Tocqueville (iv)

     [...] Providence did not create mankind entirely independent or altogether enslaved. Around each man it traced, to be sure, a fatal circle beyond which he may not venture, but within the ample limits thus defined man is powerful and free, and so are peoples.
     It is beyond the ability of nations today to prevent conditions within them from becoming equal, but it is within their power to decide whether equality will lead them into servitude or liberty, enlightenment or barbarism, prosperity or misery.

—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (pp. 834)

(tr. Goldhammer)

This post marks the end of my reading of Tocqueville's magnum opus; although as usual not a complete one, I do believe it excels at comprehensiveness. The last chapter (General view of the subject) is a beautiful, almost psychological reflexion on the impending transformation that most societies around the globe were to suffer. Tocqueville, born in the bosom of an old society family, and having lived through the excesses of the late stages of the French Revolution, managed to acquire a remarkably open vision of the world to come. While not a usual topic of conversation (one can easily fall trap to the conjurations of political correctness), cultural equalization has brought with it good and bad: Tocqueville realized that, and attempted to cope with it. Notice how he readily admits of the usual romantic mistake of elevating society by its colossi while refusing to acknowledge the abundance and majority of commoners:

     When the world was full of men both very great and very small, very rich and very poor, very learned and very ignorant, I used to avert my gaze from the latter to focus solely on the former, and they gladdened my eyes, but I know that my pleasure was a consequence of my weakness: it is because I cannot take everything around me at a single glance that I am allowed to choose in this way among so many objects those that it pleases me to contemplate. [...]

     It is natural to believe that what is most satisfying to the eye of man's creator and keeper is not the singular prosperity of a few but the greater well-being of all: what seems decadence to me is therefore progress in his eyes; what pains me pleases him. Equality is less lofty, perhaps, but more just, and its justice is the source of its grandeur and beauty.

—ídem (pp. 832-833)

While touching, I nevertheless wonder if Tocqueville is succumbing to the all too familiar doctrine of christian submission and conformism; not something I'd blame, but rather be alert about. He is indeed aware of the tendency of some contemporaries to announce the end of the world and doom of mankind, and is sometimes more productive and suggestive about what to do, rather than why to cry. At any rate, I would have liked to read more about his ideas on how to bring observance and treasuring of some spirit of citizenship, belonging and nation to a mass population in equality. Maybe our syllabus just missed that. My next stop is reading about the influences that Tocqueville had on thinkers after him; I glanced at "liberalism" and the usual "keep the government out" on Wikipedia, but those are the obvious conclusions from a superficial reading. In fact, if he were to stroll around for a day or two, I don't think he would be too happy at how the US, or in fact any other "modern democratic" country, whether liberal or not, is handling things.