Democracy in America (II)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~150,000 words · 711 passages
Cite this work
- APAAlexis de Tocqueville. (n.d.). Democracy in America — Volume 2 [Democracy in America (II)]. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/alexis-de-tocqueville/democracy-in-america-volume-2
- MLAAlexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America — Volume 2 [Democracy in America (II)]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/alexis-de-tocqueville/democracy-in-america-volume-2.
- ChicagoAlexis de Tocqueville. Democracy in America — Volume 2 [Democracy in America (II)]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/alexis-de-tocqueville/democracy-in-america-volume-2.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The second volume, of 1840, in which Tocqueville leaves the American institutions behind and looks at what equality does to a people's way of thinking, feeling and living.
Context and history
The first volume, of 1835, describes how American democracy works; this one is more abstract and more disquieting, and it is the one that has aged better. Here are individualism — a word he helped put into circulation, and which does not mean selfishness but withdrawal into the small circle — the tyranny of the majority over opinions, the temptation of a mild despotism that treats citizens as well-cared-for minors, and the observation that in an equal society, the fewer differences remain, the more they are noticed. This is the volume people quote when they quote Tocqueville on modern democracy.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
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.…