 CHAPTER XI. THE SPIRIT IN WHICH THE AMERICANS CULTIVATE THE ARTS. It would be to waste the time of my readers and my own if I strove to demonstrate how the general mediocrity of fortunes, the absence of superfluous wealth, the universal desire of comfort, and the constant efforts by which everyone attempts to procure it make the taste for the useful predominate over the love of the beautiful in the heart of man. Democratic nations, amongst which all these things exist, will therefore cultivate the arts which serve to render life easy, in preference to those whose object is to adorn it. They will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful should be useful. But I propose to go further, and after having pointed out this first feature, to sketch several others. It commonly happens that in the ages of privilege the practice of almost all the arts becomes a privilege, and that every profession is a separate walk, upon which it is not allowable for everyone to enter. Even when productive industry is free, the fixed character which belongs to aristocratic nations gradually segregates all the persons who practice the same art, till they form a distinct class, always composed of the same families, whose members are all known to each other, and amongst whom a public opinion of their own and a species of corporate pride soon spring up. In a class or guild of this kind, each artisan has not only his fortune to make, but his reputation to preserve. He is not exclusively swayed by his own interest, or even by that of his customer, but by that of the body to which he belongs, and the interest of that body is, that each artisan should produce the best possible workmanship. In aristocratic ages the object of the arts is therefore to manufacture as well as possible, not with the greatest dispatch or at the lowest rate. When on the contrary every profession is open to all, when a multitude of persons are constantly embracing and abandoning it, when it several members are strangers to each other, indifferent and from their numbers hardly seen amongst themselves, the social ties destroyed, and each workman standing alone endeavors simply to gain the greatest possible quantity of money at the least possible cost. The will of the customer is then his only limit. But at the same time a corresponding revolution takes place in the customer also. In countries in which riches as well as power are concentrated and retained in the hands of the few, the use of the greater part of this world's goods belongs to a small number of individuals who are always the same. Necessity, public opinion, or moderate desires exclude all others from the enjoyment of them. As this aristocratic class remains fixed at the pinnacle of greatness on which it stands, without diminution or increase, it is always acted upon by the same wants and affected by them in the same manner. The men of whom it is composed naturally derive from their superior and hereditary position a taste for what is extremely well-made and lasting. This affects the general way of thinking of the nation in relation to the arts. It often occurs among such a people that even the peasant will go without the object he covets, then procure it in a state of imperfection. In aristocracies, then, the handicraftsmen work for only a limited number of very fastidious customers. The profit they hope to make depends principally on the perfection of their workmanship. Such is no longer the case when, all privileges being abolished, ranks are intermingled, and men are forever rising or sinking upon a ladder of society. Amongst the democratic people a number of citizens always exist whose patrimony is divided and decreasing. They have contracted, under more prosperous circumstances, certain wants, which remain after the means of satisfying such wants are gone, and they are anxiously looking out for some surreptitious method of providing for them. On the other hand there are always, in democracies, a large number of men whose fortune is upon the increase, but whose desires grow much faster than their fortunes, and who gloat upon the gifts of wealth in anticipation long before they have means to command them. Such men eager to find some short-cut to these gratifications, already almost within their reach. From the combination of these causes the result is that in democracies there are always a multitude of individuals whose wants are above their means, and who are very willing to take up with imperfect satisfaction rather than abandon the object of their desires. The artisan readily understands these passions, for he himself partakes in them. In an aristocracy he would seek to sell his workmanship at a high price to the few. He now conceives that the more expeditious way of getting rich is to sell them at a low price to all. But there are only two ways of lowering the price of commodities. The first is to discover some better, shorter, and more ingenious method of producing them. The second is to manufacture a larger quantity of goods, nearly similar but of less value. Thanks to democratic population all the intellectual faculties of the workmen are directed to these two objects. He strives to invent methods which may enable him not only to work better, but quicker and cheaper, or, if he cannot succeed in that, to diminish the intrinsic qualities of the thing he makes, without rendering it wholly unfit for the use for which it is intended. When none but the wealthy had watches they were almost all very good ones. Two are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket. Thus the democratic principle not only tends to direct the human mind to the useful arts, but it induces the artisan to produce with greater rapidity a quantity of imperfect commodities, and the consumer to content himself with these commodities. Not that in democracies the arts are incapable of producing very commendable works if such be required, if customers appear who are ready to pay for time and trouble. In this rivalry of every kind of industry, in the midst of this immense competition and these countless experiments, some excellent workmen are formed, who've reached the utmost limits of their craft. But they have rarely an opportunity of displaying what they can do. They are scrupulously sparing of their powers. They remain in a state of accomplished mediocrity, which condemns itself, and though it be very well able to shoot beyond the mark before it, aims only at what it hits. In aristocracies, on the contrary, workmen always do all they can, and when they stop, it is because they have reached the limit of their attainments. When I arrive in a country where I find some of the finest productions of the arts, I learn from this fact nothing of the social condition or of the political constitution of the country. But if I perceive that the production of the arts are generally of an inferior quality, very abundant and very cheap, I am convinced that, amongst the people where this occurs, privilege is on the decline, and that ranks are beginning to intermingle and will soon be confounded together. The handicraftsmen of democratic ages endeavor not only to bring their useful productions within the reach of the whole community, but they strive to give to all their commodities attractive qualities, which they do not in reality possess. In the confusion of all ranks, everyone hopes to appear what he is not, and makes great exertions to succeed in this object. This sentiment, indeed, which is but too natural to the heart of man, does not originate in the democratic principle, but that principle applies it to material objects. To mimic virtue is of every age, but the hypocrisy of luxury belongs more particularly to the ages of democracy. To satisfy these new cravings of human vanity, the arts have recourse to every species of imposture, and these devices sometimes go so far as to defeat their own purpose. Human diamonds are now made, which may be easily mistaken for real ones. As soon as the art of fabricating false diamonds shall have reached so high a degree of perfection that they cannot be distinguished from real ones, it is probable that both one and the other will be abandoned, and become mere pebbles again. This leads me to speak of those arts which are called the fine arts, by way of distinction. I do not believe that it is a necessary effect of a democratic social condition and of democratic institutions to diminish the number of men who cultivate the fine arts, but these causes exert a very powerful influence on the manner in which these arts are cultivated. Many of those who had already contracted a taste for the fine arts are impoverished. On the other hand, many of those who are not yet rich begin to conceive that taste at least by imitation, and the number of consumers increases, but opulent and fastidious consumers become more scarce. Having analogous to what I have already pointed out in the useful arts then takes place in the fine arts. The productions of artists are more numerous, but the merit of each production is diminished. No longer able to soar to what is great, they cultivate what is pretty and elegant, and appearance is more attended to than reality. In aristocracies a few great pictures are produced. In democratic countries a vast number of insignificant ones. In the former statues are raised of bronze. In the latter they are modeled in plaster. When I arrived for the first time in New York by that part of the Atlantic Ocean which is called the Narrows, I was surprised to perceive along the shore, at some distance from the city, a considerable number of little palaces of white marble, several of which were built after the models of ancient architecture. When I went the next day to inspect more closely the building which had particularly attracted my notice, I found that its walls were a whitewashed brick, and its columns of painted wood. All the edifices which I had admired the night before were of the same kind. The social condition and the institutions of democracy in part, moreover, certain peculiar tendencies to all the imitative arts, which it is easy to point out. They frequently withdraw them from the delineation of the soul to fix them exclusively on that of the body, and they substitute the representation of motion and sensation for that of sentiment and thought. In a word, they put the real in the place of the ideal. I doubt whether Raphael studied the minutest intricacies of the mechanism of the human body as thoroughly as the draftsmen of our own time. He did not attach the same importance to rigorous accuracy on this point as they do, because he aspired to surpass nature. He sought to make of man something which should be superior to man, an embellished beauty's self. David and his scholars were, on the contrary, as good anatomists as they were good painters. They wonderfully depicted the models which they had before their eyes, but they rarely imagined anything beyond them. They followed nature with fidelity, whilst Raphael sought for something better than nature. They have left us an exact portraiture of man, but he discloses in his works a glimpse of the divinity. This remark, as to the manner of treating a subject, is no less applicable to the choice of it. The painters of the Middle Ages generally sought far above themselves and away from their own time for mighty subjects, which left their imagination an unbounded range. Our painters frequently employ their talents in the exact imitation of the details of private life, which they have always before their eyes, and they are forever copying trivial objects, the originals of which are only too abundant in nature. CHAPTER XII. Why the Americans raised some monuments so insignificant and others so important. I have just observed that in democratic ages monuments of the arts tend to become more numerous and less important. I now hasten to point out the exception to this rule. In a democratic community individuals are very powerless, but the state which represents them all, and contains them all in its grasp, is very powerful. Nowhere do citizens appear so insignificant as in a democratic nation. Nowhere does the nation itself appear greater, or does the mind more easily take in a wide general survey of it. In democratic communities the imagination is compressed when men consider themselves. It expands indefinitely when they think of the state. Hence it is that the same men who live in a small scale in narrow dwellings frequently aspire to gigantic splendor in the erection of their public monuments. The Americans traced out the circuit of an immense city on the site which they intended to make their capital, but which up to the present time is hardly more densely peopled than the Pontoise, though according to them it will one day contain a million of inhabitants. They have already rooted up trees for ten miles round, lest they should interfere with the future citizens of this imaginary metropolis. They have erected a magnificent palace for Congress in the center of the city, and have given it the pompous name of the capital. The several states of the Union are every day planning and erecting for themselves prodigious undertakings which would astonish the engineers of the great European nations. Thus democracy not only leads men to a vast number of inconsiderable productions, it also leads them to raise some monuments on the largest scale, but between these two extremes there is a blank. A few scattered remains of enormous buildings can therefore teach us nothing of the social condition and the institutions of the people by whom they were raised. I may add, though the remark leads me to step out of my subject, that they do not make us better acquainted with its greatness, its civilization, and its real prosperity. Whensoever a power of any kind shall be able to make a whole people cooperate in a single undertaking, that power, with a little knowledge and a great deal of time, will succeed in obtaining something enormous from the cooperation of efforts so multiplied. But this does not lead to the conclusion that the people was very happy, very enlightened, or even very strong. The Spaniards found the city of Mexico full of magnificent temples and vast palaces, but that did not prevent Cortez from conquering the Mexican Empire with six hundred foot soldiers and sixteen horses. If the Romans had been better acquainted with the laws of hydraulics, they would not have constructed all the aqueducts which surround the ruins of their cities. They would have made a better use of their power and their wealth. If they had invented the steam engine, perhaps they would not have extended to the extremities of their empire those long artificial roads which are called Roman roads. These things are at once the splendid memorials of their ignorance and of their greatness. A people which should leave no other vestige of its track than a few leaden pipes in the earth and a few iron rods upon its surface might have been more the master of nature than the Romans. End of Part 1, chapters 11 and 12. Part 1, chapters 13 and 14 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. Democracy in America, Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by Henry Reeve. Part 1, Chapter 13. Literary Characteristics of Democratic Ages. When a traveler goes into a bookseller's shop in the United States and examines the American books upon the shelves, the number of works appears extremely great, whilst that of known authors appears, on the contrary, to be extremely small. He will first meet with a number of elementary treatises destined to teach the rudiments of human knowledge. Most of these books are written in Europe. The Americans reprint them, adapting them to their own country. Next comes an enormous quantity of religious works, Bibles, sermons, edifying anecdotes, controversial divinity, and reports of charitable societies. Lastly appears the long catalogue of political pamphlets. In America, parties do not write books to combat each other's opinions, but pamphlets which are circulated for a day with incredible rapidity and then expire. In the midst of all these, obscure productions of the human brain are to be found the more remarkable works of that small number of authors whose names are or ought to be known to Europeans. Although America is perhaps in our days the civilized country in which literature is least attended to, a large number of persons are nevertheless to be found there who take an interest in the productions of the mind, and who make them, if not the study of their lives, at least the charm of their leisure hours. But England supplies these readers with the larger portion of the books which they require. Almost all important English books are republished in the United States. The literary genius of Great Britain still darts its rays into the recesses of the forests of the New World. There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember that I read the feudal play of Henry V for the first time in a log-house. Not only do the Americans constantly draw upon the treasures of English literature, but it may be said with truth that they find the literature of England growing on their own soil. The larger part of that small number of men in the United States who are engaged in the composition of literary works are English in substance, and still more so in form. Thus they transport into the midst of democracy the ideas and literary fashions which are current among the aristocratic nation they have taken for their model. They paint with colors borrowed from foreign manners, and as they hardly ever represent the country which they were born in, as it really is, they are seldom popular there. The citizens of the United States are themselves so convinced that it is not for them that books are published, that before they can make up their minds upon the merit of one of their authors, they generally wait till his fame has been ratified in England, just as in pictures the author of an original is held to be entitled to judge of the merit of a copy. The inhabitants of the United States have then, at present, properly speaking, no literature. The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen and make themselves heard by them. Other authors are alien. They are, to the Americans, what the imitators of the Greeks and Romans were to us at the revival of learning, an object of curiosity, not of general sympathy. They amuse the mind, but they do not act upon the manners of the people. I have already said that this state of things is very far from originating in democracy alone, and that the causes of it must be sought for in several peculiar circumstances independent of the democratic principle. If the Americans, retaining the same laws and social condition, had a different origin, and had been transported into another country, I do not question that they would have had a literature. Even as they now are, I am convinced that they will ultimately have one, but its character will be different from that which marks the American literary productions of our time, and that character will be peculiarly its own. Nor is it impossible to trace this character beforehand. I suppose an aristocratic people, amongst whom letters are cultivated, the labors of the mind, as well as the affairs of the state, are conducted by a ruling class in society. The literary, as well as political career, is almost entirely confined to this class, or to those nearest to it in rank. These premises suffice to give me a key to all the rest. When a small number of the same men are engaged at the same time upon the same objects, they easily concert with one another, and agree upon certain leading rules which are to govern them each and all. If the object which attracts the attention of these men is literature, the productions of the mind will soon be subjected by them to precious cannons, from which it will be no longer allowable to depart. If these men occupy a hereditary position in the country, they will be naturally inclined, not only to adopt a certain number of fixed rules for themselves, but to follow those which their forefathers laid down for their own guidance. Their code will be at once strict and traditional. As they are not necessarily engrossed by the cares of daily life, as they have never been so, any more than their fathers were before them, they have learned to take an interest, for several generations back, in the labors of the mind. They have learned to understand literature as an art, and to love it in the end for its own sake, and to feel a scholar-like satisfaction in seeing men conform to its rules. Nor is this all. The men of whom I speak began and will end their lives in easy or in affluent circumstances, hence they have naturally conceived a taste for choice gratifications, and a love of refined and delicate pleasures. Nay, more, a kind of indolence of mind and heart, which they frequently contract in the midst of this long and peaceful enjoyment of so much welfare, leads them to put aside, even from their pleasures, whatever might be too startling or too acute. They had rather be amused than intensely excited. They wished to be interested, but not to be carried away. Now let us fancy a great number of literary performances executed by the men, for the men whom I have just described, and we shall readily conceive a style of literature in which everything will be regular and pre-arranged. The slightest work will be carefully touched in its least details. Art and labor will be conspicuous in everything. Each kind of writing will have rules of its own, from which it will not be allowed to swerve, and which distinguish it from all others. Style will be thought of almost as much importance as thought, and the form will be no less considered than the matter. The diction will be polished, measured, and uniform. The tone of the mind will be always dignified, seldom very animated, and writers will care more to perfect what they produce than to multiply their productions. It will sometimes happen that the members of the literary class, always living amongst themselves and writing for themselves alone, will lose sight of the rest of the world, which will infect them with a false labored style. They will lay down minute literary rules for their exclusive use, which will insensibly lead them to deviate from common sense, and finally to transgress the bounds of nature. By dint of striving after a mode of parlance different from the vulgar, they will arrive at a sort of aristocratic jargon, which is hardly less remote from pure language than is the coarse dialect of the people. Such are the natural perils of literature amongst aristocracies. Every aristocracy, which keeps itself entirely aloof from the people, becomes impotent, a fact which is as true in literature as it is in politics. Let us now turn the picture and consider the other side of it. Let us transport ourselves into the midst of a democracy, not unprepared by ancient traditions and present culture, to partake in the pleasures of the mind. Ranks are there intermingled and confounded. Knowledge and power are both infinitely subdivided, and if I may use the expression, scattered on every side. Here then is a motley multitude, whose intellectual wants are to be supplied. These new votaries of the pleasures of the mind have not all received the same education. They do not possess the same degree of culture as their fathers, nor any resemblance to them. In A. they perpetually differ from themselves, for they live in a state of incessant change of place, feelings, and fortunes. The mind of each member of the community is therefore unattached to that of his fellow citizens by tradition or by common habits, and they have never had the power, the inclination, nor the time to concert together. It is, however, from the bosom of this heterogeneous and agitated mass that authors spring, and from the same source their prophets and their fame are distributed. I can without difficulty understand that, under these circumstances, I must expect to meet in the literature of such a people with but few of those strict conventional rules which are admitted by readers and writers in aristocratic ages. If it should happen that the men of some one period were agreed upon any such rules, that would prove nothing for the following period, for amongst democratic nations each new generation is a new people. In such nations, then, literature will not easily be subjected to strict rules, and it is impossible that any such rules should ever be permanent. In democracies it is by no means the case that all the men who cultivate literature have received a literary education, and most of those who have some tinge of ballet are either engaged in politics or in a profession which only allows them to taste occasionally, and by stealth the pleasures of the mind. These pleasures, therefore, do not constitute the principal charm of their lives, but they are considered as a transient and necessary recreation amidst the serious labors of life. Such men can never acquire a sufficiently intimate knowledge of the art of literature to appreciate its more delicate beauties, and the minor shades of expression must escape them. As the time they can devote to letters is very short, they seek to make the best use of the whole of it. They prefer books which may be easily procured, quickly read, and which require no learned researches to be understood. They ask for beauties self-prophered and easily enjoyed. Above all, they must have what is unexpected and new. Accustomed to the struggle, the crosses, and the monotony of practical life, they require rapid emotions, startling passages, truths or errors brilliant enough to rouse them up, and to plunge them at once, as if by violence, into the midst of a subject. Why should I say more? Or who does not understand what is about to follow before I have expressed it? Taken as a whole, literature in democratic ages can never present, as it does in the periods of aristocracy, an aspect of order, regularity, science, and art. Its form will, on the contrary, ordinarily be slighted, sometimes despised. Style will frequently be fantastic, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, almost always vehement and bold. Authors will aim at rapidity of execution more than at perfection of detail. Small productions will be more common than bilky books. There will be more width than erudition, more imagination than profundity, and literary performances will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor of thought, frequently of great variety and singular fecundity. The object of authors will be to astonish rather than to please, and to stir the passions more than to charm the tastes. Here and there, indeed, writers will doubtless occur who will choose a different track, and who will, if they are gifted with superior abilities, succeed in finding readers, in spite of their defects or their better qualities. But these exceptions will be rare, and even the authors who shall so depart from the received practice in the main subject of their works will always relapse into it in some lesser details. I have just depicted two extreme conditions. The transition by which a nation passes from the former to the latter is not sudden but gradual, and marked with the shape of various intensity. In the passage which conducts a lettered people from the one to the other, there is almost always a moment at which the literary genius of democratic nations has its confluence with that of aristocracies, and both seek to establish their joints sway over the human mind. Such epics are transient, but very brilliant. They are fertile without exuberance and animated without confusion. The French literature of the eighteenth century may serve as an example. I should say more than I mean if I were to assert that the literature of a nation is always subordinate to its social conditions and its political constitution. I am aware that, independently of these causes, there are several others which confer certain characteristics on literary productions. But these appear to me to be the chief. The relations which exist between the social and political conditions of a people and the genius of its authors are always very numerous. Whoever knows the one is never completely ignorant of the other. CHAPTER XIV THE TRADE OF LITERATURE Democracy not only infuses a taste for letters among the trading classes, but introduces a trading spirit into literature. In aristocracies readers are fastidious and few in number. In democracies they are far more numerous and far less difficult to please. The consequence is that among aristocratic nations no one can hope to succeed without immense exertions, and that these exertions may bestow a great deal of fame, but can never earn much money. Whilst among democratic nations a writer may flatter himself that he will obtain at a cheap rate a meager reputation and a large fortune. For this purpose he need not be admired, it is enough that he is liked. The ever-increasing crowd of readers and their continual craving for something new ensure the sale of books which nobody much esteems. In democratic periods the public frequently treat authors as kings to do their courtiers. They enrich and they despise them. What more is needed by the venal souls which are born in courts, or which are worthy to live there? Democratic literature is always infested with a tribe of writers who look upon letters as a mere trade, and for some few great authors who adorn it you may reckon thousands of idea-mongers. End of Part 1, Chapters 13 and 14. Democracy in America, Volume 2, by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by Henry Reeve. Part 1, Chapter 15. The study of Greek and Latin literature peculiarly useful in democratic communities. What was called the people in the most democratic republics of antiquity was very unlike what we designate by that term. In Athens all the citizens took part in public affairs, but there were only 20,000 citizens to more than 350,000 inhabitants. All the rest were slaves, and discharged the greater part of those duties which belong at the present day to the lower or even to the middle classes. Athens then, with her universal suffrage, was after all merely an aristocratic republic in which all the nobles had an equal right to the government. The struggle between the patricians and plebeians of Rome must be considered in the same light. It was simply an intestine feud between the elder and younger branches of the same family. All the citizens belonged, in fact, to the aristocracy and partook of its character. It is moreover to be remarked that amongst the ancients books were always scarce and dear, and that very great difficulties impeded their publication and circulation. These circumstances concentrated literary tastes and habits amongst a small number of men who formed a small literary aristocracy out of the choicier spirits of the great political aristocracy. Accordingly, nothing goes to prove that literature was ever treated as a trade amongst the Greeks and Romans. These peoples, which not only constituted aristocracies, but very polished in free nations, of course imparted to their literary productions the defects and the merits which characterized the literature of aristocratic ages. And indeed, a very superficial survey of the literary remains of the ancients will suffice to convince us that if those writers were sometimes deficient in variety, or fertility in their subjects, or in boldness, vivacity, or power of generalization in their thoughts, they always displayed exquisite care and skill in their details. Nothing in their work seems to be done hastily or at random. Every line is written for the eye of the connoisseur, and is shaped after some conception of ideal beauty. No literature places those fine qualities in which the writers of democracies are naturally deficient in bolder relief than that of the ancients. No literature, therefore, ought to be more studied in democratic ages. This study is better suited than any other to combat the literary defects inherent in those ages. As for their more praiseworthy literary qualities, they will spring up of their own accord, without its being necessary to learn to acquire them. It is important that this point should be clearly understood. A particular study may be useful to the literature of a people without being appropriate to its social and political ones. If men were to persist in teaching nothing but the literature of the dead languages, in a community where everyone is habitually led to make vehement exertions to augment or to maintain his fortune, the result would be a very polished, but a very dangerous, race of citizens. For as their social and political condition would give them every day a sense of wants, which their education would never teach them to supply, they would perturb the state and the name of the Greeks and Romans, instead of enriching it by their productive industry. It is evident that in democratic communities the interest of individuals, as well as the security of the Commonwealth, demands that the education of the greater number should be scientific, commercial, and industrial, rather than literary. Greek and Latin should not be taught in all schools, but it is important that those who, by their natural disposition or their fortune, are destined to cultivate letters or prepared to relish them, should find schools where a complete knowledge of ancient literature may be acquired, and where the true scholar may be formed. A few excellent universities would do more towards the attainment of this object than a vast number of bad grammar schools, where superfluous matters, badly learned, stand in the way of sound instruction in necessary studies. All who aspire to literary excellence in democratic nations ought frequently to refresh themselves at the springs of ancient literature. There is no more wholesome course for the mind. Not that I hold the literary productions of the ancients to be irreproachable, but I think that they have some special merits, admirably calculated to counterbalance our peculiar defects. They are a prop on the side on which we are most in danger of falling. CHAPTER XVI. THE EFFECT OF DEMOCRACY ON LANGUAGE If the reader has rightly understood what I have already said on the subject of literature in general, he will have no difficulty in comprehending that species of influence which a democratic social condition and democratic institutions may exercise over language itself, which is the chief instrument of thought. American authors may truly be said to live more in England than in their own country, since they constantly study the English writers, and take them every day for their models. But such is not the case with the bulk of the population, which is more immediately subjected to the peculiar causes acting upon the United States. It is not then to the written, but to the spoken language, that attention must be paid if we would detect the modifications which the idiom of an aristocratic people may undergo when it becomes the language of democracy. Englishmen of education, and more competent judges than I can be myself of the nicer states of expression, have frequently assured me that the language of the educated classes in the United States is notably different from that of the educated classes in Great Britain. They complain not only that the Americans have brought into use a number of new words, the difference in the distance between the two countries might suffice to explain that much, but that these new words are more especially taken from the jargon of parties, the mechanical arts, or the language of trade. They assert, in addition to this, that old English words are often used by the Americans in new acceptations, and lastly that the inhabitants of the United States frequently intermingled their phraseology in the strangest manner, and sometimes place words together which are always kept apart in the language of the mother country. These remarks, which were made to me at various times by persons who appear to be worthy of credit, led me to reflect upon the subject, and my reflections brought me, by theoretical reasoning, to the same point at which my informants had arrived by practical observation. In aristocracies language must naturally partake of that state of repose in which everything remains. Few new words are coined because few new things are made, and even if new things were made, and even if new things were made they would be designated by known words whose meaning has been determined by tradition. If it happens that the human mind besters itself at length, or is roused by light breaking in from without, the novel expressions which are introduced are characterized by a degree of learning, intelligence, and philosophy, which shows that they do not originate in a democracy. After the fall of Constantinople had turned the tide of science and literature towards the West, the French language was almost immediately invaded by a multitude of new words, which had all Greek or Latin roots. An erudite neologism then sprang up in France which was confined to the educated classes, and which produced no sensible effect, or at least a very gradual one, upon the people. All the nations of Europe successively exhibited the same change. Milton alone introduced more than six hundred words into the English language, almost all derived from the Latin, the Greek, or the Hebrew. The constant agitation which prevails in a democratic community tends unceasingly, on the contrary, to change the character of the language, as it does the aspect of affairs. In the midst of this general stir and competition of minds, a great number of new ideas are formed, old ideas are lost, or reappear, or are subdivided into an infinite variety of minor shades. The consequence is that many words must fall into despotude, and others must be brought into use. Democratic nations love change for its own sake, and this is seen in their language as much as in their politics. Even when they do not need to change words, they sometimes feel a wish to transform them. The genius of a democratic people is not only shown by the great number of words they bring into use, but also by the nature of the ideas these new words represent. Among such a people, the majority lays down the law in language, as well as in everything else. Its prevailing spirit is as manifest in that as in other respects. But the majority is more engaged in business than in study, in political and commercial interests than in philosophical speculation, or literary pursuits. Most of the words coined or adapted for its use will therefore bear the mark of these habits. They will mainly serve to express the wants of business, the passions of party, or the details of the public administration. In these departments the language will constantly spread, whilst on the other hand it will gradually lose ground in metaphysics and theology. As to the source from which democratic nations are want to derive their new expressions, and the manner in which they go to work to coin them, both may be easily described. Men living in democratic countries know but little of the language which has spoken at Athens and at Rome, and they do not care to dive into the lore of antiquity to find the expression they happen to want. If they have sometimes recourse to learn the dead emologies, vanity will induce them to search at the roots of the dead languages. But erudition does not naturally furnish them with its resources. The most ignorant it sometimes happens will use them the most. The eminently democratic desire to get above their own sphere will often lead them to seek to dignify a vulgar expression by a Greek or Latin name. The lower the calling is, and the more remote from learning, the more pompous and erudite is its appellation. Thus the French rope dancers have transformed themselves into acrobats and funambules. In the absence of knowledge of the dead languages, democratic nations are apt to borrow words from living tongues, for their mutual intercourse becomes perpetual, and the inhabitants of different countries imitate each other the more readily as they grow more like each other every day. But it is principally upon their own languages that democratic nations attempt to perpetrate innovations. From time to time they resume forgotten expressions in the vocabulary, which they restore to use, or they borrow from some particular class of the community a term peculiar to it, which they introduce with a figurative meaning into the language of daily life. Many expressions, which originally belong to the technical language of a profession or a party, are thus drawn into general circulation. The most common expedient employed by democratic nations to make an innovation in language consists in giving some unwanted meaning to an expression already in use. This method is very simple, prompt and convenient. No learning is required to use it to write, and ignorance itself rather facilitates the practice. But that practice is most dangerous to the language. When a democratic people doubles the meaning of a word in this way, they sometimes render the signification which it retains as ambiguous as that which it acquires. An author begins by a slight deflection of a known expression from its primitive meaning, and he adapts it, thus modified, as well as he can to his subject. A second writer twists the sense of the expression in another way. A third takes possession of it for another purpose, and as there is no common appeal to the sentence of a permanent tribunal which may definitely settle the signification of the word, it remains in an ambiguous condition. The consequence is that writers hardly ever appear to dwell upon a single thought, but they always seem to point their aim at a nod of ideas, leaving the reader to judge which of them has been hit. This is a deplorable consequence of democracy. I had rather that the language should be made hideous with words imported from the Chinese, the Tartars, or the Herans, than that the meaning of a word in their own language should become indeterminate. Harmony and uniformity are only secondary beauties in composition. Many of these things are conventional, and, strictly speaking, it is possible to forego them. But without clear phraseology there is no good language. The principle of equality necessarily introduces several of their changes into language. In aristocratic ages, when each nation tends to stand aloof from all others and likes to have distinct characteristics of its own, it often happens that several peoples, which have a common origin, become nevertheless estranged from each other, so that, without ceasing to understand the same language, they no longer all speak it in the same manner. In these ages, each nation is divided into a certain number of classes which see but little of each other and do not intermingle. Each of these classes contracts and invariably retains habits of mind peculiar to itself, and adopts by choice certain words and certain terms which afterwards pass from generation to generation, like their estates. The same idiom then comprises a language of the poor and a language of the rich, a language of the citizen and a language of the nobility, a learned language and a vulgar one. The deeper the divisions and the more impassable the barriers of society become, the more must this be the case. I would lay a wager that amongst the castes of India there are amazing variations of language, and that there is almost as much difference between the language of the pariah and that of the Brahmin, as there is in their dress. When, on the contrary, men, being no longer restrained by ranks, meet on terms of constant intercourse, when castes are destroyed and the classes of society are recruited and intermixed with each other, all the words of a language are mingled. Those which are unsuitable to the greater number perish. The remainder form a common store whence everyone chooses pretty nearly at random. Almost all the different dialects which divided the idioms of European nations are manifestly declining. There is no patois in the new world and it is disappearing every day from the old countries. The influence of this revolution in social conditions is as much felt in style as it is in phraseology. Not only does everyone use the same words, but a habit springs up of using them without discrimination. The rules which style had set up are almost abolished. The line ceases to be drawn between expressions which seem by their very nature vulgar and other which appear to be refined. Persons springing from different ranks of society carry the terms and expressions they are accustomed to use with them into whatever circumstances they may pass. Thus the origin of words is lost like the origin of individuals and there is as much confusion and language as there is in society. I am aware that in the classification of words there are rules which do not belong to one form of society any more than to another but which are derived from the nature of things. Some expressions and phrases are vulgar because the ideas they are meant to express are low in themselves. Others are of a higher character because the objects they are intended to designate are naturally elevated. No intermixture of ranks will ever efface these differences. But the principle of equality cannot fail to root out whatever is merely conventional and arbitrary in the forms of thought. Perhaps the necessary classification which I pointed out in the last sentence will always be less respected by a democratic people than by any other because amongst such a people there are no men who are permanently disposed by education, culture, and leisure to study the natural laws of language and who cause those laws to be respected by their own observance of them. I shall not quit this topic without touching on a feature of democratic languages which is perhaps more characteristic of them than any other. It has already been shown that democratic nations have a taste and sometimes a passion for general ideas and that this arises from their peculiar... and that this arises from their peculiar merits and defects. This liking for general ideas is displayed in democratic languages by the continual use of generic terms or abstract expressions and by the manner in which they are employed. This is the great merit and the great imperfection of these languages. Democratic nations are passionately addicted to generic terms or abstract expressions because these modes of speech enlarge thought and assist the operations of the mind by enabling it to include several objects in a small compass. A French democratic writer will be apt to say capesite in the abstract for men of capacity and without particularizing the objects to which their capacity is applied. He will talk about actualities to designate in one word the things passing before his eyes at the instant and he will comprehend under the term eventualities whatever may happen in the universe dating from the moment at which he speaks. Democratic writers are perpetually coining words of this kind in which they sublimate into further abstraction the abstract terms of the language. They more to render their mode of speech more succinct they personify the subject of these abstract terms and make it act like a real entity. Thus they would say in French I cannot better illustrate what I mean than by my own example. I have frequently used the word equality in an absolute sense. Nay, I have personified equality in several places. Thus I have said that equality does such and such things or refrains from doing others. It may be affirmed that the writers of the age of Louis XIV would not have used these expressions. They would never have thought of using the word equality without applying it to some particular object and they would rather have renounced the term altogether than have consented to make a living personage of it. These abstract terms which abound in democratic languages and which are used on every occasion without attaching them to any particular fact enlarge and obscure the thoughts they are intended to convey. They render the mode of speech more succinct and the idea contained in it less clear. But with regard to language, democratic nations prefer obscurity to labor. I know not indeed whether this loose style has not some secret charm for those who speak and write amongst these nations. As the men who live there are frequently left to the efforts of their individual powers of mind, they are almost always a prey to doubt and as their situation in life is forever changing, they are never held fast to any of their opinions by the certain tenure of their fortunes. Men living in democratic countries are then apt to entertain unsettled ideas and they require loose expressions to convey them. As they never know whether the idea they express today will be appropriate to the new position they may occupy tomorrow, they naturally acquire a liking for abstract terms. An abstract term is like a box with a false bottom. You may put in it what ideas you please and take them out again without being observed. Amongst all nations, generic and abstract terms form the basis of language. I do not therefore affect to expel these terms from democratic languages. I simply remark that men have a special tendency in the ages of democracy to multiply words of this kind, to take them always by themselves in their most abstract acceptations and to use them on all occasions even when the nature of the discourse does not require them. End of Part 1 Chapters 15 and 16 Section 9 Chapters 17 and 18 of Book 1 of Volume 2 of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville translated by Henry Reeve. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading is done by Ralph Volpe. Chapter 17 of some of the sources of poetry amongst democratic nation. Various different significations have been given to the word poetry. It would weary my readers if I were to lead them into a discussion as to which of these definitions ought to be selected. I prefer telling them at once that which I have chosen. In my opinion, poetry is the search and the delineation of the ideal. The poet is he who by suppressing a part of what exists by adding some imaginary touches to the picture and by combining certain real circumstances but which do not in fact concurrently happen completes and extends the work of nature. Thus, the object of poetry is not to represent what is true but to adorn it and to present to the mind some loftier image. Verse, regarded as the ideal beauty of language, may be eminently poetical but verse does not of itself constitute poetry. I now proceed to inquire whether amongst the actions, the sentiments and the opinions of democratic nations there are any which lead to a conception of ideal beauty and which may for this reason be considered as natural sources of poetry. It must in the first place be acknowledged that the taste for ideal beauty and the pleasure derived from the expression of it are never so intense or so diffused amongst a democratic as amongst an aristocratic people. In aristocratic nations it sometimes happens that the body goes on to act as it were spontaneously while the higher faculties are bound and burdened by repose. Amongst these nations the people will very often display poetic tastes and sometimes allow their fancy to range beyond and above what surrounds them. But in democracy the love of physical gratification the notion of bettering one's condition the excitement of competition the charm of anticipated success are so many spurs to urge men onwards in the active professions they have embraced without allowing them to deviate an instant from the track. The main stress of the faculties is to this point. The imagination is not extinct but its chief function is to devise what may be useful and to represent what is real. The principle of equality not only diverts men from the description of ideal beauty it also diminishes the number of objects to be described. Aristocracy by maintaining society in a fixed position is favorable to the solidity and duration of positive religion as well as to the stability of political institutions. It not only keeps the human mind within a certain sphere of belief but it predisposes the mind to adopt one faith rather than another. An aristocratic people will always be prone to place intermediate powers between God and man. In this respect it may be said that the aristocratic element is favorable to poetry. When the universe is peopled with supernatural creatures not palpable to the senses but discoverable by the mind the imagination ranges freely and poets finding a thousand subjects to delineate also find a countless audience to take an interest in their productions. In democratic ages it sometimes happens on the contrary that men are as much a float in matters of belief as they are in their laws. Skepticism then draws the imaginations of poets back to earth and confines them to the real and visible world. Even when the principle of equality does not disturb religious belief it tends to simplify it and divert attention from secondary agents to fix it principally on the supreme power. Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation of the past and fixes it there. Democracy on the contrary gives men a sort of instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In this respect aristocracy is far more favorable to poetry for things commonly grow larger and more obscure as they are more remote and for this twofold reason they are better suited to the delineation of the ideal. After having deprived poetry of the past the principle of equity robs it in part of the present. Amongst aristocratic nations there are a certain number of privileged personages whose situation is as it were without and above the condition of man. To these power, wealth, fame, wit, refinement and distinction in all things appear particularly to belong. The crowd it never sees them very closely nor does not watch them in minute detail. And little is needed to make the description of such men poetical. On the other hand amongst the same people you will meet with classes so ignorant, low and enslaved. They are no less fit for objects of poetry from the excesses of their rudeness and wretchedness than the former are from their greatness and refinement. Besides as the different classes of which an aristocratic community is composed are widely separated and imperfectly acquainted with each other. The imagination may always represent them with some addition to or some subtraction from what they really are. In democratic communities where men are all insignificant and very much alike each man instantly sees all his fellows when he surveys himself. The poets of democratic ages can never therefore take any man in particular as a subject of a piece for an object of slender importance which is distinctly seen on all sides will never lend itself to an ideal conception. Thus the principle of equity in proportion as it has established itself in the world has dried up most of the old springs of poetry. Let us now attempt to show what new ones it may disclose. When skepticism had depopulated heaven and the progress of equality had reduced each individual to smaller and better known proportions. The poets, not yet aware of what they could substitute for the great themes which were departing together with the aristocracy turned their eyes to inanimate nature. As they lost sight of gods and heroes they set themselves to describe streams and mountains. Then originated in the last century that kind of poetry which has been called by way of distinction, the descriptive. Some have thought that this sort of delineation embellished with all the physical and inanimate objects which cover the earth was the kind of poetry particular to democratic ages. But I believe this to be an error and that it only belongs to a period of transition. I am persuaded that in the end democracy diverts the imagination from all that is external to man and fixes it on man alone. Democratic nations may amuse themselves for a while with considering the productions of nature. But they are only excited in reality by a survey of themselves. Here and here alone are the true sources of poetry amongst such nations are to be found. And it may be believed that all the poets who shall neglect to draw their inspiration hence will lose all sway over the minds which they would enchant and will be left in the end with none but unpassioned spectators of their transports. I have shown how the ideas of progression and the infinite perfectability of a human race belong to the democratic ages. Democratic nations care little for what has been but are haunted by visions of what will be. In this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure. Here then is the wildest range open to the genius of poets which allows them to remove their performances to a sufficient distance from the eye. Democracy shuts the past against the poet but opens the future before him. As all the citizens who compose a democratic community are nearly equal and alike the poet cannot dwell upon any one of them. But the nation itself invites the exercise of his powers. The general solitude of individuals which renders any one of them taken separately an improper subject of poetry allows poets to include them all in the same imagery and to take a general survey of the people itself. Democratic nations have a clear perception than any others of their own aspect and an aspect so imposing is admirably fitted to the delineation of the ideal. I readily admit that the Americans have no poets. I cannot allow that they have no poetic ideas. In Europe people talk a great deal of the wiles of America but the Americans themselves never think about them. They are insensible to the wonders of inanimate nature and they may be said not to perceive the mighty forests which surround them till they fall beneath the hatchet. Their eyes are fixed upon another side. The American people views its own march across these wiles drying swamps, turning the course of rivers, peopling soliditudes and subduing nature. This magnificent image of themselves does not meet the gaze of Americans at intervals only. It may be said to haunt every one of them in his least as well as in his most important actions and always to be flitting before his mind. Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests in one word so anti-poetic as the life of a man in the United States. But amongst the thoughts which it suggests, there is always one which is full of poetry and that is the hidden nerve which gives vigor to the frame. In aristocratic ages, each people as well as each individual is prone to stand separate and aloof from all others. In democratic ages, the extreme fluctuations of men and the impatience of their desires keep them perpetually on the move so that the inhabitants of different countries intermingle, see, listen to and borrow from each other's stores. It is not only then the members of the same community who grow more alike. Communities are themselves assimilated to one another and the whole assemblage presents to the eye of the spectator one vast democracy, each citizen of which is a people. This displays the aspect of mankind for the first time in the broadest light. All that belongs to the existence of the human race taken as a whole to its vicissitudes and to its future becomes an abundant mind of poetry. The poets who live in aristocratic ages have been eminently successful in their delineations of certain incidents in the life of a people or a man, but none of them has ventured to include within his performance the destinies of mankind, a task which the poets writing in democratic ages may attempt. At the same time at which every man rising his eyes above his country begins at length to discern mankind at large, the divinity is more and more manifest to the human mind in full and entire majesty. If in democratic ages, faith in positive religions be often shaken and the belief in intermediate agents by whatever name they are called be overcast. On the other hand, men are disposed to conceive a far broader idea of province itself and its interference in human affairs assumes a new and more imposing appearance in their eye. Looking at the human race as one great whole, they easily conceive that its destinies are regulated by the same design and in the actions of every individual, they are led to acknowledge a trace of that universal and eternal plan on which God rules our race. This consideration may be taken as another prolific sense of poetry which is open in democratic ages. Democratic poets will always appear trivial and frigid if they seek to invest God, demons, or angels with corporal forms and if they attempt to draw them down from heaven to dispute the supremacy of earth. But if they strive to connect the great events they commemorate with the general providential designs which govern the universe and without showing the finger of the supreme governor, reveal the thoughts of the supreme mind, their works will be admired and understood for the imaginations of their contemporaries take this direction of its own accord. It may be foreseen in like manner that the poets living in democratic ages will prefer the delineation of passions and ideas to that of persons and achievements. The language, the dress, and the daily actions of men in democracies are repugnant to ideal conceptions. These things are not poetical in themselves and if it were otherwise, they would cease to be so because they are too familiar to all those whom the poet would speak of them. This forces the poet constantly to search below the external surface, which is palpable to the senses in order to read the inner soul and nothing lends itself more to the delineation of the ideal than the scrutiny of the hidden depths in the immaterial nature of man. I do not need to ramble over earth and sky to discover a wondrous object woven of contrast of greatness and littleness infinite, of intense gloom and of amazing brightness, capable at once of exciting pity, admiration, terror, and contempt. I find that object in myself. Man springs out of nothing, crosses time, and disappears forever into the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment, staggering on the verge of the two abysses and there he is lost. If man were wholly ignorant of himself, he would have no poetry in him, for it is impossible to describe what the mind does not conceive. If man clearly discerned his own nature, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently disclosed for him to apprehend something of himself and sufficiently obscure for all the rest to be plunged into thick darkness in which he gropes forever and forever in vain, to lay hold on some completer notion of his being. Amongst a democratic people, poetry will not be fed with legendary lays or the memorials of old traditions. The poet will not attempt to people the universe with supernatural beings in whom his readers and his own fancy have ceased to believe, nor will he present virtues and vices in the masks of frigid personification which are better received under their own features. All these resources fail him, but man remains and the poet needs no more. The destinies of mankind, man himself, taken aloof from his age and his country and standing in the presence of nature and God with his passions, his doubts, his rare prosperity, his inconceivable wretchedness will become the chief if not the sole theme of poetry amongst these nations. Experience may confirm this assertion if we consider the productions of the greatest poets who have appeared since the world has turned to democracy. The authors of our age who have so admirably delineated the features of Faust, Child Herod, Rene, and Joslyn did not seek to record the actions of an individual but to enlarge and throw light upon some of the obscure recesses of the human heart. Such are the poems of democracy. The principle of equality does not then destroy all the subject of poetry. It renders them less numerous, but more vast. End of chapter 17, chapter 18 of the inflated style of American writers and orators. I have frequently remarked that the Americans who generally treat of business in clear, plain language, devoid of all ornament, and so extremely simple as to be often coarse, are apt to become inflated as soon as they attempt a more poetical diction. They then vent their pomposity from one end of a harangue to the other, and to hear them lavage imagery on every occasion, one might fancy that they never spoke of anything with simplicity. The English are more rarely given to a similar failing. The cause of this may be pointed out without much difficulty. In democratic communities, each citizen is habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object, namely himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he then perceives nothing but the immense form of society at large, or the still more imposing aspect of mankind. His ideas are all extremely minute and clear, or extremely general and vague, but lies between is an open void. When he has been drawn out of his own sphere, therefore, he always expects that some amazing object will be offered to his attention. And it is on these terms alone that he consents to tear himself for an instant from the petty complicated cares which form the charm and excitement of his life. This appears to me sufficiently to explain why men in democracies, whose concerns in general are so paltry, call upon their poets for conceptions so vast and description so unlimited. The authors on their part do not fail to obey a propensity of which they themselves partake. They perpetually inflate their imaginations and expanding them beyond all bounds, they not unfrequently abandon the great in order to reach the gigantic. By these means, they hope to attract the observations of the multitude and to fix it easily upon themselves. Nor are their hopes disappointed, for as the multitude seeks for nothing in poetry but subjects of very vast dimensions, it has neither the time to measure with accuracy the proportions of all the subjects set before it, nor it tastes sufficiently correct to perceive at once in what respect they are out of proportion. The author and the public at once vitiate one another. We have just seen that amongst a democratic nation, the sources of poetry are grand but not abundant. They are soon exhausted and poets not finding the elements of the ideal in what is real and true, abandon them entirely and create monsters. I do not fear that the poetry of democratic nations will prove to be too insipid or that it will fly too near the ground. I rather apprehend that it will be forever losing itself in the clouds and that it will range at last to purely imaginary region. I fear that the productions of democratic poets may often be surcharge with an immense and incoherent imagery, with exaggerated descriptions and strange creations. And that the fantastic beings of their brains may sometimes make us regret the world of reality. End of chapter 18, end of section nine, chapters 17 and 18 of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, volume two, book one, translated by Henry Reeve. Section 10, chapters 19 and 20 of book one of volume two of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, translated by Henry Reeve. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading is done by Ralph Volpe, chapter 19. Some observations on the drama amongst democratic nation. When the revolution which subverts the social and political state of an aristocratic people begins to penetrate into literature, it generally first manifests itself in the drama, and it always remains conspicuous there. The spectator of a dramatic piece is, to a certain extent, taken by surprise by the impression it conveys. He has no time to refer to his memory or to consult those more able to judge than himself. It does not occur to him to resist the new literary tendencies which begin to be felt by him. He yields to them before he knows what they are. Authors are very prompt in discovering which way the taste of the public is thus secretly inclined. They shape their productions accordingly, and the literature of the stage, after having served to indicate the approach of literary revolution, speedily completes its accomplishment. If you would judge beforehand the literature of a people who is lapsing into democracy, study its dramatic production. The literature of the stage, moreover, even amongst aristocratic nations, constitutes the most democratic part of their literature. No kind of literary gratification is so much within the reach of the multitude as that which is derived from theatrical representation. Their preparation nor study is required to enjoy them. They lay hold on you in the midst of your prejudices and your ignorance. When the yet untutored love of the pleasures of the mind begins to affect a class of the community, it instantly draws them to the stage. The theatres of aristocratic nations have always been filled with spectators not belonging to the aristocracy. At the theatre alone the higher ranks mix with the middle and lower classes. There alone do the former consent to listen to the opinions of the latter, or at least allow them to give an opinion at all. At the theatre, men of cultivation and of literary attainments have always had more difficulty in making their taste prevail over that of the people and in preventing themselves from being carried away by the latter. The pit has frequently made laws for the boxes. If it be difficult for an aristocracy to event the people from getting the upper hand in the theatre, it will be readily understood that the people will be supreme there when democratic principles have crept into the laws and manners. When the ranks are intermixed, when minds as well as fortunes are brought more nearly together, and when the upper class has lost with its hereditary wealth, its power, its precedence, and its leisure. The tastes and the propensities natural to democratic nations in respect to literature will therefore first be discernible in the drama, and it may be foreseen that they will break out there with vehemence. In written productions, the literary canons of aristocracy will be gently, gradually, and, so to speak, legally modified. At the theatre, they will be riotously overthrown. The drama brings out most of the good qualities and almost all the defects inherent in democratic literature. Democratic peoples hold erudition very cheap and care but little for what occurred at Rome and Athens. They want to hear something which concerns themselves, and the delineation of the present age is what they demand. When the heroes and the manners of antiquity are frequently brought upon the stage, dramatic authors faithfully observe the rules of antiquated precedent. That is enough to warrant a conclusion that the democratic classes have not yet got the upper hand of the theatres. Racine makes a very humble apology in the preface to Britannicus for having disposed of Oenia amongst the Vestals, who, according to Eulius Galenus, he says, admitted no one below six years of age nor above ten. We may be sure he would neither have accused himself of the offense, nor defended himself from censure if he had written for our contemporaries. A fact of this kind not only illustrates the state of literature at the time when it occurred, but also that of society itself. A democratic stage does not prove that the nation is in a state of aristocracy. Four, as we have just seen, even in aristocracies it may happen that democratic tastes affect the drama. But when the spirit of aristocracy reigns exclusively on the stage, the fact in irrefra-gubbly demonstrates that the whole of society is aristocratic. And it may be boldly inferred that the same lettered and learned class which orders commands the people and governs the country. The refined tastes and the arrogant bearing of an aristocracy will rarely fail to lead it when it manages the stage to make a kind of selection in human nature. Some of the conditions of society claim its chief interest and the scenes which delineate their manners are preferred upon the stage. Certain virtues and even certain vices are thought more particularly to deserve to figure there and they are applauded whilst all others are excluded. Upon the stage as well as elsewhere an aristocratic audience will only meet personages of quality and share the emotions of kings. The same thing applies to style and aristocracy is apt to impose upon dramatic authors certain modes of expression which give the key in which everything is to be delivered. By these means the stage frequently comes to delineate only one side of man or sometimes even to represent what is not to be met with in human nature at all. To rise above nature and to go beyond it. In democratic communities the spectators have no such partiality and they rarely display any such antipathies. They like to see upon the stage that medley of conditions of feelings and of opinions which occur before their eyes. The drama becomes more striking more common and more true. Sometimes however the stage in democracies also transgress the bounds of human nature but it is on a different side from their predecessors. By seeking to represent in minute detail the little singularities of the moment and the particular characteristics of certain personages they forget to portray the general features of the race. When the democratic classes rule the stage they introduce as much license in a manner of treating subjects as in the choice of them. As the love of drama is of all literary tastes that which is most natural to democratic nations the number of authors and of spectators as well of theatrical representations is constantly increasing amongst these communities. A multitude composed of elements so different and scattered in so many different places cannot acknowledge the same rules or submit to the same law. No concurrence is possible amongst judges so numerous who know not when they may meet again and therefore each pronounces his own sentence on the piece. If the effect of democracy is generally to question the authority of all literary rules and conventions on the stage it abolishes them all together and puts in their place nothing but the whim of each author and of each public. The drama also displays in a special manner the truth of what I have said before in speaking more generally of style and art in democratic literature. In reading the criticisms which were occasioned by the dramatic productions of the age of Louis XIV one is surprised to remark the great stress which the public laid on the probability of the plot and the importance which was attached to the perfect consistency of the characters and to their doing nothing which could not be easily explained and understood. The value which was set upon the forms of language at that period and the paltry strife about the words which the dramatic authors were assailed are no less surprising. It would seem that the men of the age of Louis XIV attached a very exaggerated importance to these details which may be perceived in the study which which escape attention on the stage. Four, after all the principal object of a dramatic piece is to be performed and its chief merit is to affect the audience but the audience and the readers in that age were the same on quitting the theater they called up the author for judgment to their own firesides in democracies dramatic pieces are listened to but not read most of those who frequent the amusements of the stage do not go there to seek the pleasures of the mind but the keen emotions of the heart they do not expect to hear a fine literary work but to see a play and provided the author writes the language of his country correctly enough to be understood and that his characters excite curiosity and awaken sympathy the audience are satisfied they ask no more of fiction and immediately return to real life accuracy of style is therefore less required because the attentive observance of its rules is less perceptible as for the probability of the plot it is incompatible with perpetual novelty surprise and rapidity of invention it is therefore neglected and the public excuses the neglect you may be sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience into the presence of something that affects them they will not care by what road you brought them there and they will never reproach you for having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules the Americans very broadly display all the different propensities which I have here described when they go to the theater but it must be acknowledged that as yet a very small number of them go to theaters at all although playgoers and plays have prodigiously increased in the United States in the last 40 years the population indulges in this kind of amusement with the greatest reserve this is attributable to particular causes which the reader is already acquainted with and of which a few words will suffice to remind him the Puritans who founded the American Republics were not only enemies to amusements but they professed for the stage they considered it as an abominable pastime and as long as their principles prevailed with undivided sway scenic performances were wholly unknown amongst them these opinions of the first fathers of the colony have left very deep marks on the minds of their descendants the extreme regularity of habits and the great sickness of manners which are observable in the United States have as yet opposed additional obstacles to the growth of dramatic art there are no dramatic subjects in a country which has witnessed no great political catastrophe and in which love inevitably leads by a straight and easy road to matrimony people who spend every day in the week in making money in going to church have nothing to invite the muse of comedy a single fact suffices to show that the stage is not very popular in the United States the Americans whose laws allow of the utmost freedom and even license of language in all other respects have nevertheless subject their dramatic authors to a sort of censorship theatrical performances can only take place by permission of a municipal authority this may serve to show how much communities are like individuals they surrender themselves unscrupulously to their ruling passions and afterwards take the greatest care not to yield too much to the vehemence of taste which they do not possess no portion of literature is connected by closer and more diverse ties with the present condition of society than the drama the drama of one period can never be suited to the following age if in the interval an important revolution has changed the manners and the laws of the nation the great authors of a preceding age may be read but pieces written for a different public will not be followed the dramatic authors of only in books the traditional taste of certain individuals vanity, fashion or the genius of an actor may sustain or resuscitate for a time the aristocratic drama amongst a democracy but it will speedily fall away of itself not overthrown but abandoned end of chapter 19 chapter 20 characteristics of historians in democratic ages historians who write in aristocratic ages are want to refer all occurrences to the particular will or temper of certain individuals and they are apt to attribute the most important revolutions to very slight accidents they trace out the smallest causes with sagacity and frequently leave the greatest unperceived historians who live in democratic ages exhibit precisely opposite characteristics most of them attribute hardly any influence to the individual over the destiny of the race nor to citizens over the fate of a people but on the other hand they assign great general causes to all petty incidents these contrary tendencies explain each other when the historian of aristocratic ages surveys the theater of the world he at once perceives a very small number of prominent actors who manage the whole piece these great personages who occupy the front of the stage arrest the observation and fix it on themselves and whilst the historian is bent on penetrating the secret motives which make them speak and act the rest escape his memory the importance of the things which some men seem to do gives him an exaggerated estimate of the influence which one man may possess and naturally leads him to think that in order to explain the impulse of the multitude to them to the particular influence of some one individual when on the contrary all the citizens are independent of one another and each of them is individually weak no one is seen to exert a great or still less a lasting power over the community at first sight individuals appear to be absolutely devoid of any influence over it and society would seem to advance alone by the free and voluntary concurrence of all men who compose it this naturally prompts the mind to search for that general reason which operates upon so many men's faculties at the same time and turns them simultaneously in the same direction I am very well convinced that even amongst democratic nations genius, the vices or the virtues of certain individuals retard or accelerate the natural current of a people's history but causes of this secondary and fortuitous nature are infinitely more various more concealed more complex less powerful and consequently less easy to trace in periods of equality than in ages of aristocracy the historian is simply to detach from the mass of general events one man or of a few men in the former case the historian is soon worried by the toil his mind loses itself in this labyrinth and in his inability clearly to discern or conspicuously to point out the influence of individuals he denies their existence he prefers talking about the characteristics of the race the physical confirmation of the country or the genius of civilization which abridges his own labors and satisfies his readers far better at less cost Monsieur de Lafayette says somewhere in his memoirs that the exaggerated system of general causes affords surprising consolations to second rate statesmen I will add that its effects are not less consolatory to second rate historian it can always furnish a few mighty reasons to extricate them from the most difficult part of their work and it indulges the indolence or incapacity of their minds whilst it confers upon them the honors of deep thinking for myself I am of the opinion that all times one great portion of the events of this world are attributable to general facts and the other to special influences these two kinds of cause are always in operation their proportion only varies general facts serve to explain more things in democratic than in aristocratic ages and fewer things are then assignable to special influences at periods of aristocracy the reverse takes place special influences are stronger general causes weaker and less indeed we consider as a general cause the fact itself of the inequality of conditions which allows some individuals to baffle the natural tendencies of all the rest the historians who seek to describe what occurs in democratic societies are right therefore in assigning much to general causes and in devoting their chief attentions to discover them but they are wrong in wholly denying the special influence of individuals because they cannot easily trace or follow it the historians who live in democratic ages are not only prone to assign a great cause to every incident but they are also given to connect incidents together so as to deduce a system from them in aristocratic ages as the attentions of historians is constantly drawn to individuals the connection of events escapes them or rather they do not believe in any such connection to them the cue of history seems every instant cross and broken by the step of man in democratic ages as the historian sees much more of actions than of actors he may easily establish some kind of sequence and methodological order amongst the former ancient literature which is so rich in fine historical compositions does not contain a single great historical system while the poorest of the modern literatures abound with them it would appear that the ancient historians make sufficient use of those general theories which our historical writers are ever ready to carry to excess those who write in democratic ages have another more dangerous tendency when the traces of individual actions upon nations are lost it often happens that the world goes on to move though the moving agent is no longer discoverable as it becomes extremely difficult to discern and to analyze the reasons which acting separately on the volition of each member of the community concur in the end to reduce movements in the old mass men are led to believe that this movement is involuntary and that societies unconsciously obey some superior force ruling over them but even when the general fact which governs the private volition of all individuals is supposed to be discovered upon the earth the principle of human free will is not secure a cause sufficiently extensive to affect millions of men at once and sufficiently strong to bend them all together in the same direction may well seem to be irresistible having seen that mankind do yield to it the mind is close upon the inference that mankind cannot resist it historians who live in democratic ages then not only deny that few have any power of acting upon the destiny of a people but they deprive the people themselves of the power of modifying their own condition and they subject them to either an inflexible providence or to some blind necessity according to them each nation is indissolubly bound by its position its origin its precedence and its character to a certain lot which no efforts can ever change they involve generation in generation and thus going back from age to age and from necessity to necessity up to the origin of the world they forge a close and enormous chain which girds and binds the human race to their minds it is not enough to show that events have occurred they would feign show that the events could not have occurred otherwise they take a nation arrived at a certain stage of its history and they affirm that it could not but follow the track which brought it thither it is easier to make such an assertion than to show by what means the nation might have adopted a better course in reading the historians of aristocratic ages and especially those of antiquity it would seem that to be master of its lot and to govern his fellow creatures man requires only to be master of himself in pursuing the historical volumes which our age has produced it would seem that man is utterly powerless over himself and over all around him the historians of antiquity taught how to command those of our time teach only how to obey in their writings the author often appears great but humanity is always diminutive if this doctrine of necessity which is so attractive to those who write history in the democratic ages passes from authors to their readers tell it infects the whole mass of the community and gets possession of the public mind it will soon paralyze the activity of modern society and reduce Christians to the level of the Turks I would moreover observe that such principles are particularly dangerous at the period at which we have arrived our contemporaries are but too prone to doubt the human free will because each of them feels himself confined on every side by his own weakness but they are still willing to acknowledge the strength and independence of men united in society let not this principle be lost sight of for the great object of our time is to raise the faculties of men not complete their prostration of chapter 20 of book 1 of volume 2 of democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville translated by Henry Reeve this reading was done by Ralph Volpe end of section 10