Democracy in America: In Two Volumes

Chapter 2. Of the Point of Departure and Its Importance for the Future of the Anglo-Americansa

45 s4s4s4s4s4 c h a p t e r 2 Of the Point of Departure and Its Importance for the Future of the Anglo-Americansa Usefulness of knowing the point of departure of peoples in order to understand their social state and their laws.— America is the only country where the point of departure of a great people could clearly be seen.—How all the men who came to populate English America were similar.—How they differed.—Remark applicable to all the Europeans who came to settle on the shores of the New World.— Colonization of Virginia.—Id. of New England.— Original character of the first inhabitants of New England.—Their arrival.—Their first laws.—Social contract.—Penal code taken from the law of Moses.— Religious fervor.—Republican spirit.—Intimate union of the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty. A man is newly born; his first years pass obscurely amid the pleasures or occupations of childhood. He grows up; manhood begins; finallythedoors a. Point of departure./ Influence of the point of departure on the future of society. Homogeneous ideas, mores, needs, passions of the founders of American society. Influence of the extent of the territory, of the nature of the country, of its geographic situation, of its ports, of its population, immigration from Europe, and in the West, from America itself. The point of departure gave birth to the society as it is organized today, primitive fact after which come the consequences, formulated as principles (YTC, CVh, 1, p. 23). 46 of the point of departure of the world open to receive him; he enters into contact with his fellow men. Then, for the first time, you study him and think that the seeds of the vices and virtues of his mature years can be seen developing in him.b If I am not mistaken, that is a great error.c Go back to the beginning; examine the child even in the arms of his mother; see the exterior world reflected for the first time in the still dark mirror of his intellect; contemplate the first examples that catch his eye; listen to the first words that awaken his slumbering powers of thought; finally, witness the first struggles that he has to sustain. And only then will you understand the origin of the prejudices, the habits and the passions that are going to dominate his life. The whole man is there, so to speak, in the infant swaddled in his cradle. Something similar happens among nations. Peoples always feel the effects of their origin. The circumstances that accompanied their birth and were useful to their development influence all the rest of their course. If it were possible for us to go back to the elements of societies and examine the first memorials of their history, I am certain that we would be able to discover there the first cause of the prejudices, habits, dominant passions, of all that ultimately composes what is called the national character . [{There, no doubt, we would find the key to more than one historical enigma}]. There we would happen to find the explanation for customsthat today seem contrary to the reigning mores; for laws that seem opposed to recognized principles; for incoherent opinions found here and there in society like fragments of broken chains that are sometimes seen still hanging b. In the margin: “⫽It must be very much remembered that this chapter still requires research on the laws of New England, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. See especially the Town Officer [Isaac Goodwin, Town Officer: or Laws of Massachusetts Relative to the Duties of Municipal Officers, second edition, Worcester: Dorr and Howland,1829.(ed.)].⫽” c. In the margin: ⫽Point common to all parts of the Union. South. West. North. New England, sun, which is the source of all the rays that heat, light or at least color everything else.⫽ of the point of departure 47 from the vaults of an old edifice and that no longer hold up anything.Thus would be explained the destiny of certain peoples who seem to be dragged by an unknown force toward anendunknowneventothemselves.Butuntil now facts have been lacking for such a study. The spirit of analysis came to nations only as they grew older, and when, at last, they thought to contemplate their birth, time had already enveloped it in a mist; ignoranceand pride had surrounded it with fables that hid the truth. [Human remains...