1. Chapter I: Philosophical Method Among the Americans
I think that in no country in the civilized world is less
attention paid to philosophy than in the United States. The
Americans have no philosophical school of their own; and they
care but little for all the schools into which Europe is divided,
the very names of which are scarcely known to them. Nevertheless
it is easy to perceive that almost all the inhabitants of the
United States conduct their understanding in the same manner, and
govern it by the same rules; that is to say, that without ever
having taken the trouble to define the rules of a philosophical
method, they are in possession of one, common to the whole
people. To evade the bondage of system and habit, of family
maxims, class opinions, and, in some degree, of national
prejudices; to accept tradition only as a means of information,
and existing facts only as a lesson used in doing otherwise, and
doing better; to seek the reason of things for one's self, and in
one's self alone; to tend to results without being bound to
means, and to aim at the substance through the form; -such are
the principal characteristics of what I shall call the
philosophical method of the Americans. But if I go further, and
if I seek amongst these characteristics that which predominates
over and includes almost all the rest, I discover that in most of
the operations of the mind, each American appeals to the
individual exercise of his own understanding alone. America is
therefore one of the countries in the world where philosophy is
least studied, and where the precepts of Descartes are best
applied. Nor is this surprising. The Americans do not read the
works of Descartes, because their social condition deters them
from speculative studies; but they follow his maxims because this
very social condition naturally disposes their understanding to
adopt them. In the midst of the continual movement which agitates
a democratic community, the tie which unites one generation to
another is relaxed or broken; every man readily loses the trace
of the ideas of his forefathers or takes no care about them. Nor
can men living in this state of society derive their belief from
the opinions of the class to which they belong, for, so to speak,
there are no longer any classes, or those which still exist are
composed of such mobile elements, that their body can never
exercise a real control over its members. As to the influence
which the intelligence of one man has on that of another, it must
necessarily be very limited in a country where the citizens,
placed on the footing of a general similitude, are all closely
seen by each other; and where, as no signs of incontestable
greatness or superiority are perceived in any one of them, they
are constantly brought back to their own reason as the most
obvious and proximate source of truth. It is not only confidence
in this or that man which is then destroyed, but the taste for
trusting the ipse dixit of any man whatsoever. Everyone shuts
himself up in his own breast, and affects from that point to
judge the world.
The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing
the standard of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to
other habits of mind. As they perceive that they succeed in
resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which
their practical life presents, they readily conclude that
everything in the world may be explained, and that nothing in it
transcends the limits of the understanding. Thus they fall to
denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little
faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable
distaste for whatever is supernatural. As it is on their own
testimony that they are accustomed to rely, they like to discern
the object which engages their attention with extreme clearness;
they therefore strip off as much as possible all that covers it,
they rid themselves of whatever separates them from it, they
remove whatever conceals it from sight, in order to view it more
closely and in the broad light of day. This disposition of the
mind soon leads them to contemn forms, which they regard as
useless and inconvenient veils placed between them and the truth.
The Americans then have not required to extract their
philosophical method from books; they have found it in
themselves. The same thing may be remarked in what has taken
place in Europe. This same method has only been established and
made popular in Europe in proportion as the condition of society
has become more equal, and men have grown more like each other.
Let us consider for a moment the connection of the periods in
which this change may be traced. In the sixteenth century the
Reformers subjected some of the dogmas of the ancient faith to
the scrutiny of private judgment; but they still withheld from it
the judgment of all the rest. In the seventeenth century, Bacon
in the natural sciences, and Descartes in the study of philosophy
in the strict sense of the term, abolished recognized formulas,
destroyed the empire of tradition, and overthrew the authority of
the schools. The philosophers of the eighteenth century,
generalizing at length the same principle, undertook to submit to
the private judgment of each man all the objects of his belief.
Who does not perceive that Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire
employed the same method, and that they differed only in the
greater or less use which they professed should be made of it?
Why did the Reformers confine themselves so closely within the
circle of religious ideas? Why did Descartes, choosing only to
apply his method to certain matters, though he had made it fit to
be applied to all, declare that men might judge for themselves in
matters philosophical but not in matters political? How happened
it that in the eighteenth century those general applications were
all at once drawn from this same method, which Descartes and his
predecessors had either not perceived or had rejected? To what,
lastly, is the fact to be attributed, that at this period the
method we are speaking of suddenly emerged from the schools, to
penetrate into society and become the common standard of
intelligence; and that, after it had become popular among the
French, it has been ostensibly adopted or secretly followed by
all the nations of Europe?
The philosophical method here designated may have been
engendered in the sixteenth century -it may have been more
accurately defined and more extensively applied in the
seventeenth; but neither in the one nor in the other could it be
commonly adopted. Political laws, the condition of society, and
the habits of mind which are derived from these causes, were as
yet opposed to it. It was discovered at a time when men were
beginning to equalize and assimilate their conditions. It could
only be generally followed in ages when those conditions had at
length become nearly equal, and men nearly alike.
The philosophical method of the eighteenth century is then
not only French, but it is democratic; and this explains why it
was so readily admitted throughout Europe, where it has
contributed so powerfully to change the face of society. It is
not because the French have changed their former opinions, and
altered their former manners, that they have convulsed the world;
but because they were the first to generalize and bring to light
a philosophical method, by the assistance of which it became easy
to attack all that was old, and to open a path to all that was
new.
If it be asked why, at the present day, this same method is
more rigorously followed and more frequently applied by the
French than by the Americans, although the principle of equality
be no less complete, and of more ancient date, amongst the latter
people, the fact may be attributed to two circumstances, which it
is essential to have clearly understood in the first instance.
It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to
Anglo-American society. In the United States religion is
therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation and all
the feelings of patriotism; whence it derives a peculiar force.
To this powerful reason another of no less intensity may be
added: in American religion has, as it were, laid down its own
limits. Religious institutions have remained wholly distinct from
political institutions, so that former laws have been easily
changed whilst former belief has remained unshaken. Christianity
has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in
America; and, I would more particularly remark, that its sway is
not only that of a philosophical doctrine which has been adopted
upon inquiry, but of a religion which is believed without
discussion. In the United States Christian sects are infinitely
diversified and perpetually modified; but Christianity itself is
a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either
to attack or to defend it. The Americans, having admitted the
principal doctrines of the Christian religion without inquiry,
are obliged to accept in like manner a great number of moral
truths originating in it and connected with it. Hence the
activity of individual analysis is restrained within narrow
limits, and many of the most important of human opinions are
removed from the range of its influence.
The second circumstance to which I have alluded is the
following: the social condition and the constitution of the
Americans are democratic, but they have not had a democratic
revolution. They arrived upon the soil they occupy in nearly the
condition in which we see them at the present day; and this is of
very considerable importance.
There are no revolutions which do not shake existing belief,
enervate authority, and throw doubts over commonly received
ideas. The effect of all revolutions is therefore, more or less,
to surrender men to their own guidance, and to open to the mind
of every man a void and almost unlimited range of speculation.
When equality of conditions succeeds a protracted conflict
between the different classes of which the elder society was
composed, envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, pride, and
exaggerated self-confidence are apt to seize upon the human
heart, and plant their sway there for a time. This,
independently of equality itself, tends powerfully to divide men
-to lead them to mistrust the judgment of others, and to seek
the light of truth nowhere but in their own understandings.
Everyone then attempts to be his own sufficient guide, and makes
it his boast to form his own opinions on all subjects. Men are
no longer bound together by ideas, but by interests; and it would
seem as if human opinions were reduced to a sort of intellectual
dust, scattered on every side, unable to collect, unable to
cohere.
Thus, that independence of mind which equality supposes to
exist, is never so great, nor ever appears so excessive, as at
the time when equality is beginning to establish itself, and in
the course of that painful labor by which it is established.
That sort of intellectual freedom which equality may give ought,
therefore, to be very carefully distinguished from the anarchy
which revolution brings. Each of these two things must be
severally considered, in order not to conceive exaggerated hopes
or fears of the future.
I believe that the men who will live under the new forms of
society will make frequent use of their private judgment; but I
am far from thinking that they will often abuse it. This is
attributable to a cause of more general application to all
democratic countries, and which, in the long run, must needs
restrain in them the independence of individual speculation
within fixed, and sometimes narrow, limits. I shall proceed to
point out this cause in the next chapter.