Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The essays in our study reference the following edition of Democracy In America: University of Chicago Press – 1st edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Today’s essay references pages 433 (Chp.10 heading & below – 439 (2 lines & 2 complete paragraphs at top) of this edition of Democracy in America.

In this chapter, De Tocqueville gives an account of the problem of science in democratic times. Science, he says, may be divided into three parts: the first and most fundamental is the purely theoretical part, which “contains the most abstract notions, those whose application is not known or is very distant.” The second part contains “general truths” that are derived from pure theory but which “lead by a direct, short path to practice.” The third and least fundamental part contains “the processes of application and the means of execution.”

America, which De Tocqueville takes for his model of democracy left to its natural instincts, shows that democracy strongly favors practice over theory. There is no leisured nobility or propertyless peasantry in a democracy. In a democracy, nearly everyone works for a living and nearly everyone can lose what wealth they have. Everyone is therefore striving for material wellbeing. Science is therefore prized not for its power to reveal the most fundamental truths of nature but for its power to conquer nature. Not knowledge for its own sake but for the sake of relieving man’s estate, not the satisfaction of the mind but the comfort of the body, is the goal of science in democratic times. De Tocqueville singles out the steamboat as a representative example of what human intelligence aspires to achieve in democratic times. In our own time, we may say this aspiration looks to the next generation of computers, rocket ships, and medical therapies. These projects doubtless require a monumental effort of theoretical intelligence. De Tocqueville would not deny this. But he would stress that only such theory as is required to achieve the next leap in technology will be regarded as an object of high intellectual concern in democratic times. There is ample room for theory in democratic times, but it is the type of theory that corresponds to the middle part of science. It is not pure theory. It is theory in the service of application, rather than theory for the sake of contemplation.

The preceding view stands in sharp contrast to the aristocratic view of science. The defining product of the aristocratic view of knowledge is not technology but the knower himself, the theoretical man that Pascal so beautifully epitomizes in the brief portrait De Tocqueville gives of him in this chapter. De Tocqueville cannot conceive of Pascal as having been driven by “some great profit” or “glory alone,” given the extraordinary effort of will and intellect he mustered in order “to discover the most hidden secrets of the Creator.” The Platonic resonance of this description is worth remarking upon. For just as De Tocqueville earlier gave a rank order of the three kinds of knowledge, he here implicitly gives a rank order of the three kinds of desire. The order corresponds with that given in Plato’s Republic. The human soul is described near the end of the dialogue as being composed of a gain-loving part, an honor-loving part, and a wisdom-loving part. These parts form an order, with love of wisdom occupying the highest place. This order enables Plato’s Socrates to argue that the human beings in which the highest desire predominates are the highest human types. The coming into being of the best regime depends on such types coming to absolute power. It is of course not De Tocqueville’s style to speculate about utopias in an attempt to show the nature of political things. But he does here show an awareness of the classical view of the rank order of desires and men. And he seems to affirm that view through his strong praise of Pascal. The problem of science in democratic times may thus be formulated as follows: democracy will not provide an intellectual atmosphere in which men like Pascal are likely to arise and set the tone of intellectual life. This entails a diminution of the intellectual horizon of democratic man, a diminution of man’s awareness of what man is and what his perfection requires. Though a modern thinker who welcomes the broad material prosperity democratic times will bring, De Tocqueville is well aware that things essential to man’s humanity, the “rare and fruitful” passions of a Pascal, are unlikely to be “born and developed as easily in the midst of democratic societies as within aristocracies.”

De Tocqueville is not one to spell out definitive solutions to the problems he articulates. But he does point to at least three dimensions of the problem that give democratic man reason for hoping that the Pascalian peaks of intellectual endeavor will not be totally obscured by the overcast sky of a democratic climate.

To begin with, democracy enables many more human beings to partake in scientific enterprises of all sorts. Even if most human beings are concerned with application, there is a unity of knowledge that connects the most concrete technical application with the most abstract theories. It is highly unlikely, De Tocqueville claims, that with so many people engaging in scientific activity, and making such a variety of technological discoveries, that some great theoretical discoveries will not be made from time to time. Indeed, a certain regard for theory is necessary to the success of application and especially of innovation. The desire for better and more labor-saving technology may therefore be expected to nourish a certain degree of concern for theory.

Secondly, and arguably more crucial than any other factor, is the power of human nature, which endures unchanged regardless of changes in the political and social order. Some individuals have always been and always will be born with high intellectual vocations. This type “will strive to penetrate the most profound mysteries of nature, whatever the spirit of his country and his times should be” [emphasis added]. However much democracy may make practice reign over theory, nature will make theory reign over practice within certain select souls. Let us not forget that in the immediately preceding chapter, De Tocqueville writes the following with reference to the natural inequality of men: “the legislature, it is true, no longer grants privileges, but nature gives them.”

Finally, De Tocqueville gives a cautionary account of the civilizational risk posed by the loss of pure theory by way a brief account of the decadence of 16th Century China. The Europeans who landed there found an industrial and technologically developed country, “but science itself no longer existed” there, and a “singular kind of immobility” characterized “the minds of its people.” They knew how to use the scientific teachings their fathers had left them but did not understand the reasoning underlying those teachings. They could therefore not improve upon them. They “could not change anything” and so “had to renounce improvement.” This state of affairs was wholly compatible with the peace and reasonable degree of material prosperity that the Europeans found there. And yet De Tocqueville finishes this description, and closes the chapter, by comparing it to a state of barbarism. He suggests that science in democratic times, with its vast power to conquer nature in the service of human comfort, may lull democratic peoples into a false sense of security, leading them to believe that “the barbarians are still far from us.” For a society that has stifled what he earlier in the chapter calls “the transcendent lights of the human mind” is one in which the barbarians are already inside. By showing democratic man how the neglect of theory can lead to an inability to innovate, i.e., to make further technological progress, De Tocqueville cleverly uses democratic man’s natural passion for practice to foster his concern with theory.

Antonio Sosa is associate director and lecturer at the School of Civic Leadership. In this capacity, he oversees the development of fellowships, conferences, and courses that invite students to reflect on the principles of a liberal society. Prior to joining School of Civic Leadership, Antonio was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught classes on classical political philosophy, the American Founding, modern European history, and the history of liberal arts education. He is primarily interested in the political thought of De Tocqueville, Ortega y Gasset, and Leo Strauss.

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