21. Chapter XXI: Why Great Revolutions Will Become More Rare
A people which has existed for centuries under a system of
castes and classes can only arrive at a democratic state of
society by passing through a long series of more or less critical
transformations, accomplished by violent efforts, and after
numerous vicissitudes; in the course of which, property,
opinions, and power are rapidly transferred from one hand to
another. Even after this great revolution is consummated, the
revolutionary habits engendered by it may long be traced, and it
will be followed by deep commotion. As all this takes place at
the very time at which social conditions are becoming more equal,
it is inferred that some concealed relation and secret tie exist
between the principle of equality itself and revolution, insomuch
that the one cannot exist without giving rise to the other.
On this point reasoning may seem to lead to the same result
as experience. Amongst a people whose ranks are nearly equal, no
ostensible bond connects men together, or keeps them settled in
their station. None of them have either a permanent right or
power to command -none are forced by their condition to obey;
but every man, finding himself possessed of some education and
some resources, may choose his won path and proceed apart from
all his fellow-men. The same causes which make the members of
the community independent of each other, continually impel them
to new and restless desires, and constantly spur them onwards.
It therefore seems natural that, in a democratic community, men,
things, and opinions should be forever changing their form and
place, and that democratic ages should be times of rapid and
incessant transformation.
But is this really the case? does the equality of social
conditions habitually and permanently lead men to revolution?
does that state of society contain some perturbing principle
which prevents the community from ever subsiding into calm, and
disposes the citizens to alter incessantly their laws, their
principles, and their manners? I do not believe it; and as the
subject is important, I beg for the reader's close attention.
Almost all the revolutions which have changed the aspect of
nations have been made to consolidate or to destroy social
inequality. Remove the secondary causes which have produced the
great convulsions of the world, and you will almost always find
the principle of inequality at the bottom. Either the poor have
attempted to plunder the rich, or the rich to enslave the poor.
If then a state of society can ever be founded in which every man
shall have something to keep, and little to take from others,
much will have been done for the peace of the world. I am aware
that amongst a great democratic people there will always be some
members of the community in great poverty, and others in great
opulence; but the poor, instead of forming the immense majority
of the nation, as is always the case in aristocratic communities,
are comparatively few in number, and the laws do not bind them
together by the ties of irremediable and hereditary penury. The
wealthy, on their side, are scarce and powerless; they have no
privileges which attract public observation; even their wealth,
as it is no longer incorporated and bound up with the soil, is
impalpable, and as it were invisible. As there is no longer a
race of poor men, so there is no longer a race of rich men; the
latter spring up daily from the multitude, and relapse into it
again. Hence they do not form a distinct class, which may be
easily marked out and plundered; and, moreover, as they are
connected with the mass of their fellow-citizens by a thousand
secret ties, the people cannot assail them without inflicting an
injury upon itself. Between these two extremes of democratic
communities stand an innumerable multitude of men almost alike,
who, without being exactly either rich or poor, are possessed of
sufficient property to desire the maintenance of order, yet not
enough to excite envy. Such men are the natural enemies of
violent commotions: their stillness keeps all beneath them and
above them still, and secures the balance of the fabric of
society. Not indeed that even these men are contented with what
they have gotten, or that they feel a natural abhorrence for a
revolution in which they might share the spoil without sharing
the calamity; on the contrary, they desire, with unexampled
ardor, to get rich, but the difficulty is to know from whom
riches can be taken. The same state of society which constantly
prompts desires, restrains these desires within necessary limits:
it gives men more liberty of changing and less interest in
change.
Not only are the men of democracies not naturally desirous
of revolutions, but they are afraid of them. All revolutions
more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those
who live in democratic countries are possessed of property -not
only are they possessed of property, but they live in the
condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.
If we attentively consider each of the classes of which society
is composed, it is easy to see that the passions engendered by
property are keenest and most tenacious amongst the middle
classes. The poor often care but little for what they possess,
because they suffer much more from the want of what they have
not, than they enjoy the little they have. The rich have many
other passions besides that of riches to satisfy; and, besides,
the long and arduous enjoyment of a great fortune sometimes makes
them in the end insensible to its charms. But the men who have a
competency, alike removed from opulence and from penury, attach
an enormous value to their possessions. As they are still almost
within the reach of poverty, they see its privations near at
hand, and dread them; between poverty and themselves there is
nothing but a scanty fortune, upon which they immediately fix
their apprehensions and their hopes. Every day increases the
interest they take in it, by the constant cares which it
occasions; and they are the more attached to it by their
continual exertions to increase the amount. The notion of
surrendering the smallest part of it is insupportable to them,
and they consider its total loss as the worst of misfortunes.
Now these eager and apprehensive men of small property constitute
the class which is constantly increased by the equality of
conditions. Hence, in democratic communities, the majority of
the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by a
revolution, but they continually and in a thousand ways feel that
they might lose by one.
I have shown in another part of this work that the equality
of conditions naturally urges men to embark in commercial and
industrial pursuits, and that it tends to increase and to
distribute real property: I have also pointed out the means by
which it inspires every man with an eager and constant desire to
increase his welfare. Nothing is more opposed to revolutionary
passions than these things. It may happen that the final result
of a revolution is favorable to commerce and manufactures; but
its first consequence will almost always be the ruin of
manufactures and mercantile men, because it must always change at
once the general principles of consumption, and temporarily upset
the existing proportion between supply and demand. I know of
nothing more opposite to revolutionary manners than commercial
manners. Commerce is naturally adverse to all the violent
passions; it loves to temporize, takes delight in compromise, and
studiously avoids irritation. It is patient, insinuating,
flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures until
obliged by the most absolute necessity. Commerce renders men
independent of each other, gives them a lofty notion of their
personal importance, leads them to seek to conduct their own
affairs, and teaches how to conduct them well; it therefore
prepares men for freedom, but preserves them from revolutions.
In a revolution the owners of personal property have more to fear
than all others; for on the one hand their property is often easy
to seize, and on the other it may totally disappear at any moment
-a subject of alarm to which the owners of real property are
less exposed, since, although they may lose the income of their
estates, they may hope to preserve the land itself through the
greatest vicissitudes. Hence the former are much more alarmed at
the symptoms of revolutionary commotion than the latter. Thus
nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as
personal property is augmented and distributed amongst them, and
as the number of those possessing it increases. Moreover,
whatever profession men may embrace, and whatever species of
property they may possess, one characteristic is common to them
all. No one is fully contented with his present fortune -all
are perpetually striving in a thousand ways to improve it.
Consider any one of them at any period of his life, and he will
be found engaged with some new project for the purpose of
increasing what he has; talk not to him of the interests and the
rights of mankind: this small domestic concern absorbs for the
time all his thoughts, and inclines him to defer political
excitement to some other season. This not only prevents men from
making revolutions, but deters men from desiring them. Violent
political passions have but little hold on those who have devoted
all their faculties to the pursuit of their well-being. The
ardor which they display in small matters calms their zeal for
momentous undertakings.
From time to time indeed, enterprising and ambitious men
will arise in democratic communities, whose unbounded aspirations
cannot be contented by following the beaten track. Such men like
revolutions and hail their approach; but they have great
difficulty in bringing them about, unless unwonted events come to
their assistance. No man can struggle with advantage against the
spirit of his age and country; and, however powerful he may be
supposed to be, he will find it difficult to make his
contemporaries share in feelings and opinions which are repugnant
to t all their feelings and desires.
It is a mistake to believe that, when once the equality of
conditions has become the old and uncontested state of society,
and has imparted its characteristics to the manners of a nation,
men will easily allow themselves to be thrust into perilous risks
by an imprudent leader or a bold innovator. Not indeed that they
will resist him openly, by well-contrived schemes, or even by a
premeditated plan of resistance. They will not struggle
energetically against him, sometimes they will even applaud him -but they do not follow him. To his vehemence they secretly
oppose their inertia; to his revolutionary tendencies their
conservative interests; their homely tastes to his adventurous
passions; their good sense to the flights of his genius; to his
poetry their prose. With immense exertion he raises them for an
instant, but they speedily escape from him, and fall back, as it
were, by their own weight. He strains himself to rouse the
indifferent and distracted multitude, and finds at last that he
is reduced to impotence, not because he is conquered, but because
he is alone.
I do not assert that men living in democratic communities
are naturally stationary; I think, on the contrary, that a
perpetual stir prevails in the bosom of those societies, and that
rest is unknown there; but I think that men bestir themselves
within certain limits beyond which they hardly ever go. They are
forever varying, altering, and restoring secondary matters; but
they carefully abstain from touching what is fundamental. They
love change, but they dread revolutions. Although the Americans
are constantly modifying or abrogating some of their laws, they
by no means display revolutionary passions. It may be easily
seen, from the promptitude with which they check and calm
themselves when public excitement begins to grow alarming, and at
the very moment when passions seem most roused, that they dread a
revolution as the worst of misfortunes, and that every one of
them is inwardly resolved to make great sacrifices to avoid such
a catastrophe. In no country in the world is the love of
property more active and more anxious than in the United States;
nowhere does the majority display less inclination for those
principles which threaten to alter, in whatever manner, the laws
of property. I have often remarked that theories which are of a
revolutionary nature, since they cannot be put in practice
without a complete and sometimes a sudden change in the state of
property and persons, are much less favorably viewed in the
United States than in the great monarchical countries of Europe:
if some men profess them, the bulk of the people reject them with
instinctive abhorrence. I do not hesitate to say that most of
the maxims commonly called democratic in France would be
proscribed by the democracy of the United States. This may
easily be understood: in America men have the opinions and
passions of democracy, in Europe we have still the passions and
opinions of revolution. If ever America undergoes great
revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the
black race on the soil of the United States -that is to say, they
will owe their origin, not to the equality, but to the
inequality, of conditions.
When social conditions are equal, every man is apt to live
apart, centred in himself and forgetful of the public. If the
rulers of democratic nations were either to neglect to correct
this fatal tendency, or to encourage it from a notion that it
weans men from political passions and thus wards off revolutions,
they might eventually produce the evil they seek to avoid, and a
time might come when the inordinate passions of a few men, aided
by the unintelligent selfishness or the pusillanimity of the
greater number, would ultimately compel society to pass through
strange vicissitudes. In democratic communities revolutions are
seldom desired except by a minority; but a minority may sometimes
effect them. I do not assert that democratic nations are secure
from revolutions; I merely say that the state of society in those
nations does not lead to revolutions, but rather wards them off.
A democratic people left to itself will not easily embark in
great hazards; it is only led to revolutions unawares; it may
sometimes undergo them, but it does not make them; and I will add
that, when such a people has been allowed to acquire sufficient
knowledge and experience, it will not suffer them to be made. I
am well aware that it this respect public institutions may
themselves do much; they may encourage or repress the tendencies
which originate in the state of society. I therefore do not
maintain, I repeat, that a people is secure from revolutions
simply because conditions are equal in the community; but I think
that, whatever the institutions of such a people may be, great
revolutions will always be far less violent and less frequent
than is supposed; and I can easily discern a state of polity,
which, when combined with the principle of equality, would render
society more stationary than it has ever been in our western
apart of the world.
The observations I have here made on events may also be
applied in part to opinions. Two things are surprising in the
United States -the mutability of the greater part of human
actions, and the singular stability of certain principles. Men
are in constant motion; the mind of man appears almost unmoved.
When once an opinion has spread over the country and struck root
there, it would seem that no power on earth is strong enough to
eradicate it. In the United States, general principles in
religion, philosophy, morality, and even politics, do not vary,
or at least are only modified by a hidden and often an
imperceptible process: even the grossest prejudices are
obliterated with incredible slowness, amidst the continual
friction of men and things. I hear it said that it is in the
nature and the habits of democracies to be constantly changing
their opinions and feelings. This may be true of small
democratic nations, like those of the ancient world, in which the
whole community could be assembled in a public place and then
excited at will by an orator. But I saw nothing of the kind
amongst the great democratic people which dwells upon the
opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean. What struck me in the
United States was the difficulty in shaking the majority in an
opinion once conceived, or of drawing it off from a leader once
adopted. Neither speaking nor writing can accomplish it; nothing
but experience will avail, and even experience must be repeated.
This is surprising at first sight, but a more attentive
investigation explains the fact. I do not think that it is as
easy as is supposed to uproot the prejudices of a democratic
people -to change its belief -to supersede principles once
established, by new principles in religion, politics, and morals
-in a word, to make great and frequent changes in men's minds.
Not that the human mind is there at rest -it is in constant
agitation; but it is engaged in infinitely varying the
consequences of known principles, and in seeking for new
consequences, rather than in seeking for new principles. Its
motion is one of rapid circumvolution, rather than of
straightforward impulse by rapid and direct effort; it extends
its orbit by small continual and hasty movements, but it does not
suddenly alter its position.
Men who are equal in rights, in education, in fortune, or,
to comprise all in one word, in their social condition, have
necessarily wants, habits, and tastes which are hardly
dissimilar. As they look at objects under the same aspect, their
minds naturally tend to analogous conclusions; and, though each
of them may deviate from his contemporaries and from opinions of
his own, they will involuntarily and unconsciously concur in a
certain number of received opinions. The more attentively I
consider the effects of equality upon the mind, the more am I
persuaded that the intellectual anarchy which we witness about us
is not, as many men suppose, the natural state of democratic
nations. I think it is rather to be regarded as an accident
peculiar to their youth, and that it only breaks out at that
period of transition when men have already snapped the former
ties which bound them together, but are still amazingly different
in origin, education, and manners; so that, having retained
opinions, propensities and tastes of great diversity, nothing any
longer prevents men from avowing them openly. The leading
opinions of men become similar in proportion as their conditions
assimilate; such appears to me to be the general and permanent
law -the rest is casual and transient.
I believe that it will rarely happen to any man amongst a
democratic community, suddenly to frame a system of notions very remote
from that which his contemporaries have adopted; and if some such
innovator appeared, I apprehend that he would have great difficulty in
finding listeners, still more in finding believers. When the conditions
of men are almost equal, they do not easily allow themselves to be
persuaded by each other. As they all live in close intercourse, as they
have learned the same things together, and as they lead the same life,
they are not naturally disposed to take one of themselves for a guide,
and to follow him implicitly. Men seldom take the opinion of their
equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust. Not only is confidence
in the superior attainments of certain individuals weakened amongst
democratic nations, as I have elsewhere remarked, but the general notion
of the intellectual superiority which any man whatsoever may acquire in
relation to the rest of the community is soon overshadowed. As men grow
more like each other, the doctrine of the equality of the intellect
gradually infuses itself into their opinions; and it becomes more
difficult for any innovator to acquire or to exert much influence over
the minds of a people. In such communities sudden intellectual
revolutions will therefore be rare; for, if we read aright the history
of the world, we shall find that great and rapid changes in human
opinions have been produced far less by the force of reasoning than by
the authority of a name. Observe, too, that as the men who live in
democratic societies are not connected with each other by any tie, each
of them must be convinced individually; whilst in aristocratic society
it is enough to convince a few -the rest follow. If Luther had lived
in an age of equality, and had not had princes and potentates for his
audience, he would perhaps have found it more difficult to change the
aspect of Europe. Not indeed that the men of democracies are naturally
strongly persuaded of the certainty of their opinions, or are unwavering
in belief; they frequently entertain doubts which no one, in their eyes,
can remove. It sometimes happens at such times that the human mind
would willingly change its position; but as nothing urges or guides it
forwards, it oscillates to and fro without progressive motion.
[12]
Even when the reliance of a democratic people has been won,
it is still no easy matter to gain their attention. It is
extremely difficult to obtain a hearing from men living in
democracies, unless it be to speak to them of themselves. They
do not attend to the things said to them, because they are always
fully engrossed with the things they are doing. For indeed few
men are idle in democratic nations; life is passed in the midst
of noise and excitement, and men are so engaged in acting that
little remains to them for thinking. I would especially remark
that they are not only employed, but that they are passionately
devoted to their employments. They are always in action, and
each of their actions absorbs their faculties: the zeal which
they display in business puts out the enthusiasm they might
otherwise entertain for idea. I think that it is extremely
difficult to excite the enthusiasm of a democratic people for any
theory which has not a palpable, direct, and immediate connection
with the daily occupations of life: therefore they will not
easily forsake their old opinions; for it is enthusiasm which
flings the minds of men out of the beaten track, and effects the
great revolutions of the intellect as well as the great
revolutions of the political world. Thus democratic nations have
neither time nor taste to go in search of novel opinions. Even
when those they possess become doubtful, they still retain them,
because it would take too much time and inquiry to change them -they retain them, not as certain, but as established.
There are yet other and more cogent reasons which prevent
any great change from being easily effected in the principles of
a democratic people. I have already adverted to them at the
commencement of this part of my work. If the influence of
individuals is weak and hardly perceptible amongst such a people,
the power exercised by the mass upon the mind of each individual
is extremely great -I have already shown for what reasons. I
would now observe that it is wrong to suppose that this depends
solely upon the form of government, and that the majority would
lose its intellectual supremacy if it were to lose its political
power. In aristocracies men have often much greatness and
strength of their own: when they find themselves at variance with
the greater number of their fellow-countrymen, they withdraw to
their own circle, where they support and console themselves.
Such is not the case in a democratic country; there public favor
seems as necessary as the air we breathe, and to live at variance
with the multitude is, as it were, not to live. The multitude
requires no laws to coerce those who think not like itself:
public disapprobation is enough; a sense of their loneliness and
impotence overtakes them and drives them to despair.
Whenever social conditions are equal, public opinion presses
with enormous weight upon the mind of each individual; it
surrounds, directs, and oppresses him; and this arises from the
very constitution of society, much more than from its political
laws. As men grow more alike, each man feels himself weaker in
regard to all the rest; as he discerns nothing by which he is
considerably raised above them, or distinguished from them, he
mistrusts himself as soon as they assail him. Not only does he
mistrust his strength, but he even doubts of his right; and he is
very near acknowledging that he is in the wrong, when the greater
number of his countrymen assert that he is so. The majority do
not need to constrain him -they convince him. In whatever way
then the powers of a democratic community may be organized and
balanced, it will always be extremely difficult to believe what
the bulk of the people reject, or to profess what they condemn.
This circumstance is extraordinarily favorable to the
stability of opinions. When an opinion has taken root amongst a
democratic people, and established itself in the minds of the
bulk of the community, it afterwards subsists by itself and is
maintained without effort, because no one attacks it. Those who
at first rejected it as false, ultimately receive it as the
general impression; and those who still dispute it in their
hearts, conceal their dissent; they are careful not to engage in
a dangerous and useless conflict. It is true, that when the
majority of a democratic people change their opinions, they may
suddenly and arbitrarily effect strange revolutions in men's
minds; but their opinions do not change without much difficulty,
and it is almost as difficult to show that they are changed.
Time, events, or the unaided individual action of the mind,
will sometimes undermine or destroy an opinion, without any
outward sign of the change. It has not been openly assailed, no
conspiracy has been formed to make war on it, but its followers
one by one noiselessly secede -day by day a few of them abandon
it, until last it is only professed by a minority. In this state
it will still continue to prevail. As its enemies remain mute,
or only interchange their thoughts by stealth, they are
themselves unaware for a long period that a great revolution has
actually been effected; and in this state of uncertainly they
take no steps -they observe each other and are silent. The
majority have ceased to believe what they believed before; but
they still affect to believe, and this empty phantom of public
opinion in strong enough to chill innovators, and to keep them
silent and at respectful distance. We live at a time which has
witnessed the most rapid changes of opinion in the minds of men;
nevertheless it may be that the leading opinions of society will
ere long be more settled than they have been for several
centuries in our history: that time is not yet come, but it may
perhaps be approaching. As I examine more closely the natural
wants and tendencies of democratic nations, I grow persuaded that
if ever social equality is generally and permanently established
in the world, great intellectual and political revolutions will
become more difficult and less frequent than is supposed. Because
the men of democracies appear always excited, uncertain, eager,
changeable in their wills and in their positions, it is imagined
that they are suddenly to abrogate their laws, to adopt new
opinions, and to assume new manners. But if the principle of
equality predisposes men to change, it also suggests to them
certain interests and tastes which cannot be satisfied without a
settled order of things; equality urges them on, but at the same
time it holds them back; it spurs them, but fastens them to
earth; -it kindles their desires, but limits their powers. This,
however, is not perceived at first; the passions which tend to
sever the citizens of a democracy are obvious enough; but the
hidden force which restrains and unites them is not discernible
at a glance.
Amidst the ruins which surround me, shall I dare to say that
revolutions are not what I most fear coming generations? If men
continue to shut themselves more closely within the narrow circle
of domestic interests and to live upon that kind of excitement,
it is to be apprehended that they may ultimately become
inaccessible to those great and powerful public emotions which
perturb nations -but which enlarge them and recruit them. When
property becomes so fluctuating, and the love of property so
restless and so ardent, I cannot but fear that men may arrive at
such a state as to regard every new theory as a peril, every
innovation as an irksome toil, every social improvement as a
stepping-stone to revolution, and so refuse to move altogether
for fear of being moved too far. I dread, and I confess it, lest
they should at last so entirely give way to a cowardly love of
present enjoyment, as to lose sight of the interests of their
future selves and of those of their descendants; and to prefer to
glide along the easy current of life, rather than to make, when
it is necessary, a strong and sudden effort to a higher purpose.
It is believed by some that modern society will be ever changing
its aspect; for myself, I fear that it will ultimately be too
invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices,
the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and
circumscribed; that the mind will swing backwards and forwards
forever, without begetting fresh ideas; that man will waste his
strength in bootless and solitary trifling; and, though in
continual motion, that humanity will cease to advance.
[12]
If I inquire what state of society is most
favorable to the great revolutions of the mind, I find that it occurs
somewhere between the complete equality of the whole community and the
absolute separation of ranks. Under a system of castes generations
succeed each other without altering men's positions; some have nothing
more, others nothing better, to hope for. The imagination slumbers
amidst this universal silence and stillness, and the very idea of change
fades from the human mind. When ranks have been abolished and social
conditions are almost equalized, all men are in ceaseless excitement,
but each of them stands alone, independent and weak. This latter state
of things is excessively different from the former one; yet it has one
point of analogy -great revolutions of the human mind seldom occur in
it. But between these two extremes of the history of nations is an
intermediate period -a period as glorious as it is agitated -when the
conditions of men are not sufficiently settled for the mind to be lulled
in torpor, when they are sufficiently unequal for men to exercise a vast
power on the minds of one another, and when some few may modify the
convictions of all. It is at such times that great reformers start up,
and new opinions suddenly change the face of the world.