DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA VOLUME II

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.