Here is ripe practical wisdom occurring in a letter written by Tocqueville about two years before his death:
You know that my most settled principle is, that there is no period of a man’s life at which he is entitled to rest; and that effort out of one’s self, and still more above one’s self, is as necessary in age as in youth—nay, even more necessary. Man in this world is like a traveler who is always walking towards a colder region, and who is therefore obliged to be more active as he goes farther north. The great malady of the soul is cold. And in order to counteract and combat this formidable illness, he must keep up the activity of his mind not only by work, but by contact with his fellow-men and with the world. Retirement from the great conflicts of the world is desirable no doubt for those whose strength is on the decline; but absolute retirement, away from the stir of life, is not desirable for any man, nor at any age.
His experience as practical politician made him write thus:
It is a sad side of humanity that politics uncovers. We may say, without making any exception, that nothing there is either thoroughly pure or thoroughly disinterested; nothing really generous, nothing hearty or spontaneous. There is no youth, even among the youngest; and something cold, selfish, and premeditated may be detected even in the most apparently passionate proceedings.
There was so much wholesome reaction in Tocqueville’s moral nature that, notwithstanding the disparaging views, on his part, thus revealed of human worth, he never became cynical. He could even write as follows to a friend of his who, he thought, went too far in decrying mankind:
You make humanity out worse than it is. I have seen many countries, studied many men, mingled in many public transactions, and the result of my observation is not what you suppose. Men in general are neither very good nor very bad; they are simply mediocre. I have never closely examined even the best without discovering faults and frailties invisible at first. I have always in the end found among the worst certain elements and holding-points of honesty. There are two men in every man: it is childish to see only one; it is sad and unjust to look only at the other.... Man, with all his vices, his weaknesses, and his virtues, this strange mixture of good and bad, of low and lofty, of sincere and depraved, is, after all, the object most deserving of study, interest, pity, affection, and admiration to be found upon this earth; and since we have no angels, we cannot attach ourselves to anything greater or worthier than our fellow-creatures.
On the whole, Alexis de Tocqueville’s own practice in life showed that he wrote not only with sincerity, but with earnestness, when he wrote those words. It was not of such Frenchmen as was Tocqueville that the author of that heavy sentence on France could have been thinking—that the French character was made up without conscience. We, for our part, cannot but maintain that Tocqueville is as much more solid as he may be less brilliant than his predecessor and fellow, Montesquieu. They were both too theoretical; that is, too exclusively French as distinguished, for instance, from English, in political philosophy. They began to be deductive, when to be inductive yet longer would have been their wiser part. In a word—like Guizot, too, the author of the “History of Civilization,” and the minister of Citizen-King Louis Philippe—both Montesquieu and Tocqueville failed of escaping what the French would call the defect of their quality.