some paragraphs required writing and rewriting before they found their way into the final version. Some never made it. The text at the start of page 68, for instance, offered several variants: “{The sun on modern civilization was already in the horizon}”, read the first version. He crossed it out and started again: “≠We see the sun appear in the horizon and start lighting the mountains before casting its clarity on all the world.≠” A third variant didn’t get his approval either: “<≠The top of the social edifice already received the glow of modern civilization, while the base still remained in the darkness of ignorance [v. of the Middle Ages.≠>”83 None of these versions convinced Tocqueville, and the text was eliminated.
Frequently, Tocqueville writes notes for himself, as at the start of the chapter on the point of departure: “≠One must remember that this chapter still requires some research in the laws of New England, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. See particularly the Town Officer.≠”84 He also reminds himself to complete some information: “{Know exactly the state of things on this point.}”85 And the notes reveal Tocqueville’s doubts also exist about whether to include or not or how to call his chapters: “What title should I give to this chapter?”86
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Or: “≠Think about this. A bad inference could be drawn from it, too generalized.≠”87
Notes sometimes point out the need to find sources: “≠Where to find the outline of the first federation?≠”88
He reminds himself to ask for help on whether to add a chapter or not on what is meant by a Constitution in America and in Europe: “Ask advice here.”89 In the end, he didn’t write it.
In most cases, the need for advice is from his two best readers, Louis de Kergorlay and Gustave de Beaumont.
“≠Ask L[ouis (ed.)] and B[eaumont (ed.)] if it is necessary to support these generalities with notes. Here either very minutely detailed notes are needed or nothing.≠”90 This related to the part about the American county assembly. No more details were given in the printed book than exist in the manuscript.
There is also an unpublished remark by Tocqueville in relation to note c of page 685: “Is it necessary to enter into all this fastidious detail or would it be better to make a short and clear summary and quote the authors in support? Ask Beau.[mont].”
We know he also read the manuscript to other friends to see their reactions.91
This didn’t always remove his doubts. “≠Is this true?≠”,92 he asks himself on a point about the French Constitution.
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“Is it necessary to enter into all this fastidious detail or rather make a short and clear summary and quote the authors in support? Ask Beau.[mont].”93 With the kind permission of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
If we move from the merely stylistic to the more theoretical aspects of his book, in an effort to find what and how the hidden elements in the manuscript affect or change the vision we get from the printed work, we may find a double-sided conclusion, that Tocqueville seems to be more democratic and more aristocratic in his first, rougher version, more excited by the prospects of democracy and simultaneously more pessimistic about its results, more in admiration of the American system, and at the same time more critical. As in a painter’s palette, the colors are much more vivid and raw in the manuscript than in the final painting.94
Let me point out some examples.
In the manuscript, Tocqueville insists on the necessary passage of humanity through a period of aristocracy in order to learn to be free, a fact that is less evident in the final printed version.
I am persuaded that humanity owes its enlightenment to such strokes of fortune, and I {think that it is in losing their liberty that men acquired the means to reconquer it} that it is under an aristocracy or
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under a prince that men still half-savage have gathered the various notions that later would allow them to live civilized, equal, and free.95
Another example can be found in the famous final chapter of the 1835 volume, “Some Considerations on the Present State and Probable Future of the Three Races That Inhabit the Territory of the United States.” That Tocqueville considered American slavery the most serious problem of the United States is a well-known fact. That he was so aghast at the condition of the free slaves in the Northeast that he thought they would find themselves in even worse condition in freedom than in slavery is much less evident.96 Yet a variant of the paragraph in which Tocqueville thinks the abolition of slavery will not improve the condition of the black population reads: “≠I must admit that of all the means of accelerating the fight between the two races in the states of the South the most powerful one seems to me to be the abolition of slavery.≠”97 The message was, he probably thought, too negative, and the fragment was definitely eliminated.
The author of Democracy also often suppressed expressions that could have reminded the reader of his aristocratic origins and the French aristocracy or that could have been read as too much of a critique of popular sovereignty or public opinion. “No influences except intellectual ones [{a kind of intellectual patronage}] could ever be established there.”98 Patronage was too much of a prerevolutionary word to be used and was removed. Similarly, he limited his criticisms of the people: “In this way, the upper classes did not incite [{implacable}] popular passions against themselves.”99
Tocqueville also felt the need to conceal his belief that some peoples are incapable of being free, that they will never even understand the origin of their miseries and that “≠it is necessary that experience hits
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them a thousand times with its ruthless hammer to tailor them a bit to liberty.≠”100
He must also have felt that putting too much emphasis on social division could be read in France as being too liberal and thus suppressed the following paragraph:
≠When in the same society one finds very enlightened individuals and others who are very ignorant or very rich and very poor, very strong and very weak, the second readily abdicate the use of their reason in favor of the first.≠101
Even a direct statement of the book’s purpose seemed too risky to include in the text: “<Far from wanting to stop the development of the new society, I am trying to produce it.>”102 This phrase, which appears in a draft, will not make it to the printing press.103
Nor could Tocqueville appear clearly in favor of a peaceful and well-regulated republic, as he is in his manuscript: “{For me, I will have no difficulty in saying, in all countries where the republic is practical, I will be republican.}”104
Many other points of Tocqueville’s theory will also have stronger and clearer expression in the manuscript, only to be toned down in the final version of the book. For example, the lack of society in the West will be bluntly stated: “{There are men but there is no society.}”105 So, too, the destructive force of the law of inheritance will be washed down in the process of drafting the final manuscript, perhaps because the idea could have had a different reading for a French audience. A first version of the phrase “The law of inheritance completed the dismantling of local influences” read “the law of inheritance completed the constitution of democracy.”106
