Alexis De Tocqueville Analysis

Since Alexis de Tocqueville was born shortly after the conclusion of the French Revolution, he escaped its physical brutality but not the religious aftershocks that followed. Tocqueville witnessed extremists overturning Christianity in favor of the Goddess of Reason, and he witnessed as the lack of religion drove French citizens to intellectual servitude. When he was granted permission to study the United States’ penal system, he took it as an opportunity to analyze the results of the democratic experiment. He ascertained that the point of departure, which formed the undertones of the Constitution, was determined with the arrival of the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims a high value placed on freedom and religion which meant that “from the beginning politics and religion were in accord” (Tocqueville 275).
Tocqueville then realized that “there is almost no human action … that does not arise from a very general idea that men have conceived of God” (Tocqueville 417). He also made a rather curious observation: despite the materialistic tendencies that arise from a democratic state, Americans maintained an intimate connection with religion. After careful examination, he concluded
Religion encourages citizens to be more virtuous. In the words of Tocqueville, “it [religion] facilitates their use of it [freedom],” meaning that without religion to bound human intellect, members of a democracy would not be able to make use of freedom (Tocqueville 280). Religion also teaches delayed gratification which prevents people from falling into an endless spiral of greed. Most importantly, “faith alone is the permanent state of humanity,” and without faith, humans would lose the part of themselves that gives them hope for the future (Tocqueville 284). Hope fuels humanity, and religion is “only a particular form of hope” that is potent enough to drive humanity to greatness (Tocqueville