Tocqueville takes time to describe the geography of America, its native inhabitants and the situation and characteristics of its early settlers. He claims that we can understand America, or any state, for that matter, by understanding the origins of its people. “The entire man, is so to speak, to be seen in the cradle of the child (p. 29)”. Furthermore, that the rest of the book and the key to understanding it will be found in this chapter. Big claims and direction for the reader to consider.

It is hard for me, having studied early American history at university and being exposed to this “tree is in the seed” concept, to see this idea as something original or worthy of note. For example, in Canada, we are fond of talking about our origin of French and English people learning to live together as why we are more peaceful and cooperative than other nations, particularly Americans, who had a violent revolution and civil war. Interpreting present events and characteristics of nations as the flowering of their original seeds is common nowadays. Perhaps it wasn’t so common in Tocqueville’s day? Though I know Rousseau remarked how northern Europeans had to struggle more to survive in their terrain and climate than southern Europeans, making the northerners more hardy and industrious, perhaps even more cooperative. I think of this every time I watch the news and see the higher unemployment levels in Greece, Italy and Spain compared with Germany and the Nordic countries. Is it all a matter of the start in this world that the original inhabitants had? It is an interesting question to consider.

Reading famous works, it is not uncommon to think you already know what the author is thinking they are discovering. Successful authors have so imprinted on our minds their interpretations of the world that we don’t even see it as an interpretation anymore. We simply think of it as the way things are, or common sense. This is generally a sign that an author was on to something (but not necessarily!). When someone talks about the evolutionary adaptation of some bird, no one thinks, “Whoa, what a neat idea… that animals have evolved instead of being created from scratch by God,” certain believers excluded, of course. We tend to think, how could it have been any other way? Darwin’s explanation of the species has just become the way most of us see the world.

And so it may be with Tocqueville’s analysis of America’s democracy. Perhaps he so correctly analyzed the situation, that it seems natural for us to conclude that the North is so much more progressive and enlightened today because it was originally populated by some of the more progressive and enlightened English people at the time. “These men possessed, in proportion to their number, a greater mass of intelligence than is to be found in any European nation of our time (p.35)”. Should it be any surprise then, that Massachusetts, home to M.I.T, Harvard, and some of the best medical research in the world, is an economic and intellectual leader in the world today? And is it any surprise that the South, commixed with slavery shortly after its inception as Tocqueville points out to us, should still be so much more backwards, both economically and socially, than the North? [I wonder what this means for the relationship with aboriginals in Canada?]

Interestingly, despite the fact that the North was established by highly religious settlers (Puritans), while the South was settled by people who were irreligious (or, perhaps, more accurately, less Puritanical), the South is so much more religious today than the North. Or, at least, they hold on more tightly to the idea that religion should play a role in the public sphere, whereas the North has almost completely abandoned such notions. How did colonies founded, essentially, as religious experiments by the most ardent devotees, end up being so irreligious? If the tree is in the seed, shouldn’t we see a flowering of religion today? Australia also comes to mind as a potential snag for this theory, given its criminal origins and orderly flourishing today.

That all said, it is a rewarding thesis to explore. Tocqueville notes that Puritanism was not solely a religious phenomenon, but a political one as well. Shortly after establishing themselves, the Puritans passed an act to establish a social contract, formally agreeing to create and obey laws they set themselves. Previous to this point in history, it is unlikely that any people constituted itself as a people. The social contract theorists, such as Hobbes and Locke, only “imagined” that people must have done this in the past or that, even if they hadn’t, we can think of it as if they had. But here is a people taking this idea, of a social contract, and turning it into reality. Whoa! Ideas matter.

In short, Tocqueville notes that America was created at a propitious time. The emigrants from England were familiar with the idea of democracy and capable of setting up new democracies from scratch. They mostly came from the same class of people – middle class, being neither rich nor poor. But there were two branches of settlement. In the South, the people who settled it were motivated by money and were mostly adventurous men who wouldn’t have been particularly missed in civilized society. Slavery was introduced shortly after their settlements began and had a serious influence on the South’s laws and customs. Contrarily, as my professor of American history described it, the North was settled with prophets in mind, not profits. People came with their families to create a new society based on their religious faith