s above my strength,
and in treating it I have not succeeded in satisfying myself. But, if
I have not been able to reach the goal which I had in view, my readers
will at least do me the justice to acknowledge that I have conceived and
followed up my undertaking in a spirit not unworthy of success.

A. De T.

March, 1840

Section I: Influence of Democracy on the Action of Intellect in The
United States.

Chapter I: Philosophical Method Among the Americans

I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention
paid to philosophy than in the United States. The Americans have no
philosophical school of their own; and they care but little for all
the schools into which Europe is divided, the very names of which are
scarcely known to them. Nevertheless it is easy to perceive that almost
all the inhabitants of the United States conduct their understanding in
the same manner, and govern it by the same rules; that is to say,
that without ever having taken the trouble to define the rules of a
philosophical method, they are in possession of one, common to the whole
people. To evade the bondage of system and habit, of family maxims,
class opinions, and, in some degree, of national prejudices; to accept
tradition only as a means of information, and existing facts only as a
lesson used in doing otherwise, and doing better; to seek the reason
of things for one's self, and in one's self alone; to tend to results
without being bound to means, and to aim at the substance through the
form;--such are the principal characteristics of what I shall call the
philosophical method of the Americans. But if I go further, and if I
seek amongst these characteristics that which predominates over and
includes almost all the rest, I discover that in most of the operations
of the mind, each American appeals to the individual exercise of his own
understanding alone. America is therefore one of the countries in the
world where philosophy is least studied, and where the precepts of
Descartes are best applied. Nor is this surprising. The Americans do not
read the works of Descartes, because their social condition deters them
from speculative studies; but they follow his maxims because this very
social condition naturally disposes their understanding to adopt them.
In the midst of the continual movement which agitates a democratic
community, the tie which unites one generation to another is relaxed
or broken; every man readily