and Filmer about the affinity between paternal and monarchal power, though it can be traced back to Aristotles teleological view of the relationship between the higher and lower forms of association. J.P. Mayer writes in Tocquevilles biography that he read at this time with a tireless appetite the works of Plato, Plutarch, Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Montesquieu, and it would seem that in these same years he made a close study of Aristotle, Polybius, and more particularly, the works of Edmund Burke. Regardless of his influences, Tocquevilles most serious concern is that democracy may give rise to certain forms of despotism. Without local institutionsthe despotic tendencies which have been driven into the interior of the social body will sooner or later break out on the surface. In the introductory chapter to Democracy in America, Tocqueville expresses his famous opinion that the movement of the history of Christendom over the course of the previous 700 years has invariably been in the direction of democratic equality. This is the foundation of Tocquevilles inevitability theory. He implies that democracy in inevitable in the same way that the spread of civilization and enlightenment are inevitable. Best known for his popular critique, Democracy in America, first published in 1835, Tocquville will be remembered both for his inevitability theory and his extensive writings on the problem of democracy. Here he reflects on his ideas regarding this new democratic version of despotism: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. Each of them, living apart, is a stranger to the fate of all the rest his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not; -- he touches ...
