Democracy In America, vol 2 | Page 5

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