OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/24/2015, SPi
Tocqueville, Democracy,
and Religion
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
ALAN S. KAHAN
1
0002475672.INDD 3
3/24/2015 7:12:04 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/24/2015, SPi
Contents
Introduction
1
I . T H E O RY
1. Tocqueville the Moralist
Tocqueville’s Moral Science
The French Moralist Tradition
Seventeenth-Century Grandeur
Tocqueville and Christian Moralism
11
11
16
18
23
. Enlightened and Romantic Roots of Tocqueville’s Moral Science
2
From Montesquieu to Chateaubriand: The Eighteenth Century
Tocqueville and his Contemporaries: The Nineteenth Century
31
31
39
3. Democratic Grandeur
What is Man?
Democratic Man
The Greatness Appropriate to Democracies
The Aristocratic Perfection of Democracy
49
49
53
56
61
4. Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls: Religion and Freedom
The Role of Religion
Religion as Check and as Balance
Separating Church and State
Religion and Freedom
Christianity, Democracy, and Freedom
68
68
72
80
85
88
5. Alternative Spiritualities and Alternatives to Spirituality
Of Pantheism, Poetry, and Professors
Patriotism
94
94
102
I I . A P P L I C AT I O N S
. Religion in America
6
The Point of Departure
Separation of Church and State
The Importance of Religion in Jacksonian America
American Religions
Protestant Method and Protestant Perfectionism
0002475672.INDD 9
117
117
122
128
131
141
3/24/2015 7:12:04 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/24/2015, SPi
x
Contents
7. Religion in France
The France of Mirari Vos and the France of M. Homais
Tocqueville Between the Millstones: The Freedom of
Education Controversy
The Old Regime and Religion
The Church and Napoleon III
147
147
8. Religion Elsewhere
Religion in Ireland and England
Tocqueville on Islam
Tocqueville on Hinduism
Global Democracy, Global Religion
173
173
182
189
193
9. Tocqueville Today
Weber’s Moral Problematic
Tocqueville and Post-Secular Society
Religion and Republicanism
195
196
202
207
Appendix: Methodology
Bibliography
Index
213
225
231
0002475672.INDD 10
153
160
167
3/24/2015 7:12:04 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
4
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls:
Religion and Freedom
T H E RO L E O F R E L I G I O N
Democracy in America was meant to show how democracy could be combined with
freedom and greatness, and The Old Regime and the Revolution to show how the
attempt might fail. In both cases, the role of religion was crucial: In America religion was strong, and contributed to its success. In old regime France it was weak,
and France had succumbed to Revolutionary and Napoleonic despotism. The right
kind of religion, playing the right kind of social role, was essential to the kind of
democratic society Tocqueville wanted. Only freedom and religion together could
lift democracy to greatness: “I have never been more convinced than today,” Tocqueville wrote the liberal Catholic Montalembert in 1852, “that it is only
freedom . . . and religion that can, by a combined effort, lift men above the quagmire
where democratic equality naturally plunges them, as soon as one of these supports
is lacking them.” Without much exaggeration one can say that for Tocqueville
freedom without religion (or some spiritual equivalent) is doomed to fail.1
What Tocqueville seeks from religion, in order to keep democracy out of the
quagmire, is that it will moderate democracy’s excesses, materialistic and otherwise: “Idea of bringing democracy to moderate itself. Idea of the book.” Moderation was a traditional goal of the ancient Greco-Roman moralists—an essentially
aristocratic goal, according to Montesquieu. Tocqueville wanted a democratic religion to moderate democratic society. A religion that could moderate democracy
might be called “religion well understood,” by analogy with “self-interest well
understood.” Religion well understood, for Tocqueville, was the best way to achieve
a well-balanced soul in a democratic society which otherwise tended to create unbalanced people. Religion could serve as a therapeutic counterweight to the natural
flaws of democracy, provide limits and balance for individuals, and through them
for society as a whole: it was “no less useful to each citizen than to the state.” As
such, it was indispensable.2
This perspective was, to say the least, not universally shared. In France in Tocqueville’s time many doubted either that religion would survive or that it was compatible with democracy. In the nineteenth century it was often assumed, by both
1 Tocqueville to Montalembert, 1 December 1852, cited in Antoine, L’Impensé, 130.
2 Democracy, 3:693g, 3:955. See also 3:956; Antoine, L’impensé, 152.
0002475664.INDD 68
3/20/2015 8:30:38 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
69
the left and the right, that Catholicism and democracy were natural enemies,
whether democracy was defined as equality of conditions or the sovereignty of the
people. Nineteenth-century conservatives feared and nineteenth-century radicals
rejoiced that traditional religion, especially Catholicism, seemed to be on its way
out, inextricably linked to feudalism and ignorance. Tocqueville himself acknowledged that a democratic people “readily denies what they cannot understand; that
gives them little faith in the extraordinary and an almost invincible distaste for the
supernatural.” They “scorn” forms and rituals. Democratic man has faith only in
individual reason. Nevertheless, Tocqueville did not believe that religion or Catholicism were doomed.3
For Tocqueville, human beings have a natural tendency to believe in God regardless of social context. Because all people hope for eternal life, the religious
impulse is part of human nature: “Man’s instincts constantly push his soul toward
the contemplation of another world, and it is religion that leads him there. So religion is only a particular form of hope, and it is as natural to the human heart as
hope itself.” Therefore, “to believe that democratic societies are naturally hostile to
religion is to commit a great mistake.” Rather, “unbelief is an accident; faith alone
is the permanent state of humanity.” Religion has universal appeal, and by that
very fact it is essentially democratic. This point is crucial for Tocqueville. Many
other ways in which he attempts to bring aristocratic elements into democratic
society to balance its flaws, whether through social groups such as lawyers, or
secular sources of spiritual inspiration like poetry or science, appeal only to minorities. Among Tocqueville’s secular mechanisms for replicating aristocratic elements
in democratic society the great parallel mechanism to religion is association.
Everyone, once properly educated and habituated to joining associations (in part
through self-interest well understood) can participate in an association. Religion
itself is a form of association. But religion has unique, and uniquely universal, appeal. Not everyone will want to be a stamp collector or a member of an environmental group, but all human beings want to go to heaven and live forever. Religion
appeals to everyone.4
The religion natural to democratic peoples will naturally be a democratic religion. Religions, according to Tocqueville, who clearly had Catholicism in mind,
must adapt themselves to democracy, but there is every reason, based on human
nature, to think that they can—even in the Catholic case. In his notes Tocqueville
gives five rules that a religion which wants to be successful in democratic society
must follow:
1. Necessity that religions be based on the idea of a unique being imposing at
the same time the same rules on each man.
2. Necessity of extricating religion from forms, practices, figures, as men become more democratic.
3. Necessity of not remaining immobile in secondary things.
3 Democracy, 3:701. 4 Democracy, 2:482. See also 2:486, 487x; The Old Regime, 1:205.
0002475664.INDD 69
3/20/2015 8:30:38 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
70
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
4. Necessity of trying to purify and regulate the love of well-being, without attempting to destroy it.
5. Necessity of gaining the favor of the majority.5
The medieval emphasis on intermediate powers between individuals and God,
with saints playing the role of noble patrons intervening with the Divine Majesty,
cannot be sustained in a democratic society. Democracy “diverts attention from
secondary agents in order to bring it principally to the sovereign master.” Miracles
and elaborate rituals, incense and exorcism, will have to give way—Tocqueville anticipated Vatican II. But faith in an omnipotent God will be strong in democracies.
In democratic societies, “God reveals himself more and more to the human mind in
his full and entire majesty. . . . Men . . . are disposed to conceive of a much more vast
idea of the Divinity itself . . . in the actions of each individual, they are led to recognize the mark of this general and constant plan by which God leads the species.”6
However, Tocqueville also describes religion as “the most precious heritage of
aristocratic centuries.” Viewing religion as simultaneously democratic and an inheritance from aristocratic society is inevitable. Anything that is part of human
nature, like religion from Tocqueville’s perspective, will naturally have both aristocratic and democratic forms. Aristocratic religions will either be polytheist or emphasize intermediate powers between people and God, since that is the way
aristocratic societies and governments work. A democratic religion, by contrast, in
conformity with the undivided sovereignty of the democratic people, will be either
pantheist or monotheist, and find God equally distributed everywhere or else concentrated in one place. “Allow the human spirit to follow its tendency, and it will
seek to regulate in a uniform way political society and the holy city; it will seek, if
I dare say so, to harmonize earth with heaven.”7
There is a reason religion is a precious heritage for Tocqueville. Religion is essential to maintaining freedom in a democratic society, and Tocqueville has to work
with the religion that is available, since no substitution is possible. It is, according
to Tocqueville, impossible to establish new religions in democracies, and “all attempts to bring [a new religion] to life would be not only impious, but also ridiculous and unreasonable. You can predict that democratic peoples will not easily
believe in divine missions, that they will readily scoff at new prophets and that they
will want to find the principal arbiter of their beliefs within the limits of humanity
and not beyond.” Since you cannot have a new religion, you had better cling to the
old if you want to keep any of the benefits that religion brings. Ironically enough,
it was during Tocqueville’s visit to America that the prophet Joseph Smith took the
fledgling Mormon Church west to Missouri. Tocqueville himself was not always a
prophet.8
5 Democracy, 3:742a.
6 Democracy, 3:834, 838. For Tocqueville this simplicity of conception, which elsewhere he links to
Protestantism, can also characterize Catholicism: “What is more poetic than the Discourse on Universal
History of Bossuet? Only God and the human species are present there, however.” See Democracy,
3:838r.
7 Democracy, 2:467; 3:757–8. 8 Democracy, 3:717.
0002475664.INDD 70
3/20/2015 8:30:38 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
71
The fact that religion is a heritage from aristocratic society is not without beneficial consequences. From Tocqueville’s perspective, a religion must be able to survive and flourish in a society without being altogether of that society, otherwise it
will not be able to limit and balance it. A religion well understood must be both an
insider and an outsider, rather like Tocqueville himself in his role of moralist. Only
an outsider can have enough perspective to provide checks and balances; only an
insider can succeed in exercising influence. If Christianity were just another bulwark of equality, Tocqueville would have little use for it in a democratic society. A
God who resembles humanity too closely is useless, because such a God cannot
check and balance the human soul. Rather than religion representing society in a
kind of self-worship, the function Durkheim attributes to religion, the function of
religion for Tocqueville is to be in crucial respects different from society. God is an
undemocratic authority in democratic society, a democratic one in an aristocratic
society (at least a Christian God is). Religion for Tocqueville is neither the selfworship of society nor the incarnation or reincarnation of its own system of
authority.9
In an aristocratic society, the egalitarian aspects of Christianity are the most
useful parts, the view that all souls are equal in God’s eyes limiting aristocratic arrogance. In a democratic society, what is important is that the most democratic
God imaginable is nevertheless a ruler, a being set apart, and the proper role of
religion is to make people look up to the divine Monarch, not sideways at their
equals and rivals, or down at the money they hope to make. God is responsible for
making sure that something can stand up against democratic society’s leveling tendencies, its materialism and mediocrity. As Pierre Manent puts it, for Tocqueville
“only religion can really moderate democracy. . . . Religion is its outside and its
limit.” Acting as a divine counterweight to the majority, God is the ultimate source
of the alterity necessary to lift democratic eyes and souls up towards Heaven, thus
preserving in them “the taste for the infinite, the sentiment for the grand and the
love of non-material pleasures.” The dictionary defines alterity as “otherness; specifically; the quality or state of being radically alien to the conscious self or a particular cultural orientation.” This is what Tocqueville seeks from God. Just as
Tocqueville approves of institutions such as decentralized government, practices
such as association, and social groups such as lawyers as secular means of providing
democracy with an “other,” he wants religion to provide a spiritual means of
averting the “danger of allowing a single social principle to take without objection
the absolute direction of society.”10
Tocqueville wants religion in democratic society to play the aristocratic (perfectionist) role of restoring greatness to democratic souls who would otherwise be
unable to conceive of it, much less attain it. Democratic greatness, for Tocqueville,
9 Cf. Jaume on the purported resemblance with Durkheim, Tocqueville, 80, 133, and passim for
his views on Tocqueville’s conception of authority. For Tocqueville religion cannot simply exalt the
favorite attributes of the majority, like Comte’s Positivism. A religion that does not establish an authority other than that of the majority would be useless to Tocqueville.
10 Pierre Manent, Tocqueville et la nature de la démocratie (Paris, 1982), 121; Democracy, 3:740,
740d, 958.
0002475664.INDD 71
3/20/2015 8:30:38 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
72
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
is dependent on the cultivation, in an unfertile soil, of humanity’s non-material
desires. Religion instills loftiness and spiritualism in the democratic soul, rescuing
it from the materialism, pettiness, and individualism that threaten to monopolize
it. Religion is the sovereign spiritual antidote to democracy’s flaws.
Almost any religion (provided it is sufficiently democratic to maintain its hold
on democratic people) will do:
There is no religion that does not place the object of the desires of man above and beyond the good things of the earth, and that does not naturally elevate his soul toward
realms very superior to those of the senses. Nor is there any religion that does not
impose on each man some duties toward the human species or in common with it,
and that does not in this way drag him, from time to time, out of contemplation of
himself. This is found in the most false and most dangerous religions.11
Religion plays a privileged role in Tocqueville’s endeavor to make democratic
peoples great, because “religious peoples are naturally strong precisely in the places
where democratic peoples are weak; this makes very clear how important it is for
men to keep their religion while becoming equal.”12 The goal, therefore, is to make
democratic peoples into religious peoples—the French case—or else to preserve
their religion if they already have it—the American case. In theory, religion should
be a power in democratic society—if it plays its cards right. If it is a power, it will
be able to perform the crucial moral functions Tocqueville intends for it, as a check
and a balance on democratic society.
RELIGION AS CHECK AND AS BALANCE
The functions religion fulfills as check and balance are analogous to Tocqueville’s
utilitarian and perfectionist perspectives. When he describes religion as imposing
checks on democracy, he typically adopts a utilitarian rationale. When he attributes a balancing function to religion, religion is typically contributing to the
perfection of the democratic character. “The principal business of religions is to
purify, to regulate and to limit the overly ardent and overly exclusive taste for
well-being that men feel in times of equality,” and at the same time “to inspire
entirely opposite instincts” to the love of material enjoyments, by elevating the
soul “towards realms very superior to those of the senses.” Religion works to improve both happiness (utility) and greatness (perfection). Tocqueville himself
summarized this dual function neatly: “If religion does not save men in the next
world, it is at least very useful to their happiness and to their greatness in this
one.”13
11 Democracy, 3:745–6. See also 3:924 and 3:958. 12 Democracy, 3:746.
13 Democracy, 3:744, 751. The sentence is a variation on Montesquieu, who, justifying his purely
secular approach to religion in the Spirit of the Laws says of false religions that one “can seek the ones
that are most in conformity with the good of society, the ones that, though they do not have the effect of
leading men to the felicities of the next life, can most contribute to their happiness in this one” (emphasis
added). Spirit of the Laws, 459.
0002475664.INDD 72
3/20/2015 8:30:38 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
73
Religion must fulfill both functions, but depending on context Tocqueville usually emphasizes one or the other. Most often, it is the balancing function that is
emphasized.
Balancing the materialistic impulses in democratic souls is probably the most
important moral task Tocqueville assigns to religion, even more so than limiting
them, because it leads more directly to greatness of character. Religion is the most
likely way to inspire democratic people with non-material passions. For all Tocqueville’s respect for self-interest well understood, it cannot do this, and as a result
it is not enough for achieving the human greatness he seeks. “If the doctrine of
interest well understood had only this world in view, it would be far from enough;
for a great number of sacrifices can find their reward only in the other; and whatever intellectual effort you make to feel the usefulness of virtue, it will always be
difficult to make a man live well who does not want to die.”14
Religion too can fall short of encouraging real virtue and real greatness of character, according to Tocqueville. If religion concentrates too much on the rewards
awaiting the faithful, if all religion has to offer is the bribe of paradise, as a reinforcement (indeed a reincarnation) of the doctrine of self-interest well understood, Tocqueville would find it much less worthwhile. But just as the practice of
self-interest well understood can lead people to real virtue, so its religious counterpart, doing good for the sake of Heaven, can do the same. “I refuse to believe
that all those who practice virtue because of the spirit of religion act only with a
reward in view.” Whether it does so directly or by sleight of hand, by getting
people into the habit of acting nobly, religion succeeds in elevating self-interest by
giving it a whiff of heaven and subtly replacing self-interest with the love of God.
This is what really interests Tocqueville in religion, its perfectionist aspect, the
love of God: “Christianity tells us . . . that you must prefer others to yourself in
order to gain heaven; but Christianity also tells us that you must do good to your
fellows out of love of God. That is a magnificent expression.” Tocqueville goes on
to emphasize that doing good out of the love of God “brings no other recompense
than the pleasure of contemplating [God’s purpose].” It is a purely non-material
passion.15
One may ask whether the love of God or its secular equivalent, the love of
freedom, will ever motivate more than a minority of people.16 But if so, in the
worst case, this only makes the love of God analogous to political freedom, which
14 Democracy, 3:745, 926. Tocqueville was probably aware from his lycée education of Cicero’s
saying that the purpose of philosophy was to teach people how to die. Here as elsewhere religion serves
as a democratic substitute for philosophy. Antoine notes that for Tocqueville religion helps democratic
societies where they are weak and where “the semi-virtue of self interest well understood is insufficient.” Antoine, L’impensé, 140.
15 Democracy, 3:927. See also 3:925. In these passages Tocqueville uses religion to lead self-interest
to greatness, a point overlooked in Jaume’s elided reading of them. See Jaume, Tocqueville, 133.
16 Of course, it is hard to tell the whether it is the prospect of heaven or the love of God that motivates someone. But what is a problem for Kant’s moral philosophy is not for Tocqueville: “Religions
have, by design, made such an intimate union of the doctrine of the love of God and that of interest,
that those who are sincerely devout are constantly mistaken, and it happens that they believe that they
are doing actions solely in view of the world to come,” when actually they are motivated “by the most
pure, most noble, and most disinterested instincts of human nature.” Democracy, 3:925.
0002475664.INDD 73
3/20/2015 8:30:38 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
74
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
“from time to time, gives sublime pleasures to a certain number of citizens.” Neither
political freedom nor the love of God are any less valuable to Tocqueville for only
appealing to a minority. And the love of God is more likely than political freedom
to appeal to the majority. Religion is thus a democratic instrument for cultivating
greatness—even more democratic, perhaps, than political freedom. If both freedom
and religion, for Tocqueville, have their roots in human and democratic nature,
those of religion seem to be deeper.17
But in order to love God or hope for heaven, one must adopt the view that
human beings possess an immortal soul. “Most religions are only general, simple
and practical means to teach men the immortality of the soul.” In much of the
world when one thinks about how religion might elevate souls one thinks about
how it might help people attain salvation, or Nirvana, or some other other-worldly
goal. While this has its uses for Tocqueville,18 it is not his chief concern. From a
perfectionist perspective, he values the doctrine of the immortality of the soul in
democratic societies simply because the soul is immaterial and thus serves to balance the materialistic world-view that democratic people otherwise incline to. It is
more important, for Tocqueville, for democratic people to believe in the immortality of the soul than for them to believe in heaven and hell: “The belief in a
non-material and immortal principle, united for a time to matter, is so necessary
for the grandeur of man, that it still produces beautiful effects even when you do
not join the opinion of rewards and punishments with it.” The doctrine of the immortality of the soul “is enough to give . . . an elevated turn to . . . ideas and tastes,
and to make them tend without interest, and as if on their own, toward pure sentiments and great thoughts.”19
Religious doctrine thus serves to balance democracy’s material tendencies. It
embodies, or perhaps we should say disembodies, the immaterial part of human
nature otherwise marginalized in democratic societies. What is important, in the
democratic context, is that religion emphasizes the angel, and thus helps enable
democratic humanity to find its own way to greatness.
Just as it encourages the angel, religion in Tocqueville’s view also imposes limits
on the beast, on humanity’s material desires. Religion’s balancing function in
democratic societies is combined with its traditional function as a limit on desire.
It was hardly a new discovery by Tocqueville that religion limited materialism. It
was an ancient commonplace that the fear of God or the Gods, and hope for heavenly reward, helped keep people from becoming thieves and robbers. It was also an
ancient commonplace that, as Tocqueville put it, democracy “is the form of government . . . in which it most desirable that the people be moral.” The reason was
that “you cannot establish the reign of liberty without that of mores, nor found
mores without beliefs.” Otherwise, “when [democracy] comes with moral and religious anarchy, it leads to despotism.” This was why “in the United States religion
17 Democracy, 3:876, 925–7.
18 From a utilitarian perspective, the doctrine is valuable to Tocqueville as an interest-based reinforcement of morality.
19 Democracy, 3:958–9. Montesquieu also suggests that one of religion’s functions is to give counsels of perfection and to emphasize the best rather than the good. See Spirit of the Laws, 464, 495.
0002475664.INDD 74
3/20/2015 8:30:38 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
75
is the first of political institutions,” since without the moral foundations it created,
liberty could not persist.20
America’s good morality was, according Tocqueville, the combined product of
reason, acting through self-interest well understood, and religion. He was particularly struck by the chaste behavior of American women that resulted, but what he
says of the virtue of young American women applies throughout American society.
Their good behavior was the product of both reason and religion: “In this, as in
many other circumstances, [the Americans] followed the same method. They first
made incredible efforts to get individual independence to regulate itself,” through
the rational appeal of self-interest well understood, and only then “called religion
to their help” (emphasis added).21
When purifying, regulating, and limiting materialism, religion plays an analogous role to self-interest well understood, a secular mechanism that fulfills the
same purpose. Religion well understood is not the opponent of self-interest well
understood, for Tocqueville. There is no need for religion to try and eliminate
self-interest from the democratic soul, and it could never do so anyway. Any religious attempt “to destroy this fundamental passion [the love of well-being] would
in the end be destroyed by it.” The result would be empty places of worship and
purely materialistic people. A successful democratic religion must take democratic
people as they are. It must both limit and balance materialism. For religion to oppose self-interest would be analogous to trying to eliminate materialism altogether,
which especially in a democratic society would be both futile and foolish. American
clergy, of all denominations, “while constantly pointing out the other world to the
faithful man as the great object of his fears and of his hopes . . . do not forbid him
to seek well-being honestly in this one. . . . They pay particular attention instead to
finding in what place they touch and are connected.”22
Self-interest well understood actually acts as a sort of apprenticeship in religion,
according to Tocqueville. “The men who adopt it are very disposed than [sic] others
to submit to religious beliefs and practices.” Self-interest well understood teaches a
man that “instead of yielding blindly to the heat of his first desires,” he should
“combat them . . . if such a man has faith in the religion he professes, it will hardly
cost him anything to submit to the inconveniences that it imposes.” Self-interest
well understood can thus lead a person to religion. Even if he does not start out
with faith, he is a good candidate to take up Pascal’s wager and bet on faith out of
an interest in obtaining heaven. An ignoble wager, according to Tocqueville, but
one that will at least help fill the pews. Thus Tocqueville writes that: “interest is the
principal means that religions themselves use to lead men, and I do not doubt that
it is from this side that they take hold of the crowd and become popular.” Having
succeeded in interesting people in eternal life, religion is then in a good position to
persuade them to give up their immediate self-interest for a more distant goal—a
20 Democracy, 1:25, 1:117d; 2:482u. The remark about religion being the “first of political institutions” is preceded by the phrase: “I would not hesitate to say, because I write in an irreligious century….” Clearly Tocqueville is exaggerating to make a point. He seems to have thought better of it,
since this remark was removed from the text.
21 Democracy, 2:472; 4:1044–5. 22 Democracy, 3:751, 753.
0002475664.INDD 75
3/20/2015 8:30:38 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
76
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
characteristic of self-interest well understood—as well as to encourage them to
non-material desires and real greatness.23
It is noteworthy, however, that by “moral” here Tocqueville means well-behaved,
not virtuous. “The influence that religion exercises over mores in the United States
must not be exaggerated; it is not sufficient to make a virtuous people, but an orderly one.” The parallel with the effects of self-interest well understood is strong.
Tocqueville is more sure of the limiting, utilitarian effects of religion than of its
balancing and perfectionist influence, just as he is more confident in the ability of
self-interest well understood to make democratic society “comfortable” than he is
in the ability of religion well understood and other influences to give it “grandeur”
and freedom.24
In this context it is as well to clarify the relationship between religion and mores
in Democracy. Tocqueville defines the term “mores” as referring, in a well-known
phrase, to “the habits of the heart,” as well as to “the ensemble of ideas from which
the habits of the mind [emphasis added] are formed.” Taking both implications together, Tocqueville says that “by this word [mores] I understand the whole moral
and intellectual state of a people.” Tocqueville was not always consistent in his
usage of the term, however, perhaps because he was not sure how his readers understood it. Thus shortly after defining the word (which he had already used many
times in earlier chapters of Democracy), Tocqueville wrote that in the United States,
“religion regulates not only mores; it extends its dominion even to the mind,” the
latter clause being useless if the term “mores” naturally included “the intellectual
state of a people.” The scope of the term “mores,” therefore, seems to expand or
contract depending on context, like so many of Tocqueville’s terms.25
The relationship of religion to mores likewise expands and contracts. Religious
belief, for Tocqueville, is simultaneously an influence on the mores of Americans
and a part of the national mores. Tocqueville on some occasions separates the influence of religion from the influence of mores, as in the succeeding chapters “Of
the Influence of Mores on Maintaining the Democratic Republic in the United
States” and “Of Religion Considered as a Political Institution, How it Serves
Powerfully to Maintain the Democratic Republic among the Americans.” On
other occasions, however, Tocqueville describes how religion influences mores, for
example when he says that “the great severity of mores in the United States has its
primary source in religious beliefs” or in his claim that religion in America “rules
with sovereign power over the soul of the woman, and it is the woman who shapes
the mores.” Religion is simultaneously a powerful more and a powerful influence
on mores. In both respects it functions as limit on democracy.26
Religion imposes limits beyond those of morality or mores, however. The intellectual barriers it opposes to free inquiry in certain areas are also useful and necessary in Tocqueville’s view. While this argument was also a commonplace, and
Tocqueville’s positive evaluation of it widespread in conservative and liberal (if not
23 Democracy, 3:927–8, 928d. See also 926a. However, Tocqueville worries that pews filled with
this kind of person will “give the spirit of religion a certain character . . . and it will make the desire to
gain heaven predominate over the pure love of God.” Democracy, 3:928e.
24 Democracy, 2:482u. 25 Democracy, 2:466–7, 474. 26 Democracy, 2:466–7, 473.
0002475664.INDD 76
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
77
radical) circles, he gives the argument several new twists in his discussion of the
role of “dogma” in democratic societies.
Tocqueville thinks religion is important to democratic societies in part because
it fulfills their need for “dogma,” defined as “opinions men receive on trust and
without discussion.” This idea may have originated with his friend Louis de Kergorlay.27 In a letter written just a few days after Tocqueville arrived in America,
Kergorlay asked him to look closely into dogmatic beliefs about religion and politics in America. Kergorlay remarked that while at first the idea of complete individual freedom of thought is seductive, the older he gets the more he is persuaded
that nations cannot do without religious and political dogmas. Tocqueville followed his friend’s advice, and comes to a similar conclusion. He devoted considerable attention to describing American dogmas, political and religious. He also
provided an explanation of why democratic societies need dogmatic beliefs, and
especially dogmatic religious beliefs, in the first place.28
In Tocqueville’s view, all societies and all individuals hold some dogmatic beliefs.
Without them action would be impossible. If we had to constantly figure out, first
individually, and then as a community, whether “green” should mean “go” and “red”
stop, or with which hand one should hold a knife, the only question left would be
which would come first, death by automobile accident or death by starvation. People
do not have the time to decide all these questions for themselves—Tocqueville
compares “dogmatic beliefs to algebraic quantities by the aid of which you simplify
the operations of life.” He thus neatly transforms “dogma” from a matter of revelation into one of common sense.29 No matter who you are, there are only a few
things you can examine yourself. “There is in this world no philosopher so great that
he does not believe a million things on the faith of others, and who does not assume
many more truths than he establishes.” Intellectually, we cannot be altogether free
and independent. “It is true that every man who receives an opinion on the word of
others puts his mind into slavery; but it is a salutary servitude that allows making a
good use of liberty.” We must give up some of our freedom to retain the rest. The
question is what sources of dogmatic authority we choose.30
In democratic societies, there are essentially two possible sources of authority for
dogmatic opinion. There is the authority of the majority, as expressed socially
through public opinion, and the authority of religion. Public opinion is always a
power in human societies, but in aristocratic societies it is both formed and checked by
the authority of tradition, corporate bodies, and powerful individuals and families.
27 On the other hand, Tocqueville, in a letter to Gustave de Beaumont, 5 October 1828, speaks of
the great need “men have of authority in religious matters and to what point they will wander off
course when they lose a base of certainty” and “appeal to their own reason.” The idea was common at
the time. See OC, 8, 1:70.
28 Democracy, 3:712; Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 12 May 1831, OC, 13, 1:222–3. There is a secular
parallel mechanism for providing people with unexamined beliefs: the press. See Democracy, 2:299.
29 Democracy, 3: 714–16, 716j. Tocqueville’s defense of dogma bears a strong resemblance to the
“common sense” philosophy of Thomas Reid, which had previously been adopted by Royer-Collard
and Lamennais, who may be the common source here for Tocqueville and Kergorlay. A common sense
or “pragmatist” perspective founds knowledge on a consensus about what works. Jaume discusses aspects of Tocqueville and Lamennais’ use of common sense philosophy in Tocqueville, 6.
30 Democracy, 3:714–17.
0002475664.INDD 77
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
78
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
In democratic societies, these rival authorities have disappeared. In democracies
“the disposition to believe the mass increases, and more and more it is opinion that
leads the world.” Tocqueville even speaks of the majority in religious terms: “The
majority is the prophet. . . .” This makes the continued existence of religion as an
alternative source of authority to public opinion all the more valuable. Religion
serves as a check on the power of the majority, and religious dogma is a valuable
alternative to whatever dogmas are accepted by authority of the majority.31
Religious dogma is not merely useful as a limit on the tyranny of the majority,
however. “The salutary servitude” of dogma is nowhere so salutary as in religious
questions. Tocqueville emphasizes that “among all dogmatic beliefs, the most desirable seem to me to be religious beliefs.” Religious dogma is desirable to Tocqueville for two reasons: for the way in which it paradoxically frees the mind, and
for the way in which it limits the state and the majority.32
As with dogmatic opinions generally, dogmatic religious beliefs leave the mind
free to worry about other things. The questions religion exempts us from thinking
about are particularly important ones, however. “Religion, by providing the mind
with a clear and precise solution33 to a great number of metaphysical and moral
questions as important as they are difficult to resolve, leaves the mind with the
strength and the leisure to proceed with calmness and with energy in the whole
area that religion abandons to it.” Since you do not have to think about whether
God exists, the meaning of life, or what will happen to you after you die, you can
think about politics (or the stock market) instead. Whereas if we do not know the
answers to the kinds of question to which religions provide dogmatic responses,
questions which we are unable to figure out satisfactorily on our own, this has
broad debilitating effects—far broader than worrying about which hand we should
use to hold a knife: “When religion is destroyed among a people, doubt takes hold
of the highest portions of the intellect and half paralyses all the others . . . Such a
state cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens the motivating force of will and prepares citizens for servitude.” As he puts it elsewhere, when men are “no longer able
to recapture their ancient beliefs, they give themselves a master.”34
Religious dogma turns out to be essential for political freedom, the peak of all
perfections for Tocqueville. Without the “salutary servitude” of religious dogma, we
are in danger of succumbing to the wholly unsalutary servitude of political despotism. By contrast, once religious dogma is accepted, the mind is refreshed for other
activities. “After having rested awhile in the midst of the certainties of the moral
order, man begins to move again and reenters the political arena with more fervor.”
Tocqueville concludes: “For me, I doubt that man can ever bear complete religious
independence and full political liberty at the same time; and I am led to think that,
if he does not have faith, he must serve, and, if he is free, he must believe.”35
Tocqueville has tacitly given his readers a choice and then taken it away. One
could choose to dispense with religious dogma at the price of accepting a political
31 Democracy, 3:718–20, 720. 32 Democracy, 3: 743.
33 Tocqueville’s “clear and precise solution” refers to Descartes’ “clear and distinct ideas,” which he
is turning upside down.
34 Democracy, 3: 716, 745. 35 Democracy, 3: 745.
0002475664.INDD 78
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
79
dogma, and prefer infinite free theological speculation at the price of political conformity. But Tocqueville chooses not to recognize this possibility. It holds no attraction for him, because choosing political despotism is incompatible with his
view of human greatness. We therefore need to give up our freedom to decide for
ourselves about religious matters—which is no great loss, because we cannot come
to any good conclusions anyway, even if we are philosophers, and “such studies are
far beyond the average capacity of men.” If we want to avoid a political master, if
we want to preserve our emotional and intellectual energy for politics, we need to
accept an outside authority in religious questions.36
Of equal importance is that religion’s dogmatic beliefs limit what the state, even
a democratic state, can do. Religion both enables democratic politics by creating
the psychological space for them, and limits their scope by raising barriers to arbitrary action by the government. Tocqueville laments the absence of this kind of
barrier in irreligious Europe: “Since religion lost its dominion over souls, the most
visible limit that divided good and bad is overturned; all seems doubtful and uncertain in the moral realm, kings and peoples move there haphazardly, and no one
can say where the natural limits of despotism and the bounds of licence are.” In the
United States the barrier is intact. Because nearly everyone in America either accepts some version of religious dogma, or at least publicly professes to, “the human
mind never sees a limitless field before it; whatever its audacity, it feels from time
to time that it must stop before insurmountable barriers. Before innovating, it is
forced to accept certain primary givens, and to subject its boldest conceptions to
certain forms that retard and stop it.”37
Religious dogma limits the otherwise all-powerful majority. In this respect
America serves Tocqueville as his example of democracy well understood. Tocqueville alleges that without religion the Americans would be “the boldest innovators and most implacable logicians in the world.” They would thus become radical
revolutionaries like the French Jacobins. But they are not. In America, even “revolutionaries”—an odd term in the American context of 1831, but very relevant to
Tocqueville’s French audience—must respect laws, like those of property, that are
sanctioned by religion, on pain of losing all their public support. Thus, “until now
no one has been found in the United States who has dared to advance this maxim:
that everything is allowed in the interest of society.” Religion places limits on both
the ends and the means available to American politicians: “at the same time that
the law allows the American people to do everything, religion prevents them from
conceiving of everything and forbids them to dare everything.”38
Religion limits and balances both thought and action. It checks people’s actions
and thought through dogma and by imposing religious limits on their materialism
and on the actions the government and the majority may take. It balances democratic
36 Democracy, 3: 743.
37 Democracy, 2: 474, 507. See also his letter to Kergorlay, 29 June 1831: Religion “gives a moral
and regular shape to ideas; it stops the deviations of the spirit of innovation; above all it makes very
rare the disposition of the soul, so common among us, that compels people to rush over all obstacles
per fas et nefas” (by fair or foul means). See Boesche, Selected Letters, 52–3.
38 Democracy, 2: 474–5. See also 2:599a.
0002475664.INDD 79
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
80
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
society’s natural flaws, especially excessive materialism, by encouraging non-material
desires and disinterested virtues. Religion’s powers in democratic society are great,
according to Tocqueville. Because they are so great, religion is an indispensable
support for freedom and greatness in democratic society. But for the same reason,
just as the authority of public opinion might lead to the tyranny of the majority
if unchecked, religion too must be limited, for fear of a religious despotism over
politics and society every bit as deadly to human greatness and freedom as any
other form of despotism. To avoid this problem, which is all the more pressing for
Tocqueville because the French left frequently charged Catholicism with aspirations to religious despotism—not altogether without justification—Dr. Tocqueville
prescribes limits on religion for its own protection, even more than for that of
society.
S E PA R AT I N G C H U RC H A N D S TAT E
Tocqueville’s idea of the separation of church and state is not quite that of either its
contemporary American version, based on providing freedom for religion, nor its
French incarnation, laicité, which wishes to create a public sphere altogether free of
religious expression. Laicité, at least in its twenty-first-century version (nineteenthcentury laicisme was rather different) is at best indifferent to the fate of religion, at
worst hostile, neither of which would have suited Tocqueville. Equally, twenty-firstcentury American separation, at least those versions which allow for the positive
encouragement of religion in general by the state, would have struck Tocqueville as
dangerous, not so much for the state as for religion, because such encouragement
for religion would, from his perspective, naturally arouse hostility towards it in the
same circles that supported the Enlightenment. His idea is different from both.
Religion, Tocqueville notes, thrives in America. Indeed, writes Tocqueville,
“When I first arrived in the United States, it was the religious aspect of the country
that first struck my eyes . . . every day I felt my desire to know the cause of this phenomenon increase.” There are many causes for this, but for Tocqueville the most
important is the separation of church and state. Tocqueville’s readers would have
had a hard time accepting this. From a Legitimist perspective, one of the chief political purposes of religion was to sanctify the monarchy, and one of the chief purposes of government to uphold religion. This was the basis of the ancient alliance
of throne and altar. The left agreed that this was the purpose of religion, and that,
therefore, traditional religion ought to be abandoned, or at the very least opened
up to “freethinking.” That a thriving traditional religion could be combined with
political freedom was incomprehensible from both ends of the French political
spectrum.39
Tocqueville wants neither a theocracy nor a government-sponsored religion. In
the circumstances in which the Western world found itself in the nineteenth century, he did not feel the need to spend much time criticizing or worrying about
39 Democracy, 2:476.
0002475664.INDD 80
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
81
theocratic government. Indeed, he regards the threat of theocracy merely as a kind
of red flag waved by the left to frighten children.40 He is very concerned, however,
that the attempts of French Catholicism to exercise political influence and obtain
government sponsorship will result, not in theocracy, but in sufficient harm to
­religion to make it incapable of exercising the checking and balancing function he
needs it to, thus in the end harming the state as well. The fundamental cause of
irreligion in Europe is, for Tocqueville, insufficient separation between church and
state. If religion is to be a source of checks and balances for democratic societies,
religion has to be limited, preferably with its own consent, certainly for its own
good: “For religions to be able, humanly speaking, to persist in democratic centuries, they must . . . carefully stay within the circle of religious matters.”41
Just how far does the “circle of religious matters” extend? Tocqueville, who thinks
religious dogmas a necessity in democratic society, also thinks it necessary that their
extent should be limited. In Tocqueville’s conception, the separation of church and
state is in a sense the institutional corollary or parallel to the psychological separation in the minds of democratic human beings between that which they accept as
dogma, and that in which their opinion is as good as that of any other person,
where no authority, except perhaps that of the majority, can be ­accepted. Separating
the two means limiting the sphere of dogma, the better to strengthen freedom. At
the same time it creates a positive feedback loop in which religion, strong in its own
sphere, serves to strengthen and preserve political freedom.
Religious dogma should limit itself to giving people “fixed ideas about God,
their soul, their general duties toward their creator and toward their fellows, for
doubt about these first points would leave all their actions to chance and would
condemn them in a way to permanent impotence. Religions should avoid making
not only religious doctrines, but also political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and
scientific theories descend from heaven.” As long as religion does not seek to step
outside its own boundaries, then religious dogma imposes “a salutary yoke on the
intellect,” necessary for giving our limited minds the limited space they need in
order to be free, since an unlimited independence of mind is not possible or desirable for such creatures as we. But if dogma goes beyond these limits, it will weaken
religion. “In America, religion is a world apart where the priest reigns but which he
is careful never to leave; within its limits, he leads minds; outside he leaves men to
themselves.” Tocqueville’s ideal religion must itself be limited and balanced if it is
to moderate democracy.42
Tocqueville is searching for “the middle between two opposite excesses.” He
wants to achieve a balance of the religious and the secular, between philosophy and
religion. Tocqueville defines philosophy as “all that the individual discovers by the
individual effort of reason,” and religion as “all that he accepts without discussing
it,” that is, dogma. The two are usually perceived as enemies according to Tocqueville, doubtless with the French experience in mind. If philosophy becomes
40 See Tocqueville, Ecrits et discours politiques, OC, 3, 2:493, 592. This did not hold with respect to
the Islamic world. See Chapter 8.
41 Democracy, 2:487; 3:747. 42 Democracy, 2:752; 3:743, 746.
0002475664.INDD 81
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
82
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
predominant, then “men tend toward an intellectual individualism without limits.”
If religion dominates, then people “tend toward having only common opinions
and ending at intellectual slavery. These two results are impractical and bad. Philosophy is needed and religions are needed.” Balance is the result of the coexistence
of philosophy and religion, rather than the victory of either. We need dogma, and
we need free inquiry. In a religion that is well understood, the scope of dogma
must be limited.43
A religion which oversteps its proper bounds risks its own destruction, because
more extensive dogmas will violate two of Tocqueville’s rules for successful democratic religions, the “necessity of extricating religion from forms, practices, figures,
as men become more democratic” and the “necessity of not remaining immobile in
secondary things.” But most importantly, if religion becomes involved with government, if political maxims become dogma, then religion will be the loser.44
There are two ways in which involvement with a government harms religion: by
destroying its claim to universality, and by involving it in political partisanship,
which inevitably results in hostility to religion by the partisans of the other party.
The first objection is on one level an objection to Protestant churches like the Anglican, which are linked to a single nation, and on a deeper level an appeal to Catholics to stay away from this dreadful “Protestant” error. If religion “comes to unite
with a government, it must adopt maxims that are applicable only to certain
peoples. Therefore, by allying itself to a political power, religion increases its power
over some and loses the hope of reigning over all.” A state religion cannot be a
world-wide religion. Catholics, with their claim to universality, should therefore be
particularly wary of ties to government.45
The second reason for religion to avoid entanglement with the state is even more
powerful. Political partisanship can threaten the survival of a religion. As historical
proof Tocqueville uses the examples of the French Enlightenment and the French
Revolution, in particular the mutual hostility of French intellectuals and the
Church. The source of the conflict was the close link between the Church, feudal
society and the monarchy, and the only solution to the lasting hostility is to break
those links. “For the writers to have been able to come to an understanding with the
Church, both sides would have had to recognize that political society and religious
society were by nature essentially different, and could not be ordered by similar
principles.” Unfortunately for France, “we were then very far from that idea.”46
Tocqueville insists, against the common opinion of his time, that during the
Enlightenment and the French Revolution, “it was much less as a religious doctrine than as a political institution that Christianity aroused these furious hatreds.”
To emphasize the point he titled a chapter of The Old Regime “That the Fundamental and Final Objective of the Revolution Was Not, as Has Been Thought, to
Destroy Religion and Weaken the State.” Priests were hated as tithe-collectors, not
because they administered communion, and the Church was rejected “because it
occupied the strongest and most privileged place in the old society which was
43 Democracy, 3:713e. 44 Democracy, 3:742a. 45 Democracy, 2:483; 3:742.
46 The Old Regime, 1:204.
0002475664.INDD 82
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
83
being ground into dust.” Precisely because religion must appeal to unchanging
dogmas about an unchanging God, too close a link with changeable political institutions is always dangerous, and can be fatal: “as for State religions, I have always
thought that if sometimes they could temporarily serve the interests of political
power, they always sooner or later become fatal to the Church.” In the long run,
religion can only lose by an alliance with political powers: “it does not need their
help to live, and by serving them it can die.” Indeed, Tocqueville goes so far as to
say that there is only one thing that can kill or even limit the spread of a religion,
besides another religion: uniting itself to a government. Even an indirect link with
the government or a particular political party is too much for Tocqueville.47
French history proved that a politically partisan religion attracted enemies, and “so
religion cannot share the material strength of those who govern without burdening
itself with a portion of the hatreds caused by those who govern.” When religion relied
on secular powers for support, it became “almost as fragile as all the powers of the
earth,” a particularly dangerous situation in a democratic era when power is by
nature fragile and apt to pass from hand to hand. In France religion became the
enemy of a party, and that party naturally abandoned religion. Even though religion
is rooted in human nature, “particular and natural causes” can overcome this general
tendency, and Tocqueville is convinced that the ultimate cause of the decline of religion in France, and potentially in other democratic societies, is “the intimate union
of politics and religion.”48
Tocqueville is so desperate to drive this point home to French Catholics pining
for the alliance of throne and altar that he is willing to resort to chains, at least
metaphorically: “I feel so convinced of the nearly inevitable dangers that beliefs
run when their interpreters mingle in public affairs, and I am so persuaded that
Christianity must at all cost be maintained within the new democracies, that I
would prefer to chain priests within the sanctuary than to allow them out of it.”
This is very strong language; for Tocqueville to think chains are better than
freedom, especially political freedom, is rare indeed.49
If church and state are separated, religion will have fewer enemies. The state will
also gain, as it benefits from religious belief through better mores, the willingness
to postpone gratification, and so on, and those benefits will increase as religion is
strengthened. Inspired by religion, people will be less materialistic and more open
to higher ambitions, and more great human beings will be formed, living in societies whose freedom, political and otherwise, is in part guaranteed by religion.
Religion will flourish, and everything will be for the best. So one might be led to
believe by Tocqueville’s comments, especially in his published works. But in fact
Tocqueville is less than fully confident about the survival of religion, and especially
Catholicism.
His worries have something to do with the particularities of American society and French history, but they have deeper roots as well. For all his apparent
confidence about the roots of religion in human nature, Tocqueville proclaims its
47 The Old Regime, 1:96–7; Democracy, 3:961. 48 Democracy, 2:483–4, 487.
49 Democracy, 3:962.
0002475664.INDD 83
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
84
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
contemporary weakness: “Don’t you see that religions are growing weaker. . . . Don’t
you see, on all sides, beliefs giving way to reasoning, and sentiments, to calculation?” And then he goes on to point out the necessity of appealing to self-interest
well understood as a substitute for religion in democratic times, as if religion
cannot actually be relied upon to persist. Furthermore, in an unpublished marginal
note to one of the passages in The Old Regime where he claimed that the Church
was attacked chiefly as a political power, he writes: “Beyond all this there is (which
I don’t want to say) a natural hostility between the basis of the political principles
which the writers wanted to see prevail . . . and the natural principles of the Church,
a natural antagonism which can perhaps never end.” If this is true, perhaps religion, or at least Catholicism, is destined to lose to the writers.50
Tocqueville doubts, and in the dark days of Napoleon III his doubts about
Catholicism grew stronger. Nevertheless, the bulk of his thought about the survival
of religion in democratic times is optimistic, even if nothing is ever guaranteed.
Depending on whether he is being optimistic or pessimistic about religion’s fate,
separation of church and state is either a magic bullet or a last hope. In either case
it is necessary for the mutual benefit of both parties. In the same note in which he
speculates about an eternal antagonism between free-thinking intellectuals and
Catholicism, he concludes that if such hostility can ever end, it will not be “until
all the ties which linked the political world to the religious world have been cut,
and it is recognized that the political principles of the one are different from those
of the other.”51
Church and state must be separated. But not too far. Tocqueville is very concerned that religion, particularly Christianity, might become indifferent to politics
and to political freedom. A politically indifferent religion will fail to inspire its
followers with the love of freedom, and thus deprive freedom of an essential support. Of all the non-material desires, the desire for political freedom ranks highest
on Tocqueville’s list, but he is afraid it does not show up at all on the roster of Christian virtues. Christianity takes no account the duties of men as citizens, the public
virtues, and duties towards the nation, he laments. He pursues this line of thought
in The Old Regime: “the Roman Empire in its greatest decadence was full of good
Christians.” At around the same time he complained of the compliant attitude of
the French Catholic clergy towards the despotism of Napoleon III, rejecting the
notion that the sole political duty of a Christian is to render unto Caesar that
which is Caesar’s, and arguing that Christians have duties, religious duties, to the
nation. Religion must impact politics morally while remaining separate from partisan political allegiances. Only thus can it effectively help to check and balance
democratic societies and support human greatness and freedom.52
For Tocqueville, religion and the state are like two adjoining houses which share
a common wall, but have separate entrances. In the front hall of religion, one
checks one’s right of individual inquiry and decision and accepts dogmatic authority.
50 Democracy, 2:391; The Old Regime, 1:391. 51 The Old Regime, 1:391.
52 Tocqueville to Gobineau, 5 September 1843, OC, 9:46. See also Tocqueville to Swetchine, 10
September 1856, Selected Letters, 338. The Old Regime, 1:88; Tocqueville to Swetchine, 20 October
1856, OC, 15, 2:296–7.
0002475664.INDD 84
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
85
In the front hall of politics, one hangs up one’s religious dogmas and accepts the
decision of the majority while retaining one’s freedom of thought and action. The
wall between religion and the state should be thin, however, so that the noise in one
can be heard clearly in the other. Indeed, the moral expression of religion ought to
be heard so clearly in the house of politics as to be able, if need be, to wake up its
occupants in the middle of the night, and religion should never be allowed to be so
indifferent to society as to be able to ignore a catastrophe happening next door.
RELIGION AND FREEDOM
If the metaphor of adjoining houses describes one aspect of Tocqueville’s idea of
the relationship between religion and politics, it is inaccurate in another respect.
Tocqueville does not value religion and politics equally. He is interested in human
greatness and political freedom, not salvation, and for him religion is primarily a
means, not a goal. However, to conclude from this that Tocqueville is seeking only
political utility in religion would be to conclude that he is only interested in politics. As a moralist, he is interested in the greatness and dignity of the whole human
being, and the achievement of political freedom, however important, is not the
whole of human nature, nor is it in the long run, for Tocqueville, possible with
morally and spiritually impoverished people. The utility of religion is spiritual as
well as political. For Tocqueville religion has a moral value in itself, regardless of its
ability to get a believer to heaven. Tocqueville is not indifferent about religious
dogma as such, for both political and spiritual reasons, but he is latitudinarian
about salvation, whereas he is strict in his demand for freedom.
The proof of this is that Tocqueville, in the final analysis, does not care if the
religion that serves democracy is true or false: “If it is very useful to a man as an
individual that his religion be true, it is not the same for society. Society has
nothing either to fear or to hope concerning the other life; and what is most important for society is not so much that all citizens profess the true religion but that
they profess a religion.” He does not care which religion is morally or spiritually
best, as long as it is good enough, as almost all religions are, in his view, to perform
the moral functions he assigns it, and as long as it is suitable for democratic people:
“I do not want to seek which religious doctrine is suited by nature to making men
most honest and most moral, but only which one is most likely, by its nature, to
be believed in democratic centuries.”53
Religion has many uses for Tocqueville, but the most important for Tocqueville
is that it helps maintain political freedom, which is the most important tool of all
for producing great human beings in democratic societies: “As for me, I say that,
to combat the evils that equality can produce, there is only one effective remedy:
political freedom.” Tocqueville was exaggerating when he described political freedom
as the “one effective remedy”; he suggests others elsewhere. Nevertheless, freedom,
53 Democracy, 2:473; Democracy drafts cited in Schleifer, “Tocqueville and Religion” Tocqueville
Review, 4, no. 2 (1982), 311.
0002475664.INDD 85
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
86
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
in the final analysis, is more effective in tearing democratic people away from materialism than anything else. “Only freedom can tear people from the worship of
Mammon . . . only freedom can substitute higher and stronger passions for the
love of material well-being, give rise to greater ambitions than the acquisition of a
fortune. . . .” Indeed, without freedom moralists and moral science are impossible in
Tocqueville’s view: Only freedom can “create the atmosphere which allows one
to see and judge human vices and virtues.” Freedom is the necessary basis for
­Tocqueville’s new moral science. The whole message of Democracy in America, as a
disappointed Tocqueville complained to a reviewer who had failed to see it, was that
“in the democratic age which is just beginning, political liberty is not only beautiful
but also necessary for nations to become great and even to remain civilized.”54
It is not so much that religion is subordinate to freedom in Tocqueville, as that
freedom, above all political freedom, is Tocqueville’s religion.55 Political freedom
clearly has a special status for Tocqueville among all the other attributes of the goddess Liberty. Political freedom is not just a tool, it is a goal, and a constituent part
of greatness as well as a means to greatness. Of all the non-material desires that
Tocqueville seeks to encourage as necessary to the greatness of democratic human
beings, political freedom has the highest value for him. While religion possesses
elements of greatness in Tocqueville’s view, insofar as it too represents a non-material
desire (e.g. the idea of the love of God), and thus can contribute to human greatness, it does not attract his affection to the same extent as freedom. If, as ­Tocqueville
implies at one point, the real purpose of religion is to teach people how to die, he
knew that he himself was willing to die for freedom, as he demonstrated on the
barricades in June 1848 and would have been happy to do in December 1851.
Tocqueville calls freedom a “holy thing,” and says that while he would have loved
freedom in all times, in the democratic present he is inclined to “worship” it.56 As
he writes to a friend: “I have always loved freedom instinctively, and all my reflections lead me to believe that no moral and political greatness is possible for long
without it.” Freedom is the sovereign balm for modernity’s ills, the Holy Grail that
cures all “the evils that equality can produce.” Political freedom is the peak of the
perfections for Tocqueville at the same time as it is, in the long run, the most useful
contributor to human happiness. Tocqueville’s notion of spiritual perfection is not
salvation, still less Nirvana, but rather human greatness expressed in freedom. Religion is freedom’s handmaid for Tocqueville, not the other way around.57
54 Democracy, 3:894; The Old Regime, 1:88; letter to Silvestre de Sacy, 18 October 1840, in Jaume,
Tocqueville, 336. Ralph C. Hancock makes the point about Tocqueville being interested in religion
primarily from a political point of view in “The Uses and Hazards of Christianity in Tocqueville’s Attempt to Save Democratic Souls,” in Ken Masugi, ed., Interpreting Tocqueville’s Democracy in America
(Savage, MD, 1991), 349. Antoine’s discussion of the issue is found in chapter nine of L’Impensé.
55 Tocqueville “attributes to freedom a religious status,” as François Bourricaud notes. See Bourricaud,
“Convictions de Tocqueville,” Tocqueville Review, 27, no. 1 (2006), 118.
56 Democracy, 4:1263. Exceptionally, I depart from the Schleifer translation here in favor of that by
Arthur Goldhammer. Schleifer translates “adorer” as “adore,” but the religious implication that “adore”
possesses in this instance come through more clearly in Goldhammer’s “worship.” Tocqueville’s adoration here is meant to have religious force.
57 Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, 24 July 1836, The Tocqueville Reader, 153; Democracy, 3:894.
0002475664.INDD 86
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
87
Of course, for Tocqueville political freedom and religion are or should be complementary. He writes that while “political liberty has sometimes deadened, sometimes animated religious passions,” as a general rule political passion encourages
religion, because both appeal to humanity’s higher instincts, its angel: “On both
sides general goods, immaterial to a certain degree, are in sight; on both sides an
ideal of society is pursued, a certain perfecting of the human species, the picture of
which raises souls above contemplation of private interests and carries them away.”
By checking and balancing the democratic soul and helping democratic people to
be great, religion helps them to be free, for political freedom will not long survive
in a democratic society which has abandoned greatness in favor of mediocrity and
materialism. Religion may be subordinate to politics in Tocqueville’s hierarchy of
values, but it is nonetheless essential.58
The ideal Tocquevillean relationship between religion and politics, the imaginary
Tocquevillean Concordat, was based on this hierarchy of values. Tocqueville was
vainly seeking a liberal version of Napoleon’s Concordat for nineteenth-century
France, one that would strengthen freedom rather than despotism. Both Napoleon
and Tocqueville found what they were looking for hard to get, and indeed Tocqueville never obtained it. Napoleon made his Concordat against the wishes of both
right and left in France, just as Tocqueville had to struggle against the anti-religious
prejudices of the Enlightened French left and the demand for an alliance between
throne and altar from the Legitimist French right. Tocqueville wanted to replace the
alliance between throne and altar with a new alliance between religion and freedom.
Tocqueville’s Concordat remained a mirage, at least in France, but to the end of his
life he remained convinced that there was no fundamental obstacle to such a revolution in French attitudes, a revolution that would, after all, only confirm the
American experience he had described in Democracy.
Tocqueville’s discussion of the relationship between religion and democracy, and
between religion and freedom, often takes place in terms that are both abstract and
plural. He writes about the contributions that “religions” can make, “even the most
false and dangerous religions.”59 He also often refers to “religion” in the singular,
without specifying by context or proper noun which, if any, particular religion he
has in mind. Thus the reader is tacitly encouraged to mentally insert his or her favorite, or least favorite, religion into Tocqueville’s sentence—an opportunity all
too few commentators have been willing to pass by.
But if Tocqueville shows both a tactical sense for leaving certain questions vague
and a desire to generalize, there are also aspects of the relationship between democracy and religion and freedom and religion that he wants to discuss in more
specific terms. America is not simply a religious nation, it is a Christian nation, and
a largely Protestant one, although its Catholics (and its Unitarians—see Chapter 6)
draw Tocqueville’s particular attention. France, by contrast, is a Catholic nation.
To bring them into contact Tocqueville discusses the relationship between Christianity in its various forms and democracy and freedom. Tocqueville’s optimism
58 Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 18 October 1847, Selected Letters, 191–2.
59 Democracy, 3:745–6.
0002475664.INDD 87
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
88
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
that freedom and religion can, should, and will remain friends in America and
become friends in France, that his Concordat is possible, derives in part from his
view that Christianity, and its historical manifestations Protestantism and Catholicism, are natural allies of both democracy and freedom.
C H R I S T I A N I T Y, D E M O C R A C Y, A N D F R E E D O M
For Tocqueville equality begins with Jesus Christ. His chapter on “How, in the
United States, Religion Knows How to Make Use of Democratic Instincts” includes a brief history of Christianity that marries it to the rise of democracy. The
ancient world is a world of slaves and aristocrats, whether in Sparta, Athens, or
Rome. The ancient philosophers, for all Tocqueville’s admiration of “sublime”
Plato, are no better. “All the great writers of antiquity were part of the aristocracy
of masters . . . so their minds, after expanding in several directions, were limited in
that one, and Jesus Christ had to come to earth in order to make it understood that
all members of the human species were naturally similar and equal.” The equality
of all souls in God’s eyes, the idea that “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither
slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”
struck Tocqueville as revolutionary (in a good sense), and he comes back to the first
two comparisons on several occasions as proof of the superiority of Christianity. It
is universal, unlike Judaism in his view, and it is egalitarian, unlike the ancient
world. Its spread was due in large measure to a sort of semi-democratic society created by the Roman Empire. If that Empire was firmly aristocratic in its ideals and
its economy, nonetheless it anticipated democracy by subjecting the whole Mediterranean basin to the same laws, and creating a state in which “each [individual]
was so weak and so small in relation to the greatness of the prince, that they all
seemed equal when compared with him,” as in any democratic despotism. This
new state disposed “men to receive the general truths the Christianity teaches, and
it serves to explain the easy and rapid way in which it then penetrated the human
mind.”60
For Tocqueville there is “nothing in Christianity, nothing even in Catholicism,
that is absolutely contrary to the spirit of democratic societies, and many things are
very favorable.” Christianity is not merely democratic in the sense of supporting
equality, it is also democratic with regard to freedom. Tocqueville originally wrote
in Democracy that “Christianity, even when it demands passive obedience in matters of dogma, is still of all religious doctrines the one most favorable to liberty,
because it appeals only to the mind and heart of those whom it wants to bring into
subjection.” This sentence attracted historical criticism from his father and brother,
and he removed it. But the argument that he wanted to make, regardless of the
Inquisition, the Crusades, and other events pointed out by his family, was that the
natural political affinity of Christianity is with individual freedom. He argued that
60 Democracy, 3:733, 748; New Testament, Galatians, 3:28; The Old Regime, 1:97. This historical
perspective on the rise of Christianity had been commonplace since the eighteenth century.
0002475664.INDD 88
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
89
since Christianity is not based on physical force, it is the natural enemy of tyranny,
and therefore despotism can never be securely established in a Christian nation.61
Tocqueville was not altogether sanguine on this point. Christianity might insist
on free belief, but he well knew that it did not necessarily insist on a free society.
As we have seen, he was worried by the political apathy that Christians had shown
towards the late Roman Empire, and deeply upset by the acquiescence of the Catholic Church to the despotism of Napoleon III. The American churches provided a
counter-example, but for reasons that had more to do with the specifics of their
history. The causes for Christian political indifference, on the other hand, were
linked to the very nature of Christianity, in Tocqueville’s view. Precisely because
Christianity was a universal religion, whose greatness was “to form a human society
outside all national societies,” “the duties of men towards each other as citizens, the
obligations of the citizen to the fatherland, in a word the public virtues seem to me
to be badly defined and pretty neglected in Christian morality.” Where was the
religious link between Christianity and political freedom?62
This problem worried Tocqueville profoundly. Near the end of his life, thanking
Albert de Broglie for sending him a copy of his history of early Christianity, Tocqueville wished that Broglie had included “a discussion that I ardently looked for,
and whose absence in all the books which relate to Christianity has always caused
me real trouble of mind.” The question Tocqueville wanted to see discussed was
why Christianity had done so much towards improving private conduct, and so
little towards improving public conduct, so that in the Christianizing Roman Empire the political nation became more corrupt and public virtues disappeared.
­Tocqueville complained that “the striking contrast, from the very first days of
Christianity, between the Christian virtues and what I have called the public virtues, has often been reproduced since. There is nothing in this world which seems
to me more difficult to explain.” Tocqueville never found a satisfactory explanation, and his secret fear that Christianity, for all its many and indispensable virtues, might be a politically flawed religion, must be borne in mind when reading
his much more common praise of its role.63
Tocqueville was fully convinced, however, that Christianity was not opposed to
democracy as an egalitarian social state, and that even the radically egalitarian,
avowedly atheist, and anti-Christian moralities of his time were essentially nothing
but variations on Christian themes. “We have perhaps added shades to the colors
of the picture, but I don’t see that we have added any entirely new colors.” Modern
morality “has only developed, extended the conclusions of Christian morality
without changing its principles.” Indeed, the most important modern innovation
in morality, according to Tocqueville, was the “immense development” and “new
form” it gave to two Christian ideas: First, “the equal right of all men to the goods
of this world and the duty of those who have more to come to the aid of those who
have less.” Modern revolutionaries merely developed this Christian idea. The
61 Democracy, 2:468, 468a; The Old Regime, 1:97.
62 Tocqueville to Gobineau, 5 September 1843, OC, 9:46.
63 Tocqueville to Albert de Broglie, 20 July 1856, Lettres Choisies, 1177.
0002475664.INDD 89
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
90
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
second modern moral innovation according to Tocqueville was that while Christianity made charity a private virtue, “we make of it more and more a social duty,
a political obligation, a public virtue,” combining Classical political ideas with
Christian morality. Thus “almost all of what we call new principles” were drawn
from “the old principles of Christianity,” as interpreted through “our civilization,
our political laws and our social state.”64
Tocqueville’s view that Christianity is naturally supportive of equality applied,
again with some (mostly) silent reservations, to both its Catholic and Protestant
variants, but in discussing Protestantism Tocqueville was walking on political
quicksand. Even repeating what, at the time, was a historical commonplace—the
affinity of Protestantism and democracy—could cost him support from the Catholic Legitimist readers whom he was desperately trying to persuade that Catholicism
and democracy were compatible. As a result, many of the references to Protestantism in Democracy were either removed from the published text or only ever
existed in his notes.
Most of the notes, and the remaining references to the history of Protestantism,
come from a chapter with the anodyne title “Of the Philosophical Method of the
Americans.” In this chapter Tocqueville maintains that the Americans, in this respect the archetype of democratic humanity, are Cartesians without knowing it,
since they start, like Descartes, by refusing to accept any authority beyond that of
individual reason. Tocqueville concludes his discussion of Cartesianism by asking:
“Who does not see that Luther, Descartes and Voltaire used the same method?”65
From the principle of the authority of individual reason in matters of philosophy it
is but a small leap to individual authority in matters of faith. In a note to the
chapter, he states that: “Protestantism itself already announced that society had become very democratic,” that is, that in the sixteenth century the social state had already become sufficiently egalitarian for a religion with egalitarian practices and
tenets (for example Luther’s idea of the priesthood of all believers) to become plausible to a large number of people. In a deleted passage Tocqueville develops this
thought slightly more fully, without daring to put it into the text: “Protestantism is
a democratic doctrine that preceded and facilitated the establishment of social and
political equality.” This sentence would have been doubly damnable in conservative
eyes, establishing Protestantism as socially and politically dangerous, and implying
that Tocqueville, who is a proponent of democracy and considers it the doing of
Providence, is a crypto-Protestant himself. He wrote in the margin: “Probably delete this. It is dangerous ground on which I should go only by necessity.”66
If this was dangerous ground, how much more so was another reflection that he
deleted? After remarking that Catholicism too favored equality of conditions, he
64 Tocqueville to Gobineau, 5 September 1843, OC, 9:46–7, 2 October 1843, 9:59–62, 22 October
1843, 9:68. Around the same time Tocqueville noted that while modern society was “putting into
practice the Christian idea of fraternity,” it was giving it “such an extended practical development as
to make it almost a new principle.” See “Des progrés théoriques et pratiques de la morale depuis cinquante ans,” OC, 16, 3:168n.1, 169.
65 Linking Descartes and Protestantism was common at the time. See Jaume, Tocqueville, 76n.51.
66 Democracy, 3:698, 702, 702k, 706–7; 4:1041c.
0002475664.INDD 90
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
91
wrote: “I do not doubt that Protestantism, which places all religious authority in
the universality of the faithful acting by themselves, is very favorable to the establishment of [originally indirectly supports the political dogma of the sovereignty of
the people and thus serves] republican government.” The version that remained in
the text avoided naming the religion concerned: “In the United States the religion
of the greatest number [i.e. Protestantism] itself is republican; it subjects the truths
of the other world to individual reason, as politics relinquishes to the good sense of
all the responsibility for the interests of this one; and it agrees that each man should
freely take the path that will lead him to heaven, in the same way that the law recognizes the right of each citizen to choose his government.” The deleted version, by
contrast, went on to state that “Catholicism . . . seems to me to have more natural
affinity with limited monarchy.” Given that Tocqueville elsewhere wrote that in the
long run limited monarchy was but a way-station on the road to the republic, this
would imply the coming triumph of both Protestantism and republicanism, and a
politically dangerous (for Tocqueville) link between Protestantism and political
freedom. Yet Tocqueville also predicted that in the long run “some will leave Christianity entirely and others will go into the Roman church,” thus implying that it was
Protestantism which would disappear. In a passage in his notebooks, he states that
“Protestantism is the government of the middle classes applied to the religious
world.” Given his dim view of the government of the middle classes, this too seemed
to argue against a Protestant future. Tocqueville’s opinion evidently wavered, and
prudence dictated that the entire question be avoided as much as possible.67
As mentioned, the link between Protestantism and democracy was a commonplace, but Tocqueville took pains not to draw attention to it. A link between Catholicism and democracy, on the other hand, was anything but commonplace,68 and
Tocqueville did his best to convince his readers of it. The end of the chapter on
“How, in the United States, Religion Knows How to Make Use of Democratic Instincts” is actually a primer for the French about how Catholicism and democracy
are reconciled in America and could be in France. Here he proclaims that “it is
wrong to regard the Catholic religion as a natural enemy of democracy,” a statement that many on both the left and the right in France would have rejected.
Catholicism places all minds on the same level, imposes the same rituals on rich
and poor, and “loves to mix all classes of society together at the foot of the same
altar, as they are mixed together in the eyes of God.” The next volume of Democracy
includes a chapter “Of the Progress of Catholicism in the United States,” which
seeks to show that Catholicism is at home in America and successful there: “America
is the most democratic country on earth, and at the same time the country where,
according to trustworthy reports, the Catholic religion is making the most progress. This is surprising at first view.” Indeed, this argument would have been very
surprising to most Europeans, as it was to American readers. Both doubted its
­accuracy, although for different reasons: the Americans as a matter of fact, the
67 Democracy, 2:469c, 470c, 633–4; 3:755e; Tocqueville to Chabrol, 26 October 1831, in Zunz,
ed., Tocqueville and Beaumont in America, 157.
68 Although Lamennais had suggested this possibility.
0002475664.INDD 91
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
92
Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion
Europeans as a conceptual possibility.69 The answer to why Catholicism was
­increasingly popular in the United States was that Protestant churches were in
practice essentially national churches. Democratic peoples naturally see God in
universal terms, and the only universal church available is the Roman Catholic
Church.70
Why then is Catholicism not equally successful in democratic Europe? Here
Tocqueville comes back to the arguments made about the separation of church and
state. In both Democracy and The Old Regime he argues that if Catholicism could
escape from the political hatreds caused by the link between church and state, it
would be very successful in democratic societies. Liberated from the suffocating
embrace of the state, “I hardly doubt that this very spirit of the century [democracy], which seems so contrary to it, would become very favorable to it, and that it
would suddenly make great conquests.”71
But if Tocqueville is confident that Catholicism and democracy can be combined, he is not so confident that Catholicism and political freedom are natural
partners. A marginal note to the passage on the egalitarian nature of Catholicism
reads: “Catholicism favors the spirit of equality in the manner of absolute power. It
places one man beyond all rank and leaves all the others mingled together in the
crowd.” A Catholicism with affinity for democratic despotism (rather in the manner
of Islam—see Chapter 8), is not what Tocqueville is looking for from religion.72
Furthermore, he fears that Catholicism will not, in the long run, be willing to
accept the separation of church and state. From America Tocqueville wrote: “I have
spoken with a good many priests; their democracy [he is using the word in its political sense] is purely skin-deep. One senses in the depths of their souls a great
contempt for the rule of the multitude and a great desire to rule and direct society.
To speak frankly, I even believe that they are tolerant only because they have given
up hope of dominating.” In another letter written in 1843, just three years after the
second volume of Democracy was published, he confesses his doubts to his devoutly
Catholic friend Corcelle: “Catholicism, I am very afraid, will never adopt the new
society. It will never forget the position it had in the old one and every time that it
is given some powers, it will hasten to abuse them. I will say that only to you. But
I say it to you, because I want to have you enter into my most secret thought.” A
note for The Old Regime states that “intolerance is natural to Catholicism, a profound part of its mores.” Tocqueville later speculated that there might be “a natural
hostility between the basis of the political principles which the writers [of the Enlightenment] wanted to see prevail . . . and the natural principles of the Church, a
natural antagonism which can perhaps never end.” Tocqueville’s chapter on the
progress of Catholicism in the United States is only three pages long, remarkably
short for such a potentially important building-block for the alliance between
French Catholicism and freedom. Perhaps the chapter was abbreviated because he
was not fully persuaded by his own arguments.73
69 See Chapter 6, 133–34. 70 Democracy, 3:753–4.
71 Democracy, 3:754–5; The Old Regime, 1:97. 72 Democracy, 2:469b.
73 Tocqueville to Chabrol, 26 October 1831, in Zunz, ed., Tocqueville and Beaumont in America,
158; Tocqueville to Corcelle, cited in Democracy, 3:755n; The Old Regime, 1:391, 2:354.
0002475664.INDD 92
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF, 03/20/2015, SPi
Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls
93
However, these doubts about Catholicism are actually not very different in substance from Tocqueville’s acknowledgement of the religious intolerance of the
American Puritans (see Chapter 6). In neither case do the potentially dispiriting
particulars discourage his conclusion that Protestantism, Catholicism, and Christianity in general are compatible with democracy and can help support freedom
and greatness in democratic societies. Tocqueville appeals to a “best self of Christianity against its historically institutionalized lesser self ” or selves. But this is no
different from his appeal to an ideal moral vision of democracy, as yet unrealized,
even in America. The coming of democratic society is Providential and inevitable.
The establishment and preservation of freedom are neither; nor will a given religion necessarily survive, if it persists in trying to join itself to the state.74
Tocqueville’s moral vision of a society that is free and democratic and produces
great human beings requires that the flaws natural to democratic societies and
democratic human beings be checked and balanced. Those checks and balances
cannot be solely political or secular. The habit of civil association, the role of aristocratic social groups such as lawyers, decentralized government, elections, and
other political/secular checks and balances, while necessary, are not sufficient. It is
only the combination of freedom with religion, of secular mechanisms with spiritual ones, which in the long run offers Tocqueville hope—and it is never more
than hope—that his vision of democratic grandeur and freedom can be accomplished. Providence, which makes numerous appearances in the Introduction to
Democracy, returns for a final bow in the last chapter, a few lines before the book’s
conclusion. There it serves as the ultimate guarantee for free will and the possibility
of a happy ending to Tocqueville’s story: “Providence has created humanity neither
entirely independent nor completely slave. It traces around each man, it is true, a
fatal circle out of which he cannot go; but within its vast limits, man is powerful
and free; so are peoples.” Religion plays an indispensable role for Tocqueville in
reinforcing the better angels of our nature and giving democratic humanity its best
chance to achieve both the greatest good of the greatest number and the greatest
perfection of the individual and of society. As a moralist, character is central to
Tocqueville’s reflections, and religion is central to how the democratic character
can be swayed in the direction of the angel. Human beings will never, indeed
should never be wholly angels, and democratic peoples still less so, but with the aid
of religion the angel can gain a beneficent influence over the beast.75
Religion, however, was not the only spiritual influence on democratic societies
and people. Tocqueville was well aware that there were other angelic, non-material
desires in the human soul beyond the love of God. In Democracy and elsewhere he
discussed alternative forms of spirituality, broadly defined, as a means of encouraging greatness in the democratic soul and preserving freedom in democratic societies. His moral science took care to leave no stone unturned.
74 Frank M. Turner, “Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill on Religion,” The Tocqueville
Review, 27, no. 2 (2006), 155.
75 Democracy, 4:1285.
0002475664.INDD 93
3/20/2015 8:30:39 AM