Variety is disappearing from the human race, the same ways of acting, thinking, and feeling are to be met with all over the world. This is not only because nations work more upon each other, and are more faithful in their mutual imitation, but as the men of each country relinquish more and more the peculiar opinions and feelings of a caste, a profession, or a family, they simultaneously arrive at something nearer to the constitution of man, which is everywhere the same. Thus they become more alike, even without having imitated each other. Like travelers scattered about some large wood, which is intersected by paths converging to one point, if all of they keep their eyes fixed upon that point and advance towards it they insensibly draw nearer together – though they seek not, though they know not, though they know not each other – and they will be surprised at length to find themselves all collected on the same spot. All the nations which, not any particular man, but man himself, is the object of these researches and their imitation, are tending in the end to a similar state of society, like these travelers converging to the central plot of the forest.

The thesis of this book is that the Jansenist influence on Tocqueville's life and works highlights the fundamentally republican nature of his political thought. I have drawn out the consequences of his republicanism tinged with Jansenism in several ways. From the Jansenist providential rhetoric to the notion of interest properly understood and debates over the freedom of education, these Jansenist colorations bring to light the contours of Tocqueville's republicanism in new and sometimes unexpected ways. I have not had the opportunity to trace the influence of Jansenism on Tocqueville's life and works beyond his participation in debates over the freedom of education, however. I have cited letters and works from later in his life, but I have not researched his negotiations with Rome during the Second Republic or the writing of the Old Regime. Nonetheless, this analysis of the Jansenist side to Alexis de Tocqueville's life and works has brought to light in a more rigorous way this influence on his political thought.