Читать книгу Tocqueville’s Voyages - Группа авторов - Страница 10

[print edition page xxviii]

[print edition page 1]

1

Hidden from View: Tocqueville’s Secrets

EDUARDO NOLLA

And now I will unclasp a secret book, And to your quick-conceiving discontents I’ll read you matter deep and dangerous.

—William Shakespeare, Henry IV, part 1, act 1.

Much is hidden in Tocqueville’s Democracy1 in the surface and under the printed text, both literally and figuratively, so much in fact that the book sometimes resembles more a mystery or a cryptographic novel than a political treatise.

The tone of the text itself and the relation that it establishes between author and reader are also closer to what can be found in literature than in political theory.

The drafts, notes, and manuscripts of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America2 form a unique palimpsest that allows researchers to discover the buried structure of the book.3 They offer a different, and often surprising, vision of his thought.

[print edition page 2]

The so-called working manuscript of Democracy in America is kept at Yale University, inside four boxes, under the call number C.VI. My guess is that it comprises around 1400 quarto sheets: about 650 for the 1835 volumes and 750 for the 1840 part. The large majority of them are written on both sides.

This estimate does not include his notes, drafts, correspondence, or the famous Rubish. The Rubish is kept in two boxes, under the call number C.V.g., and is by itself about 1000 pages long.

Tocqueville knew that the materials he used to write the book contained hidden gems and valuable information, and that his papers could in the future be of some use to himself or to others.

Cover page of the 1835 part: “Volume I. My manuscript.”4 With the kind permission of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Democracy in America’s drafts and notes are carefully organized in bundles, according to their content and to their future use, some with revealing titles such as “Notes, documents, ideas relative to America. Good to consult if I again want to write something on this subject”5 or “Fragments, ideas that I cannot place in the work (March 1840) (insignificant collection).”6

The manuscript pages for each of the chapters of the book are kept in a larger piece of paper that acts as a folder and contains the corresponding title.

Tocqueville also kept his letters and notes organized and dated.

[print edition page 3]

Cover page of the 1840 part: “Manuscript of the second part of Democracy. Volume III and IV. March 1840.”7 With the kind permission of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

A few pages of the working manuscript are copies, made probably by the same copyist who produced the final version sent to the editor.8 The comments made by family and friends refer sometimes to “copyist’s error,” which seems to point out the possible existence of a previous first complete or partial copy of Tocqueville’s text.9

There are also a few pencil notes on the manuscript, which seem to be comments made before Tocqueville decided to give his book the final shape because some of the remarks are related to some later changes in the text.10

The front page of the folder containing the manuscript for the third

[print edition page 4]

chapter of the first part of the 1835 Democracy states: “The copy has been sent to Guerry.”11

“Future of the Indians. To be dictated or copied before thinking of correcting.”12 With the kind permission of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Only very rarely, domestic and everyday life or, simply, boredom pierces through the seriousness of Tocqueville’s purpose.13 A couple of doodles, some figures, a portrait, a note, possibly about a loan requested by a servant; there is not much more than this out of place in the thousands of pages of his working manuscript, drafts, and notes.

“Marie Legendre has asked to borrow 10 écus.” With the kind permission of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

[print edition page 5]

Doodles are very uncommon occurrences in Tocqueville’s manuscripts. With the kind permission of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

That Tocqueville had only faint sympathy for machinery, technology, or the practical sciences in general is well known. His ideas are expressed in terms of textual analogies and logical thought processes, almost never with the help of schemes, plots, or graphical outlines.

One of the very few cases when there is a graphical representation of thought processes in his manuscripts. When speaking of the relation between the growth of equality and the reliance on individual reason, Tocqueville draws two parallel lines with a common origin and notes on the margin: “There is a parallelism of which I only indicate one branch.”14 With the kind permission of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

[print edition page 6]

Similarly, Tocqueville originally used a mathematical comparison to explain the assimilation process among the different parts of the American union, but he later removed it from the manuscript.

“≠Denominator.

Common divider.

Common measure.

Arithmetical comparison.≠”15

There is, however, no need to get into the reading of the manuscript itself to be able to discover that Democracy in America is also, in terms of its literary construction, a very special kind of book.16

The Author and His Reader

A careful reader of Democracy in America is able to find out that throughout the book, Tocqueville keeps a constant dialog with his reader. This ongoing conversation with the person facing the book is unheard-of in works of political theory, with the possible exception of Montesquieu.

The reader appears in the very first sentence of Democracy, later eliminated by Tocqueville: “The work that you are about to read is not a travelogue, <the reader can rest easy>.”17

Appealing to the reader in the introduction of a work is not uncommon. Tocqueville recommends Beaumont’s book,18 begs the reader to believe him,19 advances what he thinks will be the main criticism to his book,20 or defends his impartiality.21 What is less common is to prolong this dialog throughout the text. Tocqueville begs the reader to

[print edition page 7]

observe the harsh New England legislation,22 the connection between religion and liberty,23 and the different forms of a democratic system,24 and to pay attention to many other circumstances.25 Tocqueville also instructs the reader against drawing conclusions too soon,26 has fears of being boring,27 asks him to draw his own conclusions,28 explains

[print edition page 8]

directly to him the difficulties of the author’s task,29 or gives several other warnings.30

This, as I have pointed out, makes one think of Montesquieu and how large is in many respects Tocqueville’s debt to him.

In his preface to On the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu wrote:

I request one favor, which I fear may not be granted me: do not judge the work of twenty years on the basis of a single rapid reading; approve or condemn the book as a whole, rather than by a few of its phrases. There is no better way to discover its author’s design than through the design of the work he has written.31

Montesquieu’s plea is very analogous to Tocqueville’s own admonition to the reader in the introduction to the 1835 volumes:

But the diversity of the subjects that I had to treat is very great, and whoever will undertake to contrast an isolated fact to the whole of the facts that I cite, a detached idea to the whole of the ideas, will succeed without difficulty. So I would like you to grant me the favor of reading me with the same spirit that presided over my work, and would like you to judge this book by the general impression that it leaves, as I myself came to a decision, not due to a particular reason, but due to the mass of reasons.32

If we jump from the first pages to the end of the book, we will find additional similarities. Montesquieu finished his preface with the celebrated phrase: “I have been able to say along with Correggio, ‘And I too am a painter.’”33

[print edition page 9]

In the conclusion to the 1835 part of Democracy in America, Tocqueville also speaks of painting:

Now I would like to bring all of them together in a single point of view. What I will say will be less detailed, but more sure. I will see each object less distinctly; I will take up general facts with more certitude. I will be like a traveler who, while coming outside the walls of a vast city, climbs up the adjacent hill. As he moves away, the men that he has just left disappear from his view; their houses blend together; he no longer sees the public squares; he makes out the path of the streets with difficulty; but his eyes follow more easily the contours of the city, and for the first time he grasps its form. It seems to me that I too discover before me the whole future of the English race in the New World. The details of this immense tableau have remained in shadow; but my eyes take in the entire view, and I conceive a clear idea of the whole.34

Predictably, Tocqueville also ascribed to himself Montesquieu’s understanding of writing and books.

Montesquieu wrote: “But it is not always necessary to exhaust a subject and leave the reader with nothing to do. I write, not so much to make people read, but rather to make them think.”35

In a letter to Corcelle, analogously, Tocqueville explained:

I believe that the books that have made men think the most and have had the greatest influence on their opinions and actions are those in which the author hasn’t attempted to tell them dogmatically what had to be thought, but rather those where he has placed their

[print edition page 10]

minds on the road that goes toward the truths, and has made them find these, as if it were, by themselves.36

It is this understanding of the task of the writer as a type of literary author that guides the reader through a labyrinth of clues, disguises, and appearances that also singularizes Democracy in America. The book is much more than a rhetorical exercise; it tries to elicit an emotional response from the reader, seducing him, establishing with him an intimate and personal relation.

This form of close, almost autobiographical, dialog between reader and author based in self-scrutiny and confession is in the opposite pole of an Aristotle, a Thomas Hobbes, or a John Stuart Mill. It would be hard to find, barring to a certain degree Montesquieu, anything similar in the political theory tradition.

Hidden in Print

Alexis de Tocqueville’s manuscripts offer an enormous wealth of information about the trappings behind Democracy in America, but there is no need to use them to find Tocqueville’s obsession with the uncovering of truth. The published text itself also abounds in hidden laws, concealed passageways, and secret principles that Tocqueville attempts to unveil.37

Tocqueville’s obsession with removing veils and bringing secrets into light is not unexpected. It associates him clearly to Jean-Jacques

[print edition page 11]

Rousseau’s ideal of transparency38 and to the whole Enlightenment project of using reason to explain and construct the world. Very fittingly, on the frontispiece of Diderot’s Encyclopedia drawn by Cochin, reason removes the veil of truth.

It also recalls Montesquieu’s own attempt at a mechanical and see-through vision of the workings of political power.39

Rousseau and Montesquieu are two of the authors Tocqueville confessed he lived with every day of his life. The third, as is well known, is Blaise Pascal.

It is the Pascalian streak in Tocqueville’s thought that explains his calculated skepticism at ever being capable of really discovering the complete truth and his not sharing into the idea of the Enlightenment being the end result of universal human reason.

At the heart of his explanation of the world we find Tocqueville’s own approach to the problem of his two main themes, aristocracy and democracy.

The world is a book entirely closed to man.

So there is at the heart of democratic institutions a hidden tendency that carries men toward the good [v: to work toward general prosperity] despite their vices and errors; while in aristocratic institutions a secret inclination is sometimes uncovered that, despite talents and virtues, leads them to contribute to the miseries of the greatest number of their fellows.

If a hidden force independent of men did not exist in democratic institutions, it would be impossible to explain satisfactorily the peace and prosperity that reign within certain democracies.40

[print edition page 12]

Tocqueville faces, consequently, his object as if struggling against a complex and multifaceted mystery. Hidden laws, secret instincts, veiled41 relations people the pages of both his drafts and his notes, and the final printed version of the work.

Without the aim of being exhaustive or repetitive in the enunciation of the many underground processes found in the book, the reader can find the following many different mysteries.

To begin with, God’s grand designs are secret to common man. Chance is the form under which God’s hidden will42 appears to the immense majority of mortals. Only the extraordinary mind of a Pascal could “have been able to summon up, as he did, all the powers of his intelligence to reveal more clearly the most hidden secrets of the Creator.”43 We do know that Providence has the secret design to divide the world between America and Russia44 and that the movement toward equality is also divinely inspired.

If God’s projects are inscrutable, so are events to come. The future is, according to Tocqueville, a hiding place for human will,45 for the

[print edition page 13]

passions of the New World,46 for the results of the American population moving toward the West,47 for the forces secretly gathering in New England48 or the American forests,49 as well as for the unstoppable power of the majority.50

When we descend to the study of democratic society, we find ourselves in the midst of multiple invisible processes. Originally, national character is defined as an unseen force that struggles against time.51 Aristocracy and democracy are themselves secret tendencies to be found under all political parties.52 The benefits of democracy are initially hidden and will only be discovered after the passage of time.53 It is also an unnoticed tendency that brings democracies toward prosperity.54

Furtive affinities exist between the Native Americans and the

[print edition page 14]

French,55 as between liberty and industry,56 or, mistakenly, between equality and revolution.57 Surreptitious connections also exist between military mores and democratic mores,58 democratic ideas and pantheism,59 material enjoyment and restlessness,60 and equality and servitude.61

Secret or hidden instincts abound among political factions,62 majorities,63 the human heart,64 democratic governments,65 French

[print edition page 15]

democracy,66 the lower classes,67 political bodies,68 religious men,69 or democratic citizens.70

Even while traveling through the wilderness, among hidden streams71 and animals concealed in the woodland,72 to the author of Democracy the noises of the American wilderness sound as a “secret warning from God.”73

It is not surprising then that, for the Frenchman, one of the traits that best defines democracies is that these underground processes are much more complex and difficult to comprehend than in all previous forms of society.

I am very persuaded that, among democratic nations themselves, the genius, the vices or the virtues of certain individuals delay or precipitate the natural course of the destiny of the people; but these sorts of fortuitous and secondary causes are infinitely more varied, more hidden, more complicated, less powerful, and consequently more difficult to disentangle and to trace in times of equality than in the centuries of aristocracy, when it is only a matter of analyzing, amid general facts, the particular action of a single man or of a few men.74

It is typical that authors of mystery novels present their cases to the reader as the most difficult and complicated ever. Tocqueville places

[print edition page 16]

himself avant la lettre in the position of the detective who will solve the tangle of democratic obscure secrets and concealments.

I have yet to make known by what paths this power, which dominates the laws, proceeds; what its instincts, its passions are; what secret motivating forces push, slow or direct it in its irresistible march; what effects its omnipotence produces, and what future is reserved for it.75

Similarly, the end of a liberal form of government, which is the objective of Tocqueville’s project, is also linked to the discovery of the secrecy of self-sufficiency.

So the government [v. social power], even when it lends its support to individuals, must never discharge them entirely from the trouble of helping themselves by uniting; often it must deny them its help in order to let them find the secret of being self-sufficient, and it must withdraw its hand as they better understand the art of doing so.76

At almost the very end of his book, Tocqueville explains what would have been his existence if he had not written Democracy in America.

I would not have written the work that you have just read; I would have limited myself to bemoaning in secret the destiny of my fellow men.77

Secrets, once more.

Basic Colors

It is easy to understand why many trappings of Democracy were kept hidden from the reader. Authors don’t want their public to see their thought processes, only the final result.

[print edition page 17]

But the meanderings of the mind and pen offer a unique opportunity to better understand the intentions and success of an author as complex as Tocqueville himself. I would like to point out in the next pages some of those hidden elements that never made it to the printed version.

Given the wealth of materials available to researchers, I will concentrate myself exclusively in some curious or outstanding texts from the working manuscript. I will make no references to any additional materials from the drafts, notes, letters, or the famous Rubish.

Tocqueville was aware of the newness of his project and recurrently struggled to find the language and words appropriate to this new endeavor. His new science of politics needed a new name. Democratic despotism was qualified as “soft” in the absence of a better word. Individualism was a neologism he knowingly used. His manuscript reveals these and other frequent quarrels with the written word.78

Problems with words and terminology concern expressions such as social state, mores, sovereignty, tolerant, rationalism, individualism, sympathy, courtesy, civility, honor, patrie, vulgar, industrial, civil rights, despotism, democracy, or settlers.

In writing about the positions becoming an industry, for instance, Tocqueville initially wrote: “Citizens, losing hope of improving their lot by themselves, rush tumultuously toward the power of the State.” A note in the margin reads: “<I do not like this word ‘power,’ vague and new.>”79 The final version will substitute the word “power” by the word “head.”

Writing on poetry, he observes: “≠To idealize [idéaliser] isn’t French. Try to find an equivalent or, in any case, only put it in italics.≠”80 The word appears also in his drafts but will not be in the printed version.

[print edition page 18]

In the margin of one page we read: “≠Tolerant indicates a virtue. A word would be needed that indicates the interested and necessary toleration of a man who needs others.≠”81

But most of Tocqueville’s problems will come from the need to use neologisms for new social or political phenomena. “≠The thing is new [v: other], but an old word is still needed to designate it.≠”82 This difficulty is frequently expressed in the manuscript.

Inevitably, some paragraphs required writing and rewriting before they found their way into the final version. Some never made it. The text at the start of page 68, for instance, offered several variants: “{The sun on modern civilization was already in the horizon}”, read the first version. He crossed it out and started again: “≠We see the sun appear in the horizon and start lighting the mountains before casting its clarity on all the world.≠” A third variant didn’t get his approval either: “<≠The top of the social edifice already received the glow of modern civilization, while the base still remained in the darkness of ignorance [v. of the Middle Ages.≠>”83 None of these versions convinced Tocqueville, and the text was eliminated.

Frequently, Tocqueville writes notes for himself, as at the start of the chapter on the point of departure: “≠One must remember that this chapter still requires some research in the laws of New England, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. See particularly the Town Officer.≠”84 He also reminds himself to complete some information: “{Know exactly the state of things on this point.}”85 And the notes reveal Tocqueville’s doubts also exist about whether to include or not or how to call his chapters: “What title should I give to this chapter?”86

[print edition page 19]

Or: “≠Think about this. A bad inference could be drawn from it, too generalized.≠”87

Notes sometimes point out the need to find sources: “≠Where to find the outline of the first federation?≠”88

He reminds himself to ask for help on whether to add a chapter or not on what is meant by a Constitution in America and in Europe: “Ask advice here.”89 In the end, he didn’t write it.

In most cases, the need for advice is from his two best readers, Louis de Kergorlay and Gustave de Beaumont.

“≠Ask L[ouis (ed.)] and B[eaumont (ed.)] if it is necessary to support these generalities with notes. Here either very minutely detailed notes are needed or nothing.≠”90 This related to the part about the American county assembly. No more details were given in the printed book than exist in the manuscript.

There is also an unpublished remark by Tocqueville in relation to note c of page 685: “Is it necessary to enter into all this fastidious detail or would it be better to make a short and clear summary and quote the authors in support? Ask Beau.[mont].”

We know he also read the manuscript to other friends to see their reactions.91

This didn’t always remove his doubts. “≠Is this true?≠”,92 he asks himself on a point about the French Constitution.

[print edition page 20]

“Is it necessary to enter into all this fastidious detail or rather make a short and clear summary and quote the authors in support? Ask Beau.[mont].”93 With the kind permission of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

If we move from the merely stylistic to the more theoretical aspects of his book, in an effort to find what and how the hidden elements in the manuscript affect or change the vision we get from the printed work, we may find a double-sided conclusion, that Tocqueville seems to be more democratic and more aristocratic in his first, rougher version, more excited by the prospects of democracy and simultaneously more pessimistic about its results, more in admiration of the American system, and at the same time more critical. As in a painter’s palette, the colors are much more vivid and raw in the manuscript than in the final painting.94

Let me point out some examples.

In the manuscript, Tocqueville insists on the necessary passage of humanity through a period of aristocracy in order to learn to be free, a fact that is less evident in the final printed version.

I am persuaded that humanity owes its enlightenment to such strokes of fortune, and I {think that it is in losing their liberty that men acquired the means to reconquer it} that it is under an aristocracy or

[print edition page 21]

under a prince that men still half-savage have gathered the various notions that later would allow them to live civilized, equal, and free.95

Another example can be found in the famous final chapter of the 1835 volume, “Some Considerations on the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of the United States.” That Tocqueville considered American slavery the most serious problem of the United States is a well-known fact. That he was so aghast at the condition of the free slaves in the Northeast that he thought they would find themselves in even worse condition in freedom than in slavery is much less evident.96 Yet a variant of the paragraph in which Tocqueville thinks the abolition of slavery will not improve the condition of the black population reads: “≠I must admit that of all the means of accelerating the fight between the two races in the states of the South the most powerful one seems to me to be the abolition of slavery.≠”97 The message was, he probably thought, too negative, and the fragment was definitely eliminated.

The author of Democracy also often suppressed expressions that could have reminded the reader of his aristocratic origins and the French aristocracy or that could have been read as too much of a critique of popular sovereignty or public opinion. “No influences except intellectual ones [{a kind of intellectual patronage}] could ever be established there.”98 Patronage was too much of a prerevolutionary word to be used and was removed. Similarly, he limited his criticisms of the people: “In this way, the upper classes did not incite [{implacable}] popular passions against themselves.”99

Tocqueville also felt the need to conceal his belief that some peoples are incapable of being free, that they will never even understand the origin of their miseries and that “≠it is necessary that experience hits

[print edition page 22]

them a thousand times with its ruthless hammer to tailor them a bit to liberty.≠”100

He must also have felt that putting too much emphasis on social division could be read in France as being too liberal and thus suppressed the following paragraph:

≠When in the same society one finds very enlightened individuals and others who are very ignorant or very rich and very poor, very strong and very weak, the second readily abdicate the use of their reason in favor of the first.≠101

Even a direct statement of the book’s purpose seemed too risky to include in the text: “<Far from wanting to stop the development of the new society, I am trying to produce it.>”102 This phrase, which appears in a draft, will not make it to the printing press.103

Nor could Tocqueville appear clearly in favor of a peaceful and well-regulated republic, as he is in his manuscript: “{For me, I will have no difficulty in saying, in all countries where the republic is practical, I will be republican.}”104

Many other points of Tocqueville’s theory will also have stronger and clearer expression in the manuscript, only to be toned down in the final version of the book. For example, the lack of society in the West will be bluntly stated: “{There are men but there is no society.}”105 So, too, the destructive force of the law of inheritance will be washed down in the process of drafting the final manuscript, perhaps because the idea could have had a different reading for a French audience. A first version of the phrase “The law of inheritance completed the dismantling of local influences” read “the law of inheritance completed the constitution of democracy.”106

[print edition page 23]

Likewise, a large number of things that Tocqueville greatly admired in America appear much more clearly in the manuscript.

The practical experience of Americans and their ability to organize themselves in towns and in associations were very highly praised by Tocqueville: “≠In the political world. Equal education. Experience. Usage. Habit.≠”107

“Isn’t doubt the final stage of the common people in everything./

Make it felt the advantages of liberty in associations for the members, and for the purpose of the association.”108

In another note: “≠Americans undertake a multitude of initiatives on the margin of the administration, initiatives that the administration would not even have contemplated accomplishing.≠”109

Something similar happened with the importance of towns: “Without town institutions, a nation can pretend to have a free government, but it does not possess the spirit of liberty,” wrote Tocqueville. But a first version read was more assertive: “≠[W]ithout town institutions, a nation can pretend to have free institutions but it will not have the spirit of liberty.≠”110

The same admiration for American improvement appears in other places:

≠Nothing prevents him from innovating.

Everything leads him to innovate.

He has the energy to innovate.≠111

Equally, Tocqueville probably thought that his wholehearted praise of innovation and entrepreneurship in America were not going to be well received in Europe. To give but one example, he leaves out of the final version the following phrase: “So the idea of the new, ≠which in

[print edition page 24]

the mind of the European is so easily associated with that of the worst, is liked in his to that of the best.≠”112

Tocqueville’s ideas of the American Indians will also be edited in the process of refining his thoughts and presentation for the final version. “Isolated in their own country, the Indians no longer formed anything except a small colony of inconvenient foreigners in the midst of a numerous and dominating people {and they discovered for themselves that they had exchanged the evils of savage life for all the miseries of civilized peoples}.”113

Curiously, and maybe due to the influence of Gustave de Beaumont, the author of Democracy is initially more optimistic about their future: “[{The Indians today share the rights of those who conquered them and one day perhaps will rule over them}].”114

The importance of both liberty and equality for a real and well-organized democracy is also poignantly evident in the manuscript: “≠Political liberty is the great remedy against almost all the evils with which equality threatens men.≠”115

But this is not to despise the effectiveness of equality for the workings of a free democracy. In a thought that he later excised, probably because he found it too favorable to equality, Tocqueville states:

≠I have just pointed out great dangers. I add that they are not inevitable. At the same time that equality suggests the idea and the taste of social omnipotence, it provides the idea and taste of individual independence.≠116

A very similar idea is presented in Tocqueville’s explanation of the object of the book, particularly the second volume of Democracy, which could not be stated as clearly in the printed version as in the preparatory notes:

Danger of democratic peoples without liberty.

Need of liberty greater for these peoples than for all others.

[print edition page 25]

Those who yearn for liberty in democratic centuries must not be enemies of equality but only try to take advantage of it.

That a more centralized government will be needed in those centuries more than in others. This is not only necessary but also desirable.

Means of preventing excessive centralization. Secondary bodies. Aristocratic persons.

If these means do not work, others are to be found, but some must be found in order to protect human dignity.

To find these means, to direct towards them his attention, the most general idea of the book.117

It would be tempting to read Tocqueville’s democratic mystery novel as a modern version of the Enlightenment project of bringing into the light the hidden processes of human behavior and history.

Admittedly, the Middle Ages are frequently represented by Tocqueville, careful reader of Guizot, as a moment of darkness and barbarism.118 “Europe left to itself managed by its own efforts to pierce the shadows of the Middle Ages,”119 he wrote, for instance. In this regard, Tocqueville seems to follow the ideas of his time. Congruently, he also saw the period before the French Revolution as a movement forward characterized by the fact that “the peoples of Europe left the shadows and barbarism in order to advance toward civilization and enlightenment.”120

[print edition page 26]

But Tocqueville’s Democracy is something else than a late product of the century of Enlightenment. It is also much more modern than the Enlightenment endeavor because modernity for Tocqueville, as first introduced by René Descartes and Francis Bacon, was not necessarily and always associated to the light. Individualism,121 obsession with material well-being, and reliance on the state could send human beings back into darkness.122

But today, when all classes are merging together, when the individual disappears more and more in the crowd and is easily lost amid the common obscurity; today, when nothing any longer sustains man above himself, because monarchical honor has nearly lost its dominion without being replaced by virtue, who can say where the exigencies of [absolute] power and the indulgences of weakness would stop?123

Tocqueville foresaw the very possible arrival of a new form of treacherous darkness and obscurity: “So you must not feel reassured by thinking that the barbarians are still far from us; for if there are some peoples who allow light to be wrested from their hands, there are others who trample it underfoot themselves.”124

For Tocqueville, darkness or barbarism, as he likes to say, could exist at the end of the democratic age too.125

[print edition page 27]

In a very Tocquevillian twist of excesses being lessened by more of the thing that produces them, Tocqueville notes that the only way to avoid the problems of modernity is through enlightenment itself: “Pour out enlightenment lavishly in democratic nations in order to elevate the tendencies of the human mind. Democracy without enlightenment and liberty would lead the human species back to barbarism.”126

The despotic form of democracy represents reason gone wrong and giving birth to a soft totalitarian democratic state. Then, it will become apparent that “[t]his time the barbarians will come not out of the frozen North; they are rising from the heart of our fields and from the very midst of our cities.”127

Tocqueville’s ability to foresee modern barbarians at the gates of democracy is also the reason why Democracy in America remains modern while Marx’s works, which should be read as the last manifestation of a kind of unidirectional Enlightenment, have lost most of their appeal.

If for Tocqueville modernity was not necessarily a moment of unrelenting light, then the Middle Ages were not either a period defined exclusively by darkness. Rather, the Middle Ages represented a necessary step toward modernity, in the form of aristocracy.

This is the clearest expression of this idea:

Nothing is so difficult to take as the first step out of barbarism. I do not doubt that more effort is required for a savage to discover the art of writing than for a civilized man to penetrate the general laws that regulate the world. Now it is not believable that men could ever conceive the need for such an effort without having it clearly shown to them, or that they would make such an effort without grasping the result in advance. In a society of barbarians equal to each other, since the attention of each man is equally absorbed by the first needs and the most coarse interests of life, the idea of intellectual progress can come to the mind of any one of them only with difficulty, and if by chance it is born, it would soon be as if suffocated amid the nearly instructive [instinctive? (ed.)] thoughts to which the poorly satisfied

[print edition page 28]

needs of the body always give birth. The savage lacks at the very same time the idea of study and the possibility of devoting himself to it.

Further along the same text, the author explains how it is by losing their liberty that nations become free.128 In this and foremost, Tocqueville was not in tune with the typical Enlightenment position.

His argument was that because democracies instinctively reject everything that comes from aristocratic times, they find themselves at risk of falling into despotism. Tocqueville warns: “They [democracies] will suffer poverty, enslavement, barbarism, but they will not suffer aristocracy.”129

Not by chance, the very idea of an open two-pronged future finds its way into the very last sentence of the book: “The nations of today cannot make conditions among them not be equal; but it depends on them whether equality leads them to servitude or liberty, to enlightenment or barbarism, to prosperity or misery.”130

Despite the fact that the future held dark possibilities as well as bright ones, Tocqueville remained an optimist at heart, a son of his own era: “In the middle of this impenetrable obscurity of the future, however, the eye sees some shafts of light.”131