3. Chapter III: Individualism Stronger At The Close Of A Democratic
Revolution Than At Other Periods
The period when the construction of democratic society upon
the ruins of an aristocracy has just been completed, is
especially that at which this separation of men from one another,
and the egotism resulting from it, most forcibly strike the
observation. Democratic communities not only contain a large
number of independent citizens, but they are constantly filled
with men who, having entered but yesterday upon their independent
condition, are intoxicated with their new power. They entertain
a presumptuous confidence in their strength, and as they do not
suppose that they can henceforward ever have occasion to claim
the assistance of their fellow-creatures, they do not scruple to
show that they care for nobody but themselves.
An aristocracy seldom yields without a protracted struggle,
in the course of which implacable animosities are kindled between
the different classes of society. These passions survive the
victory, and traces of them may be observed in the midst of the
democratic confusion which ensues. Those members of the
community who were at the top of the late gradations of rank
cannot immediately forget their former greatness; they will long
regard themselves as aliens in the midst of the newly composed
society. They look upon all those whom this state of society has
made their equals as oppressors, whose destiny can excite no
sympathy; they have lost sight of their former equals, and feel
no longer bound by a common interest to their fate: each of them,
standing aloof, thinks that he is reduced to care for himself
alone. Those, on the contrary, who were formerly at the foot of
the social scale, and who have been brought up to the common
level by a sudden revolution, cannot enjoy their newly acquired
independence without secret uneasiness; and if they meet with
some of their former superiors on the same footing as themselves,
they stand aloof from them with an expression of triumph and of
fear. It is, then, commonly at the outset of democratic society
that citizens are most disposed to live apart. Democracy leads
men not to draw near to their fellow-creatures; but democratic
revolutions lead them to shun each other, and perpetuate in a
state of equality the animosities which the state of inequality
engendered. The great advantage of the Americans is that they
have arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a
democratic revolution; and that they are born equal, instead of
becoming so.