INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter I cited the classical trio of motives: interest, passion, and reason. It is fair to say that Tocqueville had little faith in reason or “virtue” as the original spring of behavior. At the individual level, it may be found in exceptional individuals such as Turgot (AR, p. 188) or George Washington (O II, p. 976), but at the social level, it may at best be approximated or mimicked by enlightened self-interest. It is not so much that he thought that what Madison called “the mild voice of reason” was easily overruled by the other two motives; rather, he seems to have believed that in most people it was not present at all (see, for instance, L, p. 384). As I noted, the simple idea of civic duty is absent from his work.

PASSION OVERRIDING INTEREST

Be this as it may, Tocqueville certainly believed that passion was capable of overriding interest. In Chapter 3 I cited a passage in which he asserts that long-term interest does not always trump the “passions and needs of the moment” (DA, p. 240), suggesting that enlightened self-interest can be undermined by passion as well as by short-term interest. Another important instance arises from ignoring the role of religion. We saw in Chapter 1 that by virtue of the compensation effect, citizens of democratic societies need religion. By virtue of a different mechanism (Ch. 5), democratic societies also benefit from the stabilizing effects of religion (both effects are asserted in DA, p. 633).