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763 s4s4s4s4s4 c h a p t e r 9a How the Example of the Americans Does Not Prove That a Democratic People Cannot Have Aptitude and Taste for the Sciences, Literature, and the Arts b a. On the jacket containing the chapter: “The first part of the chapter seems good to me. The second does not satisfy me. The evidence does not grab my mind. Something, I do not know what, is missing./ “Perhaps it will be necessary to have the courage to delete this section entirelyinorder to arrive immediately at the chapter on details.” See note a of pp. 696–97. The cover of the rubish of this chapter bears this note: “Very considerable and sufficiently finished fragments of the chapter as it was before the revision of September 1838” (Rubish, 1). Tocqueville already had worked on the chapters on art, science and literature in June 1836. Bonnel (YTC, CVf, p. 1) remarks that a copy of the Journal des débats of 2 April 1838 exists inside a jacket on which Tocqueville wrote: “Journal to reread when I treat the direction that equality gives to the fine arts.” The number of the Journal des débats cited contains the second part of the review, by Philarète Chasles, of the work of E. J. Dele ́cluze, Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Léopold Robert (Paris: Rittner and Goupil,1838); the first had been published March 18. This book contains a commentary on the industrialization of art that could have interested Tocqueville. b. 1. The Americans have made little progress in the sciences, letters and arts. 2. This is due to causes that are more American than democratic. 1. Puritan origin. 2. Nature of the country that leads too vigorously to the sole search for riches. 3. Proximity of scientific and literary Europe and of England in particular. 3. Why other democratic peoples would be different. 1. A people who would be ignorant and (illegible word) at the same time as democratic , not only would not cultivate the sciences, letters and the arts, but also would never come to cultivate them. The law would constantly undo fortunes without creating new ones. Since ignorance and (illegible word) benumb souls, the poor man would not even have the idea of bettering his lot and the rich man of defending himself against the approach of poverty. Equality would become complete and invincible and no one would ever have either the time or the taste for devoting them- 764 the sciences, literature, and the arts It must be recognized that, among the civilized people of today, there are few among whom the advanced sciences have made less progress than in the United States, and who have provided fewer great artists, illustrious poets and celebrated writers.c Some Europeans, struck by this spectacle, have considered it as a natural and inevitable result of equality, and they have thought that, if the democratic social state and institutions came at some time to prevail over all the selves to the works and pleasures of the mind. But it isn’t the same with a peoplewho become democratic while remaining enlightened and free. Why: 1. Since each man conceives the idea of the better and has the liberty to strive toward it, a general effort is made toward wealth. Since each man is reduced to his own strength, he attains wealth depending on whether he has greater or lesser natural abilities. And since natural inequality is very great, fortunes become very unequal and the law of inheritance has no effect other than preventing the perpetuation of wealth in families. From the moment when inequality of fortunes exists, there are men of leisure, and from the moment when men have leisure, they tend by themselves toward the works and pleasures of the mind. In an enlightened and free democratic society, men of leisure will have neither the usual wealth, nor the perfect tranquillity, nor the interests that the members of an aristocracy have, but they are much more numerous. 2. Not only is the number of those who can occupy their intelligence greater, but also the pleasures and the works of the mind are followed by a crowd of men who would in no way be involved in them in aristocratic societies. [In the margin: 1. Utility of knowledge which appears to all and which arouses all to attempt to acquire some knowledge. 2. Perpetual mixture of all classes, all men continually growing closer...

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