensible miseries, will become for these peoples the principal and almost
unique subject of poetry; and this is what you can already ascertain if you
consider what has been written by the great writers who have appeared since
the world began to turn toward democracy.
Writers who, today, have so admirably reproduced the features of Childe
Harold, of René and of Jocelynw did not claim to recount the actions of
one man; they wanted to illuminate and enlarge certain still obscure aspects
of the human heart.
Tocqueville here is referring to Pascal, very specifically to the fragment on the dispro-
portion of man (pensée 390 of the Lafuma edition).
In 1831, he had already written to Ernest de Chabrol a letter with accents of Pascal:
The more I examine this country and everything, the more I see and the more I am
frightened by seeing the few certainties that man is able to acquire in this world. There
is no subject that does not grow larger as you pursue it, no fact or observation at the
bottom of which you do not find a doubt. All the objects of this life appear to us
only like certain decorations of the opera that you see only through a curtain that
prevents you from discerning the contours with precision.
There are men who enjoy living in this perpetual half-light; as for me, it tires me
out and drives me to despair. I would like to hold political and moral truths as I hold
my pen, and doubt besieges me.
Yesterday there was an American who asked me how I classified human miseries;
I answered without hesitating that I put them in this order: chronic illnesses, death,
doubt. . . . He stopped me and protested; I have reflected about it since and I persist
in my classification, but this is enough philosophy (letter of 19 November 1832, YTC,
BIa2).
w. Henry Reeve added Faust to these examples.
Those are the poems of democracy.

So equality does not destroy all the subjects of poetry; it makes them
less numerous and more vast.x
x. I do not know if poetry such as I have taken care to define it, poetry that does not
consist of a particular form but [of (ed.)] a certain kind of ideas, is not among the
literary tastes most natural to democracy <because it is enjoyed without preparation
and in a moment and it rapidly removes the soul from the middle of the pettiness
and monotony of democratic life.
The great images of poetry seize so to [speak (ed.)] the soul without warning; they
draw it as if by force far away from its everyday habits.> The enjoyments that poetry
provides are more instinctive than reasoned; you enjoy them without preparation,
you obtain them for yourself instantaneously. They seize so to speak the soul without
warning and draw it as if by force far away from its everyday routine.
What fits democracy better than all that? (rubish of these chapters, Rub-
ish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 8a
Why American Writers and Orators
Are Often Bombastic b
I have often noticed that the Americans, who generally treat matters with
a clear and spare language devoid of all ornamentation, and whose extreme
simplicity is often common, fall readily into bombast as soon as they want
to take up poetic style. They then appear pompous without letup from one
end of the speech to the other; and seeing them lavish images at every turn
in this way, you would think that they never said anything simply.
The English fall more rarely into a similar fault.
The cause of this can be pointed out without much difficulty.
In democratic societies, each citizen is habitually busy contemplating a
very small object, which is himself. If he comes to raise his eyes higher, he
then sees only the immense image of society, or the still greater figure of
the human species. He has only very particular and very clear ideas, or very
general and very vague notions; the intermediate space is empty.
a. 1. Men who live in democracies have only very small ideas that relate to themselves
or very general ones. As soon as you take them out of themselves, they want the
gigantesque.
2. Their writers give it to them readily because they have similar instincts and as
well because they have the democratic taste of succeeding quickly and with little cost.
3. Among democratic peoples poetic sources are beautiful, but rare. They are soon
exhausted. And then you throw yourself into the monstrous and the imaginary (YTC,
CVf, p. 19).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript: “Perhaps this chapter is too thin to be put sep-
arately and should be joined to the preceding one.”
843
american writers and orators 844
So when you have drawn him out of himself, he is always waiting for
you to offer him some prodigious object to look at, and it is only at this
price that he agrees to keep himself away for a moment from the small
complicated concerns that agitate and charm his life.
This seems to me to explain well enough why men of democracies who
in general have such narrow affairs, demand from their poets such vast con-
ceptions and portraits so beyond measure.
For their part, writers hardly fail to obey these instincts that they share;
they inflate their imagination constantly, and expanding it beyond measure,
they make it reach the gigantesque, for which they often abandon the great.
In this way, they hope immediately to attract the eyes of the crowd and
to fix them easily on themselves, and they often succeed in doing so; for
the crowd, which seeks in poetry only very vast subjects, does not have time
to measure exactly the proportions of all the subjects that are presented to
it, or taste sure enough to see easily in what way they are disproportionate.
The author and the public corrupt each other at the same time.
We have seen, moreover, that among democratic peoples the sources of
poetry were beautiful, but not very abundant. You soon end by exhausting
them. Finding no more material for the ideal in the real and in the true,
poets leave them entirely and create monsters.
I am not afraid that the poetry of democratic peoples may show itself
to be timid or that it may stay very close to the earth. I am apprehensive
instead that it may lose itself at every moment in the clouds, and that it
may finish by portraying entirely imaginary realms. I fear that the works
of democratic poets may offer immense and incoherent images, over-
charged portraits, bizarre compositions, and that the fantastic beings that
have emerged from their mind may sometimes cause the real world to be
missed.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 9a
Some Observations on the
Theater of Democratic Peoples b
a. 1. It is in the theater that the literary repercussions of the political revolution first
make themselves felt. Spectators are carried away by their secret tastes without having
the time to acknowledge it.
2. The literary revolution takes place more suddenly in the theater than elsewhere.
Even in aristocracies the people have their voice in the theater. When the social
state becomes democratic, the people become sovereign and overthrow by riot the
literary laws of the aristocracy.
3. It is in the theater that the literary revolution is always most visible. The theater
puts into relief most of the qualities and all of the defects inherent in democratic
literatures.
1. Scorn for erudition. No ancient subjects.
2. Subjects taken from current society and presenting its inconsistencies.
3. Few fixed rules.
4. Style (illegible word) careless.
5. Improbabilities.
4. The Americans show all these instincts when they go to the theater, but they
rarely go. Why (YTC, CVf, p. 20).
b. On the jacket of the manuscript:
CH. [perhaps M (ed.)] to whom I have just read this chapter (22 December 1838)
immediately found 1. that it greatly resembled literary physiognomy. 2. that it was a
bit serious given the subject. 3. that it would be desirable to introduce more citations
and less argumentation./
Doesn’t interest begin to tire and isn’t this chapter, which is only the development
of literary physiognomy, too much?
Examine the impression of those who hear it./
I believe, taking everything into account, that this chapter should be deleted.
CH could indicate Charles Stoffels or Ernest de Chabrol. Tocqueville read part of his
manuscript to Chateaubriand, but a letter to Beaumont obliges us to place this reading
845
the theater of democratic peoples 846
When the revolution that changed the social and political state of an
aristocratic people begins to make itself felt in literature, it is generally in
the theater that it is first produced, and it is there that it always remains
visible.
The spectator of a dramatic work is in a way taken unprepared by the
impression that is suggested to him. He does not have time to search his
memory or to consult experts; he does not think about fighting the new
literary instincts that are beginning to emerge in him; he yields to them
before knowing them.
Authors do not take long to discover which way public taste is thus se-
cretly leaning. They turn their works in that direction; and plays, after serv-
ing to make visible the literary revolution that is being prepared, soon end
by carrying it out. If you want to judge in advance the literature of a people
that is turning toward democracy, study its theater.
Among aristocratic nations themselves, moreover, plays form the most
democratic portions of literature. There is no literary enjoyment more ac-
cessible to the crowd than those that you experience seeing the stage. Nei-
ther preparation nor study is needed to feel them. They grip you amid your
preoccupations and your ignorance. When the love, still half crude, for the
pleasures of the mind begins to penetrate a class of citizens, it immediately
drives them to the theater. The theaters of aristocratic nations have always
been full of spectators who do not belong to the aristocracy. It is only in
the theater that the upper classes have mingled with the middle and lower
classes, and that they have agreed if not to accept the advice of the latter,
at least to allow them to give it. It is in the theater that the learned and the
in January 1839. If it concerns M, Tocqueville’s wife, Mary Mottley, must be con-

sidered.
On a loose sheet with the manuscript of the chapter:
Perhaps this chapter should be reduced to only the new ideas that it contains, only
recalling all the others in passing.
The new ideas are:
1. It is in the theater that the literary revolution first shows itself.
2. It is there that it is most sudden.
3. It is there that it is always most visible.
lettered have always had the most difficulty making their taste prevail over
that of the people, and keeping themselves from being carried away by the
taste of the people. There the pit has often laid down the law for the boxes.
[So democracy not only introduces the lower classes into the theater, it
makes them dominate there.]
If it is difficult for an aristocracy not to allow the theater to be invaded
by the people, you will easily understand that the people must rule there
as a master once democratic principles have penetrated laws and mores,
when ranks merge and minds like fortunes become more similar, and when
the upper class loses its power, its traditions and its leisure, along with its
hereditary wealth.
So the tastes and instincts natural to democratic peoples as regards lit-
erature, will show themselves first in the theater, and you can predict that
they will be introduced there with violence. In written works, the literary
laws of the aristocracy will become modified little by little in a general and
so to speak legal manner. In the theater, they will be overthrown by riots.
[All that I have said in a general way about the literature of democracies
is particularly applicable to the works of the theater.]
The theater puts into relief most of the qualities and nearly all the vices
inherent in democratic literatures.
Democratic peoples have only very mediocre esteem for learning, and
they scarcely care about what happened in Rome and in Athens; they mean
for you to talk about themselves, and they ask for the present to be
portrayed.
Consequently, when the heroes and mores of antiquity are often repro-
duced on stage, and care is taken to remain very faithful to ancient tradi-
tions, that is enough to conclude that the democratic classes do not yet
dominate the theater.
Racine excuses himself very humbly, in the preface of Britannicus, for
having made Junie enter among the vestal virgins, where, according to Aulu-
Gelle, he says, “no one younger than six or older than nine years of age was
received.” It may be believed that he would not have thought to accuse him-
self or to defend himself from such a crime, if he had written today.c
Such a fact enlightens me not only about the state of literature in the
times in which it took place, but also about that of the society itself. A
democratic theater does not prove that the nation is democratic; for, as we
have just seen, even in aristocracies it can happen that democratic tastes
influence the stage. But when the spirit of aristocracy alone rules the theater,
that demonstrates invincibly that the whole society is aristocratic, and you
can boldly conclude that this same learned and lettered class that directs
authors commands citizens and leads public affairs.
It is very rare that the refined tastes and haughty tendencies of the ar-
istocracy, when it governs the theater, do not lead it to make a choice, so
the speak, in human nature. Certain social conditions interest it principally,
and it is pleased to find them portrayed on the stage; certain virtues, and
even certain vices, seem to the aristocracy to merit more particularly being
reproduced on stage: it accepts the portrayal of these while it removes all
the others from its sight. In the theater, as elsewhere, it only wants to find
great lords, and it is moved only by kings. It is the same for styles. An ar-
istocracy willingly imposes certain ways of speaking on authors; it wants
all to be said with this tone.
The theater therefore often happens to portray only one of the dimen-
sions of man, or even sometimes to represent what is not found in human
nature; it rises above human nature and leaves it behind.
In democratic societies spectators do not have such preferences, and they
rarely exhibit similar antipathies; they love to find on stage the confused
mixture of conditions, of sentiments and ideas that they find before their
eyes. The theater becomes more striking, more popular and more true.
Sometimes, however, those who write for the theater in democracies also
go beyond human nature, but in another way than their precursors. By dint
of wanting to reproduce minutely the small singularities of the present
c. In the margin of a first version that is found in the rubish of the chapter:
“Shakespeare, Addison: There where authority does not deign to interfere in the the-
ater” (Rubish, 1).
moment and the particular physiognomy of certain men, they forget to

relate the general features of the species.
When the democratic classes rule the theater, they introduce as much
liberty in the manner of treating the subject as in the very choice of this
subject.
The love of the theater being, of all literary tastes, the one most natural
to democratic peoples, the number of authors and that of spectators, like
that of the performances, increases constantly among these peoples. Such
a multitude, composed of such diverse elements and spread over so many
different places, cannot accept the same rules and be subject to the same
laws. No agreement is possible among very numerous judges who do not
know where to meet; each separately makes his judgment. If the effect of
democracy is in general to make literary rules and conventions doubtful,
in the theater it abolishes them entirely, in order to substitute only the ca-
price of each author and each public.
It is equally in the theater above all that what I have already said elsewhere
in a general way concerning style and art in democratic literatures is re-
vealed. When you read the criticism brought forth by the dramatic works
of the century of Louis XIV, you are surprised to see the great esteem of
the public for verisimilitude, and the importance that it placed on the fact
that a man, remaining always true to himself, did nothing that could not
be easily explained and understood. It is equally surprising how much value
was then attached to the forms of language and what small quarrels over
words were made with dramatic authors.
It seems that the men of the century of Louis XIV attached a very ex-
aggerated value to these details, which are noticed in the study but that
elude the stage.d For, after all, the principal object of a play is to be pre-
sented, and its first merit is to stir emotion. That came from the fact that
the spectators of this period were at the same time the readers. Leaving the
d. “<What made the men of the century of Louis XIV want to find only princes and
kings on the tragic stage was a sentiment analogous to that which made Alexander say,
when requested to appear at the Olympic games: I would willingly go if only kings raced
there>” (Rubish, 1). Tocqueville here takes up a known episode, drawn from the Life of
Alexander of Plutarch.
performance, they waited at home for the writer, in order to complete their
judgment of him.
In democracies, you listen to plays, but you do not read them. Most of
those who attend stage plays are not seeking the pleasures of the mind, but
the intense emotions of the heart. They are not waiting to find a work of
literature, but a spectacle, and provided that the author speaks the language
of the country correctly enough to make himself understood and that the
characters excite curiosity and awaken sympathy, they are content; without
asking anything more of the fiction, they immediately reenter the real
world. So style there is less necessary; for on the stage observation of these
rules escapes more and more.
As for verisimilitudes, it is impossible to be often new, unexpected, rapid,
while remaining faithful to them. So they are neglected, and the public
pardons it. You can count on the fact that they will not worry about the
roads you have led them along, if you lead them finally to an object that
touches them. They will never reproach you for having moved them in spite
of the rules.
[Two things must be clearly distinguished.
Complicated intrigues, forced effects, improbability are often due to
scorn for art and sometimes to ignorance of it. These faults are found in
all theaters that are beginning, and for this reason aristocratic theaters have
often provided an example of them, because it is ordinarily aristocracy
that leads the youthful period of peoples. The oddities, coarseness and
extravagance that are sometimes found in Lope de Vega and in Shakes-
pearee do not prove that these great men followed the natural taste of the
aristocracy, but only that they were the first to write for it.f Their genius
subsequently perpetuated their errors.g When a great dramatic author
does not purge the stage of the vices that he finds there, he fixes them
e. The rubish also names Calderón.

f. “Memoir of Grimm. Deep discussion of what there is of the improbable” (Rubish,
1). It perhaps concerns Friedrich M. Grimm, Nouveaux mémoires secrets et inédits histo-
riques, politiques, anecdotiques et littéraires . . . , (Paris: Lerouge-Wolf, 1834), 2 vols.
g. Variant in the rubish: “This is seen in the renaissance of letters among all peoples
even aristocracies. See Lope de Vega, Shakespeare and the French before Corneille. When
a great genius . . .” (Rubish, 1).
there, and all those who follow imitate those courtiers of Alexander who
found it easier to tilt their heads to the side like their master than to con-
quer Asia.
Democratic writers know in general the conventions of the stage, and
the rules of dramatic art, but often they willingly neglect them in order to
go faster or to strike more forcefully.]
The Americans bring to full light the different instincts that I have just
depicted, when they go to the theater.h But it must be recognized that there
is still only a small number of them who go. Although spectators and spec-
tacles have prodigiously increased since forty years ago in the United States,
the population still goes to this type of amusement only with extreme
reticence.
That is due to particular causes that the reader already knows and that
it is sufficient to recall to him in two words.
The Puritans, who founded the American republics, were not only en-
emies of pleasure; they professed in addition an entirely special horror of
the theater. They considered it as an abominable diversion, and as long as
their spirit reigned unrivaled, dramatic presentations were absolutely un-
known among them. These opinions of the first fathers of the colony left
profound traces in the mind of their descendants.
The extreme regularity of habits and the great rigidity of mores that are
seen in the United States, moreover, have not been very favorable to the
development of theatrical art until now.
There are no subjects for drama in a country that has not witnessed
great political catastrophesj and where love always leads by a direct and
easy road to marriage. Men who use every day of the week for making
h. I am moreover obliged to admit, and perhaps it is proper to do so, that in this

matter America cannot serve as an example. By what is happening in the United
States, it is difficult to judge the direction that the American democracy would give
to theatrical art, since the American democracy has so to speak no theaters. Forty
years ago I do not think that you would ever have attended a dramatic presentation
in this part of the New World. Since then halls for spectacles [v: theaters] have been
built in two or three great cities of the Union, but these places of pleasure are closed
part of the year and during the rest of the time the native population frequents them
little (Rubish, 1). Cf. Beaumont, Marie, I, pp. 394–96.
j. The manuscript reads: “public catastrophes.”
their fortune and Sunday for praying to God do not lend themselves to
the comic muse.
A single fact suffices to show that the theater is not very popular in the
United States.
The Americans, whose laws authorize freedom and even license of
speech in everything, have nonetheless subjected dramatic authors to a kind
of censorship.k Theatrical presentations can only take place when the ad-
ministrators of the town allow them. This demonstrates clearly that peoples
are like individuals. They give themselves without caution to their principal
passions, and then they are very careful not to yield to the impetus of tastes
that they do not have.
There is no portion of literature that is tied by tighter and more nu-
merous bonds to the current state of society than the theater.
The theater of one period can never suit the following period if, between
the two, an important revolution has changed mores and laws.
The great writers of another century are still studied. But plays written
for another public are no longer attended. Dramatic authors of past time
live only in books.
The traditional taste of a few men, vanity, fashion, the genius of an actor
can for a time sustain or bring back an aristocratic theater within a democ-
racy; but soon it collapses by itself. It is not overthrown; it is abandoned.
k. With a note in the rubish: “Ask new clarifications from Niles” (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 2 0a
Of Some Tendencies Particular to
Historians in Democratic Centuries b
Historians who write in aristocratic centuries ordinarily make all events

depend on the particular will and the mood of certain men, and they readily
link the most important revolutions to the slightest accidents. They wisely
make the smallest causes stand out, and often they do not see the greatest
ones.
Historians who live in democratic centuries show completely opposite
tendencies.
Most of them attribute to the individual almost no influence on the
destiny of the species, or to citizens on the fate of the people. But, in return,
they give great general causes to all the small particular facts. [In their eyes,
a. 1. Aristocratic historians attribute all events to a few men. Democratic historians

are led to deny the particular influence of men on the destiny of the species and of
the people and to search only for general causes. There is exaggeration on both sides.
In all events, one part must be attributed to general facts and another to particular
influences. But the relationship varies depending on the times. General facts explain
more things in democratic centuries and particular influences fewer.
2. Democratic historians are led not only to attribute each fact to a great cause,
but also to link facts together and to produce historical systems.
3. Not only are they inclined to contest the power of individuals to lead peoples,
but they are easily led to contest the ability of peoples to modify their destinies by
themselves and they subject them to a sort of blind fatality (YTC, CVf, p. 21).
One of the titles of the chapter in the rubish is: influence of equality of con-
ditions on the manner of envisaging and writing history.
b. On the jacket of the manuscript, in pencil: “Historians of antiquity did not treat
history like Mignet and company.”
853
historians in democratic centuries 854
all events are linked together by a tight and necessary chain, and therefore
they sometimes end up by denying nations control over themselves and by
contesting the liberty of having been able to do what they did.]c These
contrasting tendencies can be explained.
When historians in aristocratic centuries cast their eyes on the world
theater, they notice first of all a very small number of principal actors who
lead the whole play. These great characters, who keep themselves at the front
of the stage, stop their view and hold it; while they apply themselves to
uncovering the secret motives that make the latter act and speak, they forget
the rest.
The importance of the things that they see a few men do gives them an
exaggerated idea of the influence that one man is able to exercise, and nat-
urally disposes them to believe that you must always go back to the partic-
ular action of an individual to explain the movements of the crowd.
When, on the contrary, all citizens are independent of each other, and
when each one of them is weak, you do not discover any one of them who
exercises a very great or, above all, a very enduring power over the mass. At
first view, individuals seem absolutely powerless over the mass, and you
would say that society moves all by itself by the free and spontaneous par-
ticipation of all the men who compose it.d
That naturally leads the human mind to search for the general reason
c. In the margin: “<Perhaps to delete. This relates only to the last idea of the chap-
ter.>” Cf. p. 858.
A note in the Rubish explains: “This chapter is very closely linked to that on general
ideas. It must be combined there or be kept very separate from it” (Rubish, 1).
d. “Be careful while treating this subject about wanting to portray history and not
historians, what is happening in the world and not the manner in which historians explain
it” (Rubish, 1).
In the article “Movement of the French Press in 1836,” Revue des deux mondes, 4th
series, X, 1837, pp. 453–98, which Tocqueville utilized for the draft of chapter 2, you find
similar affirmations. “It is no longer only a matter,” you read on p. 464, “as in the past,
of putting in the forefront the figures of great men and of moving into the background
the vague and unappreciated action of the masses. Our century, which wants to know
everything and which doubts everything, seems to prefer facts and proofs to these strik-
ing tableaux in which the art of composition and the wisdom of judgments testify to
the power of the writer better than the clutter of citations.”
that has been able to strike so many minds all at once in this way and turn
them simultaneously in the same direction.e
I am very persuaded that, among democratic nations themselves, the
genius, the vices or the virtues of certain individuals delay or precipitate
the natural course of the destiny of the people; but these sorts of fortuitous
and secondary causes are infinitely more varied, more hidden, more com-
plicated, less powerful, and consequently more difficult to disentangle and
to trace in times of equality than in the centuries of aristocracy, when it is
only a matter of analyzing, amid general facts, the particular action of a
single man or of a few men.f
The historian soon becomes tired of such a work; his mind becomes lost
amid this labyrinth, and, not able to succeed in seeing clearly and in bring-
ing sufficiently to light individual influences, he denies them. He prefers
to speak to us about the nature of races, about the physical constitution of
a country, or about the spirit of civilization [<great words that I cannot hear
said without involuntarily recalling the abhorrence of a vacuum that was
e. “<That necessarily leads their minds back toward the search for general causes,
about which you always have at least something to say, and often they content themselves
with the first one they find>” (Rubish, 1).
f. There are two ideas in this chapter which must not be confused.
A people can have its destiny modified or changed by the accidental influence of
a powerful man, like Napoleon, I suppose.
Or, as well, by an accident due to chance such as a plague, the loss of a battle . . .
You can refuse to believe in the influence of individuals and believe in that of
accidents.
In democratic centuries, the influence of individuals is infinitely smaller than in
aristocratic centuries, but the influence of accidents is not less.
Now, the modern historical system consists of saying not only that individuals
cannot modify .-.-.-.- peoples, but also that accidents cannot do so. So that the nature
of some battle, for example, would not have been able definitively to prevent some
nation from succumbing, because there was a sequence of old causes that destined it
invincibly to perish.
It is clear that all that I say in the preceding chapter applies to individuals and not
to accidents. This is exaggerated because, when you go back to the origin of accidents,
you almost always arrive at individual action” (Rubish, 1).
attributed to nature before the heaviness of air was discovered>]. That

shortens his work, and, at less cost, better satisfies the reader.g
M. de Lafayette said somewhere in his Mémoires h that the exaggerated
system of general causes brought marvelous consolations to mediocre pub-
lic men. I add that it gives admirable consolations to mediocre historians.
It always provides them with a few great reasons that promptly pull them
through at the most difficult point in their book, and it favors the weakness
or laziness of their minds, all the while honoring its depth.
For me, I think that there is no period when one part of the events of
this world must not be attributed to very general facts, and another to very
particular influences. These two causes are always found; only their rela-
tionship differs. General facts explain more things in democratic centuries
than in aristocratic centuries, and particular influences fewer. In times of
aristocracy, it is the opposite; particular influences are stronger, and general
causes are weaker, as long as you do not consider as a general cause the very
fact of inequality of conditions, which allows a few individuals to thwart
the natural tendencies of all the others.
So historians who try to portray what is happening in democratic so-
cieties are right to give a large role to general causes and to apply themselves
principally to discovering them; but they are wrong to deny entirely the
particular action of individuals, because it is difficult to find and to follow
g. In the margin: “<This is not in perfect agreement with what precedes and draws
the mind in another direction. What I say above is that historians prefer looking for
general causes than for particular facts. What I say here is that they are content with bad
general reasons, which is another idea. My comparison applies only to the last one, for
the heaviness of air is a general cause, as well as the abhorrence of a vacuum. Perhaps
delete.>”
h. Marquis de Lafayette, Mémoires, correspondance et manuscrits du général Lafayette
(Paris: H. Fournier aı̂né, 1837–1838), 6 vols. In May 1837, Tocqueville received from Cor-
celle, who was the editor, the first three volumes of this work. It is probable that the
author, who did not sympathize with the general, did not read his memoirs (we know
that he considered him to be a well-intentioned man but with a mediocre mind ), and
that he found this quotation in the second part of the review done by Sainte-Beuve(Revue
des deux mondes, 4th series, 15, 1838, pp. 355–81, in which the same quotation appears on
page 359).
it [and to content themselves often with great words when great causes elude
them].
Not only are historians who live in democratic centuries drawn to giving
a great cause to each fact, but also they are led to linking facts and making
a system emerge.
In aristocratic centuries, since the attention of historians is diverted at
every moment toward individuals, the sequence of events escapes them, or
rather they do not believe in such a sequence. The thread of history seems
to them broken at every instant by the passage of a man.
In democratic centuries, on the contrary, the historian, seeing far fewer
actors and many more actions, can easily establish a relationship and a me-
thodical order among them.
Ancient literature, which has left us such beautiful histories, offers not
a single great historical system, while the most miserable modern literatures
are swarming with them. It seems that ancient historians did not make
enough use of these general theories that our historians are always ready to
abuse.
Those who write in democratic centuries have another, more dangerous
tendency.
When the trace of the action of individuals or nations becomes lost, it
often happens that you see the world move without uncovering the motor.
Since it becomes very difficult to see and to analyze the reasons that, acting
separately on the will of each citizen, end by producing the movement of
the people, you are tempted to believe that the movement is not voluntary
and that societies, without knowing it, obey a superior force that dominates
them.
Even if you should discover on earth the general fact that directs the
particular will of all individuals, that does not save human liberty. A cause
vast enough to be applied at the same time to millions of men, and strong
enough to bend all of them in the same direction, easily seems irresistible;
after seeing that you yielded to it, you are very close to believing that it
could not be resisted.
So historians who live in democratic times not only deny to a few citizens
the power to act on the destiny of the people, they also take away from
peoples themselves the ability to modify their own fate, and subject them
either to an inflexible providence or to a sort of blind fatality. According

to these historians, each nation is invincibly tied, by its position, its origin,
its antecedents, its nature, to a certain destiny that all its efforts cannot
change. They make the generations stand together with each other, and,
going back in this way, from age to age and from necessary events to nec-
essary events, to the origin of the world, they make a tight and immense
chain that envelops the entire human species and binds it.
It is not enough for them to show how facts happened; they like as well
to reveal that it could not have happened otherwise. They consider a nation
that has reached a certain place in its history, and assert that it has been
forced to follow the road that led it there. That is easier than teaching what
it could have done to take a better route.j
It seems, while reading the historians of aristocratic ages and particularly
those of antiquity, that, in order to become master of his fate and govern
his fellows, man has only to know how to control himself. You would say,
while surveying the histories written in our time, that man can do nothing,
either for himself or around him. The historians of antiquity taught how
to command; those of our days scarcely teach anything except how to obey.
In their writings, the author often appears great, but humanity is always
small.
If this doctrine of fatality, which has so many attractions for those who
write history in democratic times, by passing from the writers to their read-
ers, in this way penetrated the entire mass of citizens and took hold of the
public mind, you can predict that it would soon paralyze the movement of
new societies and would reduce Christians to Turks.k
I will say, moreover, that such a doctrine is particularly dangerous in this
period in which we live; our contemporaries are all too inclined to doubt
free will, because each of them feels limited on all sides by his weakness,
j. “I believe that in nearly each instant of their existence nations, like men, are free
to modify their fate” (Rubish, 1).
k. “Show how the idea of the powerlessness of individuals over the mass leads them
to the idea of the powerlessness of the mass over itself and thus leads them to the fatality
of the Moslems” (Rubish, 1).
but they still readily grant strength and independence to men gathered in
a social body. Care must be taken not to obscure this idea, for it is a matter
of lifting up souls and not finally demoralizing them.m
m. In the rubish you find this small chapter on religious eloquence, deleted in the
final version:
religious eloquence or preaching.
.-.-.-.-.- the influence that democracy exercises on works of the human mind, it
would probably have been enough for me to reveal how it modifies the language of
the pulpit.
[In the margin: Perhaps and even probably delete this chapter. It cannot be applied
to America. In America, by exception, religious beliefs are very firm and the language
of priests is not a plea in favor of Christianity.]
There is nothing so little variable by their nature as religions and it cannot be
otherwise. The true religion rests on absolute truth; other religions claim to be sup-
ported by it; so all are immobile, and it is easier to destroy them than to modify them.
This immobility extends to everything that is related to religion no matter how
distantly. There is no religious custom so unimportant that it is not more difficult to
change [v: destroy] than the constitution of a people.
So when any cause whatsoever leads men to vary style and method in holy things,
be sure that this is only one of the last effects of a much more general revolution and
that the same cause had already long ago changed the manner of treating all other
subjects.
.-.-.-.- Catholic and I enter a church. I see the priest mounting the steps of the
pulpit. He is young. He wears priestly vestments, but beyond that there is already
nothing of the traditional or of the conventional in his bearing, in his gestures, or in
his voice. He doesn’t say “My brothers,” but “Sirs.” He doesn’t recite, but he im-
provises. He does not talk about the growing pain that our sins cause him; our good
works do not fill him with ineffable joy. He engages his listener hand to hand, and
armed like him, takes him on. He feels that it is no longer a matter of touching us,
but of convincing us. He addresses himself not to faith, but to reason; he doesn’t
impose belief, he discusses it and wants to have it freely accepted. He does not go to
search for arguments in the old arsenal of scholastic theology, in the writings of the
Doctors, any more than in the decrees of the Popes and the decisions of the Councils.
He borrows his proofs from secular science; he draws his comparisons from everyday
things; he bases himself on the most general, the clearest and most elementary truths
[v: notions] of human philosophy.
He cites the poets and orators of today almost as much as the Fathers of the
Church. Rarely does it happen that he speaks Latin, and I cannot prevent myself
from suspecting that the Kyrie Eleison of the Mass is all the Greek he knows.
Sometimes disorganized, incorrect, incomplete, he is nearly always original, bril-
liant, unexpected, above all fruitful. Give up reading him, but go to hear him.
If, back in the solitude of your dwelling, you happen to compare the man whom
you have just heard with the great Christian orators of past centuries, you will dis-
cover, not without terror, what the strange power that moves the world is able to do;
and you will understand that democracy, after remaking in passing all the ephemeral
[v: changing] institutions of men, finally reaches the things most immobile by their
nature, and that, not able to change the substance of Christianity, which is eternal,
it at least modifies the language and the form (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 2 1a
Of Parliamentary Eloquence
in the United States b
a. 1. The discussions of the English Parliament are led by only a few men, which
makes them clear, plain and concise. Why it is not the same in Congress.
1. In aristocratic countries, the members of the legislature study the parliamentary
art in advance and for a longer time. This reason is good, but insufficient.
2. The habit of hierarchy and subordination that men have in aristocratic society
follows them into the assembly. It is not the same in democratic countries.
3. Aristocratic deputies, all being of considerable importance by themselves, are
easily consoled about not playing a role in the assembly and do not want a mediocre
one. Democratic deputies have in the country only the rank that they have in the
assembly; that necessarily pushes them ahead.
4. They are, moreover, pushed to speak by the voters; and as they depend much
more on the voters, they yield to them on this point.
2. That is the petty side of democratic discussions. Here is the great one.
1. Since there are no distinct classes, orators always speak to and about the whole
nation.
2. Since they cannot rely on the (illegible word) the privileges of wealth, of corps,
or of persons, they are obliged to go back to the general truths provided by the ex-
amination of human nature. That gives a great character of grandeur to their elo-
quence and pushes its effects to the furthest ends of the earth (YTC, CVf, pp. 21–
23).
b. There would be two subjects that you could still treat here:
1. The first would consist of finding out if eloquence strictly speaking is as natural
to democratic assemblies as to others. I do not think so.
2. Why the reports of the Presidents to Congress have always been, until now, so
simple, so clear, so noble. This would be more appropriate to the subject” (Rubish, 1).
On the first page of a draft of the chapter: “This chapter is an attempt. It probably
must be deleted” (Rubish, 1). Tocqueville adds in another place: “I believe that nothing
must be said about this subject. Since eloquence of the pulpit, which is the most con-
ventional, is modified by democracy, the mind is sufficiently struck by the power of the
latter on all types of eloquence” (Rubish, 1).
861
parliamentary eloquence 862
Among aristocratic peoples all men stand together and depend on each
other; among all men there is a hierarchical bond by the aid of which each
one can be kept in his place and the whole body can be kept in obedience.
Something analogous is always found within the political assemblies of
these peoples. Parties there line up naturally behind certain leaders, whom
they obey by a kind of instinct that is only the result of habits contracted
elsewhere. They bring to the small society of the assembly the mores of the
larger society.
[In the public assemblies of aristocratic nations there are only a few men
who act as spokesmen. All the others assent and keep quiet. Orators speak
only when something is useful to the party. They say only what can serve
the general interests of the party and they do not needlessly repeat what
has already been said. The discussion is clear, rapid and concise.
Breadth and depth are often lacking in the discussions of the Parliament
of England, but the debate is almost always conducted admirably and
speeches are very pertinent to the subject. ⫽It is not always so in Congress.⫽
I at first believed that this way of treating public affairs came from the
long use that the English have of parliamentary life. But it must be clearly
admitted that it is due to some other cause, since the Americans, with the
same experience, do not follow the same method.
In the democratic countries most accustomed to the representative re-
gime, it often happens that a great number of those who are part of the
assemblies have not sufficiently reflected in advance about the suitable way
to act there. The reason is that among these peoples public life is rarely a
career. You go there by chance; you soon depart. It is a road that you cross
and that you do not follow. So to it you bring your natural enlightenment,
and not an acquired knowledge.
In aristocratic countries that have had assemblies for a long time, it is
not the same. Since there is only a small number of men who can enter
national councils, those men apply themselves to becoming part of those
councils and study in advance the art of how to conduct themselves there.
Since the same men are part of the legislature over a long period of time,
they have the time to recognize the methods that best serve the conduct of
affairs, and they are always numerous enough to force the new arrivals to
conform.
This reason seems good, but it does [not (ed.)] suffice to explain the
difference that is noticeable here between the Americans and the English.
In the United States, deliberative bodies are so numerous and public as-
semblies so multiplied that there is no man, who has reached maturity, who
has not very often had the occasion to enter into some gathering of this
type and who has not been able to see the game. If there are no classes in
America that are specially destined for public affairs, all classes get actively
involved and constantly think about them. Almost all of even those who
remain in private life thus receive a political education. So you must look
for a more general and deeper cause than the one indicated above.
Not only do the Americans not always have very precise notions about
the parliamentary art, but also they are more strongly inclined to violate
the rules of that art when they know them.]
In democratic countries, a great number of citizens often happen to head
toward the same point; but each one marches or at least professes to march
there only by himself. Accustomed not to regulate his movements except
according to his personal impulses, he yields with difficulty to receiving his
rules from outside. This taste for and this practice of independence follow
him into national councils. If he agrees to associate himself with others for
the pursuit of the same plan, he at least wants to remain master of his own
way of cooperating in the common success.
That is why, in democratic countries, parties so impatiently endure
someone leading them and appear subordinate only when the danger is very
great. Even so, the authority of leaders, which in these circumstances can
go as far as making parties act and speak, almost never extends to the power
of making parties keep quiet.
Among aristocratic peoples, the members of political assemblies are at
the same time members of the aristocracy. Each one of them possesses by
himself a high and stable rank, and the place that he occupies in the as-
sembly is often less important in his eyes than the one that he fills in the
country. That consoles him for not playing a role in the discussion of
public affairs, and disposes him not to seek a mediocre role with too much
ardor.
In America, it ordinarily happens that the deputy amounts to something
only by his position in the assembly. So he is constantly tormented by the
need to gain importance, and he feels a petulant desire to bring his ideas
fully to light every moment.c
He is pushed in this direction not only by his vanity, but also by that of
his constituents and by the continual necessity to please them.
Among aristocratic peoples, the member of the legislature rarely has a
narrow dependence on voters; for them he is often in some way a necessary
representative; sometimes he holds them in a narrow dependency, and if
they come finally to refuse him their vote, he easily has himself appointed
elsewhere; or, renouncing a political career, he shuts himself up in an idle-
ness that still has splendor.
In a democratic country, like the United States, the deputy hardly ever
has an enduring hold on the mind of his constituents. However small the
electoral body, democratic instability makes it change face constantly. So it
must be captivated every day. He is never sure of them; and if they abandon
him, he is immediately without resources; for he does not naturally have a
position elevated enough to be easily noticed by those who are not nearby;
and, in the complete independence in which citizens live, he cannot hope
that his friends or the government will easily impose him on an electoral
body that will not know him. So it is in the district that he represents that
all the seeds of his fortune are sown; it is from this corner of the earth that
he must emerge in order to rise to command the people and to influence
the destinies of the world.
Thus, it is natural that, in democratic countries, the members of political
assemblies think more about their constituents than about their party, while
in aristocracies, they attend more to their party than to their constituents.d
c. I do not believe, moreover, that what happens on this point in the United States
indicates a general law applicable to all democracies. I believe that there exists at the
bottom of the soul of a people a secret disposition that leads it to keep the most
capable away from power when it can do so without danger. The people, moreover,
when it leads affairs, is like kings who, Montesquieu says, always imagine that their
courtiers are their best subjects. Peoples are princes in this. But I believe that this fatal
tendency can be combatted naturally by circumstances or artificially by laws, and in
America both favor it (Rubish, 1).
d. Add that the member of a democratic legislature, just as he does not have the
natural taste for parliamentary discipline, does not have a particular interest in sub-
Now, what must be said to please voters is not always what would be
suitable for serving well the political opinion that they profess.
The general interest of a party is often that the deputy who is a member
never speak about the great public affairs that he understands badly; that
he speak little about the small affairs that would hinder the march of the
great one; and most often finally, that he keep completely quiet. To main-
tain silence is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to
public matters.
But this is not the way that the voters understand it.
The population of a district charges a citizen to take part in the govern-
ment of the State, because it has conceived a very grand idea of his merit.
Since men appear greater in proportion to being surrounded by smaller
objects, it may be believed that the rarer the talents among those repre-
sented, the higher the opinion that will be held about the representative.
So it often happens that the less the voters have to expect from their deputy,
the more they will hope from him; and, however incompetent he may be,
they cannot fail to require from him signal efforts that correspond to the
rank that they give him.
Apart from the legislator of the State, the voters see also in their repre-
sentative the natural protector of the district in the legislature; they are not
even far from considering him as the agent of each one of those who elected
him, and they imagine that he will display no less ardor insisting on their
particular interests than on those of the country.
Thus, the voters hold it as certain in advance that the deputy they will
choose will be an orator; that he will speak often if he can, and that, in the
case where he would have to limit himself, he will at least try hard in his
mitting himself to it. In aristocracies, the leaders of parties are often men powerful
in themselves, or men who have easily at their disposal all of the party forces. They
have in their hands great means to serve and to harm. It frequently happens, for
example, that they are in a position to impose their choice on the voters. The party
itself, hierarchically organized in the society as in the assembly, can force all the mem-
bers to cooperate toward a general end that it sets.
In democracies, on the contrary, parties are not better organized outside the as-
semblies than within. Within parties, there exists a common will to act, but not a
government that directs it. So the deputy has truly speaking nothing either to hope
or to fear except from his constituents (Rubish, 1).
rare speeches to include the examination of all the great affairs of the State
along with the account of all the petty grievances that they themselves have
complained about; so that, not able to appear often, he shows on each oc-
casion that he knows what to do, and, instead of spouting forth incessantly,
he every now and then compresses his remarks entirely into a small scope,
providing in this way a kind of brilliant and complete summary of his
constituents and of himself. For this price, they promise their next votes.
This pushes into despair honest, mediocre men who, knowing them-
selves, would not have appeared on their own. The deputy, carried away in
this way, speaks up to the great distress of his friends, and, throwing himself
imprudently into the middle of the most celebrated orators, he muddles
the debate and tires the assembly.
All the laws that tend to make the elected more dependent on the voter
therefore modify not only the conduct of the legislators, as I noted else-
where, but also their language. They influence at the very same time public
affairs and the manner of speaking about them.
[I think as well that the more the electoral body is divided into small
parts, the more discussions will become droning within the legislative body.
You can count on the fact that such a system will fill the assembly with
mediocre men[*] and that all the mediocre men whom it sends there will
make as many efforts to appear as if they were superior men.]
[*]. Note:
This effect is explained by two very perceptible reasons.
The smaller the electoral district, the more limited is the view of the voter and the
more his good choice depends on the chance birth of a capable man near him.
So small electoral circumscriptions will necessarily produce a crowd of mediocre
representatives, for the superior men of a nation are not spread equally over the dif-
ferent points of its surface.
The smallness of the electoral body will, moreover, very often prevent voters from
choosing those men when by chance they are found near them.
When voters are very numerous and spread over a great area, there is only a small
number of them who can have personal relationships with the man they choose, and
they elect him because of the merit attributed to him. When they are very few in
number, they readily name him because of the friendship that they have for him. The
election becomes always an affair of a coterie and often of a family. In an election of
this type the superior man loses all of his natural advantages. He can scarcely aspire
to stay equal.
There is, so to speak, not a member of Congress who agrees to return

home without having given at least one speech, or who bears being inter-
rupted before he is able to include within the limits of his harangue every-
thing that can be said about what is useful to the twenty-four states that
compose the Union, and especially to the district he represents. So he puts
successively before the minds of his listeners great general truths that he
often does not notice himself and that he points out only in a confused
way, and small highly subtle particularities that he does not find and explain
very easily. Consequently, it often happens that, within this great body, dis-
cussion becomes vague and muddled, and it seems to crawl toward the goal
that is proposed rather than marching toward it.
Something analogous will always be revealed, I believe, in the public
assemblies of democracies.
Happy circumstances and good laws could succeed in drawing to the
legislature of a democratic people men much more noteworthy than those
who are sent by the Americans to Congress; but you will never prevent the
mediocre men who are found in it from putting themselves on public dis-
play, smugly and on all sides.
The evil does not appear entirely curable to me, because it is due not
only to the regulations of the assembly, but also to its constitution and even
to that of the country.
The inhabitants of the United States seem themselves to consider the mat-
ter from this point of view, and they testify to their long practice of parlia-
mentary life not by abstaining from bad speeches, but by subjecting them-
selves courageously to hearing them. They resign themselves to hearing them
as if to an evil that experience had made them recognize as inevitable.
[<Some insist that sometimes they are sleeping, but they never grumble.>]
We have shown the petty side of political discussions in democracies;
let us reveal the great one.
In YTC, CVk, 1, p. 82, next to this fragment, you find this note: “This should probably
be entirely deleted. Constant harping on electoral matters./
“I would in fact delete that.
“To delete.”
What has happened for the past one hundred fifty years in the Parliament
of England has never caused a great stir outside; the ideas and sentiments
expressed by orators have never found much sympathy among the very
peoples who found themselves placed closest to the great theater of British
liberty, while, from the moment when the first debates took place in the
small colonial assemblies of America in the period of the revolution, Eu-
rope was moved.e
That was due not only to particular and fortuitous circumstances, but
also to general and lasting causes.
I see nothing more admirable or more powerful than a great orator dis-
cussing great affairs within a democratic assembly. Since there is never a
class that has its representatives in charge of upholding its interests, it is
always to the whole nation, and in the name of the whole nation that they
speak.f That enlarges thought and elevates language.g
Since precedents there have little sway; since there are no more privileges
linked to certain properties or rights inherent to certain bodies or certain
men, the mind is forced to go back to general truths drawn from human
nature, in order to treat the particular affairs that concern it. Out of that
e. “The English orators of the last century constantly quoted Latin and even Greek
at the rostrum.
“Their sons of America quote only Shakespeare, the democratic author par excel-
lence” (Rubish, 1).
f. The political discussions of a small democratic people cause a stir in the entire
universe. Not only because other peoples, also turning toward democracy, have anal-
ogous interests, but also because the political discussions of a democratic people,
however small it may be, always have a character of generality that makes them in-
teresting to the human species. They talk about man in general and treat rights that
he holds by his nature, which is the same everywhere.
Among aristocratic peoples it is almost always a question of the particular rights
of a class, which interests only this class or at most the people among whom the class
is found.
This explains the influence of the French revolution even apart from the state of
Europe, and in contrast, the slight stir caused by the debates of the English Parliament
(Rubish, 1).
g. In the margin: “⫽I would say something analogous about our time and about our-
selves. The debates of our chambers immediately cause a stir in the entire universe and
agitate all classes in each country.⫽”
is born, in the political discussions of a democratic people, however small

it may be, a character of generality that often makes those discussions cap-
tivating to the human species. All men are interested in them because it is
a question of man, who is everywhere the same.
Among the greatest aristocratic peoples, on the contrary, the most gen-
eral questions are almost always dealt with by a few particular reasons drawn
from the customs of a period or from the rights of a class; this interests
only the class in question, or at most the people among whom this class is
found.
It is to this cause as much as to the grandeur of the French nation, and
to the favorable dispositions of the peoples who hear it, that you must at-
tribute the great effect that our political discussions sometimes produce in
the world.
Our orators often speak to all men, even when they are only addressing
their fellow citizens.h
h. In the Rubish, after the rough drafts of these chapters, you find a jacket with these
notes:
[At the head: Influence of equality on education./
There would have been many things to say about this subject, but I have already
so many things in the book, that this one must, I believe, be left aside.]
Influence of democracy on the education of men or rather their instruction is a
necessary chapter. The useful and practical direction that it gives, the change in meth-
ods that it brings about. The study of ancient languages, theoretical sciences, spec-
ulative studies that they subordinate to other studies.
To place somewhere in the chapter on ideas.
[To the side: To put a small chapter VI before the large chapter on sciences, lit-
erature and the arts, which must be the VIIth.] (Rubish, 1).
A draft contains, for the chapter on education, the following plan:
[As title on the jacket] Influence of democracy on ideas./
Of academic institutions under democracy.
An academy having the purpose of keeping minds on a certain path, of imposing
a method on them, is contrary to the genius of democracy; it is an aristocratic
institution.
An academy having the goal of making the men who apply themselves to the arts
or to the sciences famous and giving them at State expense the comfort and leisure
that the democratic social state often denies to them, is an institution that can be not
to the taste of a democratic nation, but one that is never contrary to and can some-
times be necessary to the existence of a democracy. It is an eminently democratic

institution.
[Inside, on a page] Of the need for paid learned bodies in democracies. This need
increases as peoples turn toward democracy.
This truth understood with difficulty by the democracy. Opposite natural incli-
nation that you must combat. The Americans give way to it.
Effect of this: science left to the ordinary encouragement that democracy can pro-
vide, that is to say that the men who are working produce only applications, no
theories.
[To the side: Ask Monsieur Biot for ideas.]
That the English set about badly to encourage the sciences. They give easy and
honorable rest in the hope of work. These things must be proposed as the fruit of
work.
Elsewhere: “Of Education in the United States and in democratic countries in general.
“Perhaps I should begin by portraying man in infancy and in the family before leading
him to manhood.
“The trouble with this plan is that egoism dominates even the primordial relations”
(YTC, CVa, pp. 2–3). Jean-Baptiste Biot, scientist and political writer of legitimist ten-
dencies, was a professor at the Collège de France. On Tocqueville and the question of
education after Democracy, see Edward Gargan, “The Silence of Tocqueville on Edu-
cation,” Historical Reflections, 7, 1980, pp. 565–75.
s4s4s4s4s4
second part
Influence of Democracy on the
Sentiments of the Americans a
a. [As the title] Influence of democracy on sentiments, tastes, or mores./

Ideas that must never be entirely lost from view.
After making known each flaw or each quality inherent in democracy, try to point
out with as much precision as possible the means that can be taken to attenuate the
first and to develop the second. Example. Men in democracies are naturally led to
concentrate on their interests. To draw them away from their interests as much as
possible, to spiritualize them as much as possible, and finally if possible to connect
and merge particular interest and general interest, so that you scarcely know how to
distinguish the one from the other.
That is the political side of the work that must never be allowed to be entirely lost
from view.
But do not do that in a monotonous and tiring way, for fear of boredom, or in
too practical and too detailed a way, for fear of leaving myself open to criticism.
Reserve a part of these things for the introduction of the final chapter (YTC, CVa,
pp. 31–32).
On the back of the jacket of the Rubish that contains the drafts of the part on material
enjoyments and that bears number X:
First chapters on sentiments./
First system./
Democracy leads men toward the taste for material well-being.
It leads them to commerce, industry, to everything that is produced quickly.
It gives birth to an immoderate desire for happiness in this world.
It favors restlessness of the heart.
Here perhaps spirit of religion (Rubish, 1).
871
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1a
Why Democratic Peoples Show a
More Ardent and More Enduring Love
for Equality Than for Liberty b
a. This chapter, one of the best known of Democracy, is not found in the manuscript,
where you pass directly from the previous chapter (number 19) to the one on individ-
ualism (number 20). Nor does it appear in notebook CVf.
A first version of it exists in pages 1 to 14 of notebook CVk, 2. The inclusion in the
final version is due to the insistence of Louis de Kergorlay, as is witnessed by this note
on the jacket that contains it:
L[ouis (ed.)]. thinks that this piece must absolutely appear in the work, either in the
current form or by transporting the ideas elsewhere. I believe in fact that he is right.
I see that it could be introduced in this way into the present chapter, which would
then be divided into three principal ideas:
1. How equality gives the idea and the taste for political liberty.
2. How in the centuries of equality men are much less attached to being free than
to remaining equal.
3. How equality suggests ideas and tastes to them that can make them lose liberty
and lead them to servitude.
In this way the piece would remain more or less as it is. It would only have to be
concluded differently and in such a way as to fit into the general idea of the chapter,
more or less like this:
“Thus, love of liberty cannot be the principal passion of men during democratic
centuries and it occupies in their heart only the space left for it by another passion.”
Before including this section, to see clearly whether all that I say there is not a
useless repetition of what I already said in the following sections. I am afraid it is
(YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 1–2). See note a for p. 1200.
b. The rubish of chapter 10 of this part contains a jacket cover on which you can
read: “How equality of ranks suggests to men the taste for liberty [v: equality] and why
democratic peoples love equality better than liberty./
“Piece that I will probably make the second section of the chapter and that must be
872
love for equality and for liberty 873
The first and most intense of the passions given birth by equality of con-
ditions, I do not need to say, is the love of this very equality. So no one will
be surprised that I talk about it before all the others.
Everyone has noted that in our time, and especially in France, this pas-
sion for equality has a greater place in the human heart every day. It has
been said a hundred times that our contemporaries have a much more ar-
dent and much more tenacious love for equality than for liberty; but I do
not find that we have yet adequately gone back to the causes of this fact. I
am going to try.c
reexamined with care while reviewing this chapter. 4 September 1838” (Rubish, 1). The
notes that are found in this jacket belong in large part to the final chapter of the book.
In a partial copy from the Rubish, they are found precisely with the rough drafts of the
fourth part (YTC, CVg, 2, p. 16 and following). Among these notes you find this one:
Some ideas on the sentiment of equality (2 February 1836)./
What must be understood by the sentiment of equality among democratic peo-
ples./
The taste for equality among most men is not: that no one be lower than I, but:
that no one be higher than I, which, in practice, can come to the same thing, but
which is far from meaning the same thing./
So does a real and true taste for equality exist in this world? Among some elite
souls. But you must not base your reasoning on them./
What produced aristocracies? The desire among a few to raise themselves. What
leads to democracy? The desire of all to raise themselves. The sentiment is the same;
there is only a difference in the number of those who feel it. Each man aims as high
as possible, and a level comes about naturally, without anyone wanting to be leveled.
When everyone wants to rise at once, the rule of equality is quite naturally found
to be what is most suitable for each man. A thousand runners all have the same goal.
Each one burns with the desire of coming in first. For that, it would be good to
precede the others in the course. But if I do that, who will assure me that the others
will not do so? If there were only five or six who had to run with me, I could perhaps
attempt it, but racing with a thousand, you cannot succeed in doing so. What to do?
The only means is to prevent anyone from having any privilege and to leave each one
to his natural resources. [v: All, however, agree to depart at the same time from the
same place.] It is not that they truly love equality, but they are all obliged to resort to
it./
To reflect again about all of that (Rubish, 1). See note d for p. 1203.
c. First draft of this opening of the chapter:
When conditions are more or less equal among men, each one, feeling independent
of his fellows, contracts the habit and the need to follow only his will in his particular
You can imagine an extreme point where liberty and equality meet and
merge.
Suppose that all citizens participate in the government and that each one
has an equal right to take part in it.
Since no one then differs from his fellows, no one will be able to exercise
a tyrannical power; men will be perfectly free, because they will all be en-
tirely equal; and they will all be perfectly equal, because they will be entirely
free. Democratic peoples tend toward this ideal.
That is the most complete form that equality can take on earth; but there
are a thousand other forms that, without being as perfect, are scarcely less
dear to these peoples.
Equality can become established in civil society and not reign in the
political world. Everyone can have the right to pursue the same pleasures,
to enter the same professions, to meet in the same places; in a word, to live
in the same way and to pursue wealth by the same means, without all taking
the same part in government.
A kind of equality can even become established in the political world,
even if political liberty does not exist. Everyone is equal to all his fellows,
actions. This naturally leads the human mind to the idea of political liberty and sug-
gests the taste for it.
Take one man at random from within a democratic people [v: in a country where
equality reigns], put him if possible outside of his prejudices, of his interests of
the moment, of his memories, so that he gives himself only to the sole interests
that the social state suggests to him, and you will discover that among all govern-
ments the one that he most easily imagines first and that he loves best is government
based on sovereignty of the people.
<So, as the social state of a people becomes democratic, you see the spirit of liberty
born within it. These two things generally go together so closely that one makes me
consider the other. The attempts that a nation makes to establish liberty within it
only teach me that the principle of equality is developing there, and the equality that
I see reigning among a people makes me suppose the approach of revolutions.>
So equality of conditions cannot be established among a people without the spirit
of liberty being revealed there, and it is never entirely extinguished as long as equality
of conditions remains.
Love of political liberty, however, is not the principal passion of these democratic
peoples.
You can imagine an extreme point . . . (YTC, CVk, 2, pp. 2–4).
except one, who is, without distinction, the master of all, and who takes
the agents of his power equally from among all.
It would be easy to form several other hypotheses according to which a
very great equality could easily be combined with institutions more or less
free, or even with institutions that would not be free at all.
So although men cannot become absolutely equal without being entirely
free, and consequently equality at its most extreme level merges with liberty,
you are justified in distinguishing the one from the other.d
The taste that men have for liberty and the one that they feel for equality
are, in fact, two distinct things, and I am not afraid to add that, among
democratic peoples, they are two unequal things.
If you want to pay attention, you will see that in each century, a singular
and dominant fact is found to which the other facts are related; this fact
almost always gives birth to a generative thought, or to a principal passion
that then ends by drawing to itself and carrying along in its course all sen-
timents and all ideas. It is like the great river toward which all of the sur-
rounding streams seem to flow.
Liberty has shown itself to men in different times and in different forms;
it has not been linked exclusively to one social state, and you find it else-
where than in democracies. So it cannot form the distinctive characteristic
of democratic centuries.
The particular and dominant fact that singles out these centuries is
equality of conditions; the principal passion that agitates men in those
times is love of this equality.
Do not ask what singular charm the men of democratic ages find in
living equal; or the particular reasons that they can have to be so stubbornly
attached to equality rather than to the other advantages that society presents
to them. Equality forms the distinctive characteristic of the period in which
they live; that alone is enough to explain why they prefer it to everything
else.
d. “<Equality of conditions does not lead to liberty in an irresistible way, but it leads
to it; this is our plank of salvation>” (YTC, CVk, 2, p. 6).
But, apart from this reason, there are several others that, in all times, will
habitually lead men to prefer equality to liberty.
If a people could ever succeed in destroying by itself or only in decreas-
ing the equality that reigns within it, it would do so only by long and dif-
ficult efforts. It would have to modify its social state, abolish its laws, replace
its ideas, change its habits, alter its mores. But, to lose political liberty, it is
enough not to hold on to it, and liberty escapes.
So men do not hold on to equality only because it is dear to them; they
are also attached to it because they believe it must last forever.
You do not find men so limited and so superficial that they do not dis-
cover that political liberty may, by its excesses, compromise tranquillity,
patrimony, and the life of individuals. But only attentive and clear-sighted
men see the dangers with which equality threatens us, and ordinarily they
avoid pointing these dangers out. They know that the miseries that they
fear are remote, and they imagine that those miseries affect only the gen-
erations to come, about whom the present generation scarcely worries. The
evils that liberty sometimes brings are immediate; they are visible to all, and
more or less everyone feels them. The evils that extreme equality can pro-
duce appear only little by little; they gradually insinuate themselves into
the social body; they are seen only now and then, and, at the moment when
they become most violent, habit has already made it so that they are no
longer felt.
The good things that liberty brings show themselves only over time, and
it is always easy to fail to recognize the cause that gives them birth.
The advantages of equality make themselves felt immediately, and every
day you see them flow from their source.
Political liberty, from time to time, gives sublime pleasures to a certain
number of citizens.
Equality provides a multitude of small enjoyments to each man every
day. The charms of equality are felt at every moment, and they are
within reach of all; the most noble hearts are not insensitive to them,
and they are the delight of the most common souls. So the passion to
which equality gives birth has to be at the very same time forceful and
general.
Men cannot enjoy political liberty without purchasing it at the cost of

some sacrifices, and they never secure it except by a great deal of effort. But
the pleasures provided by equality are there for the taking. Each one of the
small incidents of private life seems to give birth to them, and to enjoy
them, you only have to be alive.
Democratic peoples love equality at all times, but there are certain pe-
riods when they push the passion that they feel for it to the point of delir-
ium. This happens at the moment when the old social hierarchy, threatened
for a long time, is finally destroyed, after a final internal struggle, when the
barriers that separated citizens are at last overturned. Men then rush toward
equality as toward a conquest, and they cling to it as to a precious good that
someone wants to take away from them. The passion for equality penetrates
the human heart from all directions, it spreads and fills it entirely. Do not
tell men that by giving themselves so blindly to one exclusive passion, they
compromise their dearest interests; they are deaf. Do not show them that
liberty is escaping from their hands while they are looking elsewhere; they
are blind, or rather they see in the whole universe only one single good
worthy of desire.
What precedes applies to all democratic nations. What follows concerns
only ourselves.
Among most modern nations, and in particular among all the peoples
of the continent of Europe, the taste and the idea of liberty only began to
arise and to develop at the moment when conditions began to become
equal, and as a consequence of this very equality. It was absolute kings who
worked hardest to level ranks among their subjects. Among these peoples,
equality preceded liberty; so equality was an ancient fact, when liberty was
still something new; the one had already created opinions, customs, laws
that were its own, when the other appeared alone, and for the first time, in
full view. Thus, the second was still only in ideas and in tastes, while the
first had already penetrated habits, had taken hold of mores, and had given
a particular turn to the least actions of life. Why be surprised if men today
prefer the one to the other?e
e. Not only are these two things different, but I can easily prove that they are some-
I think that democratic peoples have a natural taste for liberty; left to
themselves, they seek it, they love it, and it is only with pain that they see
themselves separated from it. But they have an ardent, insatiable, eternal,
invincible passion for equality; they want equality in liberty, and if they
cannot obtain that, they still want equality in slavery. They will suffer pov-
erty, enslavement, barbarism, but they will not suffer aristocracy.
This is true in all times, and above all in our own. All men and all powers
that would like to fight against this irresistible power will be overturned
and destroyed by it.f In our day, liberty cannot be established without its
support, and despotism itself cannot reign without it.
times opposed. It is clear for example that men must exercise political rights only to
the extent that they are capable of doing so. Without that you would arrive at anarchy,
which is only a particular form of tyranny. Now, it is certain that the sentiment of
equality is less offended by the subjugation of all to one master, than by the sub-
mission of a great number to the government of a few. So the sentiment of equality
leads here either to giving (illegible word) rights to everyone, which leads to anarchy,
or to giving them to no one, which establishes despotism.
[To the side: “The despot is a distant enemy, the noble is an enemy who touches
you.”]
You can satisfy the taste of men for equality, without giving them liberty. Often
they must even sacrifice a part of the second in order fully to enjoy the first.
So these two things are easily separable.
The very fact that they are not intimately united and that the one is infinitely more
precious than the other would make it very easy and natural to neglect the second in
order to run after the first./
So let us hold onto liberty with a desperate attachment, let us hold on to it as a
good to which all other good things are attached.
[To the side] If, on the one hand, among a democratic people, men are more gen-
erally enlightened about their rights, on the other hand, it must be acknowledged
that they are less able to defend them, because individually they are very weak and
the art of acting in common is difficult and demands institutions that are not pro-
vided and an apprenticeship that is not allowed to be undertaken (YTC, CVd, pp. 24–
25).
f. [On the jacket of a draft] Equality is not suitable for barbaric peoples; it prevents
them from becoming enlightened and civilized./
Idea to introduce perhaps in the chapters on literature or the sciences.
[The beginning is missing (ed.)] and first, I do not believe that in all the ages of
the life of peoples a democratic social state must produce the effects that I have just
pointed out.
I have never thought that equality of conditions was suitable for the infancy of
societies. When men are uncivilized as well as equal, each one of them feels too weak
and too limited to look for enlightenment separately and it is almost impossible for
all to try to find it at the same time by a common accord.
Nothing is so difficult to take as the first step out of barbarism. I do not doubt
that more effort is required for a savage to discover the art of writing than for a
civilized man to penetrate the general laws that regulate the world. Now it is not
believable that men could ever conceive the need for such an effort without having
it clearly shown to them, or that they would make such an effort without grasping
the result in advance. In a society of barbarians equal to each other, since the attention
of each man is equally absorbed by the first needs and the most coarse interests of
life, the idea of intellectual progress can come to the mind of any one of them only
with difficulty, and if by chance it is born, it would soon be as if suffocated amid the
nearly instructive [instinctive? (ed.)] thoughts to which the poorly satisfied needs of
the body always give birth. The savage lacks at the very same time the idea of study
and the possibility of devoting himself to it.
I do not believe that history presents a single example of a democratic people who
have risen gradually and by themselves toward enlightenment and that is easily un-
derstood. We have seen that among a nation where equality and barbarism reign at
the same time it was very difficult for an individual to develop his intelligence sep-
arately. But if, exceptionally, he happens to do so, the superiority of his knowledge
suddenly gives him such a great preponderance over all those who surround him that
he does not take long to want to make use of it to put an end to equality to his
advantage. So, if peoples {an emerging people} remain democratic, civilizationcannot
arise within them, and if civilization comes by chance to penetrate among them, they
cease to be democratic. I am persuaded that humanity owes its enlightenment to such
strokes of fortune, and I ⫽{think that it is in losing their liberty that men acquired
the means to reconquer it}⫽ that it is under an aristocracy or under a prince that men
still half-savage have gathered the various notions that later would allow them to live
civilized, equal and free.
[In the margin: So I think that this same equality of conditions that seems to me
very appropriate for precipitating the march of the human mind could prevent it
from taking its first steps.]
If I admit that boldness of mind and the taste for general ideas are not necessarily
found among peoples whose social state is democratic, I am equally far from claiming
that you can hope to find them only there.
There are particular accidents that, among certain peoples, can give a particular
impulse to the human mind. Among the accidents, I will put in the first rank the
influence that some men exercise over the fate of societies. It seems that Providence,
after tracing the various paths that nations can follow and fixing the final end of their
course, leaves to individuals the task of slowing or hurrying this march of humanity
that they can neither divert nor halt.
Men are found here and there whose vigorous and unyielding minds scoff at the
impediments that the social state and laws have formed, and whose minds enjoy pur-
suing their course even amid the obstacles that are strewn over it.
Such men rarely gain great sway over their fellow-citizens, but in the long run they
exercise a powerful influence over their society and they draw the ideas of their de-
scendants in their direction.
When political liberty . . . [interrupted text (ed.)] (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 18–21).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 2a
Of Individualism in
Democratic Countries
I have shown how, in centuries of equality, each man looked for his beliefs
within himself; I want to show how, in these same centuries, he turns all
his sentiments toward himself alone.
Individualism b is a recent expression given birth by a new idea. Our
fathers knew only egoism.
a. 1. What individualism is; how it differs from egoism and ends by coming back
to it.
2. Individualism is a sickness peculiar to the human heart in democratic times.
Why?
1. Democracy makes you forget ancestors.
2. It hides descendants.
3. It separates contemporaries by destroying classes and by making them men in-
dependent of each other.
3. So in democratic centuries man is constantly brought back to himself alone and
is preoccupied only with himself.
4. It is so above all at the outset of democratic centuries because of the jealousies
and hatreds to which the democratic revolution has given birth (YTC, CVf, p. 23).
Tocqueville had thought about beginning the 1840 Democracy with this chapter (see
note a for p. 697).
b. In the rubish, the chapter, which bears the title of individualism in democ-
racies and of the means that the americans use to combat it, begins in
this way: “I am not afraid to use new words when they are necessary to portray a new
thing. Here the occasion to do so presents itself. Individualism is a recent expression . . .”
(Rubish, 1).
The word individualism, which seems to echo the amour propre (self-love) of Rous-
seau, was not invented by Tocqueville, but he is largely responsible for its definition and
its usage. The word appears for the first time in this volume. James T. Schleifer dated its
first use as 24 April 1837 (see note u for pp. 709–10). The novelty of the word must not
881
individualism 882
Egoism is a passionate and exaggerated love of oneself, which leads man

to view everything only in terms of himself alone and to prefer himself to
everything.c
Individualism is a considered and peaceful sentiment that disposes each
citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and to withdraw to
the side with his family and his friends; so that, after thus creating a small
society for his own use, he willingly abandons the large society to itself.
Egoism is born out of blind instinct; individualism proceeds from an
erroneous judgment rather than from a depraved sentiment. It has its source
in failings of the mind as much as in vices of the heart.d
Egoism parches the seed of all virtues; individualism at first dries up only
the source of public virtues, but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all
the others and is finally absorbed into egoism.
Egoism is a vice as old as the world. It hardly belongs more to one form
of society than to another.
make us forget that Tocqueville several times used the expression individual egoism in a
rather similar sense (as in note e of p. 511 in the second volume, and in p. 448, also in
the second volume). During his 1835 voyage in England (Voyage en Angleterre, OC, V, 2,
p. 60), Tocqueville also used another expression to designate almost the same idea. He
spoke about the spirit of exclusion, a sentiment that “leads each man or each association
of men to enjoy its advantages as much as possible by itself all alone, to withdraw as
much as possible into its personality and not to allow whomever to see or to put a foot
inside.” The interesting concept of collective individualism appears only in L’Ancien
Régime et la Révolution (OC, II, 1, p. 158).
Some of Tocqueville’s reading, the influence of Kergorlay (who knew Saint-
Simonianism well), or the popularization of the word perhaps pushed Tocqueville af-
terward to use the word individualism. In his theory, the term is always accompanied by
its opposite, the spirit of individuality, which Tocqueville defines in note 2 for p. 1179.
Sometimes he also adopts the terms individual strength, spirit of independence, and in-
dividual independence.
Koenrad W. Swart (“Individualism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1826–1860,”
Journal of the History of Ideas, 23, 1962, pp. 77–86) points out that Tocqueville perhaps
borrowed the term from Saint-Simon. For a discussion of the ideas of Tocqueville on
individualism, see Jean-Claude Lamberti, Tocqueville et les deux Démocraties (Paris: PUF,
1983), pp. 217–40, and La Notion d’individualisme chez Tocqueville (Paris: PUF, 1970);
see James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” pp. 252–57.
c. In the manuscript: “prefer himself to all others.”
d. “⫽Egoism, vice of the heart.
“Individualism, of the mind⫽” (Rubish, 1).
individualism 883
Individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to develop as con-

ditions become equal.
Among aristocratic peoples, families remain for centuries in the same
condition, and often in the same place. That, so to speak, makes all gen-
erations contemporaries. A man almost always knows his ancestors and re-
spects them; he believes he already sees his grandsons, and he loves them.
He willingly assumes his duty toward both, and he often happens to sac-
rifice his personal enjoyments for these beings who are no more or who do
not yet exist.
Aristocratic institutions have, moreover, the effect of tying each man
closely to several of his fellow citizens.
Since classes are very distinct and unchanging within an aristocratic peo-
ple, each class becomes for the one who is part of it a kind of small country,
more visible and dearer than the large one.
Because, in aristocratic societies, all citizens are placed in fixed positions,
some above others, each citizen always sees above him a man whose pro-
tection he needs, and below he finds another whose help he can claim.
So men who live in aristocratic centuries are almost always tied in a close
way to something that is located outside of themselves, and they are often
disposed to forget themselves. It is true that, in these same centuries, the
general notion of fellow is obscure, and that you scarcely think to lay down
your life for the cause of humanity; but you often sacrifice yourself for
certain men.e
e. Aristocracy, which makes citizens depend on each other, leads them sometimes to
great devotion, often to implacable hatreds. Democracy tends to make them indif-
ferent to each other and disposes them to act as if they were alone.
Aristocracy forces man at every moment to go outside of himself in order to attend
to others [v: interests other than his own], democracy constantly leads him back to-
ward himself and threatens finally to enclose him entirely within the solitude of his
own heart.
If democratic peoples abandon themselves immoderately to this tendency, it is easy
to foresee that great evils will result for humanity.
[In the margin] Period of transition. Isolation much more complete. The hatreds
of aristocracy and the indifference of democracy are combined. You isolate yourself
by instinct and by will (Rubish, 1).
individualism 884
In democratic centuries, on the contrary, when the duties of each in-

dividual toward the species are much clearer, devotion toward one man [<or
one class>] becomes more rare; the bond of human affections expands and
relaxes.
Among democratic peoples, new families emerge constantly out of noth-
ing, others constantly fall back into nothing, and all those that remain
change face; the thread of time is broken at every moment, and the trace
of the generations fades. You easily forget those who preceded you, and you
have no idea about those who will follow you. Only those closest to you
are of interest.
Since each class is coming closer to the others and is mingling with them,
its members become indifferent and like strangers to each other. Aristocracy
had made all citizens into a long chain that went from the peasant up to
the king; democracy breaks the chain and sets each link apart.
As conditions become equal, a greater number of individuals will be
found who, no longer rich enough or powerful enough to exercise a great
influence over the fate of their fellows, have nonetheless acquired or pre-
served enough enlightenment and wealth to be able to be sufficient for
themselves. The latter owe nothing to anyone, they expect nothing so to
speak from anyone; they are always accustomed to consider themselves in
isolation, and they readily imagine that their entire destiny is in their hands.
Thus, not only does democracy make each man forget his ancestors, but
it hides his descendants from him and separates him from his contempo-
raries; it constantly leads him back toward himself alone and threatens fi-
nally to enclose him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.[*]
[*]. I believe that if I leave the piece that follows on the period of transition, it must
simply be put there without making it a separate chapter.
s4s4s4s4s4
chapter 3
How Individualism Is Greater
at the End of a Democratic Revolution
than at Another Time a
It is above all at the moment when a democratic society finally takes form
on the debris of an aristocracy, that this isolation of men from each other,
and the egoism that follows are most easily seen.
These societies not only contain a great number of independent citizens,
they are filled daily with men who, having reached independence only yes-
terday, are intoxicated with their new power; these men conceive a pre-
sumptuous confidence in their strength, and not imagining that from then
on they might need to ask for the help of their fellows, they have no dif-
ficulty showing that they think only of themselves.
An aristocracy usually succumbs only after a prolonged struggle, during
which implacable hatreds are kindled among the different classes. These
passions survive victory, and you can follow their traces amid the demo-
cratic confusion that follows.b
Those among the citizens who were first in the destroyed hierarchy can-
not immediately forget their former greatness; for a long time they consider
themselves like strangers within the new society. They see in all the men
made equal to them by this society, oppressors whose destiny cannot pro-
a. On the jacket of the manuscript: “Idea treated further on in the political chapters
that end the book. Only after examining it in the two places will I be able to see if it
must be deleted in one of the two or if it must only be expressed in a different way.”
This chapter, which is not found on the list of notebook CVf and does not exist in the
Rubish, bears the number 20bis in the manuscript.
b. “Aristocracies have been seen that protected liberty. But every contested aristocracy
becomes tyrannical. This is what is happening to the doctrinaires” (YTC, CVa, p. 1).
885
at the end of a democratic revolution 886
voke sympathy; they have lost sight of their former equals and no longer
feel tied by a common interest to their fate; so each one, withdrawing apart,
thinks he is reduced to being concerned only with himself. Those, on the
contrary, who formerly were placed at the bottom of the social ladder, and
who had been brought closer to the general level by a sudden revolution,
enjoy only with a kind of secret uneasiness their newly acquired indepen-
dence; if they find at their side a few of their former superiors, they look
at them with triumph and fear, and move apart from them.
So it is usually at the beginning of democratic societies that citizens show
themselves most disposed to separate themselves.
Democracy leads men not to draw nearer to their fellows; but democratic
revolutions dispose them to flee each other and perpetuate within equality
the hatreds given birth by inequality.
The great advantage of the Americans is to have arrived at democracy
without having to suffer democratic revolutions, and to have been born
equal instead of becoming so.c
c. Idea to bring very much forward.

[In the margin: Idea to show fully at the head or at the end of the book and also
to present in outline in different parts.]
Effects of democracy and particularly harmful effects that are exaggerated in the
period of revolution when the democratic social state, mores and laws become
established.
Example: democracy has the end of making beliefs less stable, like fortunes and
ranks. But at the moment when democracy comes to be established, a shaking of
everything occurs that makes doubtful even the notion of good and evil, which is
nonetheless the notion that men most easily understand.
That comes not only from {the state of} democracy, but also from the state of
revolution. Produced by whatever cause, it will produce effects if not as great at least
analogous. A revolution is an accident that temporarily makes all things unstable, and
above all it has this effect when it (illegible word) to establish a permanent state whose
tendency is in a way to establish instability. The great difficulty in the study of de-
mocracy is to distinguish what is democratic from what is only revolutionary. This
is very difficult because examples are lacking. There is no European people among
whom democracy has settled down, and America is in an exceptional situation. The
state of literature in France is not only democratic, but revolutionary.
Public morality, id.
Religious opinions, id.
Political opinions, id. (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 51–53).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 4a
How the Americans Combat Individualism
with Free Institutions b
Despotism, which, by its nature, is fearful, sees in the isolation of men the
most certain guarantee of its own duration, and it ordinarily puts all its
efforts into isolating them. There is no vice of the human heart that pleases
it as much as egoism: a despot easily pardons the governed for not loving
him, provided that they do not love each other.c He does not ask them to
help him lead the State; it is enough that they do not claim to run it them-
a. 1. Despotism tends to isolate men constantly. So it is particularly dangerous in

times when the social state has the same tendency.
2. Liberty is, on the contrary, particularly necessary in these times. Why:
1. By occupying citizens with public affairs, it draws them out of themselves.
2. By making them deal in common with their affairs, it makes them feel their
reciprocal dependence.
3. By making the choice of magistrates depend on the public, it gives to all those
who have some ambition the desire to serve their fellows in order to merit being their
choice.
3. Example of all this drawn from the United States. How the Americans are not
only content to combat individualism by creating national liberty, but have also es-
tablished provincial liberties (YTC, CVf, pp. 23–24).
b. At one moment during the writing, this chapter had as a title: how the amer-
icans combat the tendencies that lead men to separate themselves by
municipal institutions and the spirit of association (Rubish, 1).
“The defect of these chapters is that, in those that follow, I have already treated a part
of the effects of individualism, without naming it” (Rubish, 1).
c. “The circulation of ideas is to civilization what the circulation of blood is to the
human body” (Rubish, 1).
887
individualism and free institutions 888
selves.d Those who claim to unite their efforts in order to create common
prosperity, he calls unruly and restless spirits; and, changing the natural
meaning of words, he calls good citizens those who withdraw narrowly into
themselves.e
d. In the margin: “⫽I have made known how, in democratic centuries, each man
looked within himself alone for his beliefs; I want to show how in these same centuries
he turns all his sentiments toward himself alone.⫽”
e. You must take great notice of the social state of a people before deciding what
political laws are suitable for them. When a nation adopts a government whose natural
defects are unfortunately in accord with the natural defects of the social state, the
nation must expect the latter to grow beyond measure.
Liberty, on the contrary, by creating great common affairs, tends constantly to draw
citizens closer together, and it shows them every day in a practical way the tight bond
that unites them. Among free peoples, it is the public that distributes honors and
power, and it is only by working for the public that you succeed in gaining its favors.
So it happens that among these peoples you think about your fellows out of ambition
as much as out of disinterestedness, and often you in a way find your interest by
forgetting about yourself.
The free institutions that certain peoples can if necessary do without, are therefore
particularly necessary to men who are led by a secret instinct constantly to separate
themselves from each other and to withdraw within the narrow limits of personal
interest.
Despotism . . . [interrupted text (ed.)] (Rubish, 1).
In the manuscript this other beginning can be read:
Equality of conditions not only disposes men to be interested only in themselves;
it also leads them not to communicate with each other.
In aristocratic countries the members of the upper class get together from time to
time for their pleasures, when they have no common affairs.
Among democratic peoples each man, having only a mediocre fortune that he
oversees himself, does not have the leisure to seek out the company of his fellows. A
great interest must force him to do so.
If the men of democratic countries were abandoned entirely to their natural in-
stincts, they would end up not only by not making use of each other, but by not know-
ing one another. The circulation of sentiments and ideas would be as if suspended.
[In the margin: <This seems contestable to me for equality suggests a host of rest-
less passions that must necessarily lead men to see each other a great deal even if they
are indifferent./
This as well seems contrary to what I said previously that democratic periods were
periods when all men came to resemble each other because they saw and heard each
other constantly.>]
These are great dangers on which the attention of the legislator must be constantly
fixed.
Thus, the vices given birth by despotism are precisely those that equality
favors. The two things complement each other and help one another in a
fatal way.
Equality places men side by side, without a common bond to hold them.
Despotism raises barriers between them and separates them. It disposes
them not to think about their fellows and makes indifference into a kind
of public virtue.
So despotism, which is dangerous in all times, is to be particularly feared
in democratic centuries.f
It is easy to see that in these same centuries men have a particular need
for liberty.
When citizens are forced to occupy themselves with public affairs, they
are necessarily drawn away from the middle of their individual interests
and are, from time to time, dragged away from looking at themselves.
From the moment when common affairs are treated together, each man
notices that he is not as independent of his fellows as he first imagined, and
that, to gain their support, he must often lend them his help.
When the public governs, there is no man who does not feel the value
of the public’s regard and who does not seek to win it by gaining the esteem
and affection of those among whom he must live.
Several of the passions that chill and divide hearts are then forced to
withdraw deep into the soul and hide there. Pride conceals itself; scorn dares
not to show itself. Egoism is afraid of itself. [You dread to offend and you
love to serve.]
Under a free government, since most public functions are elective, the
men who feel cramped in private life because of the loftiness of their souls
or the restlessness of their desires, sense every day that they cannot do with-
out the population that surrounds them.
It then happens that you think about your fellows out of ambition, and
that often, in a way, you find it in your interest to forget yourself. [This
f. “Despotism would not only destroy liberty among these people, but in a way so-
ciety” (Rubish, 1).
finally produces within democratic nations something analogous to what

was seen in aristocracies.
In aristocratic countries men are bound tightly together by their very
inequalities. In democratic countries where the various representatives of
public power are elected, men attach themselves to each other by the ex-
ertion of their own will, and it is in this sense then that you can say that
in those countries election replaces hierarchy to a certain degree.]g h I
know that you can raise the objection here of all the intrigues given birth
by an election, the shameful means that the candidates often use and the
slanders that their enemies spread. Those are occasions of hatred, and they
present themselves all the more often as elections become more frequent
[⫽which never fails to happen in proportion as municipal liberties
develop⫽].j
These evils are no doubt great, but they are temporary, while the good
things that arise with them endure.
The desire to be elected can, for a short while, lead certain men to make
war on each other; but this same desire leads all men in the long run to lend
each other natural support; and, if it happens that an election accidentally
divides two friends, the electoral system draws closer together in a per-
manent way a multitude of citizens who would always have remained stran-
gers to each other. Liberty creates particular hatreds, but despotism gives
birth to general indifference.
g. <If in my mind I wanted to portray with the aid of a physical image how men are
connected to each other in aristocracies, I would imagine a chain all of whose links,
of unequal shape and unequal thickness, would be passed [along (ed.)] equal spokes
that would all end up attached together at the same center.
And if I wanted to understand how they can be connected to each other in de-
mocracies, I would imagine a multitude of equal spokes all ending up at the same
center, so that, although all turn together, there would never be two of them that
touch each other> (Rubish, 1).
h. In the margin: “Probably shorten this paragraph. The last sentence of the chapter
is the same thing and better.”
j. To the side: “<Perhaps this must be deleted, though good. This gives too much of
a role to election in free institutions and perhaps in the mind of many readers damages
my cause more than serving it.>”
The Americans fought, by means of liberty, against the individualism

given birth by equality, and they defeated it.
The law-makers of America did not believe that to cure an illness so
natural and so fatal to the social body in democratic times, it was sufficient
to grant the nation a single way of representing itself as a whole; they
thought, as well, that it was appropriate to give political life to each portion
of the territory, in order infinitely to multiply for citizens the occasions to
act together, and to make the citizens feel every day that they depend on
each other.k
This was to behave with wisdom.
The general affairs of a country occupy only the principal citizens. The
latter gather together in the same places only from time to time; and, as it
often happens that afterward they lose sight of each other, no lasting bonds
are established among them. But, when it is a matter of having the partic-
ular affairs of a district regulated by the men who live there, the same in-
dividuals are always in contact, and they are in a way forced to know each
other and to please each other.
You draw a man out of himself with difficulty in order to interest him
in the destiny of the entire State, because he poorly understands the influ-
ence that the destiny of the State can exercise on his fate. But if it is nec-
essary to have a road pass by the end of his property, he will see at first
glance that there is a connection between this small public affair and his
greatest private affairs, and he will discover, without anyone showing him,
the close bond that here unites particular interest to general interest.
So it is by charging citizens with the administration of small affairs,
much more than by giving them the government of great ones, that you
k. So the great object of law-makers in democracies must be to create common affairs

that force men to enter into contact with each other.
Laws that lead to this result are useful to all peoples; to democratic peoples they
are necessary. Here they increase the well-being of society; there they make society
continue to exist, for what is society for thinking beings, if not the communication
and connection of minds and hearts?/
That should lead me easily to free institutions that give birth to common affairs
(Rubish, 1).
interest them in the public good and make them see the need that they
constantly have for each other in order to produce that good.
You can, by a dazzling action, suddenly capture the favor of a people;
but, to win the love and respect of the population that surrounds you, there
must be a long succession of small services provided, humble good offices,
a constant habit of benevolence and a well-established reputation of
disinterestedness.
So local liberties, which make a great number of citizens put value on
the affection of their neighbors and of those nearby, constantly bring men
back toward each other despite the instincts that separate them, and force
them to help each other.
In the United States, the most opulent citizens are very careful not to
isolate themselves from the people; on the contrary, they constantly draw
closer to them, they readily listen to them and speak with them every day.
They know that in democracies the rich always need the poor and that, in
democratic times, the poor are attached by manners more than by benefits.
The very grandeur of these benefits, which brings out the difference of
conditions, causes a secret irritation to those who profit from them; but
simplicity of manners has nearly irresistible charms; familiarity of manners
seduces and even their coarseness does not always displease.
This truth does not at first sight penetrate the mind of the rich. Usually,
they resist it as long as the democratic revolution lasts, and they do not even
admit it immediately after the revolution is accomplished. They willingly
agree to do good for the people; but they want to continue to hold them
carefully at a distance. They believe that is enough; they are wrong. They
would ruin themselves in this way without rekindling the heart of the popu-
lation that surrounds them. It is not the sacrifice of their money that is
demanded of them; it is the sacrifice of their pride.m
You would say that in the United States there is no imagination that does
not exhaust itself inventing means to increase wealth and to satisfy the
needs of the public. The most enlightened inhabitants of each district are
constantly using their knowledge to discover new secrets appropriate for
m. This paragraph and the preceding one are not found in the manuscript.
increasing common prosperity; and, when they have found some, they has-
ten to give them to the crowd.n
While closely examining the vices and weaknesses often shown by those
who govern in America, you are astonished by the growing prosperity of
the people, and you are mistaken.o It is not the elected magistrate who
makes the American democracy prosper; but it prospers because the mag-
istrate is elective.p
It would be unjust to believe that the patriotism of the Americans and
the zeal that each of them shows for the well-being of his fellow citizens
has nothing real about it. Although private interest directs most human
actions in the United States as well as elsewhere, it does not determine all
of them.
I must say that I have often seen Americans make great and true sacrifices
for public affairs, and I have observed a hundred times that they hardly ever
fail to lend faithful support to each other as needed.
The free institutions that the inhabitants of the United States possess,
and the political rights that they use so much, recall constantly, and in a
thousand ways, to each citizen that he lives in society. They lead his mind
at every moment toward this idea, that the duty as well as the interest of
men is to make themselves useful to their fellows; and, as he sees no par-
ticular cause to hate them, since he is never either their slave or their master,
his heart inclines easily in the direction of benevolence. You first get in-
volved in the general interest by necessity, and then by choice; what was
calculation becomes instinct; and by working for the good of your fellow
citizens, you finally acquire the habit and taste of serving them.
[When men, unequal to each other, put all their political powers in the
hands of one man, that is not enough for them to become indifferent and
cold toward each other, because they continue to need each other constantly
in civil life.
But when equal men do not take part in government, they almost en-
n. In the margin, in pencil: “Not only, but. Ampère.”

o. “⫽It is not those who are elected to public offices who make democracies prosper,
but those who want to be⫽” (Rubish, 1).
p. In the margin, in pencil: “A connection is desired here. Ampère.”
tirely lack the occasion to harm each other or to make use of each other.
Each one forgets his fellows to think only of the prince and himself.
So political liberty, which is useful when conditions are unequal, be-
comes necessary in proportion as they become equal.]q
Many people in France consider equality of conditions as a first evil, and
political liberty as a second. When they are forced to submit to the one,
they try hard at least to escape the other. As for me, I say that, to combat
the evils that equality can produce, there is only one effective remedy: po-
litical liberty.
q. “When the government [v: sources of power] is found in the population itself and
not above it, you feel for the people something of the good and bad sentiments that kings
inspire in absolute monarchies; you fear him, you adulate him, and often you love him
passionately. Base souls take him as the object of their flattery and lofty ones as the focus
of their devotion” (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 5a
Of the Use That Americans Make of
Association in Civil Life b
I do not want to talk about those political associations by the aid of which
men seek to defend themselves against the despotic action of a majority or
against the encroachments of royal power. I have already treated this subject
elsewhere. It is clear that, if each citizen, as he becomes individually weaker
and therefore more incapable of preserving his liberty by himself alone,
did not learn the art of uniting with his fellows to defend his liberty, tyranny
a. 1. Here it is not a matter of political associations. I treated this subject in the first
work.
2. The Americans are at the very same time the most democratic people and the
ones who have made the most use of association. These two things go together, in
fact.
1. In aristocratic countries there are permanent and established associations, com-
posed of a few powerful men and of all those who depend on them.
2. In democratic countries, where all citizens are equal and weak, temporary and
voluntary associations must be formed, or civilization is in danger.
3. Not only are industrial associations necessary, but moral and intellectual asso-
ciations. Why:
1. In order for sentiments and ideas to be renewed and for the human mind to
develop, men must act constantly upon each other.
2. Now, in democratic countries, only the government naturally has this power of
action. And it exercises it always incompletely and tyrannically.
3. So there associations must come to replace the powerful individuals who in
aristocracies take charge of bringing sentiments and ideas to light.
4. Summary. In order for men to remain civilized or to become so, the art of as-
sociation among them must be developed and perfected in the same proportion as
equality (illegible word) (YTC, CVf, pp. 24–25).
b. “⫽Remark of Édouard: chapter weakly written⫽” (Rubish, 1).
895
association in civil life 896
would necessarily grow with equality.c Here it is a matter only of the as-
sociations that are formed in civil life and whose aim has nothing political
about it.
The political associations that exist in the United States form only a
detail amid the immense tableau that associations as a whole present there.
Americans of all ages, of all conditions, of all minds, constantly unite.
Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which they
all take part, but also they have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral,
[intellectual,] serious ones, useless ones, very general and very particular
ones, immense and very small ones;d Americans associate to celebrate hol-
idays, establish seminaries, build inns, erect churches, distribute books,
send missionaries to the Antipodes; in this way they create hospitals, pris-
ons, schools. If, finally, it is a matter of bringing a truth to light or of de-
veloping a sentiment with the support of a good example, they associate.
Wherever, at the head of a new undertaking, you see in France the gov-
ernment, and in England, a great lord, count on seeing in the United States,
an association.
c. A great publicist of today has said:

It is not by exterminating the civilized men of the IVth century that the barbarians
managed to destroy the civilization of that time. It was enough for them to come
between them so to speak and by separating them to make them like strangers to one
another.
[To the side: To finish associations there, to turn G[uizot (ed.)] against himself.]
It is by a similar path that the men of today could well return to barbarism, if they
were not careful.
[In another place] M. G[uizot (ed.)]. wants to speak about the prevention of com-
municating with rather than about the impossibility of acting on each other. These
ideas are close but different. In order to act on each other, they must first communicate
with each other. But you can communicate without acting. This is the case of men
in democratic countries.
[To the side: If a government forbid citizens to associate or undertook to take away
their taste for doing so, it would behave precisely as the barbarians./
to communicate-----newspaper
to act-----association. ] (Rubish, 1). See note a of p. 18 of the first volume.
d. “A thousand types of associations in America. Harmony. C. B. 2. Shaking quakers”
(Rubish, 1 and YTC, CVa, p. 4).
I found in America some kinds of associationse of which, I confess, I

had not even the idea, and I often admired the infinite art with which the
inhabitants of the United States succeeded in setting a common goal for
the efforts of a great number of men, and in making them march freely
toward it.
I have since traveled across England, from where the Americans took
some of their laws and many of their customs, and it seemed to me that
there one was very far from making such constant and skillful use of
association.
It often happens that the English individually carry out very great things,
while there is scarcely so small an enterprise for which the Americans do
not unite. It is clear that the first consider association as a powerful means
of action; but the second seem to see it as the only means they have to act.
Thus the most democratic country on earth is, out of all, the one where
men today have most perfected the art of pursuing in common the object
of their common desires and have applied this new science to the greatest
number of things.f Does this result from an accident, or could it be that in
fact a necessary connection exists between associations and equality?
e. “Three great categories of associations:

“Industrial associations.
“Religious associations. Moral associations: Intellectual.”
[In another place] “Legal associations, voluntary associations: Artificial.
“The government, in some fashion, can well take the place of legal associations,
but not of voluntary associations. All of that moreover goes together; legal associa-
tions teach men about voluntary associations and the latter about legal associations./
“Among voluntary associations also distinguish political and civil associations”
(Rubish, 1).
f. Means to take to facilitate the spirit of association.
1. Make the will to associate very easy to carry out.
2. Do yourself only what associations can absolutely not carry out. If, on the con-
trary, the government marches in the direction of the social state, individualism has
no limit. This requires that many nuances be pointed out. For if democratic peoples
need more than others to be allowed to do things by themselves, they also sometimes
have a greater need than others to have things done for them.
[In the margin: Marvels that democracy can accomplish with the aid of the spirit
of association. See the railroads in America. Revue des deux mondes (1836).]
Aristocratic societies always contain within them, amid a multitude of

individuals who can do nothing by themselves, a small number of very
powerful and very rich citizens; each of the latter can by himself carry out
great enterprises.
In aristocratic societies, men do not need to unite in order to act, because
they are held tightly together.
There, each citizen, rich and powerful, is like the head of a permanent
and compulsory association that is composed of all those who are depen-
dent on him and who are made to cooperate in the execution of his plans.
Among democratic peoples, on the contrary, all citizens are independent
and weak; they can hardly do anything by themselves, and no one among
them can compel his fellows to lend him their help. So they all fall into
impotence if they do not learn to help each other freely.g
If men who live in democratic countries had neither the right nor the
taste to unite for political ends, their independence would run great risks,
but they could for a long time retain their wealth and their enlightenment;
while, if they did not acquire the custom of associating in ordinary life,
civilization itself would be in danger.h A people among whom individuals
3. Give enlightenment, spread liberty and allow men to solve things by themselves.
Comparison with the child that you make walk not in order to have the right to be
kept always in leading-strings, but on the contrary to make him able to run all alone
someday. But it is not in this way that governments understand it. They treat their
subjects more or less as women are treated in China. They force them to wear the
shoes of infancy all their lives (Rubish, 1).
It is possible that Tocqueville is referring here to the article of Michel Chevalier, “Des
chemins de fer comparés aux lignes navigables” (Revue des deux mondes, 4th series, 1838,
pp. 789–813).
g. “In aristocratic countries, enterprises larger and associations smaller.
“In democratic countries, enterprises smaller and associations larger” (Rubish, 1).
h. Civil associations./
[In the margin: Necessary remedy for egoism, more intelligent but more indis-
pensable [and (ed.)] not less natural than sociability.]
Political associations are necessary in democracies as the executive power there is
weaker. Without that, the majority is tyrannical.
lost the power to do great things separately without acquiring the ability to
achieve them together would soon return to barbarism.
Unfortunately, the same social state that makes associations so necessary
to democratic peoples makes them more difficult for them than for all other
peoples.
When several members of an aristocracy want to associate, they easily
succeed in doing so. As each one of them has great strength in society, the
number of members of the association can be very small, and, when the
numbers are few, it is very easy for them to know and understand each other
and to establish fixed rules.
The same facility is not found among democratic nations, where those
in the association must always be very numerous so that the association has
some power.
[The liberty to associate is, therefore, more precious and the science of
association more necessary among those peoples than among all others and
<it becomes more precious and more necessary as equality is greater.>]
I know that there are many of my contemporaries who are not hin-
dered by this. They claim that as citizens become weaker and more in-
capable, the government must be made more skillful and more active, in
order for society to carry out what individuals are no longer able to do.
They believe they have answered everything by saying that. But I think
they are mistaken.
A government could take the place of a few of the largest American
associations, and within the Union several particular states have already
Civil associations are useful in aristocratic countries; they are so necessary in de-
mocracies that it may be believed that a democratic people among whom civil asso-
ciations could not form or could form with difficulty would have difficulty not falling
into barbarism.
So the legislator in democracies must work hard to favor and to facilitate in all
ways the developments of the right of association.
Unfortunately it is a chimera to believe that civil association can undergo great
development where political association cannot exist (Rubish, 1).
tried to do so. But what political power would ever be able to be sufficient
for the innumerable multitude of small enterprises that the American cit-
izens carry out every day with the aid of the association?j
It is easy to foresee that the time is coming when man will be less and
less able to produce by himself alone the things most common and most
necessary to his life.k So the task of the social power will grow constantly,
and its very efforts will make it greater every day. The more it puts itself in
the place of associations, the more individuals, losing the idea of associ-
ating, will need it to come to their aid. These are causes and effects that
engender each other without stopping. Will the public administration end
up directing all the industries for which an isolated citizen cannot suffice?m
And if a moment finally arrives when, as a consequence of the extreme
division of landed property, the land is infinitely divided, so that it can no
longer be cultivated except by associations of farm workers, will the head
of government have to leave the tiller of the State in order to come to hold
the plow?
The morals and intelligence of a democratic people would run no lesser
dangers than their trade and industry, if the government came to take the
place of associations everywhere.n
Sentiments and ideas are renewed, the heart grows larger and the human
mind develops only by the reciprocal action of men on each other.
I have demonstrated that this action is almost nil in democratic coun-
tries. So it must be created there artificially. And this is what associations
alone are able to do.
When the members of an aristocracy adopt a new idea or conceive of a
j. “If these things are no longer done by anyone, the people gradually return to bar-
barism, and if you charge the great general association, which is called the government,
with them, tyranny is inevitable” (Rubish, 1).
k. “It is easy to foresee that the day is approaching when men will be forced to
associate in order to carry out a portion of the things most necessary to life. Fourierism”
(Rubish, 1).
m. “Commercial associations are the easiest and the first; they are the ones that a
government has the most interest in encouraging” (Rubish, 1).
n. “In this, as in nearly everything else, the greatest effort of the government must
tend toward teaching citizens the art of doing without its help” (Rubish, 1).
new sentiment, they place them, in a way, next to them on the great stage
where they are themselves, and, in this way exposing those new ideas or
sentiments to the sight of the crowd, they introduce them easily into the
mind or heart of those who surround them.
In democratic countries only the social power is naturally able to act in
this way, but it is easy to see that its action is always insufficient and often
dangerous.o
A government can no more suffice for maintaining alone and for renew-
ing the circulation of sentiments and ideas among a great people than for
conducting all of the industrial enterprises. From the moment it tries to
emerge from the political sphere in order to throw itself into the new path,
it will exercise an unbearable tyranny, even without wanting to do so; for
government only knows how to dictate precise rules; it imposes the senti-
ments and ideas that it favors, and it is always difficult to distinguish its
counsels from its orders.p
It will be still worse if a government believes itself really interested in
having nothing move. It will then keep itself immobile and allow itself to
become heavy with a voluntary sleep.
So it is necessary that it does not act alone.
Associations, among democratic peoples, must take the place of the
powerful individuals that equality of conditions has made disappear.
As soon as some inhabitants of the United States have conceived of a
sentiment or an idea that they want to bring about in the world, they seek
each other out, and when they have found each other, they unite. From
that moment, they are no longer isolated men, but a power that is seen
from afar, and whose actions serve as an example; a power that speaks and
to which you listen.
The first time I heard in the United States that one hundred thousand
men[*] had publicly pledged not to use strong liquor, the thing seemed to
o. “The dominion of the majority is absolute, but it would be too permanent if there
were not associations to combat it and to drag it out of its old ways” (Rubish, 1).
p. The manuscript says: “. . . to distinguish in it the teacher from the master.”
[*]. There are more than that. Look for the figure in the Penitentiary System.
me more amusingq than serious, and I did not at first see clearly why these
citizens, who were so temperate, would not be content to drink water within
their families.
I ended by understanding that these hundred thousand Americans,
frightened by the progress that drunkenness was making around them, had
wanted to give their patronage to temperance. They had acted precisely like
a great lord who dressed very plainly in order to inspire disdain for luxury
among simple citizens. It may be believed that if these hundred thousand
menr lived in France, each one of them would have individually addressed
the government in order to beg it to oversee the taverns throughout the
entire kingdom.
There is nothing, in my opinion, that merits our attention more than
the intellectual and moral associations of America. The political and in-
dustrial associations of the Americans easily fall within our grasp, but the
others escape us; and, if we discover them, we understand them badly, be-
cause we have hardly ever seen anything analogous. You must recognize,
however, that the intellectual and moral associations are as necessary as the
political and industrial ones to the American people, and perhaps more.
In democratic countries, the science of association is the mother science;
the progress of all the others depends on the progress of the former.s
Among the laws that govern human societies, there is one that seems
more definitive and clearer than all the others. For men to remain civilized
or to become so, the art of associating must become developed among them
and be perfected in the same proportion as equality of conditions grows.
q. The manuscript says: “ridiculous.”

r. The manuscript cites: “three hundred thousand.”
s. “So I am far from claiming that a democratic government must abandon all im-
portant enterprises to the industry of individuals, or even that there is not a certain period
in the life of a democratic people when the government must more or less mingle in a
great number of enterprises, but I do not believe that in that [interrupted text (ed.)]”
(Rubish, 1).
[Of the Manner in Which American

Governments Act toward Associations]t
[In England, the State mingles strictly only in its own affairs. Often it even
relies on individuals for the task of undertaking and of completing works
whose usefulness or grandeur has an almost national appearance.
The English think they have done enough for the citizens by allowing
them to give themselves unreservedly to their industry, or by allowing them
to associate freely if they need to do so.
The Americans go further: it often happens that they lend to certain
associations the support of the State or even charge the State with taking
their place.
⫽There are works that do not precisely have a national character, but
whose execution is very difficult, in which the government takes part in the
United States, or that it carries out at its expense. Such a thing is hardly
seen in England.⫽
That is explained when you consider that, if associations are more nec-
essary in a democratic country, they are at the same time more difficult.
Among an aristocratic people, an association can have very great power
and be composed of only a few men. In democratic countries, in order to
create a similar association, you must unite a multitude of citizens all with-
t. Short unpublished chapter that is found with the manuscript of the chapter:
This chapter contains some good ideas and some good sentences. Nonetheless, I be-
lieve it useful to delete it.
1. Because it treats very briefly and very incompletely a very interesting subject that
has been treated at great length by others. Among others, Chevalier.
2. Because it gets into the order of ideas of the great political chapters of the
end./
Consult L[ouis (ed.)]. and B[eaumont (ed.)]./
It is clear in any case that this chapter is too thin to go alone. It must be deleted
or joined to another. Perhaps to the general chapter on associations.
Tocqueville is alluding to Michel Chevalier, author of Lettres sur l’Amérique du Nord,
1836.
out defenses, keep them together and lead them. So in aristocratic countries
the State can rely on individuals and associations for everything. In dem-
ocratic countries it cannot do the same.
Those who govern democratic societies are in a very difficult position.
If they always want to take the place of great associations, they prevent the
spirit of association from developing and they take on a burden that weighs
them down; and if they rely only on associations, very useful and often
necessary things are not done by anyone.
Men who live in democratic centuries have more need than others to be
allowed to do things by themselves, and more than others, they sometimes
need things to be done for them. That depends on circumstances.
The greatest art of government in democratic countries consists in
clearly distinguishing the circumstances and acting according to how cir-
cumstances lead it.
I will say only in a general way that since the first interest of a people of
this type is that the spirit of association spreads and becomes secure within
it, all the other interests must be subordinated to that one.
So the government [v. social power], even when it lends its support to
individuals, must never discharge them entirely from the trouble of helping
themselves by uniting; often it must deny them its help in order to let them
find the secret of being self-sufficient, and it must withdraw its hand as they
better understand the art of doing so.
This is, moreover, not particular to the subject of associations or to dem-
ocratic times.
The principal aim of good government has always been to make the
citizens more and more able to do without its help. That is more useful than
the help can be.
If men learn in obedience only the art of obeying and not that of being
free, I do not know what privileges they will have over the animals except
that the shepherd would be taken from among them.]u
u. In the margin: “There is the kernel of the thought. There is no correlation between
help and obedience. You can lend help to a man that you do not command.”
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 6a
Of the Relation between
Associations and Newspapers b
a. 1. When men are independent of one another you can only make a large number
of them act in common by persuading each one separately but simultaneously of the
utility of the enterprise.
And only a newspaper can thus succeed in putting the same thought in a thousand
ears at the same time.
So newspapers are necessary in proportion as conditions are more equal.
2. A newspaper not only suggests the same plan to a large number of men at the
same time, it provides them the means to carry out in common the plans that they
had conceived themselves.
1. First, it makes them know each other and it puts them in contact.
2. Then, it binds them together; it makes them talk with each other without seeing
each other and march in agreement without gathering together.
3. Since newspapers increase with associations, it is easy to understand that the less
centralization there is among a people, the more newspapers there must be. For each
district then forms a permanent association in which the need for a newspaper makes
itself felt much more than when there is only a large national association.
4. Since a newspaper always represents an association, it explains why, the greater
equality is and the weaker each individual is, the stronger the press is. The news-
paper overpowers each of its readers in the name of all the others (YTC, CVf,
pp. 26–27).
b. The Rubish contains two jackets with notes and drafts for this chapter. One bears
the same title as the chapter; the other bears the following title:
particular utility that democratic peoples draw from liberty of
the press and in particular from newspapers./
Chapter scarcely roughed out and weakly conceived, to review and perhaps to de-
lete. To put in the middle of associations./
Édouard notes rightly: 1. that the subject of newspapers is of all democratic subjects
the one most familiar to the French, that consequently I must hesitate to treat it. 2. that
in any case it is too important to treat it accidentally in relation to associations.
905
associations and newspapers 906
When men are no longer bound together in a solid and permanent way,
you cannot get a large number to act in common, unless by persuading
each one whose help is needed that his particular interest obliges him to
unite his efforts voluntarily with the efforts of all the others.
That can usually and conveniently be done only with the aid of a news-
paper;c only a newspaper can succeed in putting the same thought in a
thousand minds at the same instant.
A newspaper is an advisor that you do not need to go to find, but which
appears by itself and speaks to you daily and briefly about common affairs,
without disturbing you in your private affairs.
So newspapers become more necessary as men are more equal and
individualism more to be feared. It would diminish their importance
to believe that they serve only to guarantee liberty; they maintain civili-
zation.
I will not deny that, in democratic countries, newspapers often lead cit-
He proposes that I only show the relation that exists between newspapers and
associations. A newspaper is the voice of an association. You can consider it as the
soul of the association, the most energetic means that the association uses to form
itself. If, on the one hand, there is a connection between the number of associations
and equality of conditions, there is a connection between the number of newspapers
and that of associations.
An association that has only one newspaper to read is only rough-hewn, but it
already exists.
To that I propose to join what I say about how the power of newspapers grows in
proportion as conditions become equal./
Associations in democracies can form only from a multitude of weak and humble
individuals who do not see each other from far away, who do not have the leisure to
seek each other out, or the ability to consult and to agree with each other (in aris-
tocracies, on the contrary, a powerful association can form from a small number of
powerful citizens; the latter know each other and they do not need newspapers to
consult and to agree with each other). All of these things can take place only because
of newspapers and in general because of the free publications of the press. So news-
papers are necessary in democracies in proportion as associations themselves are nec-
essary (the central idea is found! ) (Rubish, 1).
c. “Make a note to point out that it is a matter here not only of political newspapers,
but also and above all of scientific, industrial, religious, moral newspapers . . .” (Rub-
ish, 1).
izens to do in common very ill-considered undertakings; but if there were

no newspapers, there would be hardly any common action. So the evil that
they produce is much less than the one they cure.
A newspaper not only has the effect of suggesting the same plan to a
large number of men; it provides them with the means to carry out in
common the plans that they would have conceived by themselves.
The principal citizens who inhabit an aristocratic country see each other
from far away; and, if they want to combine their strength, they march
toward each other, dragging along a multitude in their wake.
It often happens, on the contrary, in democratic countries, that a large
number of men who have the desire or the need to associate cannot do so;
since all are very small and lost in the crowd, they do not see each other
and do not know where to find each other. Along comes a newspaper that
exposes to view the sentiment or the idea that came simultaneously, but
separately, to each of them. All head immediately for this light, and these
wandering spirits, who have been looking for each other for a long time in
the shadows, finally meet and unite.
[<In aristocratic countries you group readily around one man, and in
democratic countries around a newspaper, and it is in this sense that you
can say that newspapers there take the place of great lords.>]
The newspaper has drawn them closer together, and they continue to
need it to hold them together.
For an association among a democratic people to have some power it
must be numerous. Those who compose it are thus spread over a large area,
and each of them is kept in the place that he inhabits by the mediocrity of
his fortune and by the multitude of small cares that it requires. They must
find a means to talk together every day without seeing each other, and to
march in accord without getting together. Thus there is hardly any dem-
ocratic association that can do without a newspaper.d
d. “That also explains the power of newspapers in democracies. They are not natu-
rally stronger than in aristocracies, but they speak amid the universal silence; they act
amid the common powerlessness. They take the initiative when no one dares to take it.”
(Rubish particular utility that democratic peoples draw from liberty
of the press and in particular from newspapers, Rubish, 1).
So a necessary relation exists between associations and newspapers;news-

papers make associations, and associations make newspapers; and if it was
true to say that associations must multiply as conditions become equal, it
is no less certain that the number of newspapers grows as associations
multiply.e
Consequently America is the only country in the world where at the same
time you find the most associations and the most newspapers.
This relationship between the number of newspapers and that of as-
sociations leads us to discover another one between the condition of the
periodical press and the administrative form of the country, and we learn
that the number of newspapers must decrease or increase among a dem-
ocratic people in proportion as administrative centralization is more or less
great. For among democratic peoples, you cannot entrust the exercise of
local powers to the principal citizens as in aristocracies. These powers must
be abolished, or their use handed over to a very great number of men. These
men form a true association established in a permanent manner by the law
for the administration of one portion of the territory, and they need a news-
paper to come to find them each day amid their small affairs, and to teach
them the state of public affairs. The more numerous the local powers are,
the greater is the number of those called by the law to exercise them; and
the more this necessity makes itself felt at every moment, the more news-
papers proliferate.
It is the extraordinary splitting up of administrative power, much more
than great political liberty and the absolute independence of the press,
that so singularly multiplies the number of newspapers in America. If all
the inhabitants of the Union were voters under the rule of a system that
limited their electoral right to the choice of the legislators of the State,
they would need only a small number of newspapers, because they could
have only a few very important, but very rare occasions to act together;
but within the great national association, the law established in each prov-
ince and in each city, and so to speak in each village, small associations
e. “Thus the number of newspapers grows not only according to the number of vol-
untary associations; it also increases in proportion as the political power [v: administra-
tion] becomes decentralized and as the local power passes from the hands of the few
into those of all” (Rubish, 1).
with the purpose of local administration. The law-maker in this way

forced each American to cooperate daily with some of his fellow citizens
in a common work, and each of them needs a newspaper to teach him
what the others are doing.
I think that a democratic people,1 who would not have national repre-
sentation, but a great number of small local powers, would end by having
more newspapers than another people among whom a centralized admin-
istration would exist alongside an elected legislature. What best explains to
me the prodigious development that the daily press has undergone in the
United States, is that I see among the Americans the greatest national liberty
combined with local liberties of all types.
It is generally believed in France and in England that it is enough to
abolish the duties that burden the press in order to increase newspapers
indefinitely. That greatly exaggerates the effects of such a reform. News-
papers multiply not only following low cost, but also following the more
or less repeated need that a large number of men have to communicate
together and to act in common.
I would equally attribute the growing power of newspapers to more gen-
eral reasons than those that are often used to explain it.
A newspaper can continue to exist only on the condition of reproducing
a common doctrine or common sentiment for a large number of men. So
a newspaper always represents an association whose members are its habit-
ual readers.
This association can be more or less defined, more or less limited, more
or less numerous; but it exists in minds, at least in germ; for that reason
alone the newspaper does not die.
This leads us to a final reflection that will end this chapter.
The more conditions become equal, the weaker men are individually,
1. I say a democratic people. The administration can be very decentralized among an

aristocratic people, without making the need for newspapers felt, because local powers then
are in the hands of a very small number of men who act separately or who know each other
and can easily see and understand each other.
the more they allow themselves to go along easily with the current of the
crowd and the more difficulty they have holding on alone to an opinion
that the crowd abandons.
The newspaper represents the association; you can say that it speaks to
each one of its readers in the name of all the others, and the weaker they
are individually, the more easily it carries them along.f
So the dominion of newspapers must grow as men become more
equal.
f. “The press that much more powerful among a democratic people as the spirit of
association is less widespread. It is not that it is itself stronger, but that those whom it
wants to dominate are weaker” (Rubish particular utility that democratic
peoples draw from liberty of the press and in particular from news-
papers, Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 7a
Relations between Civil Associations
and Political Associations b
a. 1. When men have contracted the habit of associations in civil life, that gives them
great facility for associating in political life.
2. Political associations are on their side very powerful for giving men the thought
and the art of associating in civil life.
1. Politics provides common interests to a multitude of men at the same time,
provides them with natural occasions to associate, which generalizes the theory of
association and makes it studied.
2. You can in general become familiar with the theory of association only by risking
your money. Associations are the free schools of association.
3. So political associations neutralize in the long run most of the evils that they
create. For if they put the tranquillity of the State at risk, they multiply the number
of civil associations that favor this tranquillity (YTC, CVf, p. 27).
b. ⫽This chapter absolutely needs a general reworking. Its movement is confused and
difficult, and several of the ideas that it contains are questionable.⫽/
You would say that I come to prove that civil association arises from political as-
sociation, which is false according to myself, since I say that in countries where po-
litical association is forbidden, civil association is rare.
1. The first aim of the chapter is to show that civil association is always weak,
lethargic, limited, clumsy wherever political association does not exist. Civil associ-
ation does not arise from political association any more than the latter from civil
association. They develop mutually. In a country where political associations are very
numerous, civil associations cannot fail to be so as well, just as men who already have
the habit of associating in civil matters have a great facility for associating in politics.
2. The second objective of the chapter is to show that a people can have an interest
in allowing liberty of political association in order to favor civil association, which is
more necessary to its tranquillity than the other is harmful./
There are free associations other than political associations, but they are not
striking.
You can undoubtedly study the laws of association in the Norman association, but
who thinks of doing so? (Rubish, 1).
911
civil associations and political associations 912
There is only one nationc on earth where the unlimited liberty of associ-
ating for political ends is used daily. This same nation is the only one in
the world where the citizens have imagined making continual use of the
right of association in civil life and have succeeded in gaining in this way
all the good things civilization can offer.
Among all peoples where political association is forbidden, civil associ-
ation is rare.
It is hardly probable that this is a result of an accident; but you must
instead conclude from it that there exists a natural and perhaps necessary
relationship between the two types of associations.
[⫽Men can associate in a thousand ways, but the spirit of association is
a whole, and you cannot stop one of its principal developments without
weakening it everywhere else.⫽]
Some men have by chance a common interest in a certain affair. It con-
cerns a commercial enterprise to direct, an industrial operation to conclude;
they meet together and unite; in this way they become familiar little by
little with association [and when it becomes necessary to associate for a
political end, they feel more inclined to attempt it and more capable of
succeeding in doing so.]
The more the number of these small common affairs increases, the more
men acquire, even without their knowing, the ability to pursue great affairs
together.
Civil associations therefore facilitate political associations; but, on the
other hand, political association develops and singularly perfects civil
association.
In civil life, each man can, if need be, believe that he is able to be self-
sufficient. In politics, he can never imagine it. So when a people has a public
life, the idea of association and the desire to associate present themselves
each day to the mind of all citizens; whatever natural reluctance men have
to act in common, they will always be ready to do so in the interest of a
party.
Thus politics generalizes the taste and habit of association; it brings
c. In a first version: “. . . there are only two nations.”

about the desire to unite and teaches the art of associating to a host of men
who would have always lived alone.
Politics not only gives birth to many associations, it creates very vast
associations.
In civil life it is rare for the same interest to attract naturally a large num-
ber of men toward a common action. Only with a great deal of art can you
succeed in creating something like it.
In politics, the occasion presents itself at every moment. Now, it is only
in great associations that the general value of association appears. Citizens
individually weak do not form in advance a clear idea of the strength that
they can gain by uniting; you must show it to them in order for them to
understand it. The result is that it is often easier to gather a multitude for
a common purpose than a few men; a thousand citizens do not see the
interest that they have in uniting; ten thousand see it. In politics, men unite
for great enterprises, and the advantage that they gain from association in
important affairs teaches them, in a practical way, the interest that they have
in helping each other in the least affairs.
A political association draws a multitude of individuals out of them-
selves at the same time; however separated they are naturally by age, mind,
fortune, it brings them closer together and puts them in contact. They meet
once and learn how to find each other always.
You can become engaged in most civil associations only by risking a
portion of your patrimony; it is so for all industrial and commercial
companies. When men are still little versed in the art of associating and
are ignorant of its principal rules, they fear, while associating for the first
time in this way, paying dearly for their experience. So they prefer doing
without a powerful means of success, to running the dangers that accom-
pany it. But they hesitate less to take part in political associations, which
seem without danger to them, because in them they are not risking their
own money. Now, they cannot take part for long in those associations
without discovering how you maintain order among a great number of
men, and by what process you succeed in making them march, in agree-
ment and methodically, toward the same goal. They learn to submit their
will to that of all the others, and to subordinate their particular efforts to
common action, all things that are no less necessary to know in civil as-
sociations than in political associations.
So political associations can be considered as great free schools, where
all citizens come to learn the general theory of associations.
So even if political association would not directly serve the progress of
civil association, it would still be harmful to the latter to destroy the first.
When citizens can associate only in certain cases, they regard association
as a rare and singular process, and they hardly think of it.
When you allow them to associate freely in everything, they end up
seeing in association the universal and, so to speak, unique means that
men can use to attain the various ends that they propose. Each new need
immediately awakens the idea of association. The art of association then
becomes, as I said above, the mother science; everyone studies it and ap-
plies it.
When certain associations are forbidden and others allowed, it is difficult
in advance to distinguish the first from the second. In case of doubt, you
refrain from all, and a sort of public opinion becomes established that tends
to make you consider any association like a daring and almost illicit
enterprise.1
1. That is true, above all, when it is the executive power that is charged with allowing or
forbidding associations according to its arbitrary will.
When the law limits itself to prohibiting certain associations and leaves to the courts the
task of punishing those who disobey, the evil is very much less; each citizen then knows in
advance more or less what is what; in a way he judges himself before his judges do so, and,
avoiding forbidden associations, he devotes himself to permitted associations. All free peoples
have always understood that the right of association could be limited in this way. But, if it
happened that the legislator charged a man with disentangling in advance which associations
are dangerous and which are useful, and left him free to destroy the seed of all associations or
to allow them to be born, no one would be able any longer to foresee in advance in what case
you can associate and in what other you must refrain from doing so; so the spirit of association
would be completely struck with inertia. The first of these two laws attacks only certain as-
sociations; the second is addressed to society itself and wounds it. I conceive that a regular
government might resort to the first, but I recognize in no government the right to bring about
the second.
So it is a chimera to believe that the spirit of association, repressed at

one point, will allow itself to develop with the same vigor at all the others,
and that it will be enough to permit men to carry out certain enterprises
together, for them to hurry to try it. When citizens have the ability and the
habit of associating for all things, they will associate as readily for small
ones as for great ones. But if they can associate only for small ones, they
will not even find the desire and the capacity to do so. In vain will you allow
them complete liberty to take charge of their business together; they will
only nonchalantly use the rights that you grant them; and after you have
exhausted yourself with efforts to turn them away from the forbidden as-
sociations, you will be surprised at your inability to persuade them to form
the permitted ones.
I am not saying that there can be no civil associations in a country where
political association is forbidden; for men can never live in society without
giving themselves to some common enterprise. But I maintain that in such
a country civil associations will always be very few in number, weakly con-
ceived, ineptly led, and that they will never embrace vast designs, or will
fail while wanting to carry them out.
This leads me naturally to think that liberty of association in political
matters is not as dangerous for public tranquillity as is supposed, and that
it could happen that after disturbing the State for a time, liberty of asso-
ciation strengthens it.d
In democratic countries, political associations form, so to speak, the only
powerful individuals who aspire to rule the State. Consequently the gov-
ernments [v. princes] of today consider these types of associations in the
same way that the kings of the Middle Ages saw the great vassals of the
crown: they feel a kind of instinctive horror for them and combat them at
every occasion.
They have, on the contrary, a natural favor for civil associations, because
they have easily discovered that the latter, instead of leading the mind of
citizens toward public affairs, serve to distract it from these affairs, and by
d. According to Jean-Claude Lamberti, Tocqueville is referring here to the law on

association of 16 February 1834. Tocqueville et les deux Démocraties (Paris: PUF, 1983),
p. 104, note 42.
engaging citizens more and more in projects that cannot be accomplished

without public peace, civil associations turn them away from revolutions.
But the governments of today do not notice that political associations mul-
tiply and prodigiously facilitate civil associations, and that by avoiding a
dangerous evil, they are depriving themselves of an effective remedy. When
you see the Americans associate freely each day, with the purpose of making
a political opinion prevail, of bringing a statesman to the government, or
of wresting power from another man, you have difficulty understanding
that men so independent do not at every moment fall into license.
If, on the other hand, you come to consider the infinite number of in-
dustrial enterprises that are being pursued in common in the United States,
and you see on all sides Americans working without letup on the execution
of some important and difficult plan, which would be confounded by the
slightest revolution, you easily conceive why these men, so very busy, are
not tempted to disturb the State or to destroy a public peace from which
they profit.
Is it enough to see these things separately? Isn’t it necessary to find the
hidden bond that joins them? It is within political associations that the
Americans of all the states, all minds and all ages, daily acquire the general
taste for association and become familiar with its use. There they see each
other in great number, talk together, understand each other and become
active together in all sorts of enterprises. They then carry into civil life the
notions that they have acquired in this way and make them serve a thousand
uses.
So it is by enjoying a dangerous liberty that the Americans learn the art
of making the dangers of liberty smaller.
If you choose a certain moment in the existence of a nation, it is easy
to prove that political associations disturb the State and paralyze industry;
but when you take the entire life of a people, it will perhaps be easy to
demonstrate that liberty of association in political matters is favorable to
the well-being and even to the tranquillity of citizens.
I said in the first part of this work: “The unlimited freedom of associ-
ation cannot be confused with the freedom to write: the first is both less
necessary and more dangerous than the second. A nation can set limits on
the first without losing control over itself; sometimes it must set limits in
order to continue to be in control.” And later I added: “You cannot conceal

the fact that, of all liberties, the unlimited freedom of association, in po-
litical matters, is the last one that a people can bear. If unlimited freedom
of association does not make a people fall into anarchy, it puts a people on
the brink, so to speak, at every moment.”
Thus, I do not believe that a nation is free at all times to allow its citizens
the absolute right to associate in political matters; and I even doubt that
there is any country in any period in which it would be wise to set no limits
to the liberty of association.
A certain people, it is said, cannot maintain peace internally, inspire re-
spect for the laws or establish enduring government, if it does not enclose
the right of association within narrow limits. Such benefits are undoubtedly
precious, and I conceive that, to acquire or to retain them, a nation agrees
temporarily to impose great burdens on itself; but still it is good that the
nation knows precisely what these benefits cost it.
That, to save the life of a man, you cut off his arm, I understand; but I
do not want you to assure me that he is going to appear as dexterous as if
he were not a one-armed man.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 8a
How the Americans Combat
Individualism by the Doctrine of Interest
Well Understood b
[I showed in a preceding chapter how equality of conditions developed

among all men the taste for well-being, and directed their minds toward
the search for what is useful.
Elsewhere, while talking about individualism, I have just shown how this
same equality of conditions broke the artificial bonds that united citizens
in aristocratic societies, and led each man to search for what is useful to
himself alone.
These various changes in the social constitution and in the tastes of hu-
manity cannot fail to influence singularly the theoretical idea that men form
of their duties and their rights.]c
When the world was led by a small number of powerful and rich in-
dividuals, the latter loved to form a sublime idea of the duties of man; they
took pleasure in professing that it is glorious to forget self and that it is right
a. 1. As men are more equal and more detached from their fellows, the idea of de-
votion becomes more foreign, and it is more necessary to show how particular interest
merges with general interest.
2. This is what is done in America. Not only is the doctrine of interest well un-
derstood openly professed there, but it is universally admitted.
3. The doctrine of interest well understood is the most appropriate one for the
needs of a democratic people, and the moralists of our time should turn toward it
(YTC, CVf, p. 28).
b. Former title in the manuscript: of interest well understood as philo-
sophical doctrine.
c. In the margin, with a bracket indicating this beginning: “Probably delete this.”
918
doctrine of interest well understood 919
to do good without interest, just like God. That was the official doctrine
of this time in the matter of morality [{moral philosophy}].
I doubt that men were more virtuous in aristocratic centuries than in
others, but it is certain that they then talked constantly about the beauties
of virtue; they only studied in secret how it was useful. But as imagination
soars less and as each person concentrates on himself, moralists become
afraid of this idea of sacrifice, and they no longer dare to offer it to the
human mind; so they are reduced to trying to find out if the individual
advantage of citizens would not be to work toward the happiness of all,
and, when they have discovered one of these points where particular in-
terest meets with general interest and merges with it, they hasten to bring
it to light; little by little similar observations multiply. What was only an
isolated remark becomes a general doctrine, and you believe finally that you
see that man, by serving his fellows, serves himself, and that his particular
interest is to do good.d
[<But this doctrine is not accepted all at once or by all. Many receive a
few parts of it and reject the rest. Some adopt it at the bottom of their hearts
and reject it with disdain before the eyes of the world.>]e
I have already shown, in several places in this work, how the inhabitants
of the United States almost always knew how to combine their own well-
being with that of their fellow citizens. What I want to note here is the
general theory by the aid of which they succeed in doing so.f
d. “Democracy destroys the instinct for devotion, reason for it [devotion] must be
found” (Rubish, 1).
e. In the margin: “To delete I think./
“These paragraphs seem to Édouard to merit some small development./
“Explain why some affect to despise this theory.”
f. Democracy pushes each man to think only of himself; on the other hand, reason
and experience indicate that it is sometimes necessary in his own interest to be con-
cerned about others.
The philosophical doctrine of interest well understood as principal rule of human
actions has presented itself to the human mind from time to time in all centuries,
but in democratic centuries it besieges the human mind and entirely dominates the
moral world.
[To the side] The barbarians forced each man to think only of himself; democracy
leads them by themselves to want to do so” (Rubish, 1).
In the United States, you almost never say that virtue is beautiful. You
maintain that it is useful, and you prove it every day. American moralists
do not claim that you must sacrifice yourself for your fellows because it is
great to do so; but they say boldly that such sacrifices are as necessary to
the person who imposes them on himself as to the person who profits from
them.g
They have noticed that, in their country and time, man was led back
toward himself by an irresistible force and, losing hope of stopping him,
they have thought only about guiding him.
So they do not deny that each man may follow his interest, but they
strive to prove that the interest of each man is to be honest.
Here I do not want to get into the details of their reasons, which would
take me away from my subject; it is enough for me to say that they have
persuaded their fellow citizens.
A long time ago, Montaigne said: “When I would not follow the right
road because of rectitude, I would follow it because I found by experience
that in the end it is usually the happiest and most useful path.”h
So the doctrine of interest well understood is not new; but, among
the Americans of today, it has been universally admitted; it has become
popular; you find it at the bottom of all actions; it pokes through all dis-
cussions. You find it no less in the mouths of the poor than in those of
the rich.
In Europe the doctrine of interest is much cruder than in America, but
at the same time, it is less widespread and above all less evident, and great
devotions that are felt no more are still feigned among us every day.
The Americans, in contrast, take pleasure in explaining almost all the
g. In aristocratic centuries, you know your interest, but the philosophical doctrine is
to scorn it.
In democratic centuries, you maintain that virtue and interest are in agreement.
[To the side] I need America to prove these two propositions, so I must finish rather
than begin with it, in order to gather light on this essential point (Rubish, 1).
h. A note of the manuscript indicates that this quotation belongs to book II, chapter
XVI of the Essais. The library of the Tocqueville château had an edition in three volumes
dating from 1600.
actions of their life with the aid of interest well understood; they show with
satisfaction how enlightened love of themselves leads them constantly to
help each other and disposes them willingly to sacrifice for the good of the
State a portion of their time and their wealth. I think that in this they often
do not do themselves justice; for you sometimes see in the United States,
as elsewhere, citizens give themselves to the disinterested and unconsidered
impulses that are natural to man; but the Americans hardly ever admit that
they yield to movements of this type; they prefer to honor their philosophy
rather than themselves.j
I could stop here and not try to judge what I have just described. The
extreme difficulty of the subject would be my excuse. But I do not want to
take advantage of it, and I prefer that my readers, clearly seeing my purpose,
refuse to follow me rather than remain in suspense.
Interest well understood is a doctrine not very lofty, but clear and sure.
It does not try to attain great objectives, but without too much effort it
attains all those it targets. Since the doctrine is within reach of all minds,
each man grasps it easily and retains it without difficulty. Accommodating
itself marvelously to the weaknesses of men, it easily gains great dominion
and it is not difficult for it to preserve that dominion, because the doctrine
turns personal interest back against itself and, to direct passions, uses the
incentive that excites them.
The doctrine of interest well understood does not produce great devo-
tions; but it suggests small sacrifices every day; by itself, it cannot make a
j. Some enlightenment makes men see how their personal interest differs from that
of their fellows. A great deal of enlightenment shows them how the two interests
often come to merge./
Three successive states:
1. Ignorance. Instinctive devotion.
2. Half-knowledge. Egoism.
3. Complete enlightenment. Thoughtful sacrifice./
There are two ways to make that understood by a people:
1. Experience. 2. Enlightenment.
The most difficult task of governments is not to govern, but to instruct men in
governing them[selves (ed.)]./
The worst effect of a bad government is not the evil that it does, but the one that
it suggests (Rubish, 1).
man virtuous, but it forms a multitude of steady, temperate, moderate, far-

sighted citizens who have self-control; and, if it does not lead directly to
virtue by will, it imperceptibly draws closer to virtue by habits.k
If the doctrine of interest well understood came to dominate the moral
world entirely, extraordinary virtues would undoubtedly be rarer. But I also
think that then the coarsest depravities would be less common. The doc-
trine of interest well understood perhaps prevents some men from rising
very far above the ordinary level of humanity; but a great number of others
who fall below encounter the doctrine and cling to it. Consider a few in-
dividuals, it lowers them. Envisage the species, it elevates it.
I will not be afraid to say that the doctrine of interest well understood
seems to me, of all philosophical theories, the most appropriate to the needs
of the men of our time, and that I see in it the most powerful guarantee
remaining to them against themselves. So it is principally toward this doc-
trine that the mind of the moralists of today should turn. Even if they were
to judge it as imperfect, it would still have to be adopted as necessary.
I do not believe, everything considered, that there is more egoism among
us than in America; the only difference is that there it is enlightened and
here it is not. Each American knows how to sacrifice a portion of his par-
ticular interests in order to save the rest. We want to keep everything, and
often everything escapes us.
I see around me only men who seem to want to teach their contem-
poraries, every day by their word and their example, that what is useful
is never dishonorable. Will I never finally find some men who undertake
to make their contemporaries understand how what is honorable can be
useful?
There is no power on earth that can prevent the growing equality of
k. “The beauty of virtue is the favorite thesis of moralists under aristocracy. Its utility
under democracy” (Rubish, 1).
“Interest well understood is not contrary to the disinterested advance of the good.
These are two different things, but not opposite. Great souls for whom this doctrine
cannot be enough, pass in a way through it and go beyond it, while ordinary souls stop
there” (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 85).
conditions from leading the human mind toward the search for what is
useful, and from disposing each citizen to become enclosed within himself.
So you must expect individual interest to become more than ever the
principal, if not the sole motivating force of the actions of men; but how
each man will understand his individual interest remains to be known.
If citizens, while becoming equal, remained ignorant and coarse, it is
difficult to predict to what stupid excess their egoism could be led, and you
cannot say in advance into what shameful miseries they would plunge
themselves, out of fear of sacrificing something of their well-being to the
prosperity of their fellows.m
I do not believe that the doctrine of interest, as it is preached in America,
is evident in all its parts; but it contains a great number of truths so evident
that it is enough to enlighten men in order for them to see them. So en-
lighten them at all cost, for the century of blind devotions and instinctive
virtues is already fleeing far from us, and I see the time drawing near when
liberty, the public peace and the social order itself will not be able to do
without enlightenment.n
m. “Utility of provincial institutions in order to create centers of common interest

in democracy. National interest is not enough. It is necessary to multiply links, to bring
men to see each other, understand each other, and have ideas, sentiments in common”
(Rubish, 1).
n. Fragment that belongs to the rubish of the chapter:
Doctrine of interest./
[To the side: This could be placed as well in sentiments and tastes. To think about
it.]
Not very elevated point of view from which the Americans envisage human ac-
tions. Doctrine of interest followed elsewhere, professed in America. Effort to make
it a social doctrine. Succeeds in fact in making society proceed comfortably, but without
grandeur.
{To put perhaps before or after what I say about religion as political element.}/
This, among the Americans in particular and among democratic peoples in gen-
eral, is clearly the result: 1. of egoism above all that makes you think only of yourself;
2. of the concentration of the soul in material things.
So this must be treated only after these two ideas are known; this chapter will be
only their corollary./
I will first demonstrate that the Americans are led in general to concentrate on
their interest and then, that they have made this way of acting into a philosophical
theory./
That the legislators of democracies are not able to prevent the establishment and
development of this doctrine, that all their effort should be limited to getting the
most out of it, to making it so that men have a real interest in doing good, or at least
to making this interest clear to all. That is useful in all societies, but very much more
useful in those in which men cannot withdraw to the platonic enjoyment of doing
good and in which they see the other world ready to escape them.
It is equally necessary that men, having reached this point, be enlightened at all
cost, for there is enough truth in the notion that man has an interest in doing good,
that widespread enlightenment cannot fail to make man discover it.
Proof of this, morality of the well-enlightened man.
Political consequences. Extreme efforts that the legislator must make in democracies
to spiritualize man. Particular necessity for religions in democracy; even dogmatic
and not very reasonable religions, for lack of anything better. Show heaven even if
it is through the worst instruments./
Distinctions to make between the different doctrines of interest./
There is a doctrine of interest that consists of believing that you must make the
interest of other men yield before your own and that it is natural and reasonable to
embrace only the latter. This is an instinctive, crude egoism that hardly merits the
name of doctrine.
[In the margin: The doctrine of interest can teach how to live, but not how to
die./
The doctrine of interest must not be confused with the doctrine of the useful. It
is contained in that of the useful, but it is only a part of it.]
There is another doctrine of interest that consists of believing that the best way
to be happy is to serve your interest and to be good, honest . . . in a word, that interest
well understood requires you often to sacrifice your interest or rather, that to follow
your interest over all, you often have to neglect it in detail.
This is a philosophical doctrine that has its value.
[In the margin: Great passions of the true, the beautiful and the good. Analogous
things flowing from [the (ed.)] same source, equally rare, producing great men of
learning, great men of literature and great virtues.]
There is, finally, a doctrine infinitely purer, more elevated, less material, according
to which the basis of actions is duty. Man penetrates divine thought with his intel-
ligence. He sees that the purpose of God is order, and he freely associates himself as
much as he is able with this great design. He cooperates with it in his humble sphere,
depending on his strength, in order to fulfill his destination and to obey his mandate.
There is still personal interest there, for there is a proud and private enjoyment in
such points of view and hope for remuneration in a better world; but interest there
is as small, as secretive and as legitimate as possible.
Positive religions render this interest more visible; they render these sentiments
stronger, more popular. They generally mix the two things in a clever way that fa-
cilitates practice. In Christianity, for example, we are told that it is necessary to do
good out of love of God (magnificent expression of the doctrine that I have just ex-
plained) and also to gain eternal life.
Thus Christianity at one end touches the doctrine of interest well understood and
at the other the doctrine that I developed afterward and that I could call with Chris-
tianity itself, the doctrine of the love of God. In sum, a religion very superior in terms
of loftiness to the doctrine of interest well understood because it places interest in
the other world and draws us out of this cesspool of human and material interests.
The doctrine of interest well understood can make men honest.
But it is only that of the love of God that makes men virtuous. The one teaches
how to live, the other teaches how to die, and how can you make men who do not
want to die live well for long?
Why aristocratic peoples are led more than democratic peoples to adopt the second
doctrines more than the first.
Class that has material happiness without thinking about it, that can think and is
not preoccupied by the trouble to work and to acquire. Another class that by working
can scarcely hope to reach material happiness and that turns naturally toward the
non-material world.
On the contrary, in democracies each man has just enough material happiness to
desire more of it, enough of a chance of gaining it to fix the mind on material hap-
piness or at least that of this world./
Another point of view.
The philosophical doctrine that I spoke about is based on interest.
Religious doctrines are also based on interest.
But there is this great difference between them, that the first places this interest in
this world and the others outside of it, which is enough to give actions an infinitely
less material and loftier purpose; that the ones out of necessity profess to scorn ma-
terial goods, while the other, restricting itself to that life, cannot fail to hold material
goods in a certain esteem. So although the cause of actions is the same, these actions
are very different./
Religions have, by design, made such an intimate union of the doctrine of the
love of God and of that of interest, that those who are sincerely devout are constantly
mistaken, and it happens that they believe that they are doing actions solely in view
of the reward to come, actions that are principally suggested to them by the most
pure, most noble and most disinterested instincts of human nature (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 9a
How the Americans Apply the Doctrine
of Interest Well Understood
in the Matter of Religion b
If the doctrine of interest well understood had only this world in view, it
would be far from enough; for a great number of sacrifices can find their
reward only in the other; and whatever intellectual effort you make to feel
the usefulness of virtue, it will always be difficult to make a man live well
who does not want to die.
So it is necessary to know if the doctrine of interest well understood can
be easily reconciled with religious beliefs.
The philosophers who teach this doctrine say to men that, to be happy
in life, you must watch over your passions and carefully repress their ex-
cesses; that you cannot gain lasting happiness except by denying yourself
a. 1. If the doctrine of interest well understood had only this life in view, it would
be far from enough; so we must see if it is not contrary to religions that promote
action with the other in view.
2. If you look closely you will see that interest is the motivating force of nearly all
religious men, and the lever used by nearly all the founders of religion.
So the doctrine of interest well understood in itself is not contrary to religions,
since religions only apply it in another way.
It is easy as well to prove that the men who adopt it are very disposed than [sic ]
others to submit to religious beliefs and practices.
3. Examples of the Americans (YTC, CVf, pp. 28–29). There is no rubish for this
chapter.
b. At the first page of the manuscript: “<I am afraid of being superficial and incom-
plete and commonplace in these two chapters, while there is no matter that requires more
knowledge and depth and originality.>”
926
interest well understood in religion 927
a thousand passing enjoyments, and that finally you must triumph over
yourself constantly in order to serve yourself better.
The founders of nearly all religions adhered more or less to the same
language. Without pointing out another path to men, they only placed the
goal further away; instead of placing in this world the prize for the sacrifices
that they impose, they put it in the other.c
Nonetheless, I refuse to believe that all those who practice virtue because
of the spirit of religion act only with a reward in view.
I have met zealous Christians who constantly forgot themselves in order
to work with more fervor for the happiness of all, and I have heard them
claim that they acted this way only to merit the good things of the other
world; but I cannot prevent myself from thinking that they are deluding
themselves. I respect them too much to believe them.
Christianity tells us, it is true, that you must prefer others to self in order
to gain heaven; but Christianity also tells us that you must do good to your
fellows out of love of God. That is a magnificent expression; man pene-
trates divine thought with his intelligence, he sees that the purpose of God
is order; he associates freely with this great design; and even while sacrificing
his particular interests to this admirable order of all things, he expects no
other recompense than the pleasure of contemplating it.
So I do not believe that the sole motivating force of religious men is
interest; but I think that interest is the principal means that religions them-
selves use to lead men, and I do not doubt that it is from this side that they
take hold of the crowd and become popular.
So I do not see clearly why the doctrine of interest well understood
would put off men of religious beliefs, and it seems to me, on the contrary,
that I am sorting out how it brings them closer.
[All the actions of the human mind are linked together, and once man
is set by his will on a certain path, he then marches there without wanting
to, and he feels himself carried along by his own inertia.]
I suppose that, to attain happiness in this world, a man resists instinct
in all that he encounters and coldly considers all the actions of his life, that
c. In the margin: “and that alone is enough to give to religions a great advantage over
philosophy . . .”
instead of yielding blindly to the heat of his first desires, he has learned the
art of combating them, and that he has become accustomed to sacrificing
effortlessly the pleasure of the moment to the permanent interest of his
entire life.
If such a man has faith in the religion that he professes, it will hardly
cost him anything to submit to the inconveniences that it imposes. Reason
itself counsels him to do it, and custom prepared him in advance to endure
it.
If he has conceived doubts about the object of his hopes, he will not let
himself be stopped easily, and he will judge that it is wise to risk a few of
the good things of this world in order to maintain his rights to the immense
heritage that has been promised to him in the other.
“To be mistaken in believing the Christian religion true,” said Pascal,
“there is not much to lose; but what misfortune to be mistaken in believing
it false!”d
The Americans do not affect a crude indifference for the other life; they
do not assume a puerile pride in scorning the perils that they hope to escape.
So they practice their religion without shame and without weakness; but
you ordinarily see, even amid their zeal, something so tranquil, so me-
thodical and so calculated, that it seems that it is the reason much more
than the heart that leads them to the steps of the altar.e
Not only do Americans follow their religion by interest, but they often
place in this world the interest that you can have in following religion. In
the Middle Ages, priests spoke only about the other life: they hardly worried
about proving that a sincere Christian can be a happy man here below.
But American preachers come back to earth constantly, and only with
d. To the side: “This thought, which does not seem to me worthy of the great soul
of Pascal, sums up perfectly well the state of souls in the countries where reason is be-
coming enlightened and stronger at the same time that religious beliefs falter.” Pensée 36
in the Lafuma edition.
e. In the margin: “<So the doctrine of interest well understood can become the ruling
philosophy among a people without harming the spirit of religion; but it cannot fail to
give the spirit of religion a certain character, and you must expect that, in the soul of
the devout, it will make the desire to gain heaven predominate over the pure love of
God.>”
great pain can they take their eyes away from it. To touch their listeners
better, they show them every day how religious beliefs favor liberty and
public order, and it is often difficult to know, hearing them, if the principal
object of religion is to gain eternal felicity in the other world or well-being
in this one.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 0a
Of the Taste for
Material Well-Being in America b
a. 1. The taste for material well-being is universal in America. Why?

1. In aristocracies, the upper classes, since they have never acquired well-being or
feared losing it, readily apply their passions elsewhere and on a more lofty level. Since
the lower classes do not have the idea of bettering their lot and are not close enough
to well-being to desire it, their imagination is thrown toward the other world.
2. In democratic centuries, on the contrary, each person tries hard to attain well-
being or fears losing it. That constantly keeps the soul in suspense on this point (YTC,
CVf, p. 29).
First organization of this part of the book in the Rubish:
of the taste for material enjoyments in democracies./
1. Of the taste for material enjoyments in America.
2. Of the different effects that the taste for material enjoyments produces in an
aristocracy and in a democracy.
3. Of some bizarre sects that are arising in America.
4. Of restlessness of the heart in America.
5. How the taste for material enjoyments is combined among the Americans with
love of liberty and concerns for public affairs.
6. How equality of conditions (or democracy) leads Americans toward industrial
professions.
7. How the religious beliefs of the Americans hold within certain limits the ex-
cessive taste for material well-being (Rubish of chapter 15 of this part, Rubish, 1).
b. In the Rubish there is a voluminous sheaf bearing the title rubish and ideas
relating to the chapters on material enjoyments. It contains notes and
pages of rubish for this chapter and for those that follow, up to and including chapter
18. The rubish for this chapter retains another sheaf with this note on the cover:
what makes the love of riches predominate over all other passions
in democratic centuries./
Chapter to insert in the course of the book, probably before industrial careers./
930
of the taste for material well-being 931
In America, the passion for material well-being is not always exclusive, but
it is general; if everyone does not experience it in the same way, everyone
feels it. The concern to satisfy the slightest needs of the body and to provide
for the smallest conveniences of life preoccupies minds universally.
Something similar is seen more and more in Europe.
Among the causes that produce these similar effects in two worlds, sev-
eral are close to my subject, and I must point them out.
When wealth is fixed in the same families by inheritance, you see a great
number of men who enjoy material well-being, without feeling the exclu-
sive taste for well-being.
What most strongly holds the human heart is not the peaceful possession
of a precious object but the imperfectly satisfied desire to possess it and the
constant fear of losing it.
In aristocratic societies the rich, never knowing a state different from
their own, do not fear its changing; they scarcely imagine another one. So
for them material well-being is not the goal of life; it is a way of living.
They consider it, in a way, like existence, and enjoy it without thinking
about it.
Since the natural and instinctive taste that all men feel for well-being is
thus satisfied without difficulty and without fear, their soul proceeds else-
At ambition, what diverts from great ambition, it is the petty ambition for
money.
You devote yourself to the petty ambition for money as preliminary to the other
and, when you have devoted yourself to it for a long time, you are incapable of mov-
ing away from it./
To put I think before material enjoyments. The desire for wealth is close to the
desire for material enjoyments, but is distinct.
The only page of the sheaf bears particularly the following notes:
“Regularity. Monotony of life./
“That is not democratic but commercial, or at least it is democratic only in so far as
democracy pushes toward commerce and industry.
“There are also religious habits in the middle of that.”
In another place: “In aristocracies, even the life of artisans is varied; they have games,
ceremonies, a form of worship that serves as a diversion from the monotony of their
works. Their body is attached to their profession, not their soul.
“It is not the same thing with democratic peoples” (Rubish, 1).
where and attaches itself to some more difficult and greater enterprise that
animates it and carries it away.
In this way, in the very midst of material enjoyments, the members of
an aristocracy often demonstrate a proud scorn for these very enjoyments
and find singular strength when they must finally do without them. All the
revolutions that have disturbed or destroyed aristocracies have shown with
what ease men accustomed to superfluity were able to do without neces-
sities, while men who have laboriously attained comfort are hardly ever able
to live after losing it.c
If, from the upper ranks, I pass to the lower classes, I will see analogous
effects produced by different causes.
Among nations where aristocracy dominates society and keeps it im-
mobile, the people end by becoming accustomed to poverty as the rich are
to their opulence. The latter are not preoccupied by material well-being,
because they possess it without difficulty; the former do not think about
material well-being, because they despair of gaining it and do not know it
well enough to desire it.d
c. “⫽Byron remarks somewhere that in his voyages, he easily bore and suffered almost
without complaint the privations that made his valet despair. The same remark could
have been made by a thousand others⫽” (Rubish, 1). Letter of Byron to his mother,
Athens, 17 January 1831; reproduced in Correspondence of Lord Byron with a Friend . . .
(Paris: A. and W. Calignani, 1825), I, pp. 21–22; the same publishing house published a
French version of this text.
d. How the different forms of government can more or less favor the taste for money
among men./
Among nations that have an aristocracy you seek money because it leads to power.
Among nations that have a nobility you seek it to console yourself for being excluded
from power. It seems that it is among democratic peoples that you have to seek it the
least. There as elsewhere, ordinary souls undoubtedly continue to be attached to it;
but ambitious spirits take it neither as principal goal and as a makeshift equivalent [?
(ed.)].
You object to me in vain that in the United States, which forms a democracy, the
love of money is excessive and that in France, where we turn daily toward democracy,
love of money is becoming more and more the dominant passion. I will reply that
political institutions definitively exercise only a limited influence over the inclinations
of the human heart. If love of money is great in France and in the United States,
that comes from the fact that in France mores, beliefs and characters are becoming
depraved, and that in the United States the material condition of the country presents
continual opportunities to the passion to grow rich. In the two countries you love
In these sorts of societies the imagination of the poor is pushed toward

the other world; the miseries of real life cramp their imagination; but it
escapes those miseries and goes to find its enjoyments beyond.
When, on the contrary, ranks are mingled and privileges destroyed, when
patrimonies divide and enlightenment and liberty spread, the desire to gain
well-being occurs to the imagination of the poor, and the fear of losing it
to the mind of the rich.e A multitude of mediocre fortunes is established.
Those who possess them have enough material enjoyments to conceive the
taste for these enjoyments, and not enough to be content with them. They
never obtain these enjoyments except with effort and devote themselves to
them only with trepidation.
So they are constantly attached to pursuing or to retaining these enjoy-
ments so precious, so incomplete and so fleeting. [Preoccupied by this sole
concern, they often forget all the rest.
It is not the wealth, but the work that you devote to obtaining it for
yourself that encloses the human heart within the taste for well-being.]f
I seek a passion that is natural to men who are excited and limited by
the obscurity of their origin or the mediocrity of their fortune, and I find
none more appropriate than the taste for well-being. The passion for well-
being is essentially a passion of the middle class; it grows and spreads with
money not because there are democratic institutions, but even though there are dem-
ocratic institutions (YTC, CVa, pp. 53–54).
On 28 May 1831, Tocqueville writes from New York to his brother, Édouard:
We are very truly here in another world; political passions here are only on the surface.
The profound passion, the only one that profoundly moves the human heart, the
passion of every day, is the acquisition of wealth, and there are a thousand means to
acquire it without disturbing the State. You have to be very blind in my opinion to
want to compare this country to Europe and to adapt to one what suits the other; I
believed it before leaving France; I believe it more and more while examining the
society in the midst of which I now live; it is a people of merchants who are busy
with public affairs when its [sic ] work leaves it the leisure (YTC, BIa2).
e. “What makes democratic nations egotistic is not even so much the great number
of independent citizens that they contain as the great number of citizens who are con-
stantly reaching independence” (YTC, CVa, pp. 7–8).
f. To the side: “<This sentence is good, but interrupts the flow of the idea.>”
this class; it becomes preponderant with it. From there it gains the upper
ranks of society and descends to the people.
I did not meet, in America, a citizen so poor who did not cast a look of
hope and envy on the enjoyments of the rich, and whose imagination did
not grasp in advance the good things that fate stubbornly refused him.
On the other hand, I never saw among the rich of the United States this
superb disdain for material well-being that is sometimes shown even within
the heart of the most opulent and most dissolute aristocracies.
Most of these rich have been poor; they have felt the sting of need; they
have long fought against a hostile fortune, and now that victory is won, the
passions that accompanied the struggle survive it; they remain as if intox-
icated amid these small enjoyments that they have pursued for forty years.
It is not that in the United States, as elsewhere, you do not find a fairly
large number of rich men who, holding their property by inheritance, pos-
sess without effort an opulence that they have not gained. But even these
do not appear less attached to the enjoyments of material life. The love of
well-being has become the national and dominant taste. The great current
of human passions leads in this direction, it sweeps everything along in its
wake.g
g. “Other reason. In a democratic society the only visible advantage that you can enjoy
over your fellows is wealth. This explains the desire for riches, but not that for material
enjoyments. These two things are close, but are nonetheless distinct. While it comes to
the aid of sensuality here, pride in aristocracies often runs counter to it; you want to
distinguish yourself from those who do not have money” (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 1a
Of the Particular Effects Produced by
the Love of Material Enjoyments
in Democratic Centuries b
a. When an aristocracy gives itself to the passion for material enjoyments, it aims at
extraordinary pleasures; it falls into a thousand excesses that shame human nature
and disturb society.
In democratic countries the taste for material enjoyments is a universal passion,
constant, but contained. Everyone conceives it and gives himself to it constantly, but
it leads no one to great excesses. Everyone seeks to satisfy the slightest needs easily
and without cost rather than to obtain great pleasures.
This type of passion for material enjoyments can be reconciled with order and to
a certain point with religion and morality. It does not always debilitate souls, but it
softens them and silently relaxes their springs of action (YTC, CVf, p. 30).
b. Title in the rubish: of the different effects that the taste for ma-
terial enjoyments produces in an aristocracy and in a democracy.
At another place in the rubish: “that the taste for well-being and for ma-
terial enjoyments in democracies is more tranquil, leads to less ex-
cess than in aristocracies and can be combined with a sort of spirit
of order and morality. 2nd chapter.
“Honest materialism” (Rubish, 1). In a letter addressed to an unidentified person,
Tocqueville had expressed the same idea in this way:
Author of all these revolutions, carried away himself by the movement that he
brought about, the American of the United States ends by feeling pushed by an ir-
resistible need for action; in Europe there are philosophers who preach human per-
fection; for him, the possible has hardly any limit. To change is to improve; he has
constantly before his eyes the image of indefinite perfection that throws deep within
his heart an extraordinary restlessness and a great distaste for the present.
Here, the enjoyments of the soul are not very important, the pleasures of imagi-
nation do not exist, but an immense door is open for achieving material happiness
and each man rushes toward it. In order to reach it, you abandon parents, family,
country; you try in the course of one life ten different roads to attain wealth. The
same man has been priest, doctor, tradesman, farmer.
I do not know if you live here more happily than elsewhere, but at least you feel
935
the love of material enjoyments 936
You could believe, from what precedes, that the love of material enjoyments
must constantly lead the Americans toward disorder in morals, disturb fam-
ilies and in the end compromise the fate of society itself.
But this is not so; the passion for material enjoyments produces within
democracies other effects than among aristocratic peoples.
It sometimes happens that weariness with public affairs, the excess of
wealth, the ruin of beliefs, the decadence of the State, little by little turn
the heart of an aristocracy toward material enjoyments alone. At other
times, the power [v. tyranny] of the prince or the weakness of the people,
without robbing the nobles of their fortune, forces them to withdraw from
power, and by closing the path to great undertakings to them, abandons
them to the restlessness of their desires; they then fall heavily back onto
themselves, and they seek in the enjoyments of the body to forget their past
grandeur.
When the members of an aristocratic body turn exclusively in this way
toward material enjoyments, they usually gather at this point alone all the
energy that the long habit of power gave them.
To such men the pursuit of well-being is not enough; they require a
sumptuous depravity and a dazzling corruption. They worship the material
magnificently and seem to vie with one another in their desire to excel in
the art of making themselves into brutes.
The more an aristocracy has been strong, glorious and free, the more it
will appear depraved, and whatever the splendor of its virtues had been, I
dare to predict it will always be surpassed by the brilliance of its vices.c
The taste for material enjoyments does not lead democratic peoples to
existence less; and you arrive at the great abyss without having had the time to notice
the road that you followed.
These men call themselves virtuous; I deny it. They are steady, that is all that I am
able to say in their favor. They steal from the neighbor and respect his wife, which I
can only explain to myself because they love money and do not have the time to make
love (Letter of 8 November 1831, YTC, BIa2).
c. “⫽I know nothing more deplorable than the spectacle presented by an aristocracy
that, losing its power, has remained master of its wealth⫽” (Rubish, 1).
such excesses.d There the love of well-being shows itself to be a tenacious,

exclusive, universal passion, but contained. It is not a question of building
vast palaces, of vanquishing or of deceiving nature, of exhausting the uni-
verse, in order to satisfy better the passions of a man; it is a matter of adding
a few feet to his fields, of planting an orchard, of enlarging a house, of
making life easier and more comfortable each moment, of avoiding dis-
comfort and satisfying the slightest needs effortlessly and almost without
cost. These goals are small, but the soul becomes attached to them; it thinks
about them every day and very closely; these goals finish by hiding from
the soul the rest of the world, and they sometimes come to stand between
the soul and God.
This, you will say, cannot be applied except to those among the citizens
whose fortune is mediocre; the rich will show tastes analogous to those that
the rich reveal in aristocratic centuries. That I dispute.e
Concerning material enjoyments, the most opulent citizens of a de-
mocracy will not show tastes very different from those of the people,
whether, because having emerged from the people, they really share their
tastes, or whether they believe they must submit to them. In democratic
societies, the sensuality of the public has taken on a certain moderate and
tranquil appearance, to which all souls are obliged to conform. It is as dif-
ficult to escape the common rule in its vices as in its virtues.
So the rich who live amid democratic nations aim for the satisfaction of
their slightest needs rather than for extraordinary enjoyments; they satisfy
a multitude of small desires and do not give themselves to any great dis-
ordered passion. They fall therefore into softness rather than debauchery.
This particular taste that the men of democratic centuries conceive for
d. “In aristocracies the taste for material well-being breaks the bonds of society, in
democracies it tightens them” (Rubish, 1).
e. In the rubish, the sentence says: “cannot be applied except to the poor of democ-
racies.” On this subject, you read as well the following note: “The remark of Édouard
on this point is this:
“ ‘I am speaking here,’ he says, ‘only about the poor or at most about people who are
well-off, but there are rich people in democracies and it must be explained why these rich
men are also forced to pursue material enjoyments in small ways and share on this point
the instincts of the poor.
“ ‘True remark’ ” (Rubish, 1).
material enjoyments is not naturally opposed to order; on the contrary, it

often needs order to satisfy itself. Nor is it the enemy of regularity of morals;
for good morals are useful to public tranquillity and favor industry. Often
it even comes to be combined with a sort of religious morality; you want
to be as well-off as possible in this world, without renouncing your chances
in the other.
Among material goods, there are some whose possession is criminal; you
take care to do without them. There are others whose use is allowed by
religion and morality; to the latter you give unreservedly your heart, your
imagination, your life, and by trying hard to grasp them, you lose sight of
these more precious goods that make the glory and the grandeur of the
human species.
What I reproach equality for is not carrying men toward the pursuit of
forbidden enjoyments; it is for absorbing them entirely in the pursuit of
permitted enjoyments.
In this way there could well be established in the world a kind of honest
materialism that would not corrupt souls, but would soften them and end
by silently relaxing all their springs of action.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 2a
Why Certain Americans Exhibit
So Excited a Spiritualism b
Although the desire to acquire the goods of this world is the dominant
passion of the Americans, there are moments of respite when their soul
seems suddenly to break the material bonds that hold it and to escape im-
petuously toward heaven.c
In all of the states of the Union, but principally in the half-populated
regions of the West, you sometimes meet itinerant preachers who peddle
the divine word from place to place.
Entire families, old people, women and children cross difficult places
and go through uninhabited woods in order to come from far away to hear
them; and when these people have found the preachers, for several days and
a. Although the Americans have as a dominant passion the acquisition of the goods
of this world, spiritualism shows itself from time to time among all, and exclusively
among some, with singular forms and a fervor that often goes nearly to extravagance.
Camp meetings.
Bizarre sects.
These different effects come from the same cause.
The soul has natural needs that must be satisfied. If you want to imprison it in
contemplation of the needs of the body, it ends by escaping and in its momentum
it does not stop even at the limits of common sense (YTC, CVf, pp. 30–31).
b. Original title in the rubish: of some bizarre sects that arise in america.
See the appendix sects in america.
c. On the jacket of the manuscript: “Small chapter that must be retained only if
someone formally advises me to do so.
“The core of the idea is questionable. Everything considered there were more mystical
extravagances in the Middle Ages (centuries of aristocracy) than in America today.
“Moreover, several of these ideas reappear or have already appeared (I believe ) in the
book!”
939
americans and spiritualism 940
several nights, while listening to them, they forget their concern for public
and private affairs and even the most pressing needs of the body.
[<⫽America is assuredly the country in the world in which the sentiment
of individual power has the most sway. But several religious sects have been
founded in the United States that, despairing of moderating the taste for
material enjoyments, have gone as far as destroying the incentive of prop-
erty by establishing community of goods within them.⫽>]d
You find here and there, within American society, some souls totally filled
with an excited and almost fierce spiritualism that you hardly find in Eu-
rope. From time to time bizarre sects arise there that try hard to open ex-
traordinary paths to eternal happiness. Religious madness is very common
there.
This must not surprise us.
Man has not given himself the taste for the infinite and the love of what
is immortal. These sublime instincts do not arise from a caprice of the will;
they have their unchanging foundation in his nature; they exist despite his
efforts. He can hinder and deform them, but not destroy them.
The soul has needs that must be satisfied; and whatever care you take to
distract it from itself, it soon grows bored, restless and agitated amid the
enjoyments of the senses.e
If the spirit of the great majority of humanity ever concentrated solely
on the pursuit of material goods, you can expect that a prodigious reaction
would take place in the souls of some men. The latter would throw them-
selves frantically into the world of spirits, for fear of remaining hampered
in the overly narrow constraints that the body wanted to impose on them.
So you should not be astonished if, within a society that thinks only
about the earth, you would find a small number of individuals who wanted
d. In the margin: “⫽All this shows the weakness of the idea by recalling the monas-
teries, institutions quite differently spiritualist than the small associations that I am speak-
ing about.⫽”
e. “⫽When I {read the impractical laws of Plato} see Plato in his sublime reveries
want to forbid commerce and industry to the citizens and, in order to release them better
from coarse desires, want to take away even the possession of their children, I think of
his contemporaries, and the sensual democracy of Athens makes me understand the laws
of this imaginary republic whose portrait he has drawn for us⫽” (Rubish, 1).
americans and spiritualism 941
to look only to heaven. I would be surprised if, among a people solely pre-
occupied by its well-being, mysticism did not soon make progress.f
It is said that the persecutions of the emperors and the tortures of the
circus populated the deserts of the Thebaid; as for me, I think that it was
much more the delights of Rome and the Epicurean philosophy of Greece.g
If the social state, circumstances and laws did not so narrowly confine
the American spirit to the pursuit of well-being, it is to be believed that
when the American spirit came to occupy itself with non-material things,
it would show more reserve and more experience, and that it would control
itself without difficulty. But it feels imprisoned within the limits beyond
which it seems it is not allowed to go. As soon as it crosses those limits, it
does not know where to settle down, and it often runs without stopping
beyond the bounds of common sense.h
f. “I would not be surprised if the first monasteries to be established in America are

trappist monasteries” (Rubish, 1).
g. There is in the very nature of man a natural and permanent disposition that pushes
his soul despite habits, laws, customs . . . toward the contemplation of elevated and
intellectual things.
This natural disposition is found in democracies as elsewhere. And it can even be
exalted and perfected there by a sort of reaction to the material and the ordinary that
abound in these sorts of societies.
When society presents elevated and grand points of view, the kinds of souls that
I have just spoken about can allow themselves to be caught by and attach themselves
to this half-good, instead of detaching themselves entirely from the earth in order to
go to find absolute good.
The dissolute orgies of Rome filled the deserts of Thebaid.
K[ergorlay (ed.)]., 13 March 1836 (YTC, CVk, 1, p. 5).
h. “⫽If the Americans had a literature this would be even more perceptible. Some
would want to escape from monotony by the bizarre, the singular. You could see a mys-
tical literature within a materialistic society./
“Exalted spiritualism. Intellectual orgies.⫽” (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 3a
Why the Americans Appear So Restless
Amid Their Well-Being
You still sometimes find, in certain remote districts of the Old World, small
populations that have been as if forgotten amid the universal tumult and
that have remained unchanged when everything around them moved. Most
of these peoples are very ignorant and very wretched; they are not involved
in governmental affairs and often governments oppress them. But they usu-
ally show a serene face, and they often exhibit a cheerful mood.
I saw in America the most free and most enlightened men placed in the
a. Of restlessness of the heart in America. Although the Americans are a very pros-
perous people, they seem almost always restless and care-ridden; they constantly
change places, careers, desires.
That comes principally from these causes:
Equality makes the love of the enjoyments of this world predominate. Now
1. Men who restrict themselves to the pursuit of the enjoyments of this world are
always pressed by the idea of the brevity of life. They fear having missed the shortest
road that could lead them to happiness.
2. The taste for material enjoyments causes intense desires, but leads easily to dis-
couragement. For the effort that you make to attain the enjoyment must not surpass
the enjoyment.
3. Equality suggests a thousand times more desires than it can satisfy. It excites
ambition and deceives it. Men can achieve anything, but their individual weakness
and competition limit them (YTC, CVf, p. 31).
This chapter appears with the same title of restlessness of the heart in america
in the rubish and manuscript. A page of the rubish contains the following note: “Small
chapter done with great difficulty. To delete perhaps, but to review in any case. Perhaps
in order to avoid the commonplace, I fell into the forced./
“Immoderate desire for happiness in this world, that arises from democracy. Idea to
make emerge better from the chapter” (Rubish, 1).
942
restlessness amid well-being 943
happiest condition in the world; it seemed to me that a kind of cloud ha-

bitually covered their features; they appeared to me grave and almost sad,
even in their pleasures.b
The principal reason for this is that the first do not think about the evils
that they endure, while the others think constantly about the goods that
they do not have.c
It is a strange thing to see with what kind of feverish ardor the Americans
pursue well-being, and how they appear tormented constantly by a vague
fear of not having chosen the shortest road that can lead to it.d
The inhabitant of the United States is attached to the goods of this
world, as if he was assured of not dying, and he hastens so much to seize
those goods that pass within his reach, that you would say that at every
instant he is afraid of ceasing to live before enjoying them. He seizes all of
b. I arrived one night in the company of several savages at the house of an American
planter. It is the dwelling of a rich planter and at the same time a tavern. You saw
reigning there great ease and even a sort of rustic luxury. I was brought into a well-
lighted and carefully heated room in which several men of leisure from the neigh-
borhood were already gathered around a table laden with grain whiskey. These men
were all more or less drunk, but their drunkenness had a grave and somber character
that struck me. They talked painfully about public affairs, about the price of houses,
about the hazards of commerce and the cycles of industry. The Indians remained
outside, although the night was rainy and they had [only (ed.)] a few bad rags of
blankets to cover themselves. They had lighted a large fire and sat around on the
humid earth. They spoke happily among themselves. I did not understand the mean-
ing of their speeches, but the noisy bursts of their joy at each instant penetrated the
gravity of our banquet (Rubish, 1).
c. “The inhabitant of the United States has all the goods of this world within reach,
but can grasp none of them without effort” (Rubish, 1).
d. “All of that still much more marked in the revolutionary period and in unbelieving
democracies./
“The Americans are materialistic by their tastes, but they are not by their ideas. They
ardently pursue the goods of this world, but they have not ceased believing in the ex-
istence of another one” (Rubish, 1).
them, but without gripping them, and he soon lets them escape from his
hands in order to run after new enjoyments.e
A man, in the United States, carefully builds a house in which to spend
his old age, and he sells it while the ridgepole is being set; he plants a garden
and he rents it as he is about to taste its fruits; he clears a field, and he leaves
to others the trouble of gathering the harvest. He embraces a profession,
and he leaves it. He settles in a place that he soon leaves in order to carry
his changing desires elsewhere. If his private affairs give him some respite,
he immediately plunges into the whirl of politics. And when, near the end
of a year filled with work, he still has a little leisure, he takes his restless
curiosity here and there across the vast limits of the United States. He will
do as much as five hundred leagues in a few days in order to distract himself
better from his happiness.
Death finally intervenes and stops him before he has grown weary of
this useless pursuit of a complete felicity that always escapes.
You are at first astounded contemplating this singular agitation exhibited
by so many happy men, in the very midst of abundance. This spectacle is,
however, as old as the world; what is new is to see it presented by an entire
people.
The taste for material enjoyments must be considered as the primary
source of this secret restlessness that is revealed in the actions of Americans,
and of this inconstancy that they daily exemplify.
The man who has confined his heart solely to the pursuit of the goods
of this world is always in a hurry, for he has only a limited time to find
them, to take hold of them and to enjoy them. The memory of the brevity
of life goads him constantly. Apart from the goods that he possesses, at every
instant he imagines a thousand others that death will prevent him from
tasting if he does not hurry. This thought fills him with uneasiness, fears,
e. In a first version of the rubish:

I met a man in the United States who, after having for a long time hidden great talents
in poverty, finally became the wealthiest man of his profession. At the same time in
England lived another individual who, following the same career as the first man,
had amassed greater wealth. News of it reached the American and this colleague
who was on the other side of the ocean troubled his sleep and kept his joy in check
(Rubish, 1).
and regrets, and keeps his soul in a kind of constant trepidation that leads
him to change plans and places at every moment.
If the taste for material well being is joined with a social state in which
neither law nor custom any longer holds anyone in his place, it is one more
great excitement to this restlessness of spirit; you will then see men con-
tinually change path, for fear of missing the shortest road that is to lead
them to happiness.
It is easy to understand, moreover, that if the men who passionately seek
material enjoyments do desire strongly, they must be easily discouraged;
since the final goal is to enjoy, the means to get there must be quick and
easy, otherwise the difficulty of obtaining the enjoyment would surpass the
enjoyment. So most souls are at the same time ardent and soft, violent and
enervated. Often death is less feared than constant efforts toward the same
goal.
Equality leads by a still more direct road toward several of the effects
that I have just described.
When all the prerogatives of birth and fortune are destroyed, when all
the professions are open to everyone, and when you can reach the summit
of each one of them on your own, an immense and easy career seems to
open before the ambition of men, and they readily imagine that they are
called to great destinies.f But that is an erroneous view that experience cor-
rects every day. The same equality that allows each citizen to conceive vast
hopes makes all citizens individually weak. It limits their strengths on all
sides, at the same time that it allows their desires to expand.
Not only are they powerless by themselves, but also they find at each
step immense obstacles that they had not at first noticed.
They destroyed the annoying privileges of a few of their fellows; they
encounter the competition of all. The boundary marker has changed form
rather than place. When men are more or less similar and follow the same
road, it is very difficult for any one of them to march quickly and cut
through the uniform crowd that surrounds and crushes him.
f. In the margin: “<This idea must necessarily be found in the chapter on ambition.
Do not let it appear without reviewing both of them at the same time.>”
This constant opposition that reigns between the instincts given birth
by equality and the means that equality provides to satisfy them torments
and fatigues souls.g
You can imagine men having arrived at a certain degree of liberty that
satisfies them entirely. They then enjoy their independence without rest-
lessness and without fervor. But men will never establish an equality that
is enough for them.
Whatever efforts a people may make, it will not succeed in making con-
ditions perfectly equal within it; and if it had the misfortune to arrive at
this absolute and complete leveling, there would still be inequality of in-
telligence that, coming directly from God, will always escape the laws.
No matter how democratic the social state and political constitution of
a people, you can therefore count on each of its citizens always seeing near
himself several points that are above him, and you can predict that he will
obstinately turn his attention solely in their direction. When inequality is
the common law of a society, the greatest inequalities do not strike the eye.
When all is nearly level, the least inequalities offend it. This is why the desire
for equality always becomes more insatiable as equality is greater.h
Among democratic peoples, men easily gain a certain equality; they can-
not attain the equality they desire. The latter retreats from them every day,
but without ever hiding from their view, and by withdrawing, it draws them
in pursuit. They constantly believe that they are about to grasp it, and it
constantly escapes their grip. They see it close enough to know its charms,
they do not come close enough to enjoy it, and they die before having fully
savored its sweet pleasures.
It is to these causes that you must attribute the singular melancholy that
the inhabitants of democratic countries often reveal amid their abundance,
and this disgust for life that sometimes comes to seize them in the middle
of a comfortable and tranquil existence.
Some complain in France that the number of suicides is growing; in
g. The four paragraphs that follow do not appear in the manuscript.

h. “<Envy is a sentiment that develops strongly only among equals, that is why it is so
common and so ardent in democratic centuries>” (Rubish, 1).
America suicide is rare, but we are assured that insanity is more common
than anywhere else.
These are different symptoms of the same disease.
Americans do not kill themselves, however agitated they are, because
religion forbids them to so do, and because among them materialism does
not so to speak exist, although the passion for material well-being is general.
Their will resists, but often their reason gives way.j
In democratic times enjoyments are more intense than in aristocratic
centuries, and above all the number of those who sample them is infinitely
greater; but on the other hand, it must be recognized that hopes and desires
are more often disappointed there, souls more excited and more restless,
and anxieties more burning.k
j. To the side: “<Perhaps remove all of this as too strong.>”

k. Men of democracies are tormented by desires more immense and more unlimited
than those of all other men. Their desires generally lead them however to less sus-
tained, less energetic, less persevering actions. The desires have enough power over
them to agitate them, to make them lose hope, and not enough to lead them to these
great and persevering efforts that bring great and enduring results. They have enough
desires to become disgusted with life and to kill themselves, not enough to overcome
themselves and to prevail, live and act. They have constantly recurring weak desires,
rather than will.
Examine this phenomenon very closely and portray it, probably in the chapter
entitled of restlessness of the heart, which comes after material enjoyments, true cause
of what precedes.
12 March 1838 (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 4a
How the Taste for Material Enjoyments Is
United, among the Americans, with the Love of
Liberty and Concern for Public Affairs
When a democratic Stateb turns to absolute monarchy, the activity that

was brought previously to public and private affairs comes suddenly to be
concentrated on the latter, and a great material prosperity results for some
time; but soon the movement slows and the development of production
stops.c
a. Liberty is useful for the production of well-being among all peoples, but princi-
pally among democratic peoples.
It often happens among these peoples, however, that the excessive taste for well-
being causes liberty to be abandoned.
Men there are so preoccupied by their petty private affairs that they regard the
attention that they give to great public affairs as a waste of time. That delivers them
easily to the despotism of one man or to the tyranny of a party. The Americans offer
the opposite example. They concern themselves with public affairs attentively and
with the same ardor as with their private interests, which shows clearly that in their
mind these two things go together (YTC, CVf, p. 32).
b. The manuscript says “republic.”
c. I said in another part of this work the reasons that led me to believe that, if des-
potism came to be established in a lasting way among a democratic people, it would
show itself more ordered and heavier than anywhere else. The more I advance into
my subject, the more it seems to me that I am finding new reasons to think so.
[In the margin: All of that is weak because these are general truths that do not
apply to democratic peoples more than to others. It is the special reasons that I must
seek.
The special reason here would be the particularly suffocating nature of despotism
among democratic peoples.]
948
material enjoyments and love of liberty 949
Now, the necessary effect of a despotism of this type is to constrict the imagination
of man, to narrow in all ways the limits of his faculties and finally to make him
indifferent and as if useless to himself. But perhaps I am exaggerating the danger.
Who could believe in such excesses amid the enlightenment of our {Europe} age? So
it is claimed. I agree, so I will not speak about the wars undertaken for a particular
interest, the misappropriations of public wealth, the plundering by the agents of
power, the general uncertainty of private fortunes, things still more fatal to the pros-
perity of citizens, that are like the usual consequence of the establishment of such a
government and whose effect will soon make itself felt on the well-being of the cit-
izens. All these things can be considered as accidents. I want to seek a permanent
cause of the evil that I suppose, and I imagine a soft and intelligent despotism that,
limiting itself to confiscating liberty, leaves men in possession of all the goods given
birth by liberty.
[In the margin: Commerce cannot bear war; but the character of democratic des-
potism is not tyrannical, but minutely detailed and annoying.]
Some maintain that such a government {favors} would save human morality and
is, everything considered, more favorable to happiness; I do not believe it. Nonethe-
less, it can be claimed. But you certainly cannot claim that such a government favors
as well the development of material well-being and the acquisition of wealth.
There is a more intimate connection than is thought between political activity and
industrial activity. There is nothing that awakens the imagination of a people, that
expands the circle of its ideas, that gives it the taste for enterprises of all types and
the boldness to execute them, finally that forces citizens to see each other and to
enlighten each other mutually with their knowledge, like the concern for public af-
fairs. Men being so disposed, there is no progress that they do not imagine, and, from
the simultaneous efforts of all, universal well-being is born.
That is so true that I do not know if you can cite the example of a single manu-
facturing and commercial people, from the Tyrians to the English, who have not been
at the same time a free people. You saw the industrial genius of the Florentines do
wonders amid the constantly recurring revolutions that devoured the products of the
work of man as they came from his hands. Florence, amid the very excesses of its
independence, was rich; it became poor as soon as it wanted to rest under the tranquil
and regular government [v: despotism] of the Medicis. So there is a hidden but very
close bond between these two things: liberty and industry.1
[To the side: Perhaps do not speak about the Florentines, already cited by others
on analogous occasions.]
You do not notice this at first. When the absolute authority of a prince follows the
government of all, this great human activity that went toward public affairs and pri-
vate affairs suddenly finds itself concentrated on the second, and for a time, a pro-
digious impetus and an unparalleled prosperity usually result. But soon movement
slows. New ideas cease to circulate with the same rapidity. Men only communicate
with each other from time to time, cease counting on their fellows, and end by no
longer having confidence in themselves. No longer having the habit or the right to
I do not know if you can cite a single manufacturing and commercial

people, from the Tyrians to the Florentines and to the English, who have
not been a free people. So there is a close bond and a necessary connection
between these two things: liberty and industry.
That is generally true of all nations, but especially of democratic nations.
I showed above how men who live in centuries of equality had a con-
tinual need for association in order to obtain nearly all the goods they covet,
and on the other hand, I showed how great political liberty perfected and
spread widely within their midst the art of association. So liberty, in these
centuries, is particularly useful for the production of wealth. You can see,
on the contrary, that despotism is particularly the enemy of the production
of wealth.
The nature of absolute power, in democratic centuries, is neither cruel
nor savage, but it is minutely detailed and irksome. A despotism of this
type, although it does not trample humanity underfoot, is directly opposed
to the genius of commerce and to the instincts of industry.
Thus the men of democratic times need to be free, in order to obtain
more easily the material enjoyments for which they are constantly yearning.
It sometimes happens, however, that the excessive taste that they con-
ceive for these very enjoyments delivers them to the first master who pres-
ents himself. The passion for well-being then turns against itself and, with-
out noticing, drives away the object of its desires.
act in common in principal matters, they lose as well the practice of associating for
secondary ends. The ardor for enterprises becomes dull, the taste for progress becomes
less intense. Society marches at first with a more tranquil step, then it stops and finally
settles into a complete immobility.
1. To see again concerning this piece something analogous written in England in
1835 (Rubish, 1).
In notebook CVa, p. 4, with the date 3 August 1836, there is a copy of a fragment of a
letter by Machiavelli on the danger of the streets of Rome during the night. In August
1836, Tocqueville spent his vacation in Switzerland and read Machiavelli’s History of Flor-
ence. See Luc Monnier, “Tocqueville et la Suisse,” in Alexis de Tocqueville. Livre du cen-
tenaire (Paris: CNRS, 1960), pp. 101–13.
There is, in fact, a very perilous transition in the life of democratic

peoples.
When the taste for material enjoyments develops among one of these
peoples more rapidly than enlightenment and the habits of liberty, there
comes a moment when men are carried away, as if beyond themselves, by
the sight of these new goods that they are ready to grasp. Preoccupied by
the sole concern to make a fortune, they no longer notice the close bond
that unites the particular fortune of each one of them to the prosperity of
all. There is no need to take away from such citizens the rights that they
possess; they willingly allow them to escape. The exercise of their political
rights seems to them a tiresome inconvenience that distracts them from
their industry. Whether it is a matter of choosing their representatives,
coming to the assistance of the authorities, dealing together with common
affairs, they lack the time; they cannot waste such precious time on useless
works. Those are games for idle men that are not suitable for grave men
who are busy with the serious interests of life. The latter believe that they
are following the doctrine of interest, but they have only a crude idea of
it, and in order to see better to what they call their affairs, they neglect the
principal one which is to remain their own masters.
Since the citizens who work do not want to think about public matters,
and since the class that could fill its leisure hours by shouldering these con-
cerns no longer exists, the place of the government is as though empty.
If, at this critical moment, a clever man of ambition comes to take hold
of power, he finds that the path to all usurpations is open [<and he will
have no difficulty turning against liberty the very passions developed or
given birth by liberty>].
As long as he sees for a while that all material interests prosper, he will
easily be discharged from the rest. Let him, above all, guarantee good order.
Men who have a passion for material enjoyments usually find how the ag-
itations of liberty disturb well-being, before noticing how liberty serves to
gain it; and at the slightest noise of public passions that penetrates into the
petty enjoyments of their private life, they wake up and become anxious;
for a long time the fear of anarchy keeps them constantly in suspense and
always ready to jump away from liberty at the first disorder.
I agree without difficulty that public peace is a great good, but I do not
want to forget that it is through good order that all peoples have arrived at
tyranny. It assuredly does not follow that peoples should scorn public peace;
but it must not be enough for them. A nation that asks of its government
only the maintenance of order is already a slave at the bottom of its heart.
The nation is a slave of its well-being, and the man who is to put it in chains
can appear.
The despotism of factions is to be feared no less than that of one
man.
When the mass of citizens wants only to concern itself with private af-
fairs, the smallest parties do not have to despair of becoming masters of
public affairs.
It is then not rare to see on the world’s vast stage, as in our theaters, a
multitude represented by a few men. The latter speak alone in the name
of the absent or inattentive crowd; alone they take action amid the uni-
versal immobility; they dispose of everything according to their caprice;
they change laws and tyrannize mores at will; and you are astonished to
see into what a small number of weak and unworthy hands a great people
can fall.
Until now, the Americans have happily avoided all the pitfalls that I have
just pointed out; and in that they truly merit our admiration.
There is perhaps no country on earth where you find fewer men of leisure
than in America, and where all those who work are more inflamed in the
pursuit of well-being. But if the passion of the Americans for material en-
joyments is violent, at least it is not blind, and reason, powerless to moderate
it, directs it.
An American is busy with his private interests as if he were alone in
the world, and a moment later, he devotes himself to public matters as if
he had forgotten his private interests. He seems sometimes animated by
the most egotistical cupidity and sometimes by the most intense patri-
otism. The human heart cannot be divided in this manner. The inhabi-
tants of the United States bear witness alternately to such a strong and so
similar a passion for their well-being and for their liberty that it is to be
believed that these passions unite and blend some place in their soul. The
Americans, in fact, see in their liberty the best instrument and the greatest
guarantee of their well-being. They love both of these two things. So they
do not think that getting involved in public matters is not their business;
they believe, on the contrary, that their principal business is to secure by
themselves a government that allows them to acquire the goods that they
desire, and that does not forbid them to enjoy in peace those they have
acquired.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 5a
How from Time to Time Religious Beliefs
Divert the Soul of the Americans
toward Non-Material Enjoyments b
[⫽However animated the Americans are in the pursuit of well-being, there

are moments when they stop and turn away for a moment to think about
God and about the other life.⫽]
In the United States, when the seventh day of each week arrives, com-
mercial and industrial life seems suspended; all noise ceases. A profound
rest, or rather a kind of solemn recollection follows; the soul, finally, regains
self-possession and contemplates itself.
During this day, the places consecrated to commerce and industry are
deserted; each citizen, surrounded by his children, goes to church; there
strange discourses are held forth that do not seem much made for his ears.
He hears about the innumerable evils caused by pride and covetousness.
a. In America, Sunday and the use made of it interrupt each week the course of purely
material thoughts and tastes. It breaks the chain of them. Particular advantages of
this.
The democratic social state leads the human mind toward materialistic opinions
by sometimes developing beyond measure the taste for well-being. That is a tendency
that you must struggle against, just as in aristocratic times you must fight against an
opposite excess.
Effect of religions which is to keep spiritualism in honor. So religions are particu-
larly necessary among democratic peoples. What the government of these peoples
can do to uphold religions and the spiritualistic opinions that they suggest (YTC,
CVf, pp. 32–33).
b. On the jacket of the chapter in the manuscript: “The utility of religions to temper
the taste for material enjoyments in democratic centuries has already been touched upon
in chapter V, but so lightly that I believe that it can be developed here.” It concerns
chapter V of the first part.
954
religious beliefs and nonmaterial enjoyments 955
He is told about the necessity to control his desires, about the fine enjoy-
ments attached to virtue alone, and about the true happiness that accom-
panies it.
Back at home, you do not see him run to his business ledgers. He opens
the book of the Holy Scriptures; there he finds sublime or touching por-
trayals of the grandeur and the goodness of the Creator, of the infinite
magnificence of the works of God, of the elevated destiny reserved for men,
of their duties and their rights to immortality.
This is how, from time to time, the American escapes in a way from
himself, and how, tearing himself away for a moment from the petty pas-
sions that agitate his life and from the transitory interests that fill it, he enters
suddenly into an ideal world where everything is great, pure, eternal.
[So I am constantly led to the same subjects by different roads; and I
discover more and more the close bond that unites the two parts of my
subject.]
In another place in this work, I looked for the causes to which the main-
tenance of political institutions in America had to be attributed, and reli-
gion seemed to me one of the principal ones. Today, when I am concerned
with individuals, I find religion again and notice that it is no less useful to
each citizen than to the whole State.
The Americans show, by their practice, that they feel the entire necessity
of moralizing democracy by religion. What they think in this regard about
themselves is a truth that must penetrate every democratic nation.
I do not doubt that the social and political constitution of a people dis-
poses them to certain beliefs and to certain tastes in which they easily
abound afterward; while these same causes turn them away from certain
opinions and certain tendencies without their working at it themselves, and
so to speak without their suspecting it.
All the art of the legislator consists in clearly discerning in advance these
natural inclinations of human societies, in order to know where the effort
of the citizens must be aided, and where it would instead be necessary to
slow it down. For these obligations differ according to the times. Only the
end toward which humanity must always head is unchanging; the means
to reach that end constantly vary.
[⫽There are vices or erroneous opinions that can only be established
among a people by struggling against the general current of society. These

are not to be feared; they must be considered as unfortunate accidents. But
there are others that, having a natural rapport with the very constitution
of the people, develop by themselves and effortlessly among the people.
Those, however small they may be at their beginning and however rare they
seem, deserve to attract the great care of the legislator.⫽]c
If I were born in an aristocratic century, amid a nation in which the
hereditary wealth of some and the irremediable poverty of others diverted
men from the idea of the better and, as well, held souls as if benumbed in
the contemplation of another world, I would want it to be possible for me
to stimulate among such a people the sentiment of needs; I would think
about finding more rapid and easier means to satisfy the new desires that I
would have brought about, and, diverting the greatest efforts of the human
mind toward physical study, I would try to excite the human mind in the
pursuit of well-being.d
If it happened that some men caught fire thoughtlessly in the pursuit
of wealth and exhibited an excessive love for material enjoyments, I would
not become alarmed; these particular traits would soon disappear in the
common physiognomy.
Legislators of democracies have other concerns.
Give democratic peoples enlightenment and liberty and leave them
alone. They will easily succeed in drawing from this world all the [material]
goods that it can offer; they will perfect each one of the useful arts and daily
make life more comfortable, easier, sweeter; their social state pushes them
naturally in this direction. I am not afraid that they will stop.
c. In the margin: “⫽To delete this piece perhaps which slows, although it clarifies. I
have moreover expressed this idea in the first part while speaking about laws.⫽”
d. If I had been born in the Middle Ages, I would have been the enemy of super-
stitions, for then the social movement led there.
But today, I feel indulgent toward all the follies that spiritualism can suggest.
The great enemy is materialism, not only because it is in itself a detestable doctrine,
but also because it is unfortunately in accord with the social tendency (Rubish, 1).
But while man takes pleasure in this honest and legitimate pursuit of
well-being, it is to be feared that in the end he may lose the use of his most
sublime faculties, and that by wanting to improve everything around him,
he may in the end degrade himself. The danger is there and nowhere else.
So legislators in democracies and all honest and enlightened men who
live in democracies must apply themselves without respite to lifting up souls
and keeping them pointed toward heaven. It is necessary that all those who
are interested in the future of democratic societies unite, and that all in
concert make continual efforts to spread within these societies the taste for
the infinite, the sentiment for the grand and the love for non-material
pleasures.
If among the opinions of a democratic people there exist a few of these
harmful theories that tend to make you believe that everything perishes
with the body, consider the men who profess them as the natural enemies
of the people.
There are many things that offend me in the materialists. Their doctrines
seem pernicious to me, and their pride revolts me. If their system could be
of some use to man, it seems that it would be in giving him a modest idea
of himself. But they do not show that this is so; and when they believe that
they have sufficiently established that men are only brutes, they appear as
proud as if they had demonstrated that men were gods.e
Materialism is, among all nations, a dangerous sickness of the human
mind; but it must be particularly feared among a democratic people, be-
cause it combines marvelously with the vice of the heart most familiar to
these people.
e. ⫽Baden, 2 August 1836.

Of the pride of the materialists./
There are many things that shock me among the materialists, but the most dis-
pleasing in my view is the extreme pride that most of them exhibit. If the doctrine
that they profess could be of some use to men, it seems that it would be in inspiring
in them a modest idea of themselves and in leading them to humility. But they do
not indicate that this is so, and after making a thousand efforts to prove that they are
only brutes, they show themselves as proud as if they had demonstrated that they
were gods⫽” (In the rubish of chapter XVII of this part. Rubish, 1).
Democracy favors the taste for material enjoyments. This taste, if it

becomes excessive, soon disposes men to believe that everything is only
matter; and materialism, in turn, finally carries them with an insane fervor
toward these same enjoyments. Such is the fatal circle into which demo-
cratic nations are pushed. It is good that they see the danger and restrain
themselves.
Most religions are only general, simple and practical means to teach men
the immortality of the soul. That is the greatest advantage that a democratic
people draws from belief, and what makes these beliefs more necessary for
such a people than for all others.
So when no matter which religion has put down deep roots within a
democracy, be careful about weakening it; but instead protect it carefully
as the most precious heritage of aristocratic centuries;f do not try to tear
men away from their ancient religious opinions in order to substitute new
ones, for fear that, during the transition from one faith to another, when
the soul finds itself for one moment devoid of beliefs, love of material
enjoyments comes to spread and fill the soul entirely.
[I do not believe that all religions are equally true and equally good, but
I think that there is none so false or so bad that it would not still be ad-
vantageous for a democratic people to profess.]
Assuredly, metempsychosis is not more reasonable than materialism; but
if it were absolutely necessary for a democracy to make a choice between
the two, I would not hesitate, and I would judge that its citizens risk be-
coming brutalized less by thinking that their soul is going to pass into the
body of a pig than by believing that it is nothing.g
The belief in a non-material and immortal principle, united for a time
to matter, is so necessary for the grandeur of man, that it still produces
beautiful effects even when you do not join the opinion of rewards and
punishments with it and when you limit yourself to believing that after
f. To the side: “{Remark by Édouard.}”

g. In the margin: “⫽It is above all from there that the piece becomes weak because
what I say no longer relates exclusively to democracies./
“What follows is a beautiful digression on the general advantages of spiritualisms and
nothing more, thrown across the idea of the utility of a religion and of the means for
preserving it.⫽”
death the divine principle contained in man is absorbed in God or goes to

animate another creature.h
Even the latter consider the body as the secondary and inferior portion
of our nature; and they scorn it even when they undergo its influence; while
they have a natural esteem and secret admiration for the non-material part
of man, even though they sometimes refuse to submit themselves to its
dominion. This is enough to give a certain elevated turn to their ideas and
their tastes, and to make them tend without interest, and as if on their own,
toward pure sentiments and great thoughts.
It is not certain that Socrates and his school had well-fixed opinions on
what must happen to man in the other life; but the sole belief on which
they were settled, that the soul has nothing in common with the body and
survives it, was enough to give to platonic philosophy the sort of sublime
impulse that distinguishes it.
When you read Plato, you notice that in the times prior to him and in
his time, many writers existed who advocated materialism. These writers
have not survived to our time or have survived only very incompletely. It
has been so in nearly all the centuries; most of the great literary reputations
are joined with spiritualism. The instinct and the taste of humanity uphold
this doctrine; they often save this doctrine despite the men themselves and
make the names of those who are attached to it linger on. So it must not
be believed that in any time, and in whatever political state, the passion for
material enjoyments and the opinions that are linked with it will be able
h. Immortality of the soul./

The need for the infinite and the sad experience of the finite that we encounter at
each step, torments [sic ] me sometimes, but does not distress me. I see in it one of
the greatest proofs of the existence of another world and of the immortality of our
souls. From all that we know about God by his works, we know that he does nothing
without a near or distant end. This is so true that in the physical world, it is enough
for us to find an organ in order to conclude from it in a certain way that the animal
that possessed this organ used it in this or that way, and experience comes to prove
it. Argument by analogy. I cannot believe that God put in our souls the organ of the
infinite, if I can express myself in this way, in order to give our soul eternally only to
the finite, that he gave it the organ of hope in a future life, without future life (CVa,
p. 57).
to suffice for an entire people.j The heart of man is more vast than you
suppose; it can at the same time enclose the taste for the good things of the
earth and the love of the good things of heaven; sometimes the heart seems
to give itself madly to one of the two; but it never goes for a long time
without thinking of the other.k
j. In a first version you read:

I am moreover very far from believing that men can[not (ed.)] reconcile the taste for
well-being that democracy develops and the religious [v: spiritualistic] beliefs that
democracy needs. To prove it, I will not use the example of the Americans; their origin
sets them aside. But I will cite before all the others that of the English.
The middle classes of England form an immense democracy in which each man
is occupied without respite with the concern of improving his lot, and in which all
seem devoted to the love of wealth. But the middle classes of England remain faithful
to their religious beliefs and they show in a thousand small ways that these beliefs are
powerful and sincere [v: true]. England, with its traditions and its memories, is not
however relegated to a corner of the universe. Unbelief is next door. The English
themselves have seen several of the most celebrated unbelievers arise within it. But
the middle classes of England have remained firmly religious until today and are
sincere Christians who have produced these industrial wonders that astonish the
world.
So the heart of man is . . . (Rubish, 1).
A variant from the Rubish specifies: “unbelievers. Several have been powerful because of
their genius. Hume, Gibbon, Byron” (Rubish, 1).
k. To be concerned only with satisfying the needs of the body and to forget about
the soul. That is the final outcome to which materialism leads.
To flee into the deserts, to inflict sufferings and privations on yourself in order to
live the life of the soul. That is the final outcome of spiritualism. I notice at the one
end of this tendency Heliogabalus and at the other St. Jerome.
I would very much want us to be able to find between these two paths a road that
would not be a route toward the one or toward the other. For if each of these two
opposite roads can be suitable for some men, this middle road is the only one that
can be suitable for humanity. Can we not find a path between Heliogabalus and St.
Jerome? (Rubish, 1).
At another place in the rubish:
I proved sufficiently in material tastes that it was to be desired that the taste for well-
being did not repress the impulses [of (ed.)] spiritualism of the soul, were it only so
that man could obtain for himself those material enjoyments that they [sic ] desire.
For the subject to be exhausted and my philosophical position clearly established,
it would be necessary to be able to add a small chapter in which, turning myself away
from considering the fanatical spiritualists, I would show that in the very interest of
If it is easy to see that, particularly in times of democracy, it is important

to make spiritual opinions reign, it is not easy to say what those who govern
democratic peoples must do for those opinions to reign.
I do not believe in the prosperity any more than in the duration of official
philosophies, and as for State religions, I have always thought that if some-
times they could temporarily serve the interests of political power, they
always sooner or later become fatal to the Church.
Nor am I one of those who judge that in order to raise religion in the
eyes of the people, and to honor the spiritualism that religion professes, it
is good to grant indirectly to its ministers a political influence that the law
refuses to them.
[I would even prefer that you gave the clergy a definite power than to
allow them to hold an irregular and hidden power. For, in the first case,
the soul the body must prosper; I would rehabilitate the flesh as the Saint-Simonians
said. I would search for this intermediate path between Saint Jerome and Heliogab-
alus that will always be the great route of humanity.
I would show there
1. That in order to get men to concern themselves with the needs of their souls,
you must not say to them to neglect the needs of the body, for both exist, man being
neither a pure spirit nor an animal, but that the problem to solve is to find a means
to reconcile these two needs.
2. That in itself it is desirable that sublime virtues do not hide under rags (or at
least exceptions that show nothing), that a certain well-being of the body is necessary
for the development of the soul, that efforts made by the soul to attain that devel-
opment are healthy for it, that they give it habits of order, work, that they sharpen
its abilities . . ./
In a word, it is necessary to tie this world to the other or one of the two escapes us
(Rubish, 1).
In a letter of 1843, Tocqueville will repeat the same ideas to Arthur de Gobineau:
Our society has moved away much more from theology than from Christian philos-
ophy. Since our religious beliefs have become less firm and the view of the other world
more obscure, morality must show itself more indulgent for material needs and plea-
sures. It is an idea that the Saint-Simonians expressed, I believe, by saying that it was
necessary to rehabilitate the flesh (Correspondance avec Gobineau, OC, IX, p. 46).
See Joshua Mitchell, The Fragility of Freedom. Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy and the
American Future (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
you at least see clearly the political circle in which priests can act; while in
the other, there are no limits at which the imagination of the people must
stop, or public misfortunes for which the people will not be tempted to
blame the priests.]m
I feel so convinced of the nearly inevitable dangers that beliefs run when
their interpreters mingle in public affairs, and I am so persuaded that
Christianity must at all cost be maintained within the new democracies,
that I would prefer to chain priests within the sanctuary than to allow them
out of it.
So what means remain for authority to lead men back toward spiritu-
alistic opinions or keep them in the religion that suggests these opinions?
What I am going to say is going to do me harm in the eyes of politicians.
I believe that the only effective means that governments can use to honor
the dogma of the immortality of the soul is to act each day as if they be-
lieved it themselves; and I think that it is only by conforming scrupulously
to religious morality in great affairs that they can claim to teach citizens to
know, love and respect religious morality in little affairs.n
m. In the rubish, the passage continues in this way: “It is rare moreover that you wisely
use a precarious and disputed power that you can exercise only in the shadows. For me,
I am so persuaded that the spirit of religion must at all cost be maintained within de-
mocracies and I feel, on the contrary, so convinced of the nearly inevitable dangers . . .”
(Rubish, 1).
n. To put after egoism and the material tendency of democracy, when I will say that
it is necessary at all cost to throw some non-material ideas, some poetry, some taste
for the infinite into the midst of democratic peoples.
Legislators of democracy, if by chance a positive religion exists, respect it, preserve
it as a precious flame that is tending to go out, as the most precious heritage of aris-
tocratic centuries . . .
In aristocratic centuries I would work hard to turn the human spirit toward physi-
cal studies, in democratic centuries toward the moral sciences. Draw a short parallel
between these two tendencies against which you must alternately struggle in order to
reveal clearly the higher place at which I position myself and show that I am not a
slave to my own ideas (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 6a
How the Excessive Love of Well-Being
Can Harm Well-Being b
There is more of a connection than you think between the perfection of

the soul and the improvement of the goods of the body; man can leave
these two things distinct and alternately envisage each one of them; but he
cannot separate them entirely without finally losing sight of both of them.
Animals have the same senses that we have and more or less the same
desires: there are no material passions that we do not have in common with
them and whose germ is not found in a dog as well as in ourselves.
So why do the animals only know how to provide for their first and most
crude needs, while we infinitely vary our enjoyments and increase them
constantly?
What makes us superior in this to animals is that we use our soul to find
the material goods toward which their instinct alone leads them. With man,
the angel teaches the brute the art of satisfying himself. Man is capable of
rising above the goods of the body and even of scorning life, an idea animals
a. “It is the soul that teaches the body the art of satisfying itself. You cannot neglect
the one up to a certain point without decreasing the means to satisfy the other” (YTC,
CVf, p. 33).
b. “The perfection of the soul serves not only to find new means to satisfy the body,
but it also increases the ability that the body has to enjoy.
Idea of L[ouis (ed.)].
“I am persuaded in fact that a man of spirit, imagination, genius, feels material en-
joyments a thousand times more when he gives himself to them than a fool, a dull or
coarse being” (Rubish, 1).
963
excessive love of well-being 964
do not even conceive; he therefore knows how to multiply these very ad-
vantages to a degree that they also cannot imagine.
Everything that elevates, enlarges, expands the soul, makes it more ca-
pable of succeeding at even those enterprises that do not concern it.
Everything that enervates the soul, on the contrary, or lowers it, weakens
it for all things, the principal ones as well as the least ones, and threatens
to make it almost as powerless for the first as for the second. Thus, the soul
must remain great and strong, if only to be able, from time to time, to put
its strength and its greatness at the service of the body.
If men ever succeed in being content with material goods, it is to be
believed that they would little by little lose the art of producing them, and
that they would end by enjoying them without discernment and without
progress, like the animals.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 7a
How, in Times of Equality and Doubt,
It Is Important to Push Back the
Goal of Human Actions b
In centuries of faith, the final aim of life is placed after life.

So men of those times, naturally and so to speak without wanting to,
become accustomed to contemplating over a long period of years an un-
changing goal toward which they march constantly, and they learn, by tak-
ing imperceptible steps forward, to repress a thousand small passing desires,
the better to arrive at the satisfaction of this great and permanent desire
that torments them. When the same men want to concern themselves with
a. In centuries of faith, men become accustomed to directing all of their actions in

this world with the other in view.
That gives them certain habits and leads them as well to set for themselves very
distant goals in life and to march toward them obstinately.
In centuries of unbelief, on the contrary, men are naturally led to want to think
only about the next day.
So the great matter for philosophers and for those who govern in the centuries of
unbelief and democracy must be to push back the goal of human affairs in the eyes
of men. Means that they can use to succeed in doing so (YTC, CVf, pp. 33–34).
b. On the jacket of the rubish:
How, in centuries of democracy and doubt, all the effort of the social power must
tend toward again giving men the taste for the future./
After all the chapters on material enjoyments. Democratic peoples have a general
taste for easy and quick enjoyments. That is true of material enjoyments as well as
others. So this idea must be treated separately from that of material enjoyments, but
it must be treated after, because the predominance of the taste for material enjoy-
ments is a great cause of the preeminence of the general taste for current enjoyments
(Rubish, 1).
965
goal of human actions 966
earthly things, these habits recur. They readily set for their actions here
below a general and certain goal, toward which all their efforts are directed.
You do not see them give themselves each day to new attempts; but they
have settled plans that they do not grow weary of pursuing.
This explains why religious peoplesc have often accomplished such en-
during things. By concerning themselves with the other world, they found
the great secret of succeeding in this one.
Religions give the general habit of behaving with the future in view. In
this they are no less useful to happiness in this life than to felicity in the
other. It is one of their great political dimensions.
But, as the light of faith grows dim, the view of men narrows; and you
would say that each day the goal of human actions appears closer to them.
Once they become accustomed to no longer being concerned about what
must come after their life, you see them fall easily back into that complete
and brutal indifference about the future that is only too suited to certain
instincts of the human species. As soon as they have lost the custom of
putting their principal hopes in the long run, they are naturally led to want-
ing to realize their slightest desires without delay, and it seems that, from
the moment they lose hope of living eternally, they are disposed to act as
if they had only a single day to exist.
In the centuries of unbelief, it is therefore always to be feared that men
will constantly give themselves to the daily whims of their desires and that,
renouncing entirely what cannot be acquired without long efforts, they will
establish nothing great, peaceful and lasting.
If it happens that, among a people so disposed, the social state becomes
democratic, the danger that I am pointing out increases.
[<In aristocracies, the fixity of conditions and the immobility of the
social body direct the human mind toward the idea of the future and hold
it there.>]
When each man seeks constantly to change place, when an immense
competition is open to all, when wealth accumulates and disappears in a
few moments amid the tumult of democracy, the idea of a sudden and easy
fortune, of great possessions easily gained and lost, the image of chance in
c. The manuscript says: “most religious peoples.”

all its forms occurs to the human mind. The instability of the social state
comes to favor the natural instability of desires. In the middle of these
perpetual fluctuations of fate, the present grows; it hides the future that
fades away, and men want to think only about the next day.
In these countries where by an unhappy coincidence irreligion and de-
mocracy meet, philosophers and those governing must apply themselves
constantly to pushing back the goal of human actions in the eyes of men;
that is their great concern.
While enclosing himself within the spirit of his century and his country,
the moralist must learn to defend himself. May he try hard each day to
show his contemporaries how, even amid the perpetual movement that sur-
rounds them, it is easier than they suppose to conceive and to carry out
long-term enterprises. May he make them see that, even though humanity
has changed appearance, the methods by which men can obtain the pros-
perity of this world have remained the same, and that, among democratic
peoples, as elsewhere, it is only by resisting a thousand small particular ev-
eryday desires that you can end up satisfying the general passion for hap-
piness that torments.
The task of those who govern is not less marked out.
At all times it is important that those who govern nations conduct
themselves with a view toward the future. But that is still more necessary
in democratic and unbelieving centuries than in all others. By acting in
this way, the leaders of democracies not only make public affairs prosper,
but by their example they also teach individuals the art of conducting
private affairs.
Above all they must try hard to banish chance, as much as possible, from
the political world.
The sudden and unmerited elevation of a courtier produces only a pass-
ing impression in an aristocratic country, because the ensemble of insti-
tutions and beliefs usually forces men to move slowly along paths that they
cannot leave.
But nothing is more pernicious than such examples offered to the view
of a democratic people. Such examples end by hurrying the heart of a dem-
ocratic people down a slope along which everything is dragging it. So it is
principally in times of skepticism and equality that you must carefully avoid
having the favor of the people, or that of the prince, granted or denied by
chance, take the place of knowledge and services. It is to be hoped that
every advance there appears to be the fruit of effort, so that there is no overly
easy greatness, and that ambition is forced to set its sights on the goal for
a long time before achieving it.
Governments must apply themselves to giving back to men this taste for
the future that is no longer inspired by religion and the social state; and
without saying so, they must teach citizens every day in a practical way that
wealth, fame, and power are the rewards of work; that great successes are
found at the end of long desires, and that nothing lasting is gained except
what is acquired with pain.
When men become accustomed to foreseeing from a great distance what
must happen to them here below, and to finding nourishment in hopes, it
becomes difficult for them always to stop their thinking at the precise limits
of life, and they are very close to going beyond those limits in order to cast
their sight farther.
So I do not doubt that by making citizens accustomed to thinking about
the future in this world, you lead them closer little by little, and without
their knowing it, to religious beliefs.
Thus, the means that, to a certain point, allows men to do without re-
ligion, is perhaps, after all, the only one that remains to us for leading hu-
manity back by a long detour toward faith.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 8a
Why, among the Americans, All Honest
Professions Are Considered Honorable b
Among democratic peoples, where there is no hereditary wealth, each man

works in order to live, or has worked, or is born from people who have
worked. So the idea of work, as the necessary, natural and honest condition
of humanity, presents itself on all sides to the human mind.
Not only is work not held in dishonor among these peoples, it is hon-
ored; prejudice is not against work, it is for it. In the United States, a rich
man believes that he owes to public opinion the consecration of his leisure
to some industrial or commercial operation or to some public duties. He
would consider himself of bad reputation if he used his life only for living.
It is to avoid this obligation to work that so many rich Americans come to
Europe; there, they find the remnants of aristocratic societies among which
idleness is still honored.
Equality not only rehabilitates the idea of work, it boosts the idea of
work that gains a profit.
a. In America everyone works or has worked. That rehabilitates the idea of work. In
America, since fortunes are all mediocre and temporary, the idea of salary is strongly
joined with the idea of work.
From the moment when work is honorable and when all work is paid, all profes-
sions take on a family resemblance. The salary is a common feature that is found in
the physiognomy of all professions (YTC, CVf, p. 34).
b. This chapter and the following, until the end of the second part, do not exist in
the manuscript, but appear in notebook CVf. There is rubish with the title: “(a. b. c.)
Rubish./ why democracy pushes men toward commerce and all types of
industry and in general toward the taste for material well-being. in-
stincts that follow.” There is also rubish for the chapter on the industrial
aristocracy.
969
the honest professions 970
In aristocracies, it is not precisely work that is scorned, it is work for

profit. Work is glorious when ambition or virtue alone brings it about. Un-
der aristocracy, however, it constantly happens that the man who works for
honor is not insensitive to the allure of gain. But those two desires meet
only in the depths of his soul. He takes great care to hide from all eyes the
place where they come together. He willingly hides it from himself. In aris-
tocratic countries, there are hardly any public officials who do not pretend
to serve the State without interest. Their salary is a detail that they some-
times think little about and that they always pretend not to think about at
all.
Thus, the idea of gain remains distinct from that of work. In vain are
they joined in point of fact; the past separates them.
In democratic societies, these two ideas are, on the contrary, always vis-
ibly united. Since the desire for well-being is universal, since fortunes are
mediocre and temporary, since each man needs to increase his resources or
to prepare new ones for his children, everyone sees very clearly that gain is,
if not wholly, at least partially what leads them to work. Even those who
act principally with glory in view get inevitably accustomed to the idea that
they are not acting solely for this reason, and they discover, whatever they
may say, that the desire to live combines in them with the desire to make
their life illustrious.
From the moment when, on the one hand, work seems to all citizens an
honorable necessity of the human condition, and when, on the other hand,
work is always visibly done, in whole or in part, out of consideration for a
salary, the immense space that separated the different professions in aris-
tocratic societies disappears. If the professions are not always similar, they
at least have a similar feature.
There is no profession in which work is not done for money. The salary,
which is common to all, gives all a family resemblance.
This serves to explain the opinions that the Americans entertain con-
cerning the various professions.
American servants do not believe themselves degraded because they
work; for around them, everyone works. They do not feel debased by
the idea that they receive a salary; for the President of the United States
the honest professions 971
also works for a salary. He is paid to command, just as they are paid to
serve.
In the United States, professions are more or less difficult, more or less
lucrative, but they are never noble or base. Every honest profession is
honorable.
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 1 9a
What Makes Nearly All Americans Tend
toward Industrial Professions
I do not know if, of all the useful arts, agriculture is not the one that im-
proves most slowly among democratic nations. Often you would even say
that it is stationary, because several of the other useful arts seem to race
ahead.
On the contrary, nearly all the tastes and habits that arise from equality
lead men naturally toward commerce and industry.b
I picture an active, enlightened, free man, comfortably well-off, full of
desires. He is too poor to be able to live in idleness; he is rich enough to
feel above the immediate fear of need, and he thinks about bettering his
lot. This man has conceived the taste for material enjoyments; a thousand
a. Democracy not only multiplies the number of workers among different labors, it
makes men chose those of commerce and industry.
Nearly all the passions that arise from equality lead in this direction.
Love of material enjoyments.
Desire to enjoy quickly.
Love of games of chance.
In democratic countries, the rich themselves are constantly carried toward these
careers. Democracy diverts them from politics. It makes commerce and industry into
the most brilliant objects. In democratic countries the rich are always afraid of de-
clining in wealth. Example of the Americans (YTC, CVf, p. 35).
b. Action. Equality of conditions leads men toward commerce.
(Idea of L[ouis (ed.)].)
Reaction. Commercial habits, type of commercial morality favorable to the gov-
ernment of democracy. Repress all the overly violent passions of temperaments. No
anger, compromise, complicated and compromising [sic ] interests in times of revo-
lution (Rubish, 1).
972
industrial professions 973
others abandon themselves to this taste before his eyes; he has begun to give
himself to it, and he burns to increase the means to satisfy it more. But life
passes, time presses. What is he going to do?
For his efforts, cultivation of the earth promises nearly certain, but
slow results. In that way you become rich only little by little and with
difficulty. Agriculture is suitable only for the rich who already have a great
excess, or for the poor who ask only to live. His choice is made: he sells
his field, leaves his home and goes to devote himself to some risky, but
lucrative profession.c
Now, democratic societies abound in men of this type; and as equality
of conditions becomes greater, their number increases.
So democracy not only multiplies the number of workers; it leads men
to one work rather than another; and, while it gives them a distaste for
agriculture, it directs them toward commerce and industry.1
This spirit reveals itself among the richest citizens themselves.
c. Of all the means, the most energetic that you can use to push men exclusively
toward love of wealth is the establishment of an aristocracy founded solely on money.
Nearly all the desires that can agitate the human heart are combined in the love
of wealth, which becomes like the generative passion and which is seen among the
others like the trunk of the tree that supports all the branches.
The taste for money and the ardor for power are then mingled so well in the soul,
that it becomes difficult to discern if it is for ambition that men are greedy, or for
greed that they are ambitious.
That is what happens in England where someone wants to be rich in order to
achieve honors and where someone desires honors as evidence of wealth (Ru-
bish, 1).
1. It has been noted several times that men of industry and men of commerce possessed an
immoderate taste for material enjoyments, and commerce and industry were blamed for that;
I believe that here the effect has been taken for the cause.
It is not commerce and industry that suggest the taste for material enjoyments to men,
but rather this taste leads men toward industrial and commercial careers, where they hope
to be satisfied more completely and more quickly.
If commerce and industry increase the desire for well-being, that results from the fact that
every passion becomes stronger as it is exercised more, and grows with all the efforts that you
make to satisfy it. All the causes that make the love of the goods of this world predominate in
the human heart develop industry and commerce. Equality is one of these causes. It favors
commerce, not directly by giving men the taste for trade, but indirectly, by strengthening and
generalizing in their souls the love of well-being.
In democratic countries, a man, however wealthy he is assumed to be,

is almost always discontent with his fortune, because he finds himself not
as rich as his father and is afraid that his sons will not be as rich as he. So
most of the rich in democracies constantly dream about the means to ac-
quire wealth, and they naturally turn their sights toward commerce and
industry, which seem to them the quickest and most powerful means to
gain it. On this point they share the instincts of the poor man without
having his needs, or rather they are pushed by the most imperious of all
needs: that of not declining.d
In aristocracies, the rich are at the same time those who govern. The
d. .-.-.-.- is not by chance that most aristocracies have shown themselves indifferent
to the works of industry or enemies to its progress. Underneath prejudice, it is easy
to discern something real, which is like its seed.
Commerce often has admirable results in view, but it almost always uses very petty
means to attain them.
In aristocracies, it is the same men who have wealth and who hold power, and their
business is as much to direct public fortune as to look after their own. Preoccupied
by these great matters, they can only with difficulty turn their mind to the run of
small affairs that make up commerce, as well as to the minute and almost infinite
concerns that commerce requires. So it is to be believed that they would see trade as
a wearisome and secondary occupation and would neglect it even when they did not
indeed consider it degrading. If some men were found among them who felt a natural
taste for industry, they would carefully refrain from devoting themselves to it. For it
is useless to resist the dominion of numbers, you never completely escape its yoke;
and even within those aristocratic corps that refuse most stubbornly to acknowledge
the rights of the national majority, there is a particular majority that governs.
With democracy the connection that united government and wealth disappears.
The rich do not know what to do with their leisure; the restlessness of their desires,
the extent of their resources, and the taste for great adventures [v: extraordinary
things], which are almost always felt by men who stand in some way above the crowd,
presses them to action. Only the road to commerce is open to them. In a democracy
there is nothing greater or more brilliant than commerce. That is what attracts the
attention and the prompting of the public; and all energetic passions are directed
toward commerce. Nothing can keep the rich from devoting themselves to it, neither
their own prejudices nor those of anyone else.
Since the great fortunes that are seen within a democracy almost always have a
commercial origin, those who possess those fortunes have kept the habits or at least
the traditions of trade. On the other hand, the rich never make up among a dem-
ocratic people, as within aristocracies, a corps that has [interrupted text (ed.)] (Rub-
ish, 1).
attention that they give constantly to great public affairs diverts them from
the small concerns that commerce and industry demand. If the will of one
of them is nonetheless directed by chance toward trade, the will of the
aristocratic corps immediately bars the route to him; for it is useless to resist
the dominion of numbers, you never completely escape its yoke; and,
even within those aristocratic corps that refuse most stubbornly to ac-
knowledge the rights of the national majority, there is a particular majority
that governs.2
In democratic countries, where money does not lead the one who has it
to power, but often keeps him away from it, the rich do not know what to
do with their leisure.e Restlessness and the greatness of their desires, the
extent of their resources, the taste for the extraordinary, which are almost
always felt by those who stand, in whatever way, above the crowd, presses
them to action. Only the road to commerce is open to them. In democ-
racies, there is nothing greater or more brilliant than commerce; that is what
attracts the attention of the public and fills the imagination of the crowd;
all energetic passions are directed toward commerce. Nothing can prevent
the rich from devoting themselves to it, neither their own prejudices, nor
those of anyone else. The rich of democracies never form a corps that has
its own mores and its own organization; the particular ideas of their class
do not stop them, and the general ideas of their country push them. Since,
moreover, the great fortunes that are seen within a democratic people al-
most always have a commercial origin, several generations must pass before
those who possess those fortunes have entirely lost the habits of trade.f
2. See the note at the end of the volume.

e. “England.
“⫽When it is not those who govern who are rich, but the rich who govern⫽” (Rub-
ish, 1).
f. Aristocracy of birth and pure democracy form two extremes of the social state of
peoples.
In the middle is found the aristocracy of money. The latter is close to aristocracy
of birth in that it confers on a small number of citizens great privileges. It fits into
democracy in that these privileges can be successively acquired by all. It forms the
natural transition between the two things, and you cannot say whether it is ending
the rule of aristocracy on earth, or whether it is already opening the new era of dem-
ocratic centuries (Rubish, 1).
Confined to the narrow space that politics leaves to them, the rich of
democracies therefore throw themselves from all directions into commerce;
there they can expand and use their natural advantages; and it is, in a way,
by the very boldness and by the grandeur of their industrial enterprises that
you must judge what little value they would have set on industry if they
had been born within an aristocracy.
The same remark, moreover, is applicable to all the men of democracies,
whether they are poor or rich.
Those who live amid democratic instability have constantly before their
eyes the image of chance, and they end by loving all enterprises in which
chance plays a role.
So they are all led toward commerce, not only because of the gain that
it promises, but by love of the emotions that it gives.
The United States of America has only emerged for a half-century
from the colonial dependence in which England held it; the number of
great fortunes is very small there, and capital is still rare. But there is no
people on earth who has made as rapid progress as the Americans in com-
merce and industry. They form today the second maritime nation of the
world; and, although their manufacturing has to struggle against almost
insurmountable natural obstacles, it does not fail to make new gains every
day.
In the United States the greatest industrial enterprises are executed with-
out difficulty, because the entire population is involved in industry, and
because the poorest as well as the wealthiest citizen readily combine their
efforts. So it is astonishing every day to see the immense works that are
executed without difficulty by a nation that does not so to speak contain
rich men. The Americans arrived only yesterday on the land that they in-
habit, and they have already overturned the whole natural order to their
profit. They have united the Hudson with the Mississippi and connected
the Atlantic Ocean with the Gulf of Mexico, across more than five hundred
leagues of the continent that separates these two seas. The longest railroads
that have been constructed until now are in America.
But what strikes me most in the United States is not the extraordinary
greatness of some industrial enterprises, it is the innumerable multitude of
small enterprises.
Nearly all the farmers of the United States have combined some com-
merce with agriculture; most have made agriculture into a trade.
It is rare for an American farmer to settle forever on the land that he
occupies. In the new provinces of the West principally, you clear a field in
order to resell it and not to harvest it; you build a farm with the expectation
that, since the state of the country is soon going to change due to the in-
crease of inhabitants, you will be able to get a good price.
Every year, a swarm of inhabitants from the North descends toward the
South and comes to live in the countries where cotton and sugar cane grow.
These men cultivate the earth with the goal of making it produce in a few
years what it takes to make them rich, and they already foresee the moment
when they will be able to return to their country to enjoy the comfort gained
in this way. So the Americans bring to agriculture the spirit of trade, and
their industrial passions are seen there as elsewhere.
The Americans make immense progress in industry, because they are all
involved in industry at the same time; and for the same reason, they are
subject to very unexpected and very formidable industrial crises.
Since they are all engaged in commerce, commerce among them is sub-
ject to such numerous and so complicated influences that it is impossible
to foresee in advance the difficulties that can arise. Since each one of them
is more or less involved in industry, at the slightest shock that business ex-
periences, all particular fortunes totter at the same time, and the State
falters.g
I believe that the recurrence of industrial crises is an illness endemic
among the democratic nations of our day.h It can be made less dangerous,
g. In the United States, everyone does commerce or has a portion of his fortune
placed in commerce. Consequently, you see what is happening at this moment (May
1837) and what will perhaps result from it in the political world.
There is a great part of future humanity to which I must give my attention./
The Americans make immense progress in industry because they are all involved
at the same time in industry, and for the same reason, they are subject to very un-
expected and very formidable industrial crises (Rubish, 1).
h. [In the margin: I do not know if I should include this piece or where I should
put it.]
but cannot be cured, because it is not due to an accident, but to the very
temperament of these peoples.j
I have shown in this chapter how democracy served the developments of industry.
I would have been able to show as well how industry in turn hastened the develop-
ments of democracy. For these two things go together and react on each other. De-
mocracy gives birth to the taste for material enjoyments that pushes men toward
industry, and industry creates a multitude of mediocre fortunes and develops within
the very heart of aristocratic nations a separate class in which ranks are ill defined
and poorly maintained, in which people rise and fall constantly, in which leisure is
not enjoyed, a separate class whose instincts are all democratic. This class forms for
a long time within the very heart of aristocratic nations a kind of small democracy
that has its separate instincts, opinions, laws. As the people expands its commerce
and its industry, this democratic class becomes more numerous and more influential;
little by little its opinions pass into the mores and its ideas into the laws, until finally,
having become predominant and so to speak unique, it takes hold of power and
directs everything at its will and establishes democracy.
[To the side] All that badly digested (YTC, CVj, 2, pp. 16–17).
j. Fragment of rubish:
of the relation that .-.-.- commerce and industry, on the one
hand, and on the other hand, democracy./
When you examine the direction that industry and democracy give to mores as
well as to the minds of men, you are struck by the sight of the great similarity that
exists between the effects produced by these two causes.
[In the margin: See in bundle A a good piece by Beaumont on that.]
I want to take as an example the matter that I am treating at this moment ( June
1836) which is the sciences, letters and the arts (perhaps make good use of this general
idea in the article on the sciences and on literature).
When men are engaged in the different commercial and industrial professions,
their minds become accustomed to substituting in everything the idea of the useful
for that of the beautiful, which leads them to cultivate the applied sciences rather
than the theoretical sciences; inexpensive, elementary, productive literature for fin-
ished, refined literary works; useful building for beautiful monuments.
When conditions become equal and classes disappear, the same instincts arise. Ex-
cept that instead of being felt by only one part of the nation, they are felt by the
generality of citizens.
But these two causes are .-.-.-.-.- perceived separately.
I am first able to imagine very clearly a great industrial class in the middle of an
aristocratic people. This class will have its own instincts; and if, as we have seen in
England, it is influential in public affairs but without being master of them, it will
give a portion of these instincts to all the other classes; and the nation, while keeping
the social and political organization that characterizes an aristocracy, will show in part
the tastes and the ideas that a democracy displays. This has happened to the English.
But here you will stop me and say: this industrial class is nothing other than a small
democracy enclosed within a great aristocracy. Within it equality of conditions, the
need to work, etc. reign, which do not reign in the larger society within which it is
enclosed. When this class influences the opinions and ways of life of all the other
classes, you have an incomplete democracy .-.-.-.- so you cannot cultivate industry
without forming a small or large democratic society. When men cultivate industry,
they are democratic, and when they are democratic, they necessarily cultivate
industry.
I will answer that the men who are occupied with industry can be organized vis-
à-vis each other very aristocratically. Which is what happens in a country in which
industry is invariably directed by a small number of great capitalists who make the
law and a multitude of workers who receive it. But both have nearly the same in-
stincts, as regards the sciences, letters and the arts. So these instincts are due to the
types of their occupations much more than to their social state, since the poor man
and the rich man equally experience them.
[In the margin: The terms industry, commerce are too general. Make them more
specific if I want to understand myself.]
From another perspective, could you not imagine a democracy, that is to say a
people among whom conditions were more or less equal and among whom the taste
for industry would not be found??/
All of this is looking for difficulties that do not exist.
.-.-.-.-.- the natural sequence of ideas.
When conditions are more or less equal among a people, there is naturally a great
number of people who have a mediocre fortune, for [they (ed.)] are not so poor as
to despair of bettering their lot and not so rich as to be satisfied with it. They will
have enough well-being to know the attractions of well-being, not enough to content
themselves with what they have. On the other hand, they will see a thousand ways to
alleviate the material misfortunes that they feel, and the more they see the paths to
deliver themselves from those misfortunes, the more impatiently will they bear them.
This class will be able to exist, to become strong and numerous among aristocratic
nations themselves.1 But in democracies, it will be dominant; it will be alone so to
speak; it will make the laws and opinions.
Now it is clear that this class will be naturally concentrated on the taste for .-.-.-.-.-
enjoyments, on all the instincts described above, and on commerce and industry at
the same time. Commerce and industry are not the causes of these instincts, but on
the contrary their products. What you can say is that commerce and industry increase
these instincts, because every passion grows with all the efforts that you make to satisfy
it and the more you concern yourself with it.
[To the side: As the number of mediocre fortunes increases and as the ease of
making great fortunes grows, all of this more and more true. America.]
1. Here the example of England. This class that ends by giving its instincts to a
people, but that cannot take the aristocratic form away from it. Particular causes such
as liberty, maritime commerce, openings to national industries that give this class
more intense tastes for well-being (Rubish, 1).
s4s4s4s4s4
c h a p t e r 2 0a
How Aristocracy Could
Emerge from Industry b
a. Of the aristocratic make-up of some of the industries of today.

I showed how democracy favored the development of industry; I am going to show
in what roundabout way industry in return leads back toward aristocracy.
It has been discovered in our time that when each worker was occupied only with
the same detail, the work as a whole was more perfect.
It has been discovered as well that to do something with less expense, it is necessary
to undertake it immediately on a very vast scale.
The first of the two discoveries lowers [v: ruins] and brutalizes the worker. The
second constantly raises the master. They introduce the principles of aristocracy into
the industrial class.
Now, as society in general becomes more democratic, since the need for inexpen-
sive manufactured objects becomes more general and more intense, the two discov-
eries above apply more frequently and more rigorously.
So equality disappears from the small society as it becomes established in the large
one (YTC, CVf, pp. 35–36).
Several ideas from this chapter come from the book of Viscount Alban de Villeneuve-
Bargemont, Économie politique chrétienne, ou recherches sur la nature et les causes du pau-
périsme, en France et en Europe . . . (Paris: Paulin, 1834), 2 vols., which Tocqueville had
used for his memoir on pauperism. Chapter XII of the first volume of Villeneuve-
Bargemont’s book has precisely this title, “The New Feudalism,” and contains in germ
the principal arguments of this chapter. See note s of p. 81 of the first volume.
b. I do not know where to place this chapter. Three systems:
1. It could perhaps be put in the first volume after the chapter that considers equal-
ity as the universal fact. It would show the exception and would complete the picture.
In this case, it must perhaps be developed a bit.
2. It could perhaps be put before the chapter on salaries. In this case, it will have
to be shortened.
3. I think, for the moment, that the best place would be after the chapter where I
say that democracy pushes toward industrial careers. It would then be necessary to
980
aristrocracy from industry 981
I showed how democracy favored the development of industry and im-

measurably multiplied the number of industrialists; we are going to see in
what roundabout way industry in turn could well lead men toward
aristocracy.
It has been recognized that when a worker is occupied every day only
with the same detail, the general production of the work is achieved more
easily, more rapidly and more economically.
It has been recognized as well that the more an industry was undertaken
on a large scale, with great capital and large credit, the less expensive its
products were.c
These truths have been seen dimly for a long time, but they have been
demonstrated in our time. They are already applied to several very impor-
tant industries, and the smallest industries are successively making use of
them.
get into the matter a bit differently and bring out the link between this chapter and
that which precedes. Something like this:
I said that democracy pushes men toward industry, and industry, such as it seems
to want to be constituted today, tends to lead them back toward aristocracy./
Every society begins with aristocracy; industry is subject to this law (Rubish, 2).
c. In the margin, in the rubish: “<Now, these discoveries must be considered as the
two sources from which aristocracy can escape once again to cover the world.> 2 July
1837” (Rubish, 2).
There is perhaps no point on which modern critics of Tocqueville are in more agree-
ment than on his ignorance of the changes that took place in America and in Europe
during the first half of the XIXth century in matters of industry, of the process of ur-
banization, and the little attention that he gave to steamboats, canals, railroads and other
technical progress. The publication of his travel notes and the book of Seymour Drescher
(Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform, New York: Harper and Row, 1968) show,
however, that his description of Manchester is largely devoted to the results of indus-
trialization and that, far from being unaware of the problem, he knew about it and was
preoccupied by it.
If Tocqueville evokes the problem of industrialization only rapidly, it is above all
because the purpose of his work, like his anti-materialism, scarcely pushes him there.
What interests him is the energy (acquiring money and the taste for material well-being)
that creates industry and the effects that it produces (the new manufacturing aristocracy).
According to Seymour Drescher again (Tocqueville and England, Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1964, pp. 60–61), the friendship of Senior would have had a
real influence on Tocqueville’s ideas about the economy. See Voyage en Angleterre, OC,
V, 2, especially pages 67–68 and 78–85.
I see nothing in the political world that should occupy the legislator more
than these two new axioms of industrial science.
When an artisan devotes himself constantly and solely to the fabrication
of a single object, he ends by acquitting himself of this work with a singular
dexterity. But he loses, at the same time, the general ability to apply his
mind to directing the work. Each day he becomes more skillful and less
industrious, and you can say that in him the man becomes degraded as the
worker improves.
What should you expect from a man who has used twenty years of his
life making pinheads? And in his case, to what in the future can the powerful
human intelligence, which has often stirred the world, be applied, if not
to searching for the best way to make pinheads!
When a worker has in this way consumed a considerable portion of his
existence, his thought has stopped forever near the daily object of his labor;
his body has contracted certain fixed habits that he is no longer allowed to
give up. In a word, he no longer belongs to himself, but to the profession
that he chose. Laws and mores have in vain taken care to break down all
the barriers around this man and to open for him in all directions a thou-
sand different roads toward fortune; an industrial theory more powerful
than mores and laws has bound him to an occupation and often to a place
in society that he cannot leave. Amid the universal movement, it has made
him immobile.
As the principle of the division of labor is more completely applied, the
worker becomes weaker, more limited, and more dependent. The art makes
progress, the artisan goes backward. On the other hand, as it becomes
clearer that the larger the scale of manufacturing and the greater the capital,
the more perfect and the less expensive the products of an industry are, very
rich and very enlightened men arise to exploit industries that, until then,
have been left to ignorant and poor artisans. The greatness of the necessary
efforts and the immensity of the results to achieve attract them.
Thus, at the same time that industrial science constantly lowers the class
of workers, it raises the class of masters.
While the worker applies his intelligence more and more to the study
of a single detail, the master casts his sight every day over a broader whole,
and his mind expands in proportion as that of the worker contracts. Soon
nothing will be needed by the worker except physical strength without in-
telligence; the master needs knowledge, and almost genius to succeed. The
one more and more resembles the administrator of a vast empire, and the
other a brute.
So the master and the worker are not in any way similar here, and every
day they differ more. They are no longer held together except as the two
end links of a long chain. Each one occupies a place made for him and does
not leave it. The one is in a continual, narrow and necessary dependence
on the other, and seems born to obey, as the latter to command.
What is this, if not aristocracy?d
As conditions become more and more equal in the body of the nation,
the need for manufactured objects becomes more general and increases, and
an inexpensive price that puts these objects within reach of mediocre for-
tunes becomes a greater element of success.
So every day more opulent and more enlightened men are found who
devote their wealth and their knowledge to industry and who seek, by open-
ing great workshops and strictly dividing labor, to satisfy the new desires
that appear on all sides.
Thus, as the mass of the nation turns to democracy, the particular class
that is concerned with industry becomes more aristocratic. Men show
themselves more and more similar in the nation and more and more dif-
ferent in the particular class, and inequality increases in the small society
in proportion as it decreases in the large one.
In this way, when you go back to the source, it seems that you see aris-
tocracy come by a natural effort from the very heart of democracy.
But that aristocracy does not resemble the aristocracies that preceded it.
You will notice first that, applying only to industry and to a few of the
d. “Examine a bit practically the question of knowing how you could re-create an
aristocracy of fortunes, bring together (illegible word), give privileges.
“Piece on the impossibility of a new aristocracy, 2nd vol., p. 425” (YTC, CVc, p. 55).
This concerns p. 635 of the second volume.
industrial professions, it is an exception, a monstrosity, within the whole

of the social state.
The small aristocratic societies formed by certain industries amid the
immense democracy of our time include, like the great aristocratic societies
of former times, a few very opulent men and a multitude of very miserable
ones.
These poor have few means to emerge from their condition and to be-
come rich, but the rich constantly become poor, or leave trade after having
realized their profits. Thus, the elements that form the class of the poor are
more or less fixed; but the elements that compose the class of the rich are
not. Truly speaking, although there are rich men, the class of the rich does
not exist; for these rich men have neither spirit nor aims in common, nor
shared traditions or shared hopes. So there are members, but not a corps.
Not only are the rich not united solidly with each other, but you can say
that there is no true bond between the poor and the rich.
They are not fixed in perpetuity next to each other; at every moment
interest draws them closer and separates them. The worker depends in gen-
eral on the master, but not on a particular master. These two men see each
other at the factory and do not know each other elsewhere, and while they
touch at one point, they remain very far apart at all others. The manufac-
turer asks the worker only for his work, and the worker expects from him
only a salary. The one does not commit himself to protecting, nor the other
to defending, and they are not linked in a permanent way, either by habit
or by duty.
The aristocracy established by trade hardly ever settles amid the indus-
trial population that it directs; its goal is not to govern the latter, but to
make use of it.
An aristocracy thus constituted cannot have a great hold on those it em-
ploys; and if it manages to seize them for a moment, they soon escape. It
does not know what it wants and cannot act.
The territorial aristocracy of past centuries was obligated by law, or be-
lieved itself obligated by mores, to come to the aid of those who served it
and to relieve their miseries. But the manufacturing aristocracy of today,
after impoverishing and brutalizing the men it uses, delivers them in times
of crisis to public charity to be fed. This results naturally from what pre-
cedes. Between the worker and the master, contacts are frequent, but there
is no true association.
I think that, everything considered, the manufacturing aristocracy that
we see arising before our eyes is one of the harshest that has appeared on
the earth; but at the same time it is one of the most limited and least
dangerous.
Nonetheless, it is in this direction that the friends of democracy must
with anxiety constantly turn their attention; for if permanent inequality of
conditions and aristocracy ever penetrate the world again, you can predict
that they will come in through this door.

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Alexis de Tocqueville

Translated from the French by James T. Schleifer

a bilingual french-english edition

liberty fund, inc.

Key Terms xxvi

List of Illustrations xlv

Editor’s Introduction xlvii

chapter 1: Exterior Configuration of North America 33

chapter 2: Of the Point of Departure and Its Importance for

chapter 3: Social State of the Anglo-Americans 74

Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans 89

chapter 4: Of the Principle of the Sovereignty of the People

chapter 5: Necessity of Studying What Happens in the

chapter 6: Of the Judicial Power in the United States and Its

chapter 7: Of Political Jurisdiction in the United States 179

chapter 8: Of the Federal Constitution 186

chapter 1: How It Can Be Strictly Said That in the United

chapter 2: Of Parties in the United States 279

chapter 3: Of Freedom of the Press in the United States 289

chapter 4: Of Political Association in the United States 302

chapter 5: Of the Government of Democracy in America 313

Of the Manner in Which American Democracy Conducts the Foreign

chapter 7: Of the Omnipotence of the Majority in the United

chapter 8: Of What Tempers Tyranny of the Majority in the

chapter 9: Of the Principal Causes That Tend to Maintain the

Of the Influence of Laws on Maintaining the Democratic Republic in the

Part I: Influence of Democracy on the

chapter 1: Of the Philosophical Method of the Americans 697

chapter 2: Of the Principal Source of Beliefs among

chapter 3: Why the Americans Show More Aptitude and Taste

chapter 4: Why the Americans Have Never Been as Passionate

chapter 5: How, in the United States, Religion Knows How to

chapter 6: Of the Progress of Catholicism in the United States 754

chapter 7: What Makes the Minds of Democratic Peoples

chapter 8: How Equality Suggests to the Americans the Idea of

chapter 9: How the Example of the Americans Does Not Prove

chapter 10: Why the Americans Are More Attached to the

chapter 13: Literary Physiognomy of Democratic Centuries 800

chapter 14: Of the Literary Industry 813

chapter 15: Why the Study of Greek and Latin Literature Is

chapter 16: How American Democracy Has Modified the

chapter 17: Of Some Sources of Poetry among

chapter 18: Why American Writers and Orators Are

chapter 19: Some Observations on the Theater of

chapter 20: Of Some Tendencies Particular to Historians in

chapter 21: Of Parliamentary Eloquence in the United States 861

Part II: Influence of Democracy on the

chapter 1: Why Democratic Peoples Show a More Ardent and

chapter 2: Of Individualism in Democratic Countries 881

chapter 3: How Individualism Is Greater at the End of a

chapter 4: How the Americans Combat Individualism with

chapter 5: Of the Use That Americans Make of Association

chapter 6: Of the Relation between Associations

chapter 7: Relations between Civil Associations and

chapter 8: How the Americans Combat Individualism by the

chapter 9: How the Americans Apply the Doctrine of Interest

chapter 10: Of the Taste for Material Well-Being in America 930

chapter 11: Of the Particular Effects Produced by the Love of

chapter 12: Why Certain Americans Exhibit So Excited