¹ Lively, Jack, The Social and Political Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville (Oxford, 1962), pp. 196–97Google Scholar; Zetterbaum, Marvin, Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy (Stanford, California, 1967), pp. 120–24, 147.Google Scholar

² All citations are to the Lawrence, George translation of Democracy in America (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1969), here pp. 16–17, 300–301.Google Scholar

³ Koritansky, John C., “Two Forms of the Love of Equality in Tocqueville's Practical Teaching for Democracy,” Polity, 6, no. 4 (1974), 497nCrossRefGoogle Scholar, suggests that Tocqueville's discussion constitutes an attack on the church sub silentio, presumably because of the contrast between the independence of American Protestantism and the obedience required by Catholicism. Lively, , Social and Political Thought of Tocqueville, pp. 188–94Google Scholar, shows how Tocqueville's description of the place of religion in democracy does in effect criticize certain aspects of the French church's practice at the time. To go beyond this and argue that Tocqueville is attacking the church simply and entirely, Koritansky would have to explain Tocqueville's prediction that Americans would eventually divide into complete atheists and those who returned to the church. He would also have difficulty with Tocqueville's conclusion to his chapter on “How Religion in the United States Makes Use of Democratic Instincts”: “By respecting all democratic instincts which are not against it and making use of many favorable ones, religion succeeds in struggling successfully with that spirit of individual independence which is its most dangerous enemy” (p. 449).Google Scholar

⁴ Although Goldstein, Doris, Trial of Faith: Religion and Politics in Tocqueville's Thought (New York, 1975)Google Scholar, argues that Tocqueville has more personal commitment to Christianity than Lively or Zetterbaum allow, she, too, states, “The dominance of the functional posture in the Democratie is undeniable…” (p. 26).Google Scholar Cf. also Balitzer, Alfred, “Some Thoughts about Civil Religion,” Journal of Church and State, 16, no. 1 (Winter 1974), 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ de Montesquieu, Baron, De L'Esprit des Loix, I:2–8, 19–21; II: 24–25.Google Scholar See also Pangle, Thomas, Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism (Chicago, 1973), pp. 200–59.Google Scholar

⁶ Rousseau, Jean Jacques, Du Contrat Social, I:8Google Scholar; Crocker, Lester, ed., The Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (New York, 1976), p. 23.Google Scholar

⁷ Du Contrat Social, IV:8.Google Scholar

⁸ Democracy, I:1: viii: 153.Google Scholar

⁹ Ibid., I: 2: ix: 291: II: 1: v: 448.

¹⁰ Ibid., I: 1: iii: 52–3.

¹¹ Ibid., II: 2: viii: 525.

¹² Ibid., II: 3: xvii:614–15.

¹³ Ibid., I: 2: iii: 180–86.

¹⁴ Ibid., II: 1: ii: 433–34.

¹⁵ Ibid., II: 1: v: 442–44.

¹⁶ Ibid., II: 2: v: 515: “It is easy to see the time coming in which men will be less and less able to produce, by each alone, the commonest bare necessities of life. The tasks of government must therefore perpetually increase. … The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect.”

¹⁷ Ibid., II: 2: v: 517.

¹⁸ Ibid., I: 1: viii: 159–60.

¹⁹ Ibid., I: 2: ix: 305–08: “If in the course of this book I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, opinions, and, in a word, their mores, in maintaining their laws, I have failed in the main object of my work.”

²⁰ Ibid., II: 1: v: 449.

²¹ Ibid., I: 2: ix: 297.

²² Kessler, Sanford, “Tocqueville on the Civic Religion and Liberal Democracy,” Journal of Politics, 39 (02 1977), 140–41.Google Scholar

²³ Robert Bellah points out that every president in his inaugural address has appealed to God as the final judge, although there are no specifically Christian references in Richey, Russell E. and Jones, Donald, ed., American Civil Religion (New York, 1974), pp. 21–37.Google Scholar

²⁴ Lively, , Social and Political Thought of Tocqueville, p. 199Google Scholar, argues that Tocqueville's tendency to advocate social myths comes to light even more clearly in his doctrine concerning the uses of “self-interest properly understood” than in his teaching concerning the place of religion in a democracy because Tocqueville urges the inculcation of the doctrine even though he doubted its truth, at least in its accepted form. What Tocqueville says, however, is that: “I do not think that the doctrine of self-interest as preached in America is in all respects self-evident. But it does contain many truths so clear that for men to see them it is enough to educate them” (p. 528). He never suggests that it is not truly in the self-interest of every man, literally “properly understood” to participate in politics. On the contrary, he urges that a man's most fundamental and dearest interest is to maintain his liberty and so his ability to rule himself (I: v: 93; II: ii: 15: 540). The problem is that men often lose sight of this truth in pursuing short-term economic gain, but Tocqueville argues that in America the doctrine of “self-interest, properly understood,” helps counteract this characteristic failing of man's reason.

²⁵ Zetterbaum considers the inevitable triumph of democracy to be the first and foremost of Tocqueville's salutary myths, partly because Tocqueville often expresses this thesis in providential terms. More fundamentally, Zetterbaum argues that the inevitability thesis must be a myth, because Tocqueville was not truly neutral as to the merits of aristocracy and democracy. The fact that Tocqueville thought that democracy was more natural and hence more just does not in itself mean that he did not also think that it would inevitably conquer feudal aristocracy. Zetterbaum also suggests that Tocqueville went so far as to deny the freedom of the will in an attempt to persuade aristocrats that opposition was useless. Tocqueville's observation in the preface to Democracy in America that many different past actions have all unintentionally furthered the progress of democracy does not entail a denial of free will, however; it merely acknowledges the limitations of our knowledge of the long term and cumulative effects of individual actions, a point that Tocqueville makes in the chapter on history as well as in his more private Recollections. (Democracy, II:i: 20: 494–95Google Scholar; de Mattos, Alexander Teixeira, trans., The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville [New York, 1959], p. 64.)Google Scholar Tocqueville himself concludes Democracy in America by stating that “Providence did not make mankind entirely free or completely enslaved. Providence has, in truth, drawn a predestined circle around each man beyond which he cannot pass; but within those vast limits man is strong and free, and so are peoples” (p. 705). Tocqueville argues that intentional political actions can determine whether men will be free or not under democratic conditions. His expressions of uncertainty, both public and private, about the future do not contradict the inevitability thesis, as Zetterbaum maintains, because Tocqueville explicitly holds out the possibility that democracy will become despotic. Over the long run, despotism might so change the character of a people that aristocrats could again establish themselves by force. He only asserts that it is impossible for aristocracy to withstand the rising democratic tide for the foreseeable future.

²⁶ Zetterbaum, , Tocqueville and Problem of Democracy, pp. 118–23, 147.Google Scholar

²⁷ Democracy, II:1: 5: 446.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., II: 1: 1,3: 430–32, 438–39.