414
PARTISAN REVIEW
shows us men and women who no longer make demands on each other,
save the demand to be left alone; his individuals do not want praise for
being extraordinary, they want to be just like everyone else, so that no
one will give them any trouble and they can, in modern argot, do their
own thing.
But paradoxically this individualism arises only because a certain
kind of group life exists. The desire to withdraw is created by a
collective life in which social similarity holds out the promise that men
will no longer have
to
delay gratification of their intimate, small-scale
desires for comfort. With the theory of individualism Tocqueville
became a true social psychologist, but a paradoxical one: the fantasy
aroused by modern collective life is that one can withdraw from
collective life. Everyone is pretty much like oneself, so one doesn't have
to worry about violation or disruption; therefore, leave public affairs in
the hands of the state and culti vate your garden.
I have used the word "fantasy" to describe the basis of this
individualism, because it identifies Tocqueville's view of the relation
of this collective psychology
to
collective reality in an egalitarian
society. In fact, the practice of individualism does not lead to the
rewards of intimate gratification; withdrawal from association with
other people creates instead a ceaseless striving after pleasure. One
attempts to gorge oneself on the "experiences" available to everyone in
society because everyone is on an equal footing of action, but one
moves from experience to experience, never feeling satisfied, never
feeling the immediate and concrete is "enough."
How can equality of conditions produce meaningless experience,
equally available for all? When Tocqueville turns his attention to the
test for material well-being in America, he answers this question in a
striking way. He propounds a theory that could be called horizontal
mobility. The more a society destroys hierarchic barriers to action, the
more the diversity of experience occurs within a single, central band;
then the more people believe they must explore exhaustively all forms
of living in order to be psychologically complete. Tocqueville contrasts
this horizontal mobility with the deprivations of an
ancien regime
village by saying that those at the bottom of a hierarchy enjoy what is
available
to
them while resenting at the same time the evils they
presently endure, while the citizens of an egalitarian society discount
the reality of their present condition and think only of the events and
gratifications they have yet to enjoy. Whatever a person experiences at a
given moment,
. .. he imagines a thousand other gratifications which death will
keep him from knowing, if he does not hurry. This thought troubles
