Democracy in America: Chapter 46 Summary & Analysis

Tocqueville points out that while everyone in America is seeking to improve his condition, there is usually an upper limit to such ambition. No one contemplates aims much higher than property, power, and reputation. Tocqueville doesn’t think this can be traced to equality of condition, because increasing equality of condition has led to unbounded ambition in France. But he reflects that people who have recently overthrown an aristocracy are still affected by its spirit and tendencies (including that of lofty ambitions), which persist long after the revolution

America, though, has arrived at a much later period in equality and democracy. As wealth and knowledge are diffused and disseminated, the desire for advancement also increases. But this same process prevents any one person from having far greater resources than another, thus limiting both ambition and desire. Democratic men strive and strain for small goals; even those who have attained great wealth also remain prudent and restrained, while their sons recognize that their parents were humble and thus avoid unbounded ambition too.

As equality increases, the means of advancement are slowed, since it’s difficult to distinguish people from each other: professions often require a number of petty small exams and exercises, checking the development of great desire and ambitions. China, for instance, long characterized by equality of condition, selects its public officers through competitive trials at every stage of their career. 

Democracies thus open up limitless fields of action, but also make the movement across these fields slow and gradual, such that people’s ambition is discouraged by their own desire, not by laws. Nevertheless, if anyone does, against all odds, come to have boundless ambition, there are no limits to it—making it even more dangerous than elsewhere. Tocqueville advises that it’s necessary to regulate and purify ambition, though it would be wrong to repress it. Indeed, he suspects that the pettiness of daily life in a democracy is of more danger than bold ambitions are: leaders shouldn’t seek to lull their people into contentment, but rather to provoke them into ambition from time to time. Pride may be dangerous in morality, but may be useful in encouraging people to yearn toward greatness.