Democracy in America: In Two Volumes

Fourth Part

1187 s4s4s4s4s4 fourth parta a. Plan of this part in a draft: General influence of democratic ideas and mores on government./ ⫽1. How democratic ideas favor the establishment of a centralized government. 2. How id. mores do id. 3. Particular causes, but related to the great democratic cause, that can lead there. 4. Type of despotism to fear. Here show administrative despotism and themanner in which it could successively take hold⫽ of private life. Dangers of this state. 5. Remedies. Here all that I can say on association, aristocratic persons, liberty, great passions . . ./ Last chapter./ 1. New affirmation of the irresistible march of democracy. 2. General judgment of this new state. 3. Nations can turn it to good or to detestable account and they hanginthebalance (YTC, CVk, 1, pp. 73–74). Plan of the chapter in the rubish: General idea of the last chapter./ To do well, this chapter must fit together well with those that precede, which are: 1. Ambition, in which I show the sentiment of ambition universal and small. 2. Revolutions, in which I show that great revolutions will be rare. 3. The army, inwhichI show therestlessnessandhabitualdiscontentof democratic armies. I believe that what would have to be done now would be this: 1. Show how the human mind plunges on all sides among democratic peoples into the idea of unity, of uniformity. 2. Show afterward how that idea leads to administrative despotism. [To the side: A fact certainly new in our hemisphere, for if I am not mistaken the thing has existed for two thousand years in the Antipodes.] 1188 the taste of free institutions 3. Necessity of upholding human individuality.Unionof libertyandequality.Separation of the revolutionary element. [To the side: Here idea of aristocratic persons.]/ These are three ideas that follow each other well. This is found in a jacket placed with the rubish of the chapter on material well-being (chapter 10 of the second part). The jacket bears this commentary: “How equality of ranks suggests to men the taste for liberty and for equality. Why democratic peopleslove equality better than liberty./ “Piece from which I will probably have to make the second section of the chapter and that must be carefully reexamined while reviewing this chapter. 4 September 1838” (Rubish , 1). The drafts reproduced in notebook CVd bear this commentary at the head: Ideas and fragments that all relate more or less to the great chapter entitled: How the ideas and the sentiments suggested by equality influence the political constitution./ Sketch of the final chapter./ Individualism. Natural [Material (ed.)] enjoyments./ Perhaps put a part of all that in the chapter on sentiments that favor the concentration of power. Particularly what I say about the taste for material enjoyments, andindividualism. The piece. More probably place in the work a chapter on material enjoyments and individualism , pieces of this section which merit being kept (28 July 1838). 1bis. 1. Summary of the book. That equality of conditions is an irresistible, accomplished fact, which will break all those who want to struggle againstit.Thisabove all true when equality (illegible word). [To the side: Order of ideas of this chapter. 2. Equality of conditions suggests equally to men the taste for liberty and the taste for equality. But the one is a superficial and passing taste. The other a tenacious and ardent passion.] 2. That despotism can hope to succeed in becoming established only by respecting equality and by flattering democratic tendencies. 3. How a government that aspires to despotism must set about doing so and the opportunities that the ideas, the habits and the instincts of democracy provide for it. I. Why democratic peoples are naturally led to the centralization of power. Theory of centralization presents itself naturally to the mind of men when equality exists. Difficulty of knowing to whom to return intermediary powers. Jealousy of the neighbor. All this increased by revolutions. II. Democratic taste for material well-being which leads men to become absorbed in searching for it or in enjoying it. the taste of free institutions 1189 Of the Influence That Democratic Ideas and Sentiments Exercise on Political Society b III. Individualism which makes each man want to be occupied only with himself. 4. Since the government is, in this way, master of everything, it only needs war to destroy even the shadow of liberty. 1. Facility that it also finds in the democratic social state for that. 2. By this...