3. Chapter III: Why The Americans Display More Readiness And More
Taste For General Ideas Than Their Forefathers, The English
The Deity does not regard the human race collectively. He
surveys at one glance and severally all the beings of whom
mankind is composed, and he discerns in each man the resemblances
which assimilate him to all his fellows, and the differences
which distinguish him from them. God, therefore, stands in no
need of general ideas; that is to say, he is never sensible of
the necessity of collecting a considerable number of analogous
objects under the same form for greater convenience in thinking.
Such is, however, not the case with man. If the human mind were
to attempt to examine and pass a judgment on all the individual
cases before it, the immensity of detail would soon lead it
astray and bewilder its discernment: in this strait, man has
recourse to an imperfect but necessary expedient, which at once
assists and demonstrates his weakness. Having superficially
considered a certain number of objects, and remarked their
resemblance, he assigns to them a common name, sets them apart,
and proceeds onwards.
General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of
the insufficiency of the human intellect; for there are in nature
no beings exactly alike, no things precisely identical, nor any
rules indiscriminately and alike applicable to several objects at
once. The chief merit of general ideas is, that they enable the
human mind to pass a rapid judgment on a great many objects at
once; but, on the other hand, the notions they convey are never
otherwise than incomplete, and they always cause the mind to lose
as much in accuracy as it gains in comprehensiveness. As social
bodies advance in civilization, they acquire the knowledge of new
facts, and they daily lay hold almost unconsciously of some
particular truths. The more truths of this kind a man
apprehends, the more general ideas is he naturally led to
conceive. A multitude of particular facts cannot be seen
separately, without at last discovering the common tie which
connects them. Several individuals lead to the perception of the
species; several species to that of the genus. Hence the habit
and the taste for general ideas will always be greatest amongst a
people of ancient cultivation and extensive knowledge.
But there are other reasons which impel men to generalize
their ideas, or which restrain them from it.
The Americans are much more addicted to the use of general
ideas than the English, and entertain a much greater relish for
them: this appears very singular at first sight, when it is
remembered that the two nations have the same origin, that they
lived for centuries under the same laws, and that they still
incessantly interchange their opinions and their manners. This
contrast becomes much more striking still, if we fix our eyes on
our own part of the world, and compare together the two most
enlightened nations which inhabit it. It would seem as if the
mind of the English could only tear itself reluctantly and
painfully away from the observation of particular facts, to rise
from them to their causes; and that it only generalizes in spite
of itself. Amongst the French, on the contrary, the taste for
general ideas would seem to have grown to so ardent a passion,
that it must be satisfied on every occasion. I am informed,
every morning when I wake, that some general and eternal law has
just been discovered, which I never heard mentioned before.
There is not a mediocre scribbler who does not try his hand at
discovering truths applicable to a great kingdom, and who is very
ill pleased with himself if he does not succeed in compressing
the human race into the compass of an article. So great a
dissimilarity between two very enlightened nations surprises me.
If I again turn my attention to England, and observe the events
which have occurred there in the last half-century, I think I may
affirm that a taste for general ideas increases in that country
in proportion as its ancient constitution is weakened.
The state of civilization is therefore insufficient by
itself to explain what suggests to the human mind the love of
general ideas, or diverts it from them. When the conditions of
men are very unequal, and inequality itself is the permanent
state of society, individual men gradually become so dissimilar
that each class assumes the aspect of a distinct race: only one
of these classes is ever in view at the same instant; and losing
sight of that general tie which binds them all within the vast
bosom of mankind, the observation invariably rests not on man,
but on certain men. Those who live in this aristocratic state of
society never, therefore, conceive very general ideas respecting
themselves, and that is enough to imbue them with an habitual
distrust of such ideas, and an instinctive aversion of them.
He, on the contrary, who inhabits a democratic country, sees
around him, one very hand, men differing but little from each
other; he cannot turn his mind to any one portion of mankind,
without expanding and dilating his thought till it embrace the
whole. All the truths which are applicable to himself, appear to
him equally and similarly applicable to each of his
fellow-citizens and fellow-men. Having contracted the habit of
generalizing his ideas in the study which engages him most, and
interests him more than others, he transfers the same habit to
all his pursuits; and thus it is that the craving to discover
general laws in everything, to include a great number of objects
under the same formula, and to explain a mass of facts by a
single cause, becomes an ardent, and sometimes an undiscerning,
passion in the human mind.
Nothing shows the truth of this proposition more clearly
than the opinions of the ancients respecting their slaves. The
most profound and capacious minds of Rome and Greece were never
able to reach the idea, at once so general and so simple, of the
common likeness of men, and of the common birthright of each to
freedom: they strove to prove that slavery was in the order of
nature, and that it would always exist. Nay, more, everything
shows that those of the ancients who had passed from the servile
to the free condition, many of whom have left us excellent
writings, did themselves regard servitude in no other light.
All the great writers of antiquity belonged to the
aristocracy of masters, or at least they saw that aristocracy
established and uncontested before their eyes. Their mind, after
it had expanded itself in several directions, was barred from
further progress in this one; and the advent of Jesus Christ upon
earth was required to teach that all the members of the human
race are by nature equal and alike.
In the ages of equality all men are independent of each
other, isolated and weak. The movements of the multitude are not
permanently guided by the will of any individuals; at such times
humanity seems always to advance of itself. In order, therefore,
to explain what is passing in the world, man is driven to seek
for some great causes, which, acting in the same manner on all
our fellow-creatures, thus impel them all involuntarily to pursue
the same track. This again naturally leads the human mind to
conceive general ideas, and superinduces a taste for them.
I have already shown in what way the equality of conditions
leads every man to investigate truths for himself. It may
readily be perceived that a method of this kind must insensibly
beget a tendency to general ideas in the human mind. When I
repudiate the traditions of rank, profession, and birth; when I
escape from the authority of example, to seek out, by the single
effort of my reason, the path to be followed, I am inclined to
derive the motives of my opinions from human nature itself; which
leads me necessarily, and almost unconsciously, to adopt a great
number of very general notions.
All that I have here said explains the reasons for which the
English display much less readiness and taste or the
generalization of ideas than their American progeny, and still
less again than their French neighbors; and likewise the reason
for which the English of the present day display more of these
qualities than their forefathers did. The English have long been
a very enlightened and a very aristocratic nation; their
enlightened condition urged them constantly to generalize, and
their aristocratic habits confined them to particularize. Hence
arose that philosophy, at once bold and timid, broad and narrow,
which has hitherto prevailed in England, and which still
obstructs and stagnates in so many minds in that country.
Independently of the causes I have pointed out in what goes
before, others may be discerned less apparent, but no less
efficacious, which engender amongst almost every democratic
people a taste, and frequently a passion, for general ideas. An
accurate distinction must be taken between ideas of this kind.
Some are the result of slow, minute, and conscientious labor of
the mind, and these extend the sphere of human knowledge; others
spring up at once from the first rapid exercise of the wits, and
beget none but very superficial and very uncertain notions. Men
who live in ages of equality have a great deal of curiosity and
very little leisure; their life is so practical, so confused, so
excited, so active, that but little time remains to them for
thought. Such men are prone to general ideas because they spare
them the trouble of studying particulars; they contain, if I may
so speak, a great deal in a little compass, and give, in a little
time, a great return. If then, upon a brief and inattentive
investigation, a common relation is thought to be detected
between certain obtects, inquiry is not pushed any further; and
without examining in detail how far these different objects
differ or agree, they are hastily arranged under one formulary,
in order to pass to another subject.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of a democratic
period is the taste all men have at such ties for easy success
and present enjoyment. This occurs in the pursuits of the
intellect as well as in all others. Most of those who live at a
time of equality are full of an ambition at once aspiring and
relaxed: they would fain succeed brilliantly and at once, but
they would be dispensed from great efforts to obtain success.
These conflicting tendencies lead straight to the research of
general ideas, by aid of which they flatter themselves that they
can figure very importantly at a small expense, and draw the
attention of the public with very little trouble. And I know not
whether they be wrong in thinking thus. For their readers are as
much averse to investigating anything to the bottom as they can
be themselves; and what is generally sought in the productions of
the mind is easy pleasure and information without labor.
If aristocratic nations do not make sufficient use of
general ideas, and frequently treat them with inconsiderate
disdain, it is true, on the other hand, that a democratic people
is ever ready to carry ideas of this kind to excess, and to
espouse the with injudicious warmth.