19. Chapter XIX: Why So Many Ambitious Men And So Little Lofty
Ambition Are To Be Found In The United States
The first thing which strikes a traveller in the United
States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to throw
off their original condition; and the second is the rarity of
lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the universally
ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning
desire to rise; but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great
magnitude, or to drive at very lofty aims. All are constantly
seeking to acquire property, power, and reputation -few
contemplate these things upon a great scale; and this is the more
surprising, as nothing is to be discerned in the manners or laws
of America to limit desire, or to prevent it from spreading its
impulses in every direction. It seems difficult to attribute
this singular state of things to the equality of social
conditions; for at the instant when that same equality was
established in France, the flight of ambition became unbounded.
Nevertheless, I think that the principal cause which may be
assigned to this fact is to be found in the social condition and
democratic manners of the Americans.
All revolutions enlarge the ambition of men: this
proposition is more peculiarly true of those revolutions which
overthrow an aristocracy. When the former barriers which kept
back the multitude from fame and power are suddenly thrown down,
a violent and universal rise takes place towards that eminence so
long coveted and at length to be enjoyed. In this first burst of
triumph nothing seems impossible to anyone: not only are desires
boundless, but the power of satisfying them seems almost
boundless, too. Amidst the general and sudden renewal of laws and
customs, in this vast confusion of all men and all ordinances,
the various members of the community rise and sink again with
excessive rapidity; and power passes so quickly from hand to hand
that none need despair of catching it in turn. It must be
recollected, moreover, that the people who destroy an aristocracy
have lived under its laws; they have witnessed its splendor, and
they have unconsciously imbibed the feelings and notions which it
entertained. Thus at the moment when an aristocracy is
dissolved, its spirit still pervades the mass of the community,
and its tendencies are retained long after it has been defeated.
Ambition is therefore always extremely great as long as a
democratic revolution lasts, and it will remain so for some time
after the revolution is consummated. The reminiscence of the
extraordinary events which men have witnessed is not obliterated
from their memory in a day. The passions which a revolution has
roused do not disappear at its close. A sense of instability
remains in the midst of re-established order: a notion of easy
success survives the strange vicissitudes which gave it birth;
desires still remain extremely enlarged, when the means of
satisfying them are diminished day by day. The taste for large
fortunes subsists, though large fortunes are rare: and on every
side we trace the ravages of inordinate and hapless ambition
kindled in hearts which they consume in secret and in vain.
At length, however, the last vestiges of the struggle are
effaced; the remains of aristocracy completely disappear; the
great events by which its fall was attended are forgotten; peace
succeeds to war, and the sway of order is restored in the new
realm; desires are again adapted to the means by which they may
be fulfilled; the wants, the opinions, and the feelings of men
cohere once more; the level of the community is permanently
determined, and democratic society established. A democratic
nation, arrived at this permanent and regular state of things,
will present a very different spectacle from that which we have
just described; and we may readily conclude that, if ambition
becomes great whilst the conditions of society are growing equal,
it loses that quality when they have grown so. As wealth is
subdivided and knowledge diffused, no one is entirely destitute
of education or of property; the privileges and disqualifications
of caste being abolished, and men having shattered the bonds
which held them fixed, the notion of advancement suggests itself
to every mind, the desire to rise swells in every heart, and all
men want to mount above their station: ambition is the universal
feeling.
But if the equality of conditions gives some resources to
all the members of the community, it also prevents any of them
from having resources of great extent, which necessarily
circumscribes their desires within somewhat narrow limits. Thus
amongst democratic nations ambition is ardent and continual, but
its aim is not habitually lofty; and life is generally spent in
eagerly coveting small objects which are within reach. What
chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not
the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the
exertions they daily make to improve them. They strain their
faculties to the utmost to achieve paltry results, and this
cannot fail speedily to limit their discernment and to
circumscribe their powers. They might be much poorer and still
be greater. The small number of opulent citizens who are to be
found amidst a democracy do not constitute an exception to this
rule. A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power,
contracts, in the course of this protracted labor, habits of
prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A
man cannot enlarge his mind as he would his house. The same
observation is applicable to the sons of such a man; they are
born, it is true, in a lofty position, but their parents were
humble; they have grown up amidst feelings and notions which they
cannot afterwards easily get rid of; and it may be presumed that
they will inherit the propensities of their father as well as his
wealth. It may happen, on the contrary, that the poorest scion
of a powerful aristocracy may display vast ambition, because the
traditional opinions of his race and the general spirit of his
order still buoy him up for some time above his fortune.
Another thing which prevents the men of democratic periods
from easily indulging in the pursuit of lofty objects, is the
lapse of time which they foresee must take place before they can
be ready to approach them. "It is a great advantage," says
Pascal, "to be a man of quality, since it brings one man as
forward at eighteen or twenty as another man would be at fifty,
which is a clear gain of thirty years." Those thirty years are
commonly wanting to the ambitious characters of democracies. The
principle of equality, which allows every man to arrive at
everything, prevents all men from rapid advancement.
In a democratic society, as well as elsewhere, there are
only a certain number of great fortunes to be made; and as the
paths which lead to them are indiscriminately open to all, the
progress of all must necessarily be slackened. As the candidates
appear to be nearly alike, and as it is difficult to make a
selection without infringing the principle of equality, which is
the supreme law of democratic societies, the first idea which
suggests itself is to make them all advance at the same rate and
submit to the same probation. Thus in proportion as men become
more alike, and the principle of equality is more peaceably and
deeply infused into the institutions and manners of the country,
the rules of advancement become more inflexible, advancement
itself slower, the difficulty of arriving quickly at a certain
height far greater. From hatred of privilege and from the
embarrassment of choosing, all men are at last constrained,
whatever may be their standard, to pass the same ordeal; all are
indiscriminately subjected to a multitude of petty preliminary
exercises, in which their youth is wasted and their imagination
quenched, so that they despair of ever fully attaining what is
held out to them; and when at length they are in a condition to
perform any extraordinary acts, the taste for such things has
forsaken them.
In China, where the equality of conditions is exceedingly
great and very ancient, no man passes from one public office to
another without undergoing a probationary trial. This probation
occurs afresh at every stage of his career; and the notion is now
so rooted in the manners of the people that I remember to have
read a Chinese novel, in which the hero, after numberless
crosses, succeeds at length in touching the heart of his mistress
by taking honors. A lofty ambition breathes with difficulty in
such an atmosphere.
The remark I apply to politics extends to everything;
equality everywhere produces the same effects; where the laws of
a country do not regulate and retard the advancement of men by
positive enactment, competition attains the same end. In a
well-established democratic community great and rapid elevation
is therefore rare; it forms an exception to the common rule; and
it is the singularity of such occurrences that makes men forget
how rarely they happen. Men living in democracies ultimately
discover these things; they find out at last that the laws of
their country open a boundless field of action before them, but
that no one can hope to hasten across it. Between them and the
final object of their desires, they perceive a multitude of small
intermediate impediments, which must be slowly surmounted: this
prospect wearies and discourages their ambition at once. They
therefore give up hopes so doubtful and remote, to search nearer
to themselves for less lofty and more easy enjoyments. Their
horizon is not bounded by the laws but narrowed by themselves.
I have remarked that lofty ambitions are more rare in the
ages of democracy than in times of aristocracy: I may add that
when, in spite of these natural obstacles, they do spring into
existence, their character is different. In aristocracies the
career of ambition is often wide, but its boundaries are
determined. In democracies ambition commonly ranges in a
narrower field, but if once it gets beyond that, hardly any
limits can be assigned to it. As men are individually weak -as
they live asunder, and in constant motion -as precedents are of
little authority and laws but of short duration, resistance to
novelty is languid, and the fabric of society never appears
perfectly erect or firmly consolidated. So that, when once an
ambitious man has the power in his grasp, there is nothing he may
noted are; and when it is gone from him, he meditates the
overthrow of the State to regain it. This gives to great
political ambition a character of revolutionary violence, which
it seldom exhibits to an equal degree in aristocratic
communities. The common aspect of democratic nations will
present a great number of small and very rational objects of
ambition, from amongst which a few ill-controlled desires of a
larger growth will at intervals break out: but no such a thing as
ambition conceived and contrived on a vast scale is to be met
with there.
I have shown elsewhere by what secret influence the
principle of equality makes the passion for physical
gratifications and the exclusive love of the present predominate
in the human heart: these different propensities mingle with the
sentiment of ambition, and tinge it, as it were, with their hues.
I believe that ambitious men in democracies are less engrossed
than any others with the interests and the judgment of posterity;
the present moment alone engages and absorbs them. They are more
apt to complete a number of undertakings with rapidity than to
raise lasting monuments of their achievements; and they care much
more for success than for fame. What they most ask of men is
obedience -what they most covet is empire. Their manners have
in almost all cases remained below the height of their station;
the consequence is that they frequently carry very low tastes
into their extraordinary fortunes, and that they seem to have
acquired the supreme power only to minister to their coarse or
paltry pleasures.
I think that in our time it is very necessary to cleanse, to
regulate, and to adapt the feeling of ambition, but that it would
be extremely dangerous to seek to impoverish and to repress it
over-much. We should attempt to lay down certain extreme limits,
which it should never be allowed to outstep; but its range within
those established limits should not be too much checked. I
confess that I apprehend much less for democratic society from
the boldness than from the mediocrity of desires. What appears
to me most to be dreaded is that, in the midst of the small
incessant occupations of private life, ambition should lose its
vigor and its greatness -that the passions of man should abate,
but at the same time be lowered, so that the march of society
should every day become more tranquil and less aspiring. I think
then that the leaders of modern society would be wrong to seek to
lull the community by a state of too uniform and too peaceful
happiness; and that it is well to expose it from time to time to
matters of difficulty and danger, in order to raise ambition and
to give it a field of action. Moralists are constantly
complaining that the ruling vice of the present time is pride.
This is true in one sense, for indeed no one thinks that he is
not better than his neighbor, or consents to obey his superior:
but it is extremely false in another; for the same man who cannot
endure subordination or equality, has so contemptible an opinion
of himself that he thinks he is only born to indulge in vulgar
pleasures. He willingly takes up with low desires, without
daring to embark in lofty enterprises, of which he scarcely
dreams. Thus, far from thinking that humility ought to be
preached to our contemporaries, I would have endeavors made to
give them a more enlarged idea of themselves and of their kind.
Humility is unwholesome to them; what they most want is, in my
opinion, pride. I would willingly exchange several of our small
virtues for this one vice.