ABSTRACT
the very instructive translations of De Tocqueville’s work recently published in Italy bring up once more for consideration the controversy in which, as a young man, I took part between right and left, moderate conservative and progressive policies, between liberalism and democracy. Is such a controversy one between absolutely irreconcilable opposites? And is it well defined by the two terms conservatives and progressives? As for De Tocqueville, he certainly had a vein of conservatism, but it was conservatism secumdum quid, with the noble motive of love for such traditions, institutions and arrangements as he thought necessary for that liberty to which he had dedicated his soul. But the criticism passed upon his ideas by those who have recently treated of them in Italy has made it clear that his great love of liberty, his fearful anxiety lest it should be lost, had somewhat clouded his theoretical recognition of its inherently creative power, with the result that he sought props for it outside itself. Such props are weak and untrustworthy. The devices by which it was thus supported were bound to suffer change, and, either by their slow decay or sudden collapse, to bring it down in ruins. Even if they proved more or less durable, they would in no way guarantee the vitality which liberty has in itself alone, which, from its own resources, increases in strength, extent and stature, or sometimes weakens and wanders, but only to recover itself anew. Liberty, like poetry and thought and morality, is not tied to any particular environment of institutions or traditions or economic conditions or anything else; all these it can use for its own purposes as the situation 94and the historical process may suggest. Liberty does not conserve anything except itself, which is no ‘thing’ but a fundamental activity of spirit. The word ‘conservative’ often has a suspicious and unattractive sound; but surely nobody would complain of those who try to conserve intellectual vigour, artistic sensibility, moral insight or love of liberty; for, in these cases, ‘conservatism’ means hoarding our resources and equipping ourselves to fulfil our functions and to advance in the struggle of life.
