Dawson – Reflection from his book, “Understanding Europe”
Reflection
by Christopher Dawson from his book, Understanding Europe, (pp. 178-183)
on the theme of the 44th National Meeting of The Philadelphia Society
Europe, the United States, and the Future of Western Civilization
“Alike in America and Europe, Western
civilization is faced with the problem of how to reconcile the old spiritual
values with the new techniques of mass civilization and mass power.
This underlying similarity is temporarily concealed by the
fact that the technical leadership of American civilization, which was achieved
during the later nineteenth century, has enabled it to preserve the institutions
and also the illusions of nineteenth-century liberalism more successfully than
Europe, which was exposed to the full blast of the anti-liberal reaction.
But this is only a transitory phenomenon, and the two great provinces of
Western civilization are merely passing through different stages of the same
process. We should remember that it
was in America that de Tocqueville was first led to his great discovery of the
totalitarian tendency inherent in mass civilization and of the new dangers to
human freedom that lay hidden in democratic institutions.
ëI had remarked,í he writes, ëduring
my stay in the United states that a democratic state of society similar to that
of the Americans, might offer singular facilities for the establishment of
despotism, and I perceived upon my return to Europe how much use had already
been made by most of our rulers of the notions, the sentiments and the wants
engendered by this same social condition, for the purpose of extending the
circle of their power. This led me
to think that the nations of Christendom would perhaps eventually undergo some
form of oppression like that which hung over several nations of the ancient
world. A more accurate examination
of the subject, and five years of further meditations, have not diminished my
apprehensions but they have changed the object of them—.I think [now] that the
species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything
which ever before existed in the world: the old words despotism and tyranny are
inappropriate: the thing itself is new; and since I cannot name it, I must
attempt to define it.í
ëI seek to trace the novel features under
which despotism may appear in the world. The
first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all
equal and alike, incessantly endeavouring to procure the petty and paltry
pleasures with which they glut their lives—.Above this race of men stands an
immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their
gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute,
regular, provident and mild—it would be like the authority of a parent, if
like that authority its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on
the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood—.For their happiness such a
government willingly labours, but it chooses to be the sole agent and only
arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies
their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal
concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property and
subdivides their inheritance. What
remains but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of
living? Thus it every day renders
the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it
circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of the
uses of himself. The principle of
equality has prepared men for these things; it has predisposed men to endure
them and often to look upon them as benefits.í (Democracy in America,
Vol. II, part iii, Ch. 6, translated by Henry Reeve)
The last hundred years have realized all de
Tocquevilleís predictions; indeed the reality has often gone far beyond
anything that he foretold. It is
true that the loss of freedom and the trend to totalitarianism have gone further
in Europe than in America, but this also is in accordance with de
Tocquevilleís prediction. For it
was his thesis that the United States, which were the original home of
equalitarian principles, were protected from their full consequences by a series
of factors which mitigated the tyranny of the majority.
In the first place, they had inherited the tradition of personal freedom
from their colonial ancestors together with the tradition of local
self-government. In the second
place, this tradition was a religious one, so that ëAmericans combine the
motions of Christianity and liberty so intimately in their minds that it is
impossible to make them conceive of one without the otherí, and even the
sovereignty of the people and the absolute right of the majority were held to be
subject to the binding principles of the Christian moral law.
In the third place, the fundamental laws and Constitution of the United
States had been expressly framed to protect liberty by the separation of powers
and the federal form of government which was intended to present the
establishment of a centralized state.
Finally, the unlimited land and resources of a virgin
continent were a safeguard against the social tensions and economic conflicts
which were the great causes of despotism in the Old World.
Today none of these factors remains intact;
the Civil War, the filling-up of the continent and the change in the composition
of the population have made the United States a different social organism to
that which de Tocqueville knew. Yet
for all that, the existence of these traditions and the part that they played in
the formation of modern American society have saved the United States from
totalitarianism and from the full political and economic consequences of the
equalitarian principle. Nevertheless,
though the process has been slowed down, it has not been stopped.
A society cannot continue to live indefinitely on the traditions of a
vanished social order. In some
respects the techniques of modern mass civilization are more advanced in America
than they are in Europe, and they are bound to exert a growing influence on
politics unless they are controlled by some positive spiritual force and guided
by positive rational principles. In
the past American society derived this force from the religious idealism of
sectarian Protestantism, and its principles from the eighteenth-century ideology
of Natural Rights and rational Enlightenment.
But today both these forces have lost their power.
American religion has lost its supernatural faith and American philosophy
has lost its rational certitude. What
survives is a vague moral idealism and a vague rational optimism, neither of
which is strong enough to stand against the inhuman and irrational forces of
destruction that have been let loose in the modern world.
Here America is faced by just the same problem which confronts Europe,
which is the problem of Western civilization as a whole.
In both cases an age of unparalleled economic expansion and material
prosperity has been accompanied by a neglect and loss of the spiritual resources
on which the inner strength of a civilization depends.
The danger is more acute in Europe than in America because the process of
disintegration has gone farther and the revolt of the irrational forces in
culture has been more open and more destructive.
Yet the situation is no less serious in America than in Europe, because
American society has given itself up more wholeheartedly to the process of
material expansion and spiritual extroversion and has been less aware of the
inherent instability of the age of progress and of the nature of the spiritual
forces which threaten the destruction of Western culture.
Thus on neither side of the Atlantic is
there any room for self-complacency and self-congratulation, or any advantage to
be gained by maintaining the old controversies and criticism and the old claims
to moral and cultural superiority which were characteristic of the last century.
Western civilization cannot be saved either by Europe or by America; it
demands a common effort which cannot be limited to immediate political ends, but
must involve a deeper process of co-operation based on common spiritual
principles. It has been the
strength of the American tradition that it was consciously founded on these
principles as represented by the eighteenth-century ideology of Natural Law and
human rights. The great problem
today is now these principles can be re-established on foundations which are
both spiritually deeper and sociologically more realistic than the rational
constructions of eighteenth-century philosophy.”