Democracy In America, vol 2 | Page 4

perils therefore I have turned my chief
attention, and believing that I had discovered them clearly, I have not
had the cowardice to leave them untold.
I trust that my readers will find in this Second Part that impartiality
which seems to have been remarked in the former work. Placed as I am
in the midst of the conflicting opinions between which we are divided,
I have endeavored to suppress within me for a time the favorable
sympathies or the adverse emotions with which each of them inspires
me. If those who read this book can find a single sentence intended to
flatter any of the great parties which have agitated my country, or any
of those petty factions which now harass and weaken it, let such readers
raise their voices to accuse me.
The subject I have sought to embrace is immense, for it includes the
greater part of the feelings and opinions to which the new state of
society has given birth. Such a subject is doubtless above my strength,
and in treating it I have not succeeded in satisfying myself. But, if I
have not been able to reach the goal which I had in view, my readers
will at least do me the justice to acknowledge that I have conceived and
followed up my undertaking in a spirit not unworthy of success.
A. De T.
March, 1840

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