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881 s4s4s4s4s4 c h a p t e r 2a Of Individualism in Democratic Countries I have shown how, in centuries of equality, each man looked for his beliefs within himself; I want to show how, in these same centuries, he turns all his sentiments toward himself alone. Individualismb is a recent expression given birth by a new idea. Our fathers knew only egoism. a. 1. What individualism is; how it differs from egoism and ends by coming back to it. 2. Individualism is a sickness peculiar to the human heart in democratic times. Why? 1. Democracy makes you forget ancestors. 2. It hides descendants. 3. It separates contemporaries by destroying classes and by making them men independent of each other. 3. So in democratic centuries man is constantly brought back to himself alone and is preoccupied only with himself. 4. It is so above all at the outset of democratic centuries because of the jealousies and hatreds to which the democratic revolution has given birth (YTC, CVf, p. 23). Tocqueville had thought about beginning the 1840 Democracy with this chapter (see note a for p. 697). b. In the rubish, the chapter, which bears the title of individualism in democracies and of the means that the americans use to combat it, begins in this way: “I am not afraid to use new words when they are necessary to portray a new thing. Here the occasion to do so presents itself. Individualism is a recent expression. . .” (Rubish, 1). The word individualism, which seems to echo the amour propre (self-love) of Rousseau , was not invented by Tocqueville, but he is largely responsible for its definition and its usage. The word appears for the first time in this volume. James T. Schleifer dated its first use as 24 April 1837 (see note u for pp. 709–10). The novelty of the word must not 882 individualism Egoism is a passionate and exaggerated love of oneself, which leads man to view everything only in terms of himself alone and to prefer himself to everything.c Individualism is a considered and peaceful sentiment that disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and to withdraw to the side with his family and his friends; so that, after thus creating a small society for his own use, he willingly abandons the large society to itself. Egoism is born out of blind instinct; individualism proceeds from an erroneous judgmentratherthanfromadepravedsentiment.Ithasitssource in failings of the mind as much as in vices of the heart.d Egoism parches the seed of all virtues; individualism atfirstdriesuponly the source of public virtues, but, in the long run, it attacks and destroys all the others and is finally absorbed into egoism. Egoism is a vice as old as the world. It hardly belongs more to one form of society than to another. make us forget that Tocqueville several times used the expression individual egoism in a rather similar sense (as in note e of p. 511 in the first volume, and in p. 448, also in the first volume). During his 1835 voyage in England (Voyage en Angleterre, OC, V, 2, p. 60), Tocqueville also used another expression to designate almost the same idea. He spoke about the spirit of exclusion, a sentiment that “leads each man or each association of men to enjoy its advantages as much as possible by itself all alone, to withdraw as much as possible into its personality and not to allow whomever to see or to put a foot inside.” The interesting concept of collective individualism appears only in L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (OC, II, 1, p. 158). Some of Tocqueville’s reading, the influence of Kergorlay (who knew SaintSimonianism well), or the popularization of the word perhaps pushed Tocqueville afterward to use the word individualism. In his theory, the term is always accompanied by its opposite, the spirit of individuality, which Tocqueville defines in note 2 for p. 1179. Sometimes he also adopts the terms individual strength, spirit of independence, and individual independence. Koenrad W. Swart (“Individualism in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1826–1860,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 23, 1962, pp. 77–86) points out that Tocqueville perhaps borrowed the term from Saint-Simon. For a discussion of the ideas of Tocqueville on individualism, see Jean-Claude Lamberti, Tocqueville et les deux Démocraties (Paris:PUF, 1983), pp. 217–40, and La Notion d’individualisme chez Tocqueville (Paris: PUF, 1970); see James T...

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