Tocqueville’s Voyages. Группа авторов

discovery of the secrecy of self-sufficiency.

      So the government [v. social power], even when it lends its support to individuals, must never discharge them entirely from the trouble of helping themselves by uniting; often it must deny them its help in order to let them find the secret of being self-sufficient, and it must withdraw its hand as they better understand the art of doing so.76

      At almost the very end of his book, Tocqueville explains what would have been his existence if he had not written Democracy in America.

      I would not have written the work that you have just read; I would have limited myself to bemoaning in secret the destiny of my fellow men.77

      Secrets, once more.

      Basic Colors

      It is easy to understand why many trappings of Democracy were kept hidden from the reader. Authors don’t want their public to see their thought processes, only the final result.

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      But the meanderings of the mind and pen offer a unique opportunity to better understand the intentions and success of an author as complex as Tocqueville himself. I would like to point out in the next pages some of those hidden elements that never made it to the printed version.

      Given the wealth of materials available to researchers, I will concentrate myself exclusively in some curious or outstanding texts from the working manuscript. I will make no references to any additional materials from the drafts, notes, letters, or the famous Rubish.

      Tocqueville was aware of the newness of his project and recurrently struggled to find the language and words appropriate to this new endeavor. His new science of politics needed a new name. Democratic despotism was qualified as “soft” in the absence of a better word. Individualism was a neologism he knowingly used. His manuscript reveals these and other frequent quarrels with the written word.78

      Problems with words and terminology concern expressions such as social state, mores, sovereignty, tolerant, rationalism, individualism, sympathy, courtesy, civility, honor, patrie, vulgar, industrial, civil rights, despotism, democracy, or settlers.

      In writing about the positions becoming an industry, for instance, Tocqueville initially wrote: “Citizens, losing hope of improving their lot by themselves, rush tumultuously toward the power of the State.” A note in the margin reads: “<I do not like this word ‘power,’ vague and new.>”79 The final version will substitute the word “power” by the word “head.”

      Writing on poetry, he observes: “≠To idealize [idéaliser] isn’t French. Try to find an equivalent or, in any case, only put it in italics.≠”80 The word appears also in his drafts but will not be in the printed version.

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      In the margin of one page we read: “≠Tolerant indicates a virtue. A word would be needed that indicates the interested and necessary toleration of a man who needs others.≠”81

      But most of Tocqueville’s problems will come from the need to use neologisms for new social or political phenomena. “≠The thing is new [v: other], but an old word is still needed to designate it.≠”82 This difficulty is frequently expressed in the manuscript.

      Inevitably, 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