In the final chapter of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville says that he has one task left—to provide a summative judgment on how democracy, or the equality of conditions, will help or hinder “the lot of man.” In so doing, he provides a robust account of democratic greatness and offers cautious hope for the future of democracy.

Before giving his opinion, De Tocqueville hesitates. He says “I feel my sight becoming blurred and my reason wavering.” He is less confident about this final remaining task.

What prompts this circumspection? New democratic societies, De Tocqueville points out, are “only being born” and so “[t]ime has not yet fixed its form.” Here De Tocqueville revisits (and gently revises) a metaphor he used at the beginning of his book in which he compared newborns and nations. There he boasted that the best way to understand the habits, passions, and characteristics of a man’s maturity was to study him as a child. The whole man was “in the swaddling clothes of his cradle” (1.1.2). Likewise, nations always feel the effect of their origins. The problem that De Tocqueville admits here is that if the “whole” is contained in the beginning, then there’s no room for human freedom to play a role. 

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