9. Chapter IX: The Example Of The Americans Does Not Prove That A
Democratic People Can Have No Aptitude And No Taste For Science,
Literature, Or Art
It must be acknowledged that amongst few of the civilized
nations of our time have the higher sciences made less progress
than in the United States; and in few have great artists, fine
poets, or celebrated writers been more rare. Many Europeans,
struck by this fact, have looked upon it as a natural and
inevitable result of equality; and they have supposed that if a
democratic state of society and democratic institutions were ever
to prevail over the whole earth, the human mind would gradually
find its beacon-lights grow dim, and men would relapse into a
period of darkness. To reason thus is, I think, to confound
several ideas which it is important to divide and to examine
separately: it is to mingle, unintentionally, what is democratic
with what is only American.
The religion professed by the first emigrants, and
bequeathed by them to their descendants, simple in its form of
worship, austere and almost harsh in its principles, and hostile
to external symbols and to ceremonial pomp, is naturally
unfavorable to the fine arts, and only yields a reluctant
sufferance to the pleasures of literature. The Americans are a
very old and a very enlightened people, who have fallen upon a
new and unbounded country, where they may extend themselves at
pleasure, and which they may fertilize without difficulty. This
state of things is without a parallel in the history of the
world. In America, then, every one finds facilities, unknown
elsewhere, for making or increasing his fortune. The spirit of
gain is always on the stretch, and the human mind, constantly
diverted from the pleasures of imagination and the labors of the
intellect, is there swayed by no impulse but the pursuit of
wealth. Not only are manufacturing and commercial classes to be
found in the United States, as they are in all other countries;
but what never occurred elsewhere, the whole community is
simultaneously engaged in productive industry and commerce. I am
convinced that, if the Americans had been alone in the world,
with the freedom and the knowledge acquired by their forefathers,
and the passions which are their own, they would not have been
slow to discover that progress cannot long be made in the
application of the sciences without cultivating the theory of
them; that all the arts are perfected by one another: and,
however absorbed they might have been by the pursuit of the
principal object of their desires, they would speedily have
admitted, that it is necessary to turn aside from it
occasionally, in order the better to attain it in the end.
The taste for the pleasures of the mind is moreover so
natural to the heart of civilized man, that amongst the polite
nations, which are least disposed to give themselves up to these
pursuits, a certain number of citizens are always to be found who
take part in them. This intellectual craving, when once felt,
would very soon have been satisfied. But at the very time when
the Americans were naturally inclined to require nothing of
science but its special applications to the useful arts and the
means of rendering life comfortable, learned and literary Europe
was engaged in exploring the common sources of truth, and in
improving at the same time all that can minister to the pleasures
or satisfy the wants of man. At the head of the enlightened
nations of the Old World the inhabitants of the United States
more particularly distinguished one, to which they were closely
united by a common origin and by kindred habits. Amongst this
people they found distinguished men of science, artists of skill,
writers of eminence, and they were enabled to enjoy the treasures
of the intellect without requiring to labor in amassing them. I
cannot consent to separate America from Europe, in spite of the
ocean which intervenes. I consider the people of the United
States as that portion of the English people which is
commissioned to explore the wilds of the New World; whilst the
rest of the nation, enjoying more leisure and less harassed by
the drudgery of life, may devote its energies to thought, and
enlarge in all directions the empire of the mind.
The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and
it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed
in a similar one. Their strictly Puritanical origin -their
exclusively commercial habits -even the country they inhabit,
which seems to divert their minds from the pursuit of science,
literature, and the arts -the proximity of Europe, which allows
them to neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism -a thousand special causes, of which I have only been able to
point out the most important -have singularly concurred to fix
the mind of the American upon purely practical objects. His
passions, his wants, his education, and everything about him seem
to unite in drawing the native of the United States earthward:
his religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a transient
and distracted glance to heaven. Let us cease then to view all
democratic nations under the mask of the American people, and let
us attempt to survey them at length with their own proper
features.
It is possible to conceive a people not subdivided into any
castes or scale of ranks; in which the law, recognizing no
privileges, should divide inherited property into equal shares;
but which, at the same time, should be without knowledge and
without freedom. Nor is this an empty hypothesis: a despot may
find that it is his interest to render his subjects equal and to
leave them ignorant, in order more easily to keep them slaves.
Not only would a democratic people of this kind show neither
aptitude nor taste for science, literature, or art, but it would
probably never arrive at the possession of them. The law of
descent would of itself provide for the destruction of fortunes
at each succeeding generation; and new fortunes would be acquired
by none. The poor man, without either knowledge or freedom,
would not so much as conceive the idea of raising himself to
wealth; and the rich man would allow himself to be degraded to
poverty, without a notion of self-defence. Between these two
members of the community complete and invincible equality would
soon be established.
No one would then have time or taste to devote himself to
the pursuits or pleasures of the intellect; but all men would
remain paralyzed by a state of common ignorance and equal
servitude. When I conceive a democratic society of this kind, I
fancy myself in one of those low, close, and gloomy abodes, where
the light which breaks in from without soon faints and fades
away. A sudden heaviness overpowers me, and I grope through the
surrounding darkness, to find the aperture which will restore me
to daylight and the air.
But all this is not applicable to men already enlightened
who retain their freedom, after having abolished from amongst
them those peculiar and hereditary rights which perpetuated the
tenure of property in the hands of certain individuals or certain
bodies. When men living in a democratic state of society are
enlightened, they readily discover that they are confined and
fixed within no limits which constrain them to take up with their
present fortune. They all therefore conceive the idea of
increasing it; if they are free, they all attempt it, but all do
not succeed in the same manner. The legislature, it is true, no
longer grants privileges, but they are bestowed by nature. As
natural inequality is very great, fortunes become unequal as soon
as every man exerts all his faculties to get rich. The law of
descent prevents the establishment of wealthy families; but it
does not prevent the existence of wealthy individuals. It
constantly brings back the members of the community to a common
level, from which they as constantly escape: and the inequality
of fortunes augments in proportion as knowledge is diffused and
liberty increased.
A sect which arose in our time, and was celebrated for its
talents and its extravagance, proposed to concentrate all
property into the hands of a central power, whose function it
should afterwards be to parcel it out to individuals, according
to their capacity. This would have been a method of escaping
from that complete and eternal equality which seems to threaten
democratic society. But it would be a simpler and less dangerous
remedy to grant no privilege to any, giving to all equal
cultivation and equal independence, and leaving everyone to
determine his own position. Natural inequality will very soon
make way for itself, and wealth will spontaneously pass into the
hands of the most capable.
Free and democratic communities, then, will always contain a
considerable number of people enjoying opulence or competency.
The wealthy will not be so closely linked to each other as the
members of the former aristocratic class of society: their
propensities will be different, and they will scarcely ever enjoy
leisure as secure or as complete: but they will be far more
numerous than those who belonged to that class of society could
ever be. These persons will not be strictly confined to the
cares of practical life, and they will still be able, though in
different degrees, to indulge in the pursuits and pleasures of
the intellect. In those pleasures they will indulge; for if it
be true that the human mind leans on one side to the narrow, the
practical, and the useful, it naturally rises on the other to the
infinite, the spiritual, and the beautiful. Physical wants
confine it to the earth; but, as soon as the tie is loosened, it
will unbend itself again.
Not only will the number of those who can take an interest
in the productions of the mind be enlarged, but the taste for
intellectual enjoyment will descend, step by step, even to those
who, in aristocratic societies, seem to have neither time nor
ability to in indulge in them. When hereditary wealth, the
privileges of rank, and the prerogatives of birth have ceased to
be, and when every man derives his strength from himself alone,
it becomes evident that the chief cause of disparity between the
fortunes of men is the mind. Whatever tends to invigorate, to
extend, or to adorn the mind, instantly rises to great value.
The utility of knowledge becomes singularly conspicuous even to
the eyes of the multitude: those who have no taste for its charms
set store upon its results, and make some efforts to acquire it.
In free and enlightened democratic ages, there is nothing to
separate men from each other or to retain them in their peculiar
sphere; they rise or sink with extreme rapidity. All classes
live in perpetual intercourse from their great proximity to each
other. They communicate and intermingle every day -they imitate
and envy one other: this suggests to the people many ideas,
notions, and desires which it would never have entertained if the
distinctions of rank had been fixed and society at rest. In such
nations the servant never considers himself as an entire stranger
to the pleasures and toils of his master, nor the poor man to
those of the rich; the rural population assimilates itself to
that of the towns, and the provinces to the capital. No one
easily allows himself to be reduced to the mere material cares of
life; and the humblest artisan casts at times an eager and a
furtive glance into the higher regions of the intellect. People
do not read with the same notions or in the same manner as they
do in an aristocratic community; but the circle of readers is
unceasingly expanded, till it includes all the citizens.
As soon as the multitude begins to take an interest in the
labors of the mind, it finds out that to excel in some of them is
a powerful method of acquiring fame, power, or wealth. The
restless ambition which equality begets instantly takes this
direction as it does all others. The number of those who
cultivate science, letters, and the arts, becomes immense. The
intellectual world starts into prodigious activity: everyone
endeavors to open for himself a path there, and to draw the eyes
of the public after him. Something analogous occurs to what
happens in society in the United States, politically considered.
What is done is often imperfect, but the attempts are
innumerable; and, although the results of individual effort are
commonly very small, the total amount is always very large.
It is therefore not true to assert that men living in
democratic ages are naturally indifferent to science, literature,
and the arts: only it must be acknowledged that they cultivate
them after their own fashion, and bring to the task their own
peculiar qualifications and deficiencies.