ABSTRACT
Tocqueville was interested in the relation between the life of the mind, the impulses of the heart, the drives of the personality, the everyday quality of living, and the style of the culture. One of the crucial questions Tocqueville asked about any society was: where is the seat of authority over opinions and moeurs? Unlike the aristocracies of Europe, where such authority rested with the nobility and the intellectual elite, it rested with the American democracy in the people themselves. Tocqueville saw through a good deal of the surface bluster and optimism of American life. He saw that the mania for gregariousness was a less striking fact than the driving privatism that led each man—after the hurry and worry of the day—back to his home and family circle, atomizing American life into “a multitude of little societies.” There may seem to be a strangely traditional note in Tocqueville’s many chapters on religion.
