Democracy in America — Volume 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville
Chapter VII: Of The Cause Of A Leaning To Pantheism Amongst Democratic
451 words | Chapter 8
Nations
I shall take occasion hereafter to show under what form the
preponderating taste of a democratic people for very general ideas
manifests itself in politics; but I would point out, at the present
stage of my work, its principal effect on philosophy. It cannot be
denied that pantheism has made great progress in our age. The writings
of a part of Europe bear visible marks of it: the Germans introduce it
into philosophy, and the French into literature. Most of the works of
imagination published in France contain some opinions or some tinge
caught from pantheistical doctrines, or they disclose some tendency to
such doctrines in their authors. This appears to me not only to proceed
from an accidental, but from a permanent cause.
When the conditions of society are becoming more equal, and each
individual man becomes more like all the rest, more weak and more
insignificant, a habit grows up of ceasing to notice the citizens to
consider only the people, and of overlooking individuals to think only
of their kind. At such times the human mind seeks to embrace a multitude
of different objects at once; and it constantly strives to succeed in
connecting a variety of consequences with a single cause. The idea
of unity so possesses itself of man, and is sought for by him so
universally, that if he thinks he has found it, he readily yields
himself up to repose in that belief. Nor does he content himself with
the discovery that nothing is in the world but a creation and a Creator;
still embarrassed by this primary division of things, he seeks to expand
and to simplify his conception by including God and the universe in one
great whole. If there be a philosophical system which teaches that all
things material and immaterial, visible and invisible, which the world
contains, are only to be considered as the several parts of an immense
Being, which alone remains unchanged amidst the continual change and
ceaseless transformation of all that constitutes it, we may readily
infer that such a system, although it destroy the individuality of
man--nay, rather because it destroys that individuality--will have
secret charms for men living in democracies. All their habits of
thought prepare them to conceive it, and predispose them to adopt it.
It naturally attracts and fixes their imagination; it fosters the pride,
whilst it soothes the indolence, of their minds. Amongst the different
systems by whose aid philosophy endeavors to explain the universe, I
believe pantheism to be one of those most fitted to seduce the human
mind in democratic ages. Against it all who abide in their attachment to
the true greatness of man should struggle and combine.
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