 Part 3 Chapter 17 and 18 of Democracy in America, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by John Lieder. Democracy in America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated by Henry Rieve. Part 3 Chapter 17 That the aspect of society in the United States is at once excited and monotonous. It would seem that nothing can be more adapted to stimulate and to feed curiosity than the aspect of the United States. Fortunes, opinions, and laws are there in ceaseless variation. It is as if immutable nature herself were immutable, such are the changes worked upon her by the hand of man. But in the end the sight of this excited community becomes monotonous, and after having watched the moving pageant for a time the spectator is tired of it. Amongst aristocratic nations every man is pretty nearly stationary in his own sphere, but men are astonishingly unlike each other. Their passions, their notions, their habits, and their tastes are essentially different. Nothing changes, but everything differs. In democracies, on the contrary, all men are alike and do things pretty nearly alike. It is true that they are subject to great and frequent vicissitudes, but as the same events of good or adverse fortune are continually recurring, the name of the actors only is changed, the peace is always the same. The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing, but it is monotonous, because all these changes are alike. Men living in democratic ages have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches or proceed from it. The cause of this is not that their souls are narrower, but that the importance of money is really greater at such times. When all the members of a community are independent of or indifferent to each other, the cooperation of each of them can only be obtained by paying for it. This infinitely multiplies the purposes to which wealth may be applied, and increases its value. When the reverence which belonged to what is old has vanished, birth, condition, and profession no longer distinguish men, or scarcely distinguish them at all. Hardly anything but money remains to create strongly marked differences between them, and to raise some of them above the common level. The distinction originating in wealth is increased by the disappearance and diminution of all other distinctions. Amongst aristocratic nations, money only reaches to a few points on the vast circle of man's desires. In democracies it seems to lead to all. The love of wealth is therefore to be traced either as a principle or an accessory motive at the bottom of all that the Americans do. This gives to all their passions a sort of family likeness, and soon renders the survey of them exceedingly wearisome. This perpetual recurrence of the same passion is monotonous, the peculiar methods by which this passion seeks its own gratification are no less so. In an orderly and constituted democracy like the United States, where men cannot enrich themselves by war, by public office, or by political confiscation, the love of wealth mainly drives them into business and manufactures. Although these pursuits often bring about great commotions and disasters, they cannot prosper without strictly regular habits and a long routine of petty uniform acts. The stronger the passion is, the more regular are these habits, and the more uniform are these acts. It may be said that it is the vehemence of their desires which makes the Americans so methodical. It perturbs their minds, but it disciplines their lives. The remark I here apply to America may indeed be addressed to almost all our contemporaries. Variety is disappearing from the human race. The same ways of acting, thinking, and feeling are to be met with all over the world. This is not only because nations work more upon each other and are more faithful in their mutual imitation, but as the men of each country relinquish more and more the peculiar opinions and feelings of a caste, a profession, or a family. They simultaneously arrive at something nearer to the Constitution of Man, which is everywhere the same. Thus they become more alike, even without having imitated each other. Like travellers scattered about some large wood, which is intersected by paths converging to one point, if all of them keep their eyes fixed upon that point in advance towards it, they insensibly draw nearer together, though they seek not, though they see not, though they know not each other, and they will be surprised at length to find themselves all collected on the same spot. All the nations which take, not any particular man but man himself, as the object of their researches and their imitations, are tending in the end to a similar state of society, like these travellers converging to the central plot of the forest. CHAPTER XVIII OF HONOR IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITIES It would seem that men employ two very distinct methods in the public estimation of the actions of their fellow men. At one time they judge them by those simple notions of right and wrong which are diffused all over the world. At another they refer their decision to a very few special notions which belong exclusively to some particular age and country. FUTONOTE The word honor is not always used in the same sense either in French or English. 1. It first signifies the dignity, glory, or reverence which a man receives from his kind, and in this sense a man is said to acquire honor. 2. Honor signifies the aggregate of those rules by the assistance of which this dignity, glory, or reverence is obtained. Thus we say that a man has always strictly obeyed the laws of honor or a man has violated his honor. In this chapter the word is always used in the latter sense. END OF FUTONOTE It often happens that these two rules differ. They sometimes conflict, but they are never either entirely identified or entirely annulled by one another. Honor, at the periods of its greatest power, sways the will more than the belief of men, and even whilst they yield without hesitation and without a murmur to its dictates, they feel notwithstanding, by a dim but mighty instinct, the existence of a more general, more ancient, and more holy law, which they sometimes disobey, although they ceased not to acknowledge it. Some actions have been held to be at the same time virtuous and dishonorable. A refusal to fight a duel is a case in point. I think these peculiarities may be otherwise explained than by the mere caprices of certain individuals and nations, as has he or two been the customary mode of reasoning on the subject. Mankind is subject to general and lasting wants, that have engendered moral laws, to the neglect of which men have ever and in all places attached the notion of censure and shame. To infringe them was to do ill. To do well was to conform to them. Within the bosom of this vast association of the human race lesser associations have been formed which are called nations, and amidst these nations further subdivisions have assumed the names of classes or castes. Each of these associations forms, as it were, a separate species of the human race, and though it has no essential difference from the mass of mankind, to a certain extent it stands apart and has certain wants peculiar to itself. To these special wants must be attributed the modifications which affect in various degrees and in different countries the mode of considering human actions, and the estimate which ought to be formed of them. It is the general and permanent interest of mankind that men should not kill each other, but it may happen to be the peculiar and temporary interest of a people or a class to justify or even to honor homicide. Honor is simply that peculiar rule founded upon a peculiar state of society by the application of which a people or a class allot praise or blame. Nothing is more unproductive to the mind than an abstract idea. I therefore hasten to call in the aid of facts and examples to illustrate my meaning. I select the most extraordinary kind of honor which was ever known in the world, and that which we are best acquainted with, these, aristocratic honor springing out of a feudal society. I shall explain it by means of the principle already laid down, and I shall explain the principle by means of the illustration. I am not here led to inquire when and how the aristocracy of the Middle Ages came into existence, why it was so deeply severed from the remainder of the nation or what founded and consolidated its power. I take its existence as an established fact, and I am endeavoring to account for the peculiar view which it took of the greater part of human actions. The first thing that strikes me is that in the feudal world actions were not always praised or blamed with reference to their intrinsic worth, but that they were sometimes appreciated exclusively with reference to the person who was the actor or the object of them, which is repugnant to the general conscience of mankind. Thus some of the actions which were indifferent on the part of a man in humble life dishonored a noble. Others changed their whole character according as the person aggrieved by them belonged or did not belong to the aristocracy. When these different notions first arose the nobility formed a distinct body amidst the people which it commanded from the inaccessible heights where it was ensconced. To maintain this peculiar position which constituted its strength it not only required political privileges but it required a standard of right and wrong for its own special use. That some particular virtue or vice belonged to the nobility rather than to the humble classes that certain actions were guiltless when they affected the villain which were criminal when they touched the noble these were often arbitrary matters. But that honor or shame should be attached to a man's actions according to his condition was a result of the internal constitution of an aristocratic community. This has been actually the case in all the countries which have had an aristocracy. As long as a trace of the principal remains these peculiarities will still exist. To debouch a woman of color scarcely injures the reputation of an American. To marry her dishonors him. In some cases feudal honor enjoined revenge and stigmatized the forgiveness of insults. In others it imperiously commanded men to conquer their own passions and imposed forgetfulness of self. It did not make humanity or kindness its law but it extolled generosity. It set more store on liberality than on benevolence. It allowed men to enrich themselves by gambling or by war but not by labor. It preferred great crimes to small earnings. Cupidity was less distasteful to it than avarice. It often sanctioned but cunning and treachery it invariably reprobated as contemptible. These fantastical notions did not proceed exclusively from the caprices of those who entertained them. A class which has succeeded in placing itself at the head of and above all others and which makes perpetual exertions to maintain this lofty position must especially honor those virtues which are conspicuous for their dignity and splendor and which may be easily combined with pride and the love of power. Such men would not hesitate to invert the natural order of the conscience in order to give those virtues precedence before all others. It may even be conceived that some of the more bold and brilliant vices would readily be set above the quiet, unpretending virtues. The very existence of such a class in society renders these things unavoidable. The nobles of the Middle Ages placed military courage foremost amongst virtues and in lieu of many of them. This was again a peculiar opinion which arose necessarily from the peculiarity of the state of society. Feudal aristocracy existed by war and for war. Its power had been founded by arms and by arms that power was maintained. It therefore required nothing more than military courage and that quality was naturally exalted above all others. Whatever denoted it, even at the expense of reason and humanity, was therefore approved and frequently enjoined by the manners of the time. Such was the main principle. The caprice of man was only to be traced in minuteer details. That a man should regard a tap on the cheek as an unbearable insult and should be obliged to kill in single combat the person who struck him thus lightly is an arbitrary rule. With that a noble could not tranquilly receive an insult and was dishonored if he allowed himself to take a blow without fighting were direct consequences of the fundamental principles and the wants of military aristocracy. Thus it was true to a certain extent to assert that the laws of honor were capricious. But these caprices of honor were always confined within certain necessary limits. The peculiar rule which was called honor by our forefathers is so far from being an arbitrary law in my eyes that I would readily engage to ascribe its most incoherent and fantastical injunctions to a small number of fixed and invariable wants inherent in feudal society. If I were to trace the notion of feudal honor into the domain of politics I should not find it more difficult to explain its dictates. The state of society and the political institutions of the Middle Ages were such that the supreme power of the nation never governed the community directly. The power did not exist in the eyes of the people. Every man looked up to a certain individual whom he was bound to obey. By that intermediate personage he was connected with all the others. Thus in feudal society the whole system of the Commonwealth rested upon the sentiment of fidelity to the person of the Lord. To destroy that sentiment was to open the slewises of anarchy. Fidelity to a political superior was, moreover, a sentiment of which all the members of the aristocracy had constant opportunities of estimating the importance. For every one of them was a vassal, as well as a Lord, and had to command as well as to obey. To remain faithful to the Lord, to sacrifice oneself for him if called upon, to share his good or evil fortunes, to stand by him in his undertakings whatever they might be, such were the first injunctions of feudal honor in relation to the political institutions of those times. The treachery of a vassal was branded with extraordinary severity by public opinion, and a name of peculiar infamy was invented for the offense which was called felony. On the contrary, few traces are to be found in the Middle Ages of the passion which constituted the life of the nations of antiquity. I mean patriotism. The word itself is not a very ancient date in the language. Footnote. Even the word patrie was not used by the French writers until the sixteenth century. End of footnote. Fuelled institutions concealed the country at large from men's sight and rendered the love of it less necessary. The nation was forgotten in the passions which attached men to persons. Hence it was no part of the strict law of feudal honor to remain faithful to one's country. Not indeed that the love of their country did not exist in the hearts of our forefathers, but it constituted a dim and feeble instinct which has grown more clear and strong in proportion as aristocratic classes have been abolished and the supreme power of the nation centralized. This may be clearly seen from the contrary judgments which European nations have passed upon the various events of their histories according to the generations by which such judgments have been formed. The circumstance which most dishonored the Constable de Bourbon in the eyes of his contemporaries was that he bore arms against his king. That which most dishonors him in our eyes is that he made war against his country. We brand him as deeply as our forefathers did, but for different reasons. I have chosen the honor of feudal times by way of illustration of my meaning because its characteristics are more distinctly marked and more familiar to us than those of any other period. But I might have taken an example elsewhere and I should have reached the same conclusion by a different road. Although we are less perfectly acquainted with the Romans than with our own ancestors yet we know that certain peculiar notions of glory and disgrace obtained amongst them which were not solely derived from the general principles of right and wrong. Many human actions were judged differently according as they affected a Roman citizen or a stranger, a free man or a slave, certain vices were blazoned abroad, certain virtues were extolled above all others. During that age, says Plutarch in the life of Coriolanus, Marshal Prous was more honored and prized in Rome than all the other virtues in so much that it was called vertus, the name of virtue itself, by applying the name of the kind to this particular species so that virtue in Latin was as much as to say valor. Can anyone fail to recognize the peculiar want of that singular community which was formed for the conquest of the world? Any nation would furnish us with similar grounds of observation, for, as I have already remarked, whenever men collect together as a distinct community the notion of honor instantly grows up amongst them, that is to say a system of opinions peculiar to themselves as to what is blamable or commendable, and these peculiar rules always originate in the special habits and special interests of the community. This is applicable to a certain extent to democratic communities as well as to others, as we shall now proceed to prove by the example of the Americans. Footnote I speak here of the Americans inhabiting those states where slavery does not exist. They alone can be said to present a complete picture of democratic society. End of footnote. Some loose notions of the older aristocratic honor of Europe are still to be found scattered amongst the opinions of the Americans, but these traditional opinions are few a number. They have but little root in the country and but little power. They are like a religion which has still some temples left standing, though men have ceased to believe in it. But amidst these half obliterated notions of exotic honor, some new opinions have sprung up which constitute what may be termed in our days American honor. I have shown how the Americans are constantly driven to engage in commerce and industry. Their origin, their social condition, their political institutions, and even the spot they inhabit urge them irresistibly in this direction. Their present condition is then that of an almost exclusively manufacturing and commercial association placed in the midst of a new and boundless country which their principal object is to explore for purposes of profit. This is the characteristic which most peculiarly distinguishes the American people from all others at the present time. All those quiet virtues which tend to give a regular movement to the community and to encourage business will therefore be held in particular honor by that people and to neglect those virtues will be to incur public contempt. All the more turbulent virtues which often dazzle but more frequently disturb society will on the contrary occupy a subordinate rank in the estimation of this same people. They may be neglected without forfeiting the esteem of the community. To acquire them would perhaps be to run a risk of losing it. The Americans make a no less arbitrary classification of men's vices. There are certain propensities which appear censurable to the general reason and the universal conscience of mankind, but which happen to agree with the peculiar and temporary wants of the American community. These propensities are lightly reproved, sometimes even encouraged. For instance, the love of wealth and the secondary propensities connected with it may be more particularly cited. To clear, to till, and to transform the vast uninhabited continent which is his domain, the American requires the daily support of an energetic passion. That passion can only be the love of wealth. The passion for wealth is therefore not reprobated in America and provided it does not go beyond the bounds assigned to it for public security, it is held in honor. The American lauds as noble and praiseworthy ambition what our own forefathers in the Middle Ages stigmatized as servile cupidity, such as he treats as a blind and barbarous frenzy that ardor of conquest and martial temper which bore them to battle. In the United States fortunes are lost and regained without difficulty. The country is boundless and its resources inexhaustible. The people have all the wants and cravings of a grown creature and whatever be their efforts they are always surrounded by more than they can appropriate. It is not the ruin of a few individuals which may be soon repaired, but the inactivity and sloth of the community at large which would be fatal to such a people. Boldness of enterprise is the foremost cause of its rapid progress, its strength and its greatness. Commercial business is there like a vast lottery, by which a small number of men continually lose, but the state is always a gainer. Such a people ought therefore to encourage and do honor to boldness in commercial speculations, but any bold speculation risks the fortune of the speculator and of all those who put their trust in him. The Americans, who make a virtue of commercial temerity, have no right in any case to brand with disgrace those who practice it. Hence arises the strange indulgence which is shown to bankrupts in the United States. Their honor does not suffer by such an accident. In this respect the Americans differ not only from the nations of Europe, but from all the commercial nations of our time, and accordingly they resemble none of them in their position or their wants. In America all those vices which tend to impair the purity of morals and to destroy the conjugal tie are treated with a degree of severity which is unknown in the rest of the world. At first sight this seems strangely at variance with the tolerance shown there on other subjects, and one is surprised to meet with a morality so relaxed and so austere amongst the self-same people. But these things are less incoherent than they may seem to be. Public opinion in the United States very gently represses that love of wealth which promotes the commercial greatness and the prosperity of the nation, and it especially condemns that laxity of morals which diverts the human mind from the pursuit of well-being and disturbs the internal order of domestic life which is so necessary to success in business. To earn the esteem of their countrymen the Americans are therefore constrained to adapt themselves to orderly habits, and it may be said in this sense that they make it a matter of honor to live chastely. In one point American honor accords with the notions of honor acknowledged in Europe. It places courage as the highest virtue, and treats it as the greatest of the moral necessities of man, but the notion of courage itself assumes a different aspect. In the United States Marshal Valor is but little prized. The courage which is best known and most esteemed is that which emboldens men to brave the dangers of the ocean in order to arrive earlier in port, to support the privations of the wilderness without complaint and solitude more cruel than privations, the courage which renders them almost insensible to the loss of a fortune laboriously acquired, and instantly prompts to fresh exertions to make another. Courage of this kind is peculiarly necessary to the maintenance and prosperity of the American communities, and it is held by them in peculiar honor and estimation. To betray a want of it is to incur certain disgrace. I have yet another characteristic point which may serve to place the idea of this chapter in stronger relief. In a democratic society like that of the United States, where fortunes are scanty and insecure, everybody works, and work opens away to everything. This has changed the point of honor quite round and has turned it against idleness. I have sometimes met in America with young men of wealth, personally disinclined to all laborious exertion, but who had been compelled to embrace a profession. Their disposition and their fortune allowed them to remain without employment. Public opinion forbad it too imperiously to be disobeyed. In the European countries, on the contrary, where aristocracy is still struggling with the flood which overwhelms it, I have often seen men, constantly spurred on by their wants and desires, remain in idleness in order not to lose the esteem of their equals, and I have known them submit to ennui and privations rather than to work. No one can fail to perceive that these opposite obligations are two different rules of conduct, both nevertheless originating in the notion of honor. What our forefathers designated as honor absolutely was in reality only one of its forms. They gave a generic name to what was only a species. Honor, therefore, is to be found in democratic as well as in aristocratic ages, but it will not be difficult to show that it assumes a different aspect in the former. It only are its injunctions different, but we shall shortly see that they are less numerous, less precise, and that its dictates are less rigorously obeyed. The position of a caste is always much more peculiar than that of a people. Nothing is so much out of the way of the world as a small community invariably composed of the same families, as was, for instance, the aristocracy of the Middle Ages, whose object is to concentrate and to retain exclusively and hereditarily education, wealth, and power amongst its own members. But the more out of the way the position of a community happens to be, the more numerous are its special wants, and the more extensive are its notions of honor corresponding to those wants. The rules of honor will therefore always be less numerous amongst a people not divided into castes than among any other. If ever any nations are constituted in which it may even be difficult to find any peculiar classes of society, the notion of honor will be confined to a small number of precepts, which will be more and more in accordance with the moral laws adopted by the mass of mankind. Thus the laws of honor will be less peculiar and less multifarious amongst a democratic people than in an aristocracy. They will also be more obscure, and this is a necessary consequence of what goes before, for as the distinguishing marks of honor are less numerous and less peculiar, it must often be difficult to distinguish them. To this, other reasons may be added. Amongst the aristocratic nations of the Middle Ages, generations succeeded generation in vain. Each family was like a never-dying, ever-stationary man, and the state of opinions was hardly more changeable than that of conditions. Everyone then had always the same objects before his eyes, which he contemplated from the same point. His eyes gradually detected the smallest details, and his discernment could not fail to become in the end clear and accurate. Thus not only had the men of few old times very extraordinary opinions in matters of honor, but each of those opinions was present to their minds under a clear and precise form. This can never be the case in America where all men are in constant motion, and where society, transformed daily by its own operations, changes its opinions together with its wants. In such a country men have glimpses of the rules of honor, but they have seldom time to fix attention upon them. But even if society were motionless, it would still be difficult to determine the meaning which ought to be attached to the word honor. In the Middle Ages, as each class had its own honor, the same opinion was never received at the same time by a large number of men, and this rendered it possible to give it a determined and accurate form, which was the more easy, as all those by whom it was received, having a perfectly identical and most peculiar position, were naturally disposed to agree upon the points of a law which was made for themselves alone. Thus the code of honor became a complete and detailed system in which everything was anticipated and provided for beforehand, and a fixed and always palpable standard was applied to human actions. Amongst a democratic nation, like the Americans, in which ranks are identified and the whole of society forms one single mass, composed of elements which are all analogous, though not entirely similar, it is impossible ever to agree beforehand on what shall or shall not be allowed by the laws of honor. Amongst that people, indeed, some national wants do exist which give rise to opinions common to the whole nation on points of honor. But these opinions never occur at the same time, in the same manner, or with the same intensity to the minds of the whole community. The law of honor exists, but it has no organs to promulgate it. The confusion is far greater still in a democratic country like France, where the different classes of which the former fabric of society was composed, being brought together but not yet mingled, import day by day into each others' circles various and sometimes conflicting notions of honor, where every man, at his own will and pleasure, forsakes one portion of his forefather's creed, and retains another so that, amidst so many arbitrary measures, no common rule can ever be established, and it is almost impossible to predict which actions will be held in honor and which will be thought disgraceful. Such times are wretched, but they are of short duration. As honor, amongst democratic nations, is imperfectly defined, its influence is of course less powerful, for it is difficult to apply with certainty and firmness a law which is not distinctly known. Public opinion, the natural and supreme interpreter of the laws of honor, not clearly discerning to which side censure or approval ought to lean, can only pronounce a hesitating judgment. Sometimes the opinion of the public may contradict itself. More frequently it does not act and lets things pass. The weakness of the sense of honor in democracies also arises from several other causes. In aristocratic countries, the same notions of honor are always entertained by only a few persons, always limited in number, often separated from the rest of their fellow citizens. Honor is easily mingled and identified in their minds with the idea of all that distinguishes their own position. It appears to them as the chief characteristic of their own rank. They apply its different rules with all the warmth of personal interest, and they feel, if I may use the expression, a passion for complying with its dictates. This truth is extremely obvious in the old black-letter law books on the subject of trial by battle. The nobles, in their disputes, were bound to use the lance and sword, or as the villains used only sticks amongst themselves, in as much as, to use the words of the old books, villains have no honor. This did not mean, as it may be imagined at the present day, that these people were contemptible, but simply that their actions were not to be judged by the same rules which were applied to the actions of the aristocracy. It is surprising at first sight that when the sense of honor is most predominant, its injunctions are usually most strange, so that the further it is removed from common reason, the better it is obeyed. Whence it has sometimes been inferred that the laws of honor were strengthened by their own extravagance. The two things indeed originate from the same source, but the one is not derived from the other. Honor becomes fantastical in proportion to the peculiarity of the wants which it denotes, and the paucity of the men by whom those wants are felt, and it is because it denotes wants of this kind that its influence is great. Thus the notion of honor is not the stranger for being fantastical, but it is fantastical and strong from the self-same cause. Further, amongst aristocratic nations each rank is different, but all ranks are fixed. Every man occupies a place in his own sphere which he cannot relinquish, and he lives there amidst other men who are bound by the same ties. Amongst these nations no man can either hope or fear to escape being seen. No man is placed so low, but that he has a stage of his own, and none can avoid censure or applause by this obscurity. In democratic states, on the contrary, where all the members of the community are mingled in the same crowd and in constant agitation, public opinion has no hold on men. They disappear at every instant and elude its power. Consequently, the dictates of honor will be there less imperious and less stringent, for honor acts solely for the public eye, differing in disrespect from mere virtue, which lives upon itself contented and with its own approval. If the reader has distinctly apprehended all that goes before, he will understand that there is a close and necessary relation between the inequality of social conditions and what has here been styled honor, a relation which, if I am not mistaken, had not before been clearly pointed out. I shall therefore make one more attempt to illustrate it satisfactorily. Suppose a nation stands apart from the rest of mankind, independently of certain general wants inherent in the human race. It will also have wants and interests peculiar to itself. Certain opinions of censure or approbation forthwith arise in the community which are peculiar to itself and which are styled honor by the members of that community. Now suppose that in the same nation a cast arises which in its turn stands apart from all the other classes and contracts certain peculiar wants, which give rise in their turn to special opinions. The honor of this cast, composed of a medley of the peculiar notions of the nation and the still more peculiar notions of the cast, will be as remote as it is possible to conceive from the simple and general opinions of men. Having reached this extreme point of the argument, I now return. When ranks are commingled and privileges abolished, the men of whom a nation is composed being once more equal and alike, their interests and wants become identical, and all the peculiar notions which each cast styled honor successively disappear. The notion of honor no longer proceeds from any other source than the wants peculiar to the nation at large, and it denotes the individual character of that nation to the world. Lastly, if it be allowable to suppose that all the races of mankind should be commingled and that all the peoples of the earth should ultimately come to have the same interests, the same wants, undistinguished from each other by any characteristic peculiarities, no conventional value whatever would then be attached to men's actions. They would all be regarded by all in the same light. The general necessities of mankind, revealed by their conscience to every man, would become the common standard. The simple and general notions of right and wrong only would then be recognized in the world, to which, by a natural and a necessary tie, the idea of censure or approbation would be attached. Thus, to comprise all my meaning in a single proposition, the dissimilarities and inequalities of men give rise to the notion of honor. That notion is weakened in proportion as these differences are obliterated, and with them it would disappear. And of Part 3, Chapter 18, Recording by John Leader Bloomington, Illinois. Part 3, chapters 19 and 20 of Democracy in America, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information on to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Democracy in America, Volume 2, by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by Henry Reeve. Part 3, Chapter 19. Why so many ambitious men and so little lofty ambition are to be found in the United States? The first thing which strikes a traveler in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to throw off their original condition. And the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the universally ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise, but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to drive at very lofty aims. All are constantly seeking to acquire property, power, and reputation. Few contemplate these things upon a great scale. And this is the more surprising as nothing is to be discerned in the manners or laws of America to limit desire or to prevent it from spreading its impulses in every direction. It seems difficult to attribute this singular state of things to the equality of social conditions, for at the instant when that same equality was established in France, the flight of ambition became unbounded. Nevertheless, I think that the principal cause, which may be assigned to this fact, is to be found in the social condition and democratic manners of the Americans. All revolutions enlarge the ambition of men. This proposition is more particularly true of those revolutions which overthrow an aristocracy. When the form of barriers which kept back the multitude from fame and power are suddenly thrown down, a violent and universal rise takes place towards that eminence so long coveted and at length to be enjoyed. In this first burst of triumph, nothing seems impossible to anyone. Not only are desires boundless, but the power of satisfying them seems almost boundless, too. Amidst the general and sudden renewal of laws and customs, in this vast confusion of all men in all ordinances, the various members of the community rise and sink again with excessive rapidity. And power passes so quickly from hand to hand that none need despair of catching it in turn. It must be recollected, moreover, that the people who destroy an aristocracy have lived under its laws. They have witnessed its splendor, and they have unconsciously imbibed the feelings and notions which it entertained. Thus at the moment when an aristocracy is dissolved, its spirit still pervades the mass of the community, and its tendencies are retained long after it has been defeated. Ambition is therefore always extremely great as long as a democratic revolution lasts, and it will remain so for some time after the revolution is consummated. The reminiscence of the extraordinary events which men have witnessed is not obliterated from their memory in a day. The passions which a revolution has roused do not disappear at its close. A sense of instability remains in the midst of re-established order. A notion of easy success survives the strange vicissitudes which gave it birth. Desires still remain extremely enlarged when the means of satisfying them are diminished day by day. The taste for a large fortune subsists, though large fortunes are rare. And on every side we trace the ravages of inordinate and hapless ambition kindled in hearts which they consume in secret and in vain. At length, however, the last vestiges of the struggle are afaced. The remains of aristocracy completely disappear. The great events by which its fall was attended are forgotten. Peace succeeds to war and the sway of order is restored in the new realm. Desires are again adapted to the means by which they may be fulfilled. The wants, the opinions, and the feelings of men cohere once more. The level of the community is permanently determined in democratic society established. A democratic nation arrived at this permanent and regular state of things will present a very different spectacle from that which we have just described. And we may readily conclude that if ambition becomes great whilst the conditions of society are growing equal, it loses that quality when they have grown so. As wealth is subdivided and knowledge diffused, no one is entirely destitute of education or of property. The privileges and disqualifications of caste being abolished and men having shattered the bonds which held them fixed. The notion of advancement suggests itself to every mind. The desire to rise swells in every heart and all men want to mount above their station. Ambition is the universal feeling. But if the equality of conditions gives some resources to all the members of the community, it also prevents any of them from having resources of great extent, which necessarily circumscribes their desires within somewhat narrow limits. Thus amongst democratic nations, ambition is ardent and continual, but its aim is not habitually lofty, and life is generally spent in eagerly coveting small objects which are within reach. What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them. They strain their faculties to the utmost to achieve paltry results, and this cannot fail speedily to limit their discernment and to circumscribe their powers. They might be much poorer and still be greater. The small number of opulent citizens who are to be found amidst a democracy do not constitute an exception to this rule. A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power contracts in the course of this protracted labor habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A man cannot enlarge his mind as he would his house. The same observation is applicable to the sons of such a man. They are born, if it is true, in a lofty position, but their parents were humble. They have grown up amidst feelings and notions which they cannot afterwards easily get rid of, and it may be presumed that they will inherit the propensities of their father as well as his wealth. It may happen on the contrary that the poorest seon of a powerful aristocracy may display vast ambition because the traditional opinions of his race and the general spirit of his order still buoy him up for some time above his fortune. Another thing which prevents the men of democratic periods from easily indulging in the pursuit of lofty objects is the lapse of time which they foresee must take place before they can be ready to approach them. It is a great advantage, says Pascal, to be a man of quality since it brings one man as forward at 18 or 20 as another man would be at 50, which is a clear gain of 30 years. Those 30 years are commonly wanting to the ambitious characters of democracies, the principle of equality which allows every man to arrive at everything prevents all men from rapid advancements. In a democratic society as well as elsewhere, there are only a certain number of great fortunes to be made and as the paths which lead to them are indiscriminately open to all, the progress of all must necessarily be slackened. As the candidates appear to be nearly alike and as it is difficult to make a selection without infringing the principle of equality, which is the supreme law of democratic societies, the first idea which suggests itself is to make them all advance at the same rate and submit to the same probation. Thus in proportion as men become more alike and the principle of equality is more peaceably and deeply infused into the institutions and manners of the country, the rules of advancement become more inflexible, advancement itself slower, the difficulty of arriving quickly at a certain height far greater. From hatred of privilege and from the embarrassment of choosing all men are at least constrained, whatever may be their standard to pass the same ordeal. All are indiscriminately subjected to a multitude of petty preliminary exercises in which their youth is wasted and their imagination quenched so that the despair of ever-fulling attaining what is held out to them and when at length they are in a condition to perform any extraordinary acts the taste for such things has forsaken them. In China, where the equality of conditions is exceedingly great and very ancient, no man passes from one public office to another without undergoing a probationary trial. This probation occurs afresh at every stage of his career and the notion is now so rooted in the manners of the people that I remember to have read a Chinese novel in which the hero, after numberless crosses, succeeds at length in touching the heart of his mistress by taking honors. A lofty ambition breathes with difficulty in such an atmosphere. The remark I apply to politics extends to everything. Equality everywhere produces the same effects. Where the laws of a country do not regulate and retard the advancement of men by positive enactment, competition attains the same end. In a well-established democratic community great and rapid elevation is therefore rare. It forms an exception to the common rule and it is the singularity of such occurrences that makes men forget how rarely they happen. Men living in democracies ultimately discover these things. They find out at least that the laws of their country open a boundless field of action before them but that no one can hope to hasten across it. Between them and the final object of their desires, they perceive a multitude of small, intermediate impediments which must be slowly surmounted. This prospect wearies and discourages their ambition at once. They therefore give up hope so doubtful and remote to search nearer to themselves for less lofty and more easy enjoyments. Their horizon is not bounded by the laws but narrowed by themselves. I have remarked that lofty ambitions are more rare in the ages of democracy than in times of aristocracy. I may add that when in spite of these natural obstacles they do spring into existence, their character is different. In aristocracies the career of ambition is often wide but its boundaries are determined. In democracies ambition commonly ranges in a narrower field but if once it gets beyond that hardly any limits can be assigned to it. As men are individually weak as they live asunder and in constant motion as precedents are of little authority and laws but of short duration, resistance to novelty is languid and the fabric of society never appears perfectly erect or firmly consolidated. So that when once an ambitious man has the power in his grasp there is nothing he may noted are and when it is gone from him he meditates the overthrow of the state to regain it. This gives to great political ambition a character of revolutionary violence which it seldom exhibits to an equal degree in aristocratic communities. The common aspect of democratic nations will present a great number of small and very rational objects of ambition from amongst which a few ill controlled desires of a larger growth will let intervals break out but no such thing as ambition conceived and contrived on a vast scale is to be met with there. I have shown elsewhere by what secret influence the principle of equality makes the passion for physical gratifications and the exclusive love of the present predominate in the human heart. These different propensities mingle with the sentiment of ambition and tinge it as it were with their hues. I believe that ambitious men in democracies are less engrossed than any others with the interests and the judgment of posterity. The present moment alone engages and absorbs them. They are more apt to complete a number of undertakings with rapidity than to raise lasting monuments of their achievements and they care much more for success than for fame. What they most ask of men is obedience. What they most covet is empire. Their manners have in almost all cases remained below the height of their station. The consequence is that they frequently carry very low tastes into their extraordinary fortunes and that they seem to have acquired the supreme power only to minister to their course or paltry pleasures. I think that in our time it is very necessary to cleanse, to regulate and to adapt the feeling of ambition but that it would be extremely dangerous to seek to impoverish and to repress it over much. We should attempt to lay down certain extreme limits which it should never be allowed to outstep but its range within those established limits should not be too much checked. I confess that I apprehend much less for democratic society from the boldness than from the mediocrity of desires. What appears to me most to be dreaded is that in the midst of the small incessant occupations of private life, ambition should lose its vigor and its greatness, that the passions of man should be but at the same time be lowered so that the march of society should every day become more tranquil and less aspiring. I think then that the leaders of modern society would be wrong to seek to lull the community by a state of too uniform and too peaceful happiness and that it is well to expose it from time to time to matters of difficulty and danger in order to raise ambition and to give it a field of action. Moralists are constantly complaining that the ruling vice of the present time is pride. This is true in one sense, for indeed no one thinks that he is not better than his neighbor or consents to obey his superior, but it is extremely false in another for the same man who cannot endure subordination or equality has so contemptible an opinion of himself that he thinks he is only born to indulge in vulgar pleasures. He willingly takes up with low desires without daring to embark in lofty enterprises of which he scarcely dreams. Thus, far from thinking that humility ought to be preached to our contemporaries, I would have endeavors made to give them a more enlarged idea of themselves and of their kind. Humility is unwholesome to them. What they most want is, in my opinion, pride. I would willingly exchange several of our small virtues for this one vice. Chapter 20 The Trade of Place Hunting in Certain Democratic Countries In the United States, as soon as a man has acquired some education and pecuniary resources, he either endeavors to get rich by commerce or industry or he buys land in the bush and turns pioneer. All that he asks of the state is not to be disturbed in his toil and to be secure of his earnings. Amongst the greatest part of European nations, when a man begins to feel his strength and to extend his desires, the first thing that occurs to him is to get some public employment. These opposite effects, originating in the same cause, deserve our passing notice. When public employments are few in number, ill-paid and precarious, whilst the different lines of business are numerous and lucrative, it is to business and not to official duties that the new and eager desires engendered by the principle of equality turn from every side. But if, whilst the ranks of society are becoming more equal, the education of the people remains incomplete or their spirit the reverse of bold, if commerce and industry checked in their growth afford only slow and arduous means of making a fortune, the various members of the community, despairing of ameliorating their own condition, rushed to the head of the state and demand its assistance. To relieve their own necessities at the cost of the public treasury appears to them to be the easiest and most open, if not the only, way they have to rise above a condition which no longer contends them. Place hunting becomes the most generally followed of all trades. This must be especially the case in those great centralized monarchies in which the number of paid offices is immense and the tenure of them tolerably secure so that no one despairs of obtaining a place and of enjoying it as undisturbedly as a hereditary fortune. I shall not remark that the universal and inordinate desire for place is a great social evil, that it destroys the spirit of independence in the citizen and diffuses a venal and servile humor throughout the frame of society, that it stifles the manlier virtues, nor shall I be at the pains to demonstrate that this kind of traffic only creates an unproductive activity which agitates the country without adding to its resources. All these things are obvious. But it would observe that a government which encourages this tendency risks its own tranquility and places its very existence in great jeopardy. I am aware that at a time like our own when the love and respect which formerly clung to authority are seen gradually to decline, it may appear necessary to those in power to lay a closer hold on every man by his own interest and it may seem convenient to use his own passions to keep him in order and in silence. But this cannot be so long and what may appear to be a source of strength for a certain time will assuredly become in the end a great cause of embarrassment and weakness. Amongst democratic nations as well as elsewhere, the number of official appointments has in the end some limits. But amongst those nations, the number of aspirants is unlimited. It perpetually increases with a gradual and irresistible rise in proportion as social conditions become more equal and is only checked by the limits of the population. Thus, when in public employments afford the only outlet for ambition, the government necessarily meets with a permanent opposition at last for it is tasked to satisfy with limited means, unlimited desires. It is very certain that of all people in the world, the most difficult to restrain and to manage are a people of solicitance. Whatever endeavors are made by rulers, such a people can never be contented and it is always to be apprehended that they will ultimately overturn the constitution of the country and change the aspect of the state for the sole purpose of making a clearance of places. The sovereigns of the present age who strive to fix upon themselves alone, all those novel desires which are aroused by equality and to satisfy them will repent in the end if I am not mistaken that they ever embarked in this policy. They will one day discover that they have hazarded their own power by making it so necessary and that the more safe and honest course would have been to teach their subjects the art of providing for themselves. Footnote A. Footnote A. As a matter of fact, more recent experience has shown that place hunting is quite as intense in the United States as in any country in Europe. It is regarded by the Americans themselves as one of the great evils of their social condition and it powerfully affects their political institutions. But the American who seeks a place seeks not so much a means of subsistence as the distinction which office and public employment confer. In the absence of any true aristocracy, the public service creates a spurious one which is as much an object of ambition as the distinctions of rank in aristocratic countries. Translators note. End of Part Three, Chapter 20. Recording by Peter Kelleher, Eastport, Medway, Nova Scotia. Part Three, Chapters 21 and 22 of Democracy in America, Volume 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in a public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Anna Simon. Democracy in America, Volume 2, by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by Henry Reeve. Part Three, Chapter 21. Why Great Revolutions Will Become More Rare. A people which has existed for centuries under a system of castes and classes can only arrive at a democratic state of society by passing through a long series of more or less critical transformations accomplished by violent efforts and after numerous vicissitudes, in the course of which property, opinions and power are rapidly transferred from one hand to another. Even after this great revolution is consummated, the revolutionary habits engendered by it may long be traced and it will be followed by deep commotion. As all this takes place at the very time at which social conditions are becoming more equal, it is inferred that some concealed relation and secret tie exist between the principle of equality itself and revolution, in so much that the one cannot exist without giving rise to the other. On this point, reasoning may seem to lead to the same result as experience. Amongst the people whose ranks are nearly equal, no ostensible bond connects men together or keeps them settled in their station. None of them have either a permanent right or power to command. None are forced by their condition to obey. But every man, finding himself possessed of some education and some resources, may choose his one path and proceed apart from all his fellow men. The same causes which make the members of the community independent of each other continually impel them to new and restless desires and constantly spur them onwards. It therefore seems natural that in a democratic community, men, things and opinions should be forever changing their form and place and that democratic ages should be times of rapid and incessant transformation. But is this really the case? Does the equality of social conditions habitually and permanently lead men to revolution? Thus that state of society contains some perturbing principle which prevents the community from ever subsiding into calm and disposes the citizens to alter incessantly their laws, their principles and their manners. I do not believe it. And as the subject is important, I beg for the reader's close attention. Almost all the revolutions which have changed the aspect of nations have made to consolidate or to destroy social inequality. Remove the secondary causes which have produced the great convulsions of the world and you will almost always find the principle of inequality at the bottom. Either the poor have attempted to plunder the rich or the rich to enslave the poor. If then a state of society can ever be founded in which every man shall have something to keep and little to take from others, much will have been done for the peace of the world. I'm aware that amongst the great democratic people there will always be some members of the community in great poverty and others in great opulence. With the poor, instead of forming the immense majority of the nation, as is always the case in aristocratic communities, are comparatively few in number and the laws do not bind them together by the ties of irremediable and hereditary penury. The wealthy on their side are scarce and powerless. They have no privileges which attract public observation. Even their wealth, as it is no longer incorporated and bound up with the soil, is impalpable and, as it were, invisible. As there is no longer a race of poor man, so there is no longer a race of rich man. The latter spring up daily from the multitude and relapses into it again. Hence, they do not form a distinct class which may be easily marked out and plundered and, moreover, as they are connected with the mass of their fellow citizens by a thousand secret ties, the people cannot assail them without inflicting an injury upon itself. Between these two extremes of democratic communities stand an innumerable multitude of men almost alike who, without being exactly either rich or poor, are possessed of sufficient property to desire the maintenance of order, yet not enough to excite envy. Such men are the natural enemies of violent commotions. Their stillness keeps all beneath them and above them still and secures the balance of the fabric of society. Not indeed that even these men are contented with what they have gotten or that they feel a natural abhorrence for a revolution in which they might share the spoil without sharing the calamity. On the contrary, they desire, with an example, ardour to get rich, but the difficulty is to know from whom riches can be taken. The same state of society, which constantly prompts desires, restrains these desires within necessary limits. It gives men more liberty of changing and less interest in change. Not only are the men of democracies not naturally desirous of revolutions, but they are afraid of them. All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property, but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property. Not only are they possessed of property, but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property. If we attentively consider each of the classes of which society is composed, it is easy to see that the passions engendered by property are keenest and most tenacious amongst the middle classes. The poor often care but little for what they possess because they suffer much more from the want of what they have not than they enjoy the little they have. The rich have many other passions besides that of riches to satisfy, and besides the long and arduous enjoyment of a great fortune sometimes makes them in the end insensible to its charms. But the men who have a competency, alike removed from opulence and from penury, attach an enormous value to their possessions. As they are still almost within the reach of poverty, they see its privations near at hand and dread them. Between poverty and themselves, there is nothing but a scanty fortune upon which they immediately fix their apprehensions and their hopes. Every day increases the interest they take in it by the constant cares which it occasions, and they are the more attached to it by their continual exertions to increase the amount. The notion of surrendering the smallest part of it is insupportable to them, and they consider its total loss as the worst of misfortunes. Now, these eager and apprehensive men of small property constitute the class which is constantly increased by the equality of conditions. Hence, in democratic communities, the majority of the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by a revolution, but they continually, and in a thousand ways, feel that they might lose by one. I have shown in another part of this work that the equality of conditions naturally urges men to embark in commercial and industrial pursuits, and that it tends to increase and to distribute real property. I've also pointed out the means by which it inspires every man with an eager and constant desire to increase his welfare. Nothing is more opposed to revolutionary passions than these things. It may happen that the final result of a revolution is favourable to commerce and manufacturers, but its first consequence will almost always be the ruin of manufacturers and mercantile men, because it must always change at once the general principles of consumption and temporarily upset the existing proportion between supply and demand. I know of nothing more opposite to revolutionary manners than commercial manners. Commerce is naturally adverse to all the violent passions. It loves to temperize, takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. It is patient, insinuating, flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures until obliged by the most absolute necessity. Commerce renders men independent of each other, gives them a lofty notion of their personal importance, leads them to seek to conduct their own affairs, and teaches how to conduct them well. It therefore prepares men for freedom, but preserves them from revolutions. In a revolution, the owners of personal property have more to fear than all others. From the one hand, their property is often easy to seize, and on the other, it may totally disappear at any moment. A subject of alarm to which the owners of real property are less exposed, since, although they may lose the income of their estates, they may hope to preserve the land itself through the greatest vicissitudes. Hence, the former are much more alarmed at the symptoms of revolutionary commotion than a letter. Thus, nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal property is augmented and distributed amongst them, and as the number of those possessing it increases. Moreover, whatever profession man may embrace, and whatever species of property they may possess, one characteristic is common to them all. No one is fully contented with his present fortune. All are perpetually striving in a thousand ways to improve it. Consider any one of them at any period of his life, and he'll be found engaged with some new project for the purpose of increasing what he has. Talked not to him of the interests and the rights of mankind, this small domestic concern absorbs for the time all his thoughts and inclines him to defer political excitement to some other season. This not only prevents men from making revolutions, but deters men from desiring them. Violent political passions have but little hold on those who have devoted all their faculties to the pursuit of their well-being. The ardour which they display in small matters calms their zeal for momentous undertakings. From time to time, indeed, enterprising and ambitious men will arise in democratic communities whose unbounded aspirations cannot be contented by following the beaten track. Such men like revolutions and hail their approach, but they have great difficulty in bringing them about, unless unwanted events come to their assistance. No man can struggle with advantage against the spirit of his age and country, and however powerful he may be supposed to be, he will find it difficult to make his contemporaries share in feelings and opinions which are repugnant to all their feelings and desires. It is a mistake to believe that when once the equality of conditions has become the old and uncontested state of society and has imparted its characteristics to the manners of a nation, men will easily allow themselves to be thrust into perilous risks by an imprudent leader or a bold innovator. Not indeed that they will resist him openly by well-contrived schemes or even by a premeditated plan of resistance. They will not struggle energetically against him. Sometimes they will even applaud him, but they do not follow him. To his vehemence, they secretly oppose their inertia, to his revolutionary tendency, their conservative interests, their homely tastes to his adventurous passions, their good sense to the flights of his genius, to his poetry, their prose. With immense exertion, he raises them for an instant, but they speedily escape from him and fall back as it were by their own weight. He strains himself to rouse the indifferent and distracted multitude and finds at last that he is reduced to impotence, not because he is conquered, but because he is alone. I do not assert that men living in democratic communities are naturally stationary. I think, on the contrary, that a perpetual stir prevails in the bosom of those societies and that rest is unknown there. But I think that men bestow themselves within certain limits beyond which they hardly ever go. They are forever varying, altering and restoring secondary matters, but they carefully abstain from touching what is fundamental. They love change, but they dread revolutions. Although the Americans are constantly modifying or abrogating some of their laws, they by no means display revolutionary passions. It may be easily seen from the promptitude with which they check and calm themselves when public excitement begins to grow alarming and at the very moment when passions seem most aroused, that they dread a revolution as the worst of misfortunes, that every one of them is inwardly resolved to make great sacrifices to avoid such a catastrophe. In no country in the world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in the United States. Nowhere does the majority display less inclination for those principles which threaten to alter, in whatever manner, the laws of property. I have often remarked that theories which are of a revolutionary nature since they cannot be put in practice without a complete and sometimes a sudden change in the state of property and persons are much less favorably viewed in the United States than in the great monarchical countries of Europe. If some men profess them, the bulk of the people reject them with instinctive abhorrence. I do not hesitate to say that most of the maxims commonly called democratic in France will be prescribed by the democracy of the United States. This may easily be understood. In America, men have the opinions and passions of democracy. In Europe, we have still the passions and opinions of revolution. If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States. That is to say, they will owe their origin not to the equality, but to the inequality of conditions. When social conditions are equal, every man is apt to live apart, centered in himself and forgetful of the public. If the rulers of democratic nations were either to neglect to correct this fatal tendency or to encourage it from a notion that it wins men from political passions and thus wards off revolutions, they might eventually produce the evil they seek to avoid and the time might come when the inordinate passions of a few men aided by the unintelligent selfishness or the personality of the greater number would ultimately compel society to path through strange vicissitudes. In democratic communities, revolutions are seldom desired except by a minority, but a minority may sometimes affect them. I do not assert that democratic nations are secure from revolutions. I merely say that the state of society in those nations does not lead to revolutions, but rather wards them off. A democratic people left to itself will not easily embark in great hazards. It has only led to revolutions unawares. It may sometimes undergo them, but it does not make them. And I will add that when such a people has been allowed to acquire sufficient knowledge and experience, it will not suffer them to be made. I am well aware that in this respect public institutions may themselves do much. They may encourage or repress the tendencies which originate in the state of society. I therefore do not maintain, I repeat, that a people is secure from revolutions simply because conditions are equal in the community. But I think that whatever the institutions of such a people may be, great revolutions will always be far less violent and less frequent than is supposed. And I can easily discern a state of polity which, when combined with the principle of equality, would render society more stationary than it has ever been in our western part of the world. The observations I have here made on events may also be applied in part to opinions. Two things are surprising in the United States. The mutability of the greater part of human actions and the singular stability of certain principles. Men are in constant motion. The mind of men appears almost unmoved. When once an opinion has spread over the country and struck root there, it would seem that no power on earth is strong enough to eradicate it. In the United States, general principles in religion, philosophy, morality, and even politics do not vary or at least are only modified by a hidden and often an imperceptible process. Even the grossest prejudices are obliterated with incredible slowness amidst the continual fiction of men and things. I hear it said that it is in the nature and habits of democracies to be constantly changing their opinions and feelings. This may be true of small democratic nations like those of the ancient world in which the whole community could be assembled in a public place and then excited at will by an orator. But I saw nothing of the kind amongst the great democratic people which dwells upon the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean. What struck me in the United States was a difficulty in shaking the majority in an opinion once conceived or of drawing it off from a leader once adopted. Neither speaking nor writing can accomplish it. Nothing but experience will avail and even experience must be repeated. This is surprising at first sight but a more attentive investigation explains the fact. I do not think that it is as easy as it's supposed to root the prejudices of a democratic people to change its belief, to supersede principles once established by new principles in religion, politics and morals in a word to make great and frequent changes in man's minds. Not that the human mind is there at rest. It is in constant agitation but it is engaged in infinitely varying the consequences of known principles and in seeking for new consequences rather than seeking for new principles. Its motion is one of rapid circumvolution rather than of straightforward impulse by rapid and direct effort. It extends its orbit by small, continual and hasty movements but it has not suddenly altered its position. Men who are equal in rights, in education, in fortune or to comprise all in one word in their social condition have necessarily wants, habits and tastes which are hardly dissimilar as they look at objects under the same aspect their minds naturally tend to analogous conclusions and though each of them may deviate from its contemporaries and from opinions of its own they will involuntarily and unconsciously concur in a certain number of received opinions. The more attentively I consider the effect of equality upon the mind the more am I persuaded that the intellectual anarchy which we witness about us is not as many men suppose the natural state of democratic nations. I think it is rather to be regarded as an accident peculiar to their youth and that it only breaks out at that period of transition when men have already snapped the former ties which bound them together but are still amazingly different in origin, education and manners so that having retained opinions, propensities and tastes of great diversity nothing any longer prevents men from avowing them openly. The leading opinions of men become similar in proportion as their conditions assimilate such appears to me to be the general and permanent law the rest is casual and transient. I believe that it will rarely happen to any man amongst the democratic community suddenly to frame a system of notions very remote from that which his contemporaries have adopted and if some such innovator appeared I apprehend that he would have great difficulty in finding listeners still more in finding believers. When the conditions of men are almost equal they do not easily allow themselves to be persuaded by each other as they all live in close intercourse as they have learned the same things together and as they lead the same life they are not naturally disposed to take one of themselves for a guide and to follow him implicitly men seldom take the opinion of their equal or of a man like themselves upon trust not only his confidence in the superior attainments of certain individuals weakened amongst democratic nations as ever elsewhere remarked but the general notion of the intellectual superiority which any man whatsoever may acquire in relation to the rest of the community is soon overshadowed. As men grow more like each other the doctrine of the equality of the intellect gradually infuses itself into their opinions and it becomes more difficult for any innovator to acquire or to exert much influence over the minds of a people. In such communities sudden intellectual revolutions will therefore be rare for if we read or write the history of the world we shall find that great and rapid changes in human opinions have been produced far less by the force of reasoning than by the authority of a name. Observe too that as the man who live in democratic societies are not connected with each other by any tie each of them must be convinced individually whilst in aristocratic society it is enough to convince a few the rest will follow. If Luther had lived in an age of equality and had not had princes and potentates for his audience he would perhaps have found it more difficult to change the aspect of Europe not indeed that the men of democracies are naturally strongly persuaded the certainty of their opinions or are unwavering in belief they frequently entertain doubts which no one in their eyes can remove it sometimes happens at such times that the human mind would willingly change its position but as nothing urges or guides it forward it oscillates to and fro without progressive motion. Footnote if I inquire what state of society is most favorable to the great revolutions of the mind I find that it occurs somewhere between the complete equality of the whole community and the absolute separation of ranks under a system of castes generations succeed each other without altering men's positions some have nothing more others nothing better to hopeful the imagination slumbers amidst this universal silence and stillness and the very idea of change fades from the human mind when ranks have been abolished and social conditions are almost equalized all men are in ceaseless excitement but each of them stands alone independent and weak this latter stage of things is excessively different from the former one yet it has one point of analogy great revolutions of the human mind seldom occur in it but between these two extremes of the history of nations is an intermediate period a period as glorious as it is agitated when the conditions of men are not sufficiently settled for the mind to be lulled in torpor when they are sufficiently unequal for men to exercise a vast power on the minds of one another and when some few may modify the convictions of all it is at such times that great reformers start up and new opinions suddenly change the face of the world and footnote even when the reliance of a democratic people has been won it is still no easy matter to gain their attention it is extremely difficult to obtain a hearing from men living in democracies unless it be to speak to them of themselves they do not attend to the things said to them because they are always fully engrossed with the things they are doing for indeed few men are idle in democratic nations life is passed in the midst of noise and excitement and men are so engaged in acting that little remains to them for thinking I would especially remark that they are not only employed but they are passionately devoted to their employments they are always in action and each of their actions absorbs their faculties the zeal which they display in business puts out the enthusiasm they might otherwise entertain for idea I think that it is extremely difficult to excite the enthusiasm of a democratic people for any theory which has not a palpable direct and immediate connection with the daily occupations of life therefore they will not easily forsake their old opinions for it is enthusiasm which flings the minds of men out of the beaten track and affects the great revolutions of the intellect as well as the great revolutions of the political world thus democratic nations have neither time nor taste to go in search of novel opinions even when those they possess become doubtful they still retain them because it would take too much time and inquiry to change them they retain them not as certain but as established there are yet other and more cogent reasons which prevent any great change from being easily affected in the principles of a democratic people I've already averted to them at the commencement of this part of my work if the influence of individuals is weak and hardly perceptible amongst such a people the power exercised by the mass upon the mind of each individual is extremely great I've already shown for what reasons I would now observe that it is wrong to suppose that this depends solely upon the form of government and that the majority would lose its intellectual supremacy if it were to lose its political power in aristocracies men have often much greatness and strength of their own when they find themselves at variance with the greater number of their fellow countrymen they withdraw to their own circle where they support and console themselves such is not the case in a democratic country their public favor seems as necessary as the air would breathe and to live at variance with the multitude is, as it were, not to live the multitude requires no laws to coerce those who think not liked itself public disapparation is enough a sense of their loneliness and impotence overtakes them and drives them to despair whenever social conditions are equal public opinion presses with enormous weight upon the mind of each individual it surrounds, directs and oppresses him and this arises from the very constitution of society much more than from its political laws as men grow more alike each man feels himself weaker in regard to all the rest as he discerns nothing by which he is considerably raised above them or distinguished from them he mistrusts himself as soon as they assail him not only does he mistrust his strength but he even doubts of his right and he's very near acknowledging that he is in the wrong when the greater number of his countrymen assert that he is so the majority do not need to constrain him they convince him in whatever way then the powers of a democratic community may be organized and balanced it will always be extremely difficult to believe what the bulk of the people reject or to profess what they condemn this circumstance is extraordinarily favorable to the stability of opinions when an opinion has taken root amongst the democratic people and established itself in the minds of the bulk of the community it afterwards subsists by itself and is maintained without effort because no one attacks it those who had first rejected it as false ultimately receive it as a general impression and those who still dispute it in their hearts conceal their dissent they are careful not to engage in a dangerous and useless conflict it is true that when the majority of a democratic people change their opinions they may suddenly and arbitrarily affect strange revolutions in man's minds but their opinions do not change without much difficulty and it is almost as difficult to show that they are changed time, events or the unaided individual action of the mind will sometimes undermine or destroy an opinion without any outward sign of the change it has not been openly assailed no conspiracy has been formed to make war on it but its flow is one by one noiselessly secede day by day a few of them abandon it until last it is only professed by a minority in this state it will still continue to prevail as its enemies remain mute or only interchange their thoughts by stealth they are themselves unaware for a long period that a great revolution has actually been affected and in this state of uncertainty they take no steps they observe each other and are silent the majority have ceased to believe what they believed before but they still affect to believe and this empty phantom of public opinion is strong enough to chill innovators and to keep them silent and at respectful distance we live at a time which has witnessed the most rapid changes of opinion in the minds of men nevertheless it may be that the leading opinions of society will ear long be more settled than they have been for several centuries in our history that time is not yet come but it may perhaps be approaching as I examine more closely the natural wants and tendencies of democratic nations I grow persuaded that if ever social equality is generally and permanently established in the world great intellectual and political revolutions will become more difficult and less frequent than is supposed because the men of democracies appear always excited and certain, eager, changeable in their wills and in their positions it is imagined that they are suddenly to abrogate their laws to adopt new opinions and to assume new menace but if the principle of equality predisposes men to change it also suggests to them certain interests and tastes which cannot be satisfied without a settled order of things equality urges them on but at the same time it holds them back it spurs them but fastens them to earth it kindles their desires but limits their powers this however is not perceived at first the passions which tend to sever the citizens of a democracy are obvious enough but the hidden force which restrains and unites them is not discernible at a glance amidst the ruins which surround me shall I dare to say that revolutions are not what I most fear coming generations if men continue to shut themselves more closely within the narrow circle of domestic interests and to live upon that kind of excitement it is to be apprehended that they may ultimately become inaccessible to those great and powerful public emotions which perturb nations but which enlarge them and recruit them when property becomes so fluctuating and the love of property so restless and so ardent I cannot but fear that man may arrive at such a state as to regard every new theory as apparel every innovation as an irksome toil every social improvement as a stepping stone to revolution and so refuse to move altogether for fear of being moved too far I dread and I confess it lest they should at last so entirely give way to a cowardly love of present enjoyment as to lose sight of the interests of their future selves and of those of their descendants and to prefer to glide along the easy current of life rather than to make when it is necessary a strong and sudden effort to a higher purpose it is believed by some that modern society will be ever changing its aspect for myself I fear that it will ultimately be too invariably fixed in the same institutions the same prejudices the same manners so that mankind will be stopped and circumscribed that the mind will swing backwards and forwards forever without be getting fresh ideas that man will waste his strength in bootless and solitary trifling and though in continual motion that humanity will cease to advance Chapter 22 Why democratic nations are naturally desires of peace and democratic armies of war the same interests the same fears the same passions which deter democratic nations from revolutions deter them also from war the spirit of military glory and the spirit of revolution are weakened at the same time and by the same causes the ever-increasing numbers of men of property lovers of peace the growth of personal wealth which war so rapidly consumes the mildness of menace the gentleness of heart those tendencies to pity which are engendered by the equality of conditions that coolness of understanding which renders men comparatively insensible to the violent and poetical excitement of arms all these causes concur to quench the military spirit I think it may be admitted as a general and constant rule that amongst civilized nations the warlike passions will become more rare and less intense in proportion as social conditions shall be more equal war is nevertheless an occurrence to which all nations are subject democratic nations as well as others whatever taste they may have for peace they must hold themselves in readiness to repel aggression or in other words they must have an army fortune which has conferred so many peculiar benefits upon the inhabitants of the united states has placed them in the midst of a wilderness where they have so to speak no neighbors a few thousand soldiers are sufficient for their wants but this is peculiar to america not to democracy the equality of conditions and the manners as well as the institutions resulting from it do not exempt the democratic people from the necessity of standing armies and their armies always exercise a powerful influence over their fate it is therefore of singular importance to inquire what are the natural propensities of the men of whom these armies are composed amongst aristocratic nations especially amongst those in which birth is the only source of rank the same inequality exists in the army as in the nation the officer is noble the soldier is a serve the one is naturally called upon to command the other to obey in aristocratic armies the private soldier's ambition is therefore circumscribed within very narrow limits nor has the ambition of the officer an unlimited range an aristocratic body not only forms a part of the scale of ranks in the nation but it contains a scale of ranks within itself the members of whom it is composed are placed one above another in a particular unvarying manner thus one man is born to the command of a regiment another to that of company when once they have reached the utmost object of their hopes they stop of their own accord and remain contented with their lot there is besides a strong cause which in aristocracies weakens the officer's desire of promotion amongst aristocratic nations an officer independently of his rank in the army also occupies an elevated rank in society the former is almost always in his eyes only an appendage to the letter a nobleman who embraces the profession of arms flows it less for motives of ambition than from a sense of the duties imposed on him by his birth he entered the army in order to find an honorable employment for the idle years of his youth and to be able to bring back to his home and his peers some honorable recollections of military life but his principal object is not obtained by that profession either property distinction or power for he possesses these advantages in his own right and enjoys them without leaving his home in democratic armies all the soldiers may become officers which makes the desire of promotion general and immeasurably extends the bounds of military ambition the officer on his part sees nothing which naturally and necessarily stops him at one grade more than at another and each grade has immense importance in his eyes because his rank in society almost always depends on his rank in the army amongst democratic nations it often happens that an officer has no property but his pay and no distinction but that of military honors consequently as often as his duties change his fortune changes and he becomes as it were a new man what was only an appendage to his position in aristocratic armies has thus become the main point the basis of his whole condition under the old french monarchy officers were always called by their titles of nobility they're now always called by the title their military rank this little change in the forms of language suffices to show that a great revolution has taken place in the constitution of society and in that of the army in democratic armies the desire of advancement is almost universal it is ardent tenacious perpetual it is strengthened by all other desires and only extinguished with life itself but it's easy to see that of all armies in the world those in which advancement must be slowest in times of peace are the armies of democratic countries as the number of commissions is naturally limited whilst the number of competitors is almost unlimited and as the strict law of equality is over all alike none can make rapid progress many can make no progress at all thus the desire of advancement is greater and the opportunities of advancement fewer there than elsewhere all the ambitious spirits of a democratic army are consequently ardently desires of war because war makes vacancies and warrants the violation of that law of serenity which is the sole privilege natural to democracy we thus arrive at this singular consequence that of all armies those most ardently desires of war are democratic armies and of all nations those most fond of peace are democratic nations and what makes these facts still more extraordinary is that these contrary effects are produced at the same time by the principle of equality all the members of the community being alike constantly harbor the wish and discover the possibility of changing their condition and improving their welfare this makes them fond of peace which is favorable to industry and allows every man to pursue his own little other taking to their completion on the other hand this same equality makes soldiers dream of fields of battle by increasing the value of military honors in the eyes of those who follow the profession of arms and by rendering those honors accessible to all in either case the inquiritude of hard is the same the taste for enjoyment as insatiable the ambition of success as great the means of gratifying it are alone different these opposite tendencies of the nation and the army exposed democratic communities to great dangers when a military spirit forsakes the people the profession of arms immediately ceases to be held in honor a military man fall to the lowest rank of the public servants they are little esteemed and no longer understood the reverse of what takes place in aristocratic ages then occurs the men who enter the army are no longer those of the highest but of the lowest rank military ambition is only indulged in when no other is possible hence arises a circle of cause and consequence from which it is difficult to escape the best part of the nation shuns the military profession because that profession is not honored and the profession is not honored because the best part of the nation has ceased to follow it it is then no matter of surprise that democratic armies are often restless ill-tempered and dissatisfied with their lot although their physical condition is commonly far better and their discipline less strict than in other countries the soldier feels that he occupies an inferior position and his wounded pride either stimulates his taste for hostilities which would render his services necessary or gives him a turn for revolutions during which he may hope to win by force of arms the political influence and personal importance now denied him the composition of democratic armies makes this last mention danger much to be feared in democratic communities almost every man has some property to preserve but democratic armies are generally led by men without property most of whom have little to lose in civil broils the bulk of the nation is naturally much more afraid of revolutions than in the ages of aristocracy the leaders of the army much less so moreover as amongst democratic nations to repeat what i've just remarked the wealthiest the best educated and the most able men seldom adopt the military profession the army taken collectively eventually forms a small nation by itself where the mind is less enlarged and habits are more rude than the nation at large now this small uncivilized nation has arms in its possession and alone knows how to use them for indeed the pacific temper of the community increases the danger to which a democratic people is exposed from the military and turbulent spirit of the army nothing is so dangerous as an army emits an unwarlike nation the excessive love of the whole community for quiet continually puts its constitution at the mercy of the soldiery it may therefore be asserted generally speaking that if democratic nations are naturally prone to peace from their interests and their propensities they're constantly drawn to war and revolutions by their armies military revolutions which are scarcely ever to be apprehended in aristocracies are always to be dreaded amongst democratic nations these perils must be reckoned amongst the most formidable which beset their future fate and the attention of statesmen should be sedulously applied to find a remedy for the evil when a nation perceives that it is inwardly affected by the restless ambition of its army the first thought which occurs is to give this inconvenient ambition an object by going to war i speak no ill of war war almost always enlarges the mind of a people and raises their character in some cases it is the only check to the excessive growth of certain propensities which naturally spring out of the equality of conditions and it must be considered as a necessary corrective to certain inveterate diseases to which democratic communities are liable war has great advantages but we must not flatter ourselves that it can diminish the danger i've just pointed out that peril is only suspended by it to return more fiercely when the war is over for armies are much more impatient of peace after having tasted military exploits war could only be a remedy for a people which should always be a thirst for military glory i foresee that all the military rulers who may rise up in great democratic nations will find it easier to conquer with their armies and to make their armies live at peace after conquest there are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult to begin a war and to end it again if war has some peculiar advantages for democratic nations on the other hand it exposes them to certain dangers which aristocracies have no cause to dread to an equal extent i shall only point out two of these although war gratifies the army it embarrasses and often exasperates that countless multitude of men whose minor passions every day require peace in order to be satisfied thus there is some risk of its causing under another form the disturbance it is intended to prevent no protected war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country not indeed that after every victory it is to be apprehended that the victorious generals will possess themselves by force with the supreme power after the manner of sylla and caesar the dangers of another kind war does not always give over democratic communities to military government but it must invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of civil government it must almost compulsorily concentrate the direction of all men and the management of all things in the hands of the administration if it lead not to despotism by sudden violence it prepares men for it more gently by their habits all those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it this is the first action of the science one remedy which appears to be obvious when the ambition of soldiers and officers becomes the subject of alarm is to augment the number of commissions to be distributed by increasing the army this affords temporary relief but it plunges the country into deeper difficulties at some future period to increase the army may produce a lasting effect in an aristocratic community because military ambition is there confined to one class of men and the ambition of each individual stops as it were at a certain limit so that it may be possible to satisfy all who feel its influence but nothing is gained by increasing the army amongst the democratic people because the number of aspirants always rises in exactly the same ratio as the army itself those whose claims have been satisfied by the creation of new commissions are instantly succeeded by a fresh multitude beyond all power of satisfaction and even those who were but now satisfied soon begin to crave more advancement for the same excitement prevails in the ranks of the army and in the civil classes of democratic society and what men want is not to reach a certain grade but to have constant promotion though these ones may not be very fast they're perpetually recurring thus a democratic nation by augmenting its army only allays for a time the ambition of the military profession which soon becomes even more formidable because the number of those who feel it is increased i am of opinion that a restless and turbulent spirit is an evil inherent in the very constitution of democratic armies and beyond hope of cure the legislators of democracies must not expect to devise any military organization capable by its influence of calming and restraining the military profession their efforts would exhaust their powers before the object is attained the remedy for the vices of the army is not to be found in the army itself but in the country democratic nations are naturally afraid of disturbance and of despotism the object is to turn these natural instincts into well-digested deliberate and lasting tastes when men have at last learned to make a peaceful and profitable use of freedom and have felt its blessings when they have conceived a manly love of order and have freely submitted themselves to discipline these same men if they follow the profession of arms bring into it unconsciously and almost against their will these same habits and manners the general spirit of the nation being infused into the spirit peculiar to the army tempers the opinions and desires engendered by military life or oppresses them by the mighty foes of public opinion teach by the citizens to be educated orderly firm and free the soldiers will be disciplined and obedient any law which in repressing the turbulent spirit of the army should tend to diminish the spirit of freedom in the nation and overshadow the notion of law and right would defeat its object it would do much more to favor than to defeat the establishment of military tyranny after all and in spite of all precautions a large army amidst a democratic people will always be a source of great danger the most effectual means of diminishing that danger would be to reduce the army but this is a remedy which all nations have it not in their power to use end of part three chapter 22