美国的民主
亚历克西斯·德·托克维尔
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/805328.html
哈维·C·曼斯菲尔德和德尔巴·温思罗普编辑、翻译并附有引言
论美国人在公民生活中对结社的利用
我不想谈论那些人们试图借助政治结社来保护自己免受多数人的专制行为或王权侵犯的政治结社。我已经在其他地方讨论过这个话题。很明显，如果每个公民在个人变得越来越弱，从而越来越无法独自维护自己的自由时，不学会与像他一样的人团结起来捍卫自由的艺术，暴政必然会随着平等而增长。
这里只涉及在公民生活中形成的结社，这些结社的目的绝不是政治性的。
美国现有的政治团体只是众多团体所构成的庞大图景中的一个细节。
各个年龄、各种条件、各种思想的美国人不断团结起来。他们不仅有所有人都参与的商业和工业团体，而且还有成千上万种其他团体：宗教团体、道德团体、严肃团体、无用团体、非常普遍的团体和非常特殊的团体、大型团体和非常小型团体；美国人利用团体举办庆典、创办神学院、建造旅馆、建造教堂、分发书籍、派遣传教士到对立面；他们以这种方式创建医院、监狱和学校。最后，如果要揭示真理或以伟大榜样为支撑发展情感，他们就会联合起来。在任何地方，只要你看到法国政府和英国大领主领导着一项新事业，那么你就会在美国看到一个团体。
在美国，我遇到了各种各样的协会，我承认，这些协会我以前从未了解过，我常常钦佩美国人民用无限的技巧，设法将许多人的努力确定为一个共同的目标，并让他们自由地朝着这个目标前进。
后来我去了英国，美国人从英国吸取了一些法律和许多习俗，我发现他们在那里远没有像英国人那样经常和熟练地运用协会。
英国人常常独自完成伟大的事业，而美国人几乎没有什么小事不团结起来。显然，前者认为协会是一种强有力的行动手段；而后者似乎认为这是他们唯一的行动手段。
因此，世界上最民主的国家首先是当今人们最精通共同追求共同愿望的艺术，并将这门新科学应用于大多数目标的国家。这是偶然的结果，还是事实上存在着联合和平等之间的必然关系？
贵族社会中，在众多无法独自完成任何事的个人中间，总是包括一些非常强大和非常富有的公民；他们每个人都可以独自完成伟大的事业。
在贵族社会中，人们不需要联合起来行动，因为他们被紧密地联系在一起。
其中每个富有和强大的公民都形成了一个永久的、强制性的协会的首领，这个协会由他所依赖的所有人组成，他让他们合作执行他的计划。
相反，在民主国家，所有公民都是独立和软弱的；他们几乎无法独自做任何事情，也没有人能强迫他们这样的人与他们合作。因此，如果他们不学会自由地互相帮助，他们就会变得无能为力。
如果生活在民主国家的人们既没有权利也没有兴趣团结起来实现政治目标，那么他们的独立将面临巨大风险，但他们可以长期保持财富和文明；而如果他们没有在日常生活中养成相互交往的习惯，文明本身就会处于危险之中。如果一个民族中某些人失去了单独做大事的能力，而没有获得共同做大事的能力，那么这个民族很快就会回到野蛮状态。
不幸的是，民主国家的社会状况使结社成为民主国家必不可少的，但这种社会状况也使民主国家比其他所有国家都更难结社。
当贵族阶层的几个成员想相互交往时，他们很容易成功。由于他们每个人都给社会带来了巨大的力量，成员人数可以很少，而当成员人数很少时，他们很容易相互认识、相互理解，并制定固定的规则。
民主国家没有这种便利，因为民主国家总是需要
结社者人数要非常多，这样协会才有一定的权力。
我知道，我的许多同代人对此并不感到尴尬。他们认为，随着公民变得越来越软弱和无能，有必要使政府更加熟练和积极，以便社会能够执行个人不再能做的事情。他们认为，他们这样说已经回答了所有问题。但我认为他们错了。
政府可以取代一些最大的美国协会，在联邦内部，几个特定的??州已经尝试过这样做。但是，一个州的政治权力能满足美国公民每天在协会的帮助下执行的无数小任务吗？
很容易预见到，一个人独自一人将越来越无法生产他生活中最常见和最必需的东西。因此，社会权力的任务将不断增加，它的努力将使任务日益繁重。政府越是取代社团，个人就越是失去了相互交往的念头，越是需要政府的帮助：这是永不停息的因果关系。政府最终会指导所有单个公民无法满足的行业吗？如果最终由于土地财产的极端分割，土地被无限分割，以至于只有劳动者协会才能耕种，政府首脑是否必须离开国家政权来掌舵？
如果政府取代了所有社团，民主国家的道德和智慧将面临不亚于其商业和工业的危险。
只有通过人们之间的互动，情感和思想才能更新，心灵才能扩大，人类的思想才能发展。
我已经表明，这种行动在民主国家几乎不存在。因此，有必要在那里人为地创造它。而这正是协会所能做到的。
当贵族阶层的成员采纳一种新思想或构想出一种新观点时，他们会将其置于他们所处的大舞台上，以一种与自己相近的方式，通过将其展示给群众，他们很容易将其引入周围所有人的思想或心中。
在民主国家，只有社会权力才能自然地采取这种行动，但很容易看出，这种行动总是不够的，而且往往是危险的。
一个政府本身不足以维持和更新一个伟大民族的情感和思想的流通，就像它不足以开展所有的工业活动一样。一旦它试图离开政治领域，走上这条新道路，它就会不情愿地实施一种无法忍受的暴政；因为政府只知道如何制定明确的规则；它强加它所青睐的情感和思想，而且总是很难区分它的建议和命令。
如果它认为自己真的想让一切动静都无动于衷，情况会更糟。那时，它就会一动不动，任由自己沉睡。
因此，它必须不单独行动。
在民主国家，协会必须取代因地位平等而消失的强大个人。
一旦美国的一些居民产生了一种他们想在世界上产生的情感或想法，他们就会互相寻找；当他??们找到对方时，他们就会团结起来。从那时起，他们不再是孤立的人，而是一种人们从远处就能看到的力量，他们的行为可以作为榜样；一种说话的力量，人们会倾听。
我第一次听到美国有十万个人公开承诺不喝烈性酒，我觉得这件事有趣而不严肃，起初我不明白为什么这些有节制的公民不满足于在家庭中喝水。
最后我明白了，那十万美国人被周围酗酒的蔓延所吓倒，想要为清醒提供庇护。他们的行为就像一位大领主，为了激起普通公民对奢侈的蔑视，他穿得非常朴素。可以相信，如果那十万人生活在法国，他们每个人都会单独向政府求助，请求政府监督全国的歌舞表演。
在我看来，没有什么比美国的知识和道德协会更值得我们关注的了。我们很容易将政治和工业视为
我们只注意到了美国人的结社，而其他的结社却被我们忽略了；即使我们发现了，我们也理解得很糟糕，因为我们几乎从未见过类似的东西。然而，我们应该认识到，对于美国人民来说，它们和结社一样必不可少，甚至可能更加必不可少。
在民主国家，结社科学是母科学；所有其他科学的进步都取决于结社科学的进步。
在统治人类社会的法律中，有一条似乎比其他所有法律都更精确、更清晰。为了使人们保持文明或变得文明，必须以与条件平等增加相同的比例发展和完善结社艺术。
托克维尔的《论美国的民主》是关于美国最优秀、最具影响力的书籍之一，160 年来仅被翻译过两次。早期的两种译本都没有这种基于最近对文本的批判性法语版的全新译本的流畅、准确和优雅。
网上有一小部分样本，我们相信这将是这本关于美国和美国政治制度的经典著作的权威译本。
左边是“论美国人在公民生活中对协会的利用”一章。您还可以阅读“为什么美国人在幸福中表现出如此不安”一章和译者的“翻译注释”。
托克维尔：
“我和美国人民生活了很多年，我无法形容我多么钦佩他们的经验和良好的判断力。不要让美国人谈论欧洲；他通常会表现出极大的自负和相当愚蠢的骄傲。他会满足于那些在所有国家都对无知者大有帮助的一般和模糊的想法。但问他关于他的国家，你会看到笼罩在他智力上的云突然消散；他的语言变得清晰、干净和精确，就像他的思想一样。”（第 291 页）
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/805328.html
by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop Edited, translated and with an introduction
On the Use That the Americans Make of Association in Civil Life
I do not wish to speak of those political associations with the aid of which men seek to defend themselves against the despotic action of a majority or against the encroachments of royal power. I have already treated this subject elsewhere. It is clear that if each citizen, as he becomes individually weaker and consequently more incapable in isolation of preserving his freedom, does not learn the art of uniting with those like him to defend it, tyranny will necessarily grow with equality.
Here it is a question only of the associations that are formed in civil life and which have an object that is in no way political.
The political associations that exist in the United States form only a detail in the midst of the immense picture that the sum of associations presents there.
Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner they create hospitals, prisons, schools. Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate. Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France and a great lord in England, count on it that you will perceive an association in the United States.
In America I encountered sorts of associations of which, I confess, I had no idea, and I often admired the infinite art with which the inhabitants of the United States managed to fix a common goal to the efforts of many men and to get them to advance to it freely.
I have since traveled through England, from which the Americans took some of their laws and many of their usages, and it appeared to me that there they were very far from making as constant and as skilled a use of association.
It often happens that the English execute very great things in isolation, whereas there is scarcely an undertaking so small that Americans do not unite for it. It is evident that the former consider association as a powerful means of action; but the latter seem to see in it the sole means they have of acting.
Thus the most democratic country on earth is found to be, above all, the one where men in our day have most perfected the art of pursuing the object of their common desires in common and have applied this new science to the most objects. Does this result from an accident or could it be that there in fact exists a necessary relation between associations and equality?
Aristocratic societies always include within them, in the midst of a multitude of individuals who can do nothing by themselves, a few very powerful and very wealthy citizens; each of these can execute great undertakings by himself.
In aristocratic societies men have no need to unite to act because they are kept very much together.
Each wealthy and powerful citizen in them forms as it were the head of a permanent and obligatory association that is composed of all those he holds in dependence to him, whom he makes cooperate in the execution of his designs.
In democratic peoples, on the contrary, all citizens are independent and weak; they can do almost nothing by themselves, and none of them can oblige those like themselves to lend them their cooperation. They therefore all fall into impotence if they do not learn to aid each other freely.
If men who live in democratic countries had neither the right nor the taste to unite in political goals, their independence would run great risks, but they could preserve their wealth and their enlightenment for a long time; whereas if they did not acquire the practice of associating with each other in ordinary life, civilization itself would be in peril. A people among whom particular persons lost the power of doing great things in isolation, without acquiring the ability to produce them in common, would soon return to barbarism.
Unhappily, the same social state that renders associations so necessary to democratic peoples renders them more difficult for them than for all others.
When several members of an aristocracy want to associate with each other they easily succeed in doing so. As each of them brings great force to society, the number of members can be very few, and, when the members are few in number, it is very easy for them to know each other, to understand each other, and to establish fixed rules.
The same facility is not found in democratic nations, where it is always necessary that those associating be very numerous in order that the association have some power.
I know that there are many of my contemporaries whom this does not embarrass. They judge that as citizens become weaker and more incapable, it is necessary to render the government more skillful and more active in order that society be able to execute what individuals can no longer do. They believe they have answered everything in saying that. But I think they are mistaken.
A government could take the place of some of the greatest American associations, and within the Union several particular states already have attempted it. But what political power would ever be in a state to suffice for the innumerable multitude of small undertakings that American citizens execute every day with the aid of an association?
It is easy to foresee that the time is approaching when a man by himself alone will be less and less in a state to produce the things that are the most common and the most necessary to his life. The task of the social power will therefore constantly increase, and its very efforts will make it vaster each day. The more it puts itself in place of associations, the more particular persons, losing the idea of associating with each other, will need it to come to their aid: these are causes and effects that generate each other without rest. Will the public administration in the end direct all the industries for which an isolated citizen cannot suffice? and if there finally comes a moment when, as a consequence of the extreme division of landed property, the land is partitioned infinitely, so that it can no longer be cultivated except by associations of laborers, will the head of the government have to leave the helm of state to come hold the plow?
The morality and intelligence of a democratic people would risk no fewer dangers than its business and its industry if the government came to take the place of associations everywhere.
Sentiments and ideas renew themselves, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed only by the reciprocal action of men upon one another.
I have shown that this action is almost nonexistent in a democratic country. It is therefore necessary to create it artificially there. And this is what associations alone can do.
When the members of an aristocracy adopt a new idea or conceive a novel sentiment, they place it in a way next to themselves on the great stage they are on, and in thus exposing it to the view of the crowd, they easily introduce it into the minds or hearts of all those who surround them.
In democratic countries, only the social power is naturally in a state to act like this, but it is easy to see that its action is always insufficient and often dangerous.
A government can no more suffice on its own to maintain and renew the circulation of sentiments and ideas in a great people than to conduct all its industrial undertakings. As soon as it tries to leave the political sphere to project itself on this new track, it will exercise an insupportable tyranny even without wishing to; for a government knows only how to dictate precise rules; it imposes the sentiments and the ideas that it favors, and it is always hard to distinguish its counsels from its orders.
This will be still worse if it believes itself really interested in having nothing stir. It will then hold itself motionless and let itself be numbed by a voluntary somnolence.
It is therefore necessary that it not act alone.
In democratic peoples, associations must take the place of the powerful particular persons whom equality of conditions has made disappear.
As soon as several of the inhabitants of the United States have conceived a sentiment or an idea that they want to produce in the world, they seek each other out; and when they have found each other, they unite. From then on, they are no longer isolated men, but a power one sees from afar, whose actions serve as an example; a power that speaks, and to which one listens.
The first time I heard it said in the United States that a hundred thousand men publicly engaged not to make use of strong liquors, the thing appeared to me more amusing than serious, and at first I did not see well why such temperate citizens were not content to drink water within their families.
In the end I understood that those hundred thousand Americans, frightened by the progress that drunkenness was making around them, wanted to provide their patronage to sobriety. They had acted precisely like a great lord who would dress himself very plainly in order to inspire the scorn of luxury in simple citizens. It is to be believed that if those hundred thousand men had lived in France, each of them would have addressed himself individually to the government, begging it to oversee the cabarets all over the realm.
There is nothing, according to me, that deserves more to attract our regard than the intellectual and moral associations of America. We easily perceive the political and industrial associations of the Americans, but the others escape us; and if we discover them, we understand them badly because we have almost never seen anything analogous. One ought however to recognize that they are as necessary as the first to the American people, and perhaps more so.
In democratic countries the science of association is the mother science; the progress of all the others depends on the progress of that one.
Among the laws that rule human societies there is one that seems more precise and clearer than all the others. In order that men remain civilized or become so, the art of associating must be developed and perfected among them in the same ratio as equality of conditions increases.
One of the best written and most influential books about the United States, Tocqueville's Democracy in America has been translated only twice previously in 160 years. Neither of the earlier translations has the fluidity, accuracy, and elegance of this completely new translation, based on the recent critical French editions of the text.
Here online is a small sample of what we believe will be the definitive translation of this classic book on America and the American political system.
To the left is the chapter "On the Use That the Americans Make of Association in Civil Life." You may also read the chapter "Why the Americans Show Themselves So Restive in the Midst of Their Well-Being" and the translators' "Note on the Translation."
Tocqueville:
"I lived much with the people of the United States, and I cannot say how much I admired their experience and their good sense. Do not lead an American to speak of Europe; he will ordinarily show great presumption and a rather silly pride. He will be content with those general and indefinite ideas that in all countries are of such great help to the ignorant. But ask him about his country, and you will see the cloud that envelops his intellect suddenly dissipate; his language becomes clear, clean, and precise, like his thought." (page 291)
