14. Chapter XIV: Some Reflections On American Manners
Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward
form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set
more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a
society which has not their own manners. The influence of the
social and political state of a country upon manners is therefore
deserving of serious examination. Manners are, generally, the
product of the very basis of the character of a people, but they
are also sometimes the result of an arbitrary convention between
certain men; thus they are at once natural and acquired. When
certain men perceive that they are the foremost persons in
society, without contestation and without effort -when they are
constantly engaged on large objects, leaving the more minute
details to others -and when they live in the enjoyment of wealth
which they did not amass and which they do not fear to lose, it
may be supposed that they feel a kind of haughty disdain of the
petty interests and practical cares of life, and that their
thoughts assume a natural greatness, which their language and
their manners denote. In democratic countries manners are
generally devoid of dignity, because private life is there
extremely petty in its character; and they are frequently low,
because the mind has few opportunities of rising above the
engrossing cares of domestic interests. True dignity in manners
consists in always taking one's proper station, neither too high
nor too low; and this is as much within the reach of a peasant as
of a prince. In democracies all stations appear doubtful; hence
it is that the manners of democracies, though often full of
arrogance, are commonly wanting in dignity, and, moreover, they
are never either well disciplined or accomplished.
The men who live in democracies are too fluctuating for a
certain number of them ever to succeed in laying down a code of
good breeding, and in forcing people to follow it. Every man
therefore behaves after his own fashion, and there is always a
certain incoherence in the manners of such times, because they
are moulded upon the feelings and notions of each individual,
rather than upon an ideal model proposed for general imitation.
This, however, is much more perceptible at the time when an
aristocracy has just been overthrown than after it has long been
destroyed. New political institutions and new social elements
then bring to the same places of resort, and frequently compel to
live in common, men whose education and habits are still
amazingly dissimilar, and this renders the motley composition of
society peculiarly visible. The existence of a former strict
code of good breeding is still remembered, but what it contained
or where it is to be found is already forgotten. Men have lost
the common law of manners, and they have not yet made up their
minds to do without it; but everyone endeavors to make to himself
some sort of arbitrary and variable rule, from the remnant of
former usages; so that manners have neither the regularity and
the dignity which they often display amongst aristocratic
nations, nor the simplicity and freedom which they sometimes
assume in democracies; they are at once constrained and without
constraint.
This, however, is not the normal state of things. When the
equality of conditions is long established and complete, as all
men entertain nearly the same notions and do nearly the same
things, they do not require to agree or to copy from one another
in order to speak or act in the same manner: their manners are
constantly characterized by a number of lesser diversities, but
not by any great differences. They are never perfectly alike,
because they do not copy from the same pattern; they are never
very unlike, because their social condition is the same. At
first sight a traveller would observe that the manners of all the
Americans are exactly similar; it is only upon close examination
that the peculiarities in which they differ may be detected.
The English make game of the manners of the Americans; but
it is singular that most of the writers who have drawn these
ludicrous delineations belonged themselves to the middle classes
in England, to whom the same delineations are exceedingly
applicable: so that these pitiless censors for the most part
furnish an example of the very thing they blame in the United
States; they do not perceive that they are deriding themselves,
to the great amusement of the aristocracy of their own country.
Nothing is more prejudicial to democracy than its outward
forms of behavior: many men would willingly endure its vices, who
cannot support its manners. I cannot, however, admit that there
is nothing commendable in the manners of a democratic people.
Amongst aristocratic nations, all who live within reach of the
first class in society commonly strain to be like it, which gives
rise to ridiculous and insipid imitations. As a democratic
people does not possess any models of high breeding, at least it
escapes the daily necessity of seeing wretched copies of them.
In democracies manners are never so refined as amongst
aristocratic nations, but on the other hand they are never so
coarse. Neither the coarse oaths of the populace, nor the
elegant and choice expressions of the nobility are to be heard
there: the manners of such a people are often vulgar, but they
are neither brutal nor mean. I have already observed that in
democracies no such thing as a regular code of good breeding can
be laid down; this has some inconveniences and some advantages.
In aristocracies the rules of propriety impose the same demeanor
on everyone; they make all the members of the same class appear
alike, in spite of their private inclinations; they adorn and
they conceal the natural man. Amongst a democratic people
manners are neither so tutored nor so uniform, but they are
frequently more sincere. They form, as it were, a light and
loosely woven veil, through which the real feelings and private
opinions of each individual are easily discernible. The form and
the substance of human actions often, therefore, stand in closer
relation; and if the great picture of human life be less
embellished, it is more true. Thus it may be said, in one sense,
that the effect of democracy is not exactly to give men any
particular manners, but to prevent them from having manners at
all.
The feelings, the passions, the virtues, and the vices of an
aristocracy may sometimes reappear in a democracy, but not its
manners; they are lost, and vanish forever, as soon as the
democratic revolution is completed. It would seem that nothing
is more lasting than the manners of an aristocratic class, for
they are preserved by that class for some time after it has lost
its wealth and its power -nor so fleeting, for no sooner have
they disappeared than not a trace of them is to be found; and it
is scarcely possible to say what they have been as soon as they
have ceased to be. A change in the state of society works this
miracle, and a few generations suffice to consummate it. The
principal characteristics of aristocracy are handed down by
history after an aristocracy is destroyed, but the light and
exquisite touches of manners are effaced from men's memories
almost immediately after its fall. Men can no longer conceive
what these manners were when they have ceased to witness them;
they are gone, and their departure was unseen, unfelt; for in
order to feel that refined enjoyment which is derived from choice
and distinguished manners, habit and education must have prepared
the heart, and the taste for them is lost almost as easily as the
practice of them. Thus not only a democratic people cannot have
aristocratic manners, but they neither comprehend nor desire
them; and as they never have thought of them, it is to their
minds as if such things had never been. Too much importance
should not be attached to this loss, but it may well be
regretted.
I am aware that it has not unfrequently happened that the
same men have had very high-bred manners and very low-born
feelings: the interior of courts has sufficiently shown what
imposing externals may conceal the meanest hearts. But though the
manners of aristocracy did not constitute virtue, they sometimes
embellish virtue itself. It was no ordinary sight to see a
numerous and powerful class of men, whose every outward action
seemed constantly to be dictated by a natural elevation of
thought and feeling, by delicacy and regularity of taste, and by
urbanity of manners. Those manners threw a pleasing illusory
charm over human nature; and though the picture was often a false
one, it could not be viewed without a noble satisfaction.