to be able to discover that Democracy in America is also, in terms of its literary construction, a very special kind of book.16
The Author and His Reader
A careful reader of Democracy in America is able to find out that throughout the book, Tocqueville keeps a constant dialog with his reader. This ongoing conversation with the person facing the book is unheard-of in works of political theory, with the possible exception of Montesquieu.
The reader appears in the very first sentence of Democracy, later eliminated by Tocqueville: “The work that you are about to read is not a travelogue, <the reader can rest easy>.”17
Appealing to the reader in the introduction of a work is not uncommon. Tocqueville recommends Beaumont’s book,18 begs the reader to believe him,19 advances what he thinks will be the main criticism to his book,20 or defends his impartiality.21 What is less common is to prolong this dialog throughout the text. Tocqueville begs the reader to
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observe the harsh New England legislation,22 the connection between religion and liberty,23 and the different forms of a democratic system,24 and to pay attention to many other circumstances.25 Tocqueville also instructs the reader against drawing conclusions too soon,26 has fears of being boring,27 asks him to draw his own conclusions,28 explains
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directly to him the difficulties of the author’s task,29 or gives several other warnings.30
This, as I have pointed out, makes one think of Montesquieu and how large is in many respects Tocqueville’s debt to him.
In his preface to On the Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu wrote:
I request one favor, which I fear may not be granted me: do not judge the work of twenty years on the basis of a single rapid reading; approve or condemn the book as a whole, rather than by a few of its phrases. There is no better way to discover its author’s design than through the design of the work he has written.31
Montesquieu’s plea is very analogous to Tocqueville’s own admonition to the reader in the introduction to the 1835 volumes:
But the diversity of the subjects that I had to treat is very great, and whoever will undertake to contrast an isolated fact to the whole of the facts that I cite, a detached idea to the whole of the ideas, will succeed without difficulty. So I would like you to grant me the favor of reading me with the same spirit that presided over my work, and would like you to judge this book by the general impression that it leaves, as I myself came to a decision, not due to a particular reason, but due to the mass of reasons.32
If we jump from the first pages to the end of the book, we will find additional similarities. Montesquieu finished his preface with the celebrated phrase: “I have been able to say along with Correggio, ‘And I too am a painter.’”33
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In the conclusion to the 1835 part of Democracy in America, Tocqueville also speaks of painting:
Now I would like to bring all of them together in a single point of view. What I will say will be less detailed, but more sure. I will see each object less distinctly; I will take up general facts with more certitude. I will be like a traveler who, while coming outside the walls of a vast city, climbs up the adjacent hill. As he moves away, the men that he has just left disappear from his view; their houses blend together; he no longer sees the public squares; he makes out the path of the streets with difficulty; but his eyes follow more easily the contours of the city, and for the first time he grasps its form. It seems to me that I too discover before me the whole future of the English race in the New World. The details of this immense tableau have remained in shadow; but my eyes take in the entire view, and I conceive a clear idea of the whole.34
Predictably, Tocqueville also ascribed to himself Montesquieu’s understanding of writing and books.
Montesquieu wrote: “But it is not always necessary to exhaust a subject and leave the reader with nothing to do. I write, not so much to make people read, but rather to make them think.”35
In a letter to Corcelle, analogously, Tocqueville explained:
I believe that the books that have made men think the most and have had the greatest influence on their opinions and actions are those in which the author hasn’t attempted to tell them dogmatically what had to be thought, but rather those where he has placed their
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minds on the road that goes toward the truths, and has made them find these, as if it were, by themselves.36
It is this understanding of the task of the writer as a type of literary author that guides the reader through a labyrinth of clues, disguises, and appearances that also singularizes Democracy in America. The book is much more than a rhetorical exercise; it tries to elicit an emotional response from the reader, seducing him, establishing with him an intimate and personal relation.
This form of close, almost autobiographical, dialog between reader and author based in self-scrutiny and confession is in the opposite pole of an Aristotle, a Thomas Hobbes, or a John Stuart Mill. It would be hard to find, barring to a certain degree Montesquieu, anything similar in the political theory tradition.
Hidden in Print
Alexis de Tocqueville’s manuscripts offer an enormous wealth of information about the trappings behind Democracy in America, but there is no need to use them to find Tocqueville’s obsession with the uncovering of truth. The published text itself also abounds in hidden laws, concealed passageways, and secret principles that Tocqueville attempts to unveil.37
Tocqueville’s obsession with removing veils and bringing secrets into light is not unexpected. It associates him clearly to Jean-Jacques
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Rousseau’s ideal of transparency38 and to the whole Enlightenment project of using reason to explain and construct the world. Very fittingly, on the frontispiece of Diderot’s Encyclopedia drawn by Cochin, reason removes the veil of truth.
It also recalls Montesquieu’s own attempt at a mechanical and see-through vision of the workings of political power.39
Rousseau and Montesquieu are two of the authors Tocqueville confessed he lived with every day of his life. The third, as is well known, is Blaise Pascal.
It is the Pascalian streak in Tocqueville’s thought that explains his calculated skepticism at ever being capable of really discovering the complete truth and his not sharing into the idea of the Enlightenment being the end result of universal human reason.
At the heart of his explanation of the world we find Tocqueville’s own approach to the problem of his two main themes, aristocracy and democracy.
The world is a book entirely closed to man.
So there is at the heart of democratic institutions a hidden tendency that carries men toward the good [v: to work toward general prosperity] despite their vices and errors; while in aristocratic institutions a secret inclination is sometimes uncovered that, despite talents and virtues, leads them to contribute to the miseries of the greatest number of their fellows.
If a hidden force independent of men did not exist in democratic institutions, it would be impossible to explain satisfactorily the peace
