HOW THE EXAMPLE OF THE AMERICANS DOES NOT PROVE THAT A DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE CAN HAVE NO APTITUDE FOR SCIENCE, LITERATURE, OR THE ARTS
THERE is no denying the fact that, among civilized nations today, few have made less progress in the higher sciences or produced a smaller number of great artists, illustrious poets, and celebrated writers than the United States.
Struck by this, any number of Europeans have drawn the conclusion that it is a natural and inevitable result of equality and held that if a democratic social state and democratic institutions were ever to prevail throughout the world, the light that illuminates the mind of man would gradually go dim, and human beings would sink back into darkness.
Those who reason in this way are confusing a number of ideas that are best kept apart and examined separately. They unintentionally mix what is democratic with what is merely American.
The religion preached by the earliest immigrants and bequeathed to their descendants — a religion simple in its forms of worship, austere and almost savage in its principles, and hostile to outward signs and ceremonial pomp — naturally offers little encouragement to the fine arts and is only reluctantly tolerant of literary pleasures.
The Americans are a very old and very enlightened people who came upon a vast new country where they were free to spread out as much as they wanted and which they found easy to make fertile. Nothing like this has ever occurred anywhere else in the world. Hence everyone in America enjoys unparalleled opportunities to make or increase his fortune. The possibilities open to greed are endlessly breathtaking, and the human mind, constantly distracted from the pleasures of the imagination and the works of the intellect, is engaged solely by the pursuit of wealth. The United States, like all other countries, has industrial and commercial classes, but it also has something not found anywhere else: everybody in the country is engaged in both commerce and industry.
I am nevertheless convinced that if the Americans had been alone in the world with the freedoms and enlightenment acquired by their fathers and their own passions, they would soon have discovered that one cannot make progress in the practical application of science for long without cultivating theory, and that the arts serve to perfect one another. No matter how absorbed they might have been in pursuing the principal object of their desires, they would soon have recognized that the best way to attain one’s goal is not to head unwaveringly toward it.
Indeed, so natural is the taste for the pleasures of the mind in the heart of civilized man that a certain number of people always share it even in the civil nations least disposed to indulge such pursuits. Once felt, this intellectual need would soon have been satisfied.
At a time when Americans were naturally inclined to ask nothing of science but its particular applications to the practical arts and ways of making life more comfortable, learned and literary Europe set out in search of the general sources of truth, while at the same it worked to perfect anything that might contribute to man’s pleasures or serve his needs.
Among the enlightened nations of the Old World, the Americans singled out one in particular as paramount, a nation with which they were closely united by common origins and similar habits. Among the people of that nation they found celebrated scholars, skillful artists, and great writers, and they were able to gather up treasures of the intellect without needing to work to accumulate them.
I cannot accept the idea that America is separate from Europe, despite the ocean that divides them. I regard the people of the United States as the portion of the English people charged with exploiting the forests of the New World, while the rest of the nation, granted more leisure and less preoccupied with life’s material cares, can indulge in thought and develop the human mind in every way possible.
Thus the situation of the Americans is entirely exceptional, and there is reason to believe that no other democratic people will ever enjoy anything like it. Their wholly Puritan origin; their markedly commercial habits; the very country they inhabit, which seems to discourage study of science, literature, and the arts; the proximity of Europe, which allows them not to study these things without lapsing into barbarism; and a thousand more specific causes, of which I have been able to discuss only the most important — all of these things must have concentrated the American mind in a singular way on purely material concerns. Passions, needs, upbringing, and circumstances all seem to have conspired, in fact, to focus the attention of Americans on this earth. Only religion causes them to cast a fleeting and distracted glance heavenward from time to time.
Let us therefore cease to see all democratic nations in the guise of the American people and try at last to see them as they really are.
It is possible to conceive of a people without castes, hierarchies, or classes; whose law, recognizing no form of privilege, would provide for equal division of all inheritances; and which would, at the same time, be deprived of enlightenment and liberty. This is not an idle hypothesis: a despot might deem it in his interest to establish equality among his subjects and leave them ignorant the more easily to keep them enslaved.
Not only will a democratic people of this kind exhibit neither aptitude nor taste for science, literature, or the arts, but there is reason to believe that it will never acquire them either.
The law of inheritance itself would demolish the fortunes of each generation, and no one would create new ones. The poor man, deprived of enlightenment and liberty, would not so much as conceive of the idea of raising himself to the level of the wealthy, and the wealthy man would not know how to defend himself against being dragged down into poverty. A complete and invincible equality would soon come to exist between the two. No one would then have the time or taste to indulge in the labors and pleasures of the intellect. Everyone would sink into a numb state of identical ignorance and equal servitude.
When I try to imagine a democratic society of this kind, I immediately feel trapped in a low, dark, and airless place where any light from outside soon fades away and vanishes. A sudden heaviness weighs me down, and I grope in the surrounding darkness for a way back to air and daylight. None of this description applies, however, to the case in which already enlightened men, having done away with the particular and hereditary rights that previously left all property in the hands of certain individuals and corporations in perpetuity, remain free.
When people living in a democratic society are enlightened, they see readily that there is nothing to limit them or hold them back or force them to be content with their present fortune.
Hence the idea of adding to it occurs to all of them, and if they are free, they will attempt to do so; but not all will succeed in the same way. To be sure, the legislature no longer grants privileges, but nature does. Natural inequality being very great, unequal fortunes will result as soon as each individual turns all his faculties to the task of making himself rich.
The law of inheritance still stands in the way of founding wealthy families but no longer prevents the existence of wealthy individuals. It constantly pulls citizens back toward a common level from which they constantly escape. Property becomes more unequal as enlightenment increases and liberty grows.
There has recently arisen a sect celebrated for its genius and its extravagance, which has proposed that all property be concentrated in the hands of a central power that would then be charged with distributing it to individuals on the basis of merit. This would offer an escape from the complete and eternal equality that seems to threaten democratic societies.
There is a simpler and less dangerous remedy, which is to grant privilege to no one, to give everyone equal enlightenment and equal independence, and to leave it to each individual to make a place for himself. Natural inequality will soon declare itself, and wealth will shift on its own to the most highly skilled.
Free and democratic societies will therefore always include in their midst a multitude of opulent or well-to-do individuals. These wealthy individuals will not be as closely bound to one another as were the members of the old aristocratic class; their instincts will be different, and they will almost never be as secure and complete in their possession of leisure, but they will be infinitely more numerous than the aristocracy could have been. These men will not limit themselves strictly to material concerns, and to one degree or another they will be able to indulge in the labors and pleasures of the mind. Hence they will do so, because while it is true that a part of the human mind is drawn to that which is limited, material, and useful, another part is naturally drawn upward to the infinite, the immaterial, and the beautiful. Physical needs tether the mind to the earth, but once it is held back no longer, it resumes its course without outside assistance.
Not only will the number of people capable of taking an interest in works of the mind be greater, but the taste for intellectual pleasures will gradually filter down to those who, in aristocratic societies, seem to have neither the time nor the ability to enjoy them.
When hereditary wealth, class privilege, and prerogatives of birth no longer exist and each person draws his strength only from himself, it becomes clear that the principal cause of disparities in the fortunes of men is intelligence. Anything that serves to fortify, expand, or adorn the intellect immediately takes on great value.
Even the crowd, in its own special way, recognizes the conspicuous usefulness of knowledge. Those who do not savor its charms prize its effects and make some effort to acquire it.
In enlightened and free democratic centuries, there is nothing to separate men or keep them in their place. They rise or fall with singular rapidity. All classes have one another constantly in view because they live in close proximity. They communicate and mingle every day and emulate and envy one another. To the people this suggests a host of ideas, notions, and desires they would not have if ranks were fixed and society immobile. In nations such as these, the servant never considers himself entirely a stranger to the pleasures and labors of the master, nor the poor man to the pleasures and labors of the rich. The rural man seeks to resemble the city dweller, and the provinces strive to be like the metropolis.
Thus no one allows himself to be reduced easily to life’s merely material concerns, and the humblest of artisans will on occasion cast an eager and furtive glance at the higher world of the intellect. People do not read in the same spirit or in the same way as in aristocratic nations, but the circle of readers expands constantly until ultimately it encompasses all citizens.
Once the multitude begins to take an interest in the labors of the mind, it discovers that a good way to acquire fame, power, or wealth is to excel in one or another of them. The restless ambition to which equality gives rise immediately avails itself of this as of all other opportunities. The number of people who cultivate the sciences, literature, and the arts becomes immense. The world of the intellect becomes prodigiously active, as each individual seeks to blaze a new trail and attract the attention of the public. What happens is similar to what is happening to political society in the United States: the works produced are often imperfect, but their number is countless, and while the results of each individual effort are usually quite insignificant, the overall result is always very substantial.
It is not true, therefore, to say that men who live in democratic centuries are by nature indifferent to science, literature, and the arts. It must be acknowledged, however, that they cultivate these fields in their own way and bring to the endeavor their own qualities and deficiencies.