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CHAPTER IV.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE THREE PRECEDING CHAPTERS.
When men feel a natural compassion for their mutual sufferings—when
they are brought together by easy and frequent
intercourse, and no sensitive feelings keep them asunder, it may readily
be supposed that they will lend assistance to one another whenever
it is needed. When an American asks for the co-operation of
his fellow-citizens it is seldom refused, and I have often seen it
afforded spontaneously and with great good will. If an accident
happens on the highway, everybody hastens to help the sufferer;
if some great and sudden calamity befalls a family, the purses of a
thousand strangers are at once willingly opened, and small but
numerous donations pour in to relieve their distress.
It often happens among the most civilized nations of the globe, that a poor wretch is as friendless in the midst of a crowd as the savage in his wilds: this is hardly ever the case in the United States. The Americans, who are always cold and often coarse in their manners, seldom show insensibility; and if they do not proffer services eagerly, yet they do not refuse to render them.
All this is not in contradiction to what I have said before on the subject of individualism. The two things are so far from combating each other, that I can see how they agree. Equality of conditions, while it makes men feel their independence, shows them their own weakness: they are free, but exposed to a thousand accidents; and experience soon teaches them, that although they do not habitually require the assistance of others, a time almost always comes when they cannot do without it.
We constantly see in Europe that men of the same profession are ever ready to assist each other; they are all exposed to the same ills, and that is enough to teach them to seek mutual preservatives, however hard-hearted and selfish they may otherwise be.
