Topic / culture

But the strongest prop of American order, Tocqueville found, was their body of moral habits. “I here mean the term ‘mores’ (moeurs) to have its original Latin meaning; I mean it to apply not only to “moeurs” in the strict sense, which might be called the habits of the heart, but also to the different notions possessed by men, the various opinions current among them, and the sum of ideas that shape mental habits.” Their religious beliefs in particular, and also their general literacy and their education through practical experience, gave to the Americans a set of moral convictions—one almost might say moral prejudices, as Edmund Burke would have put it—that compensated for the lack of imaginative leadership and institutional controls.

“It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States, alone among Americans, capable of maintaining the rule of democracy; and it is mores again that make the various Anglo-American democracies more or less orderly and prosperous,” Tocqueville concluded.

“Europeans exaggerate the influence of geography on the lasting powers of democratic institutions. Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores. Unquestionably those are the three great influences which regulate and direct American democracy, but if they are to be classed in order, I should say that the contribution of physical causes is less than that of the laws, and that of laws less than mores… The importance of mores is a universal truth to which study and experience continually bring us back. I find it occupies the central position in my thoughts; all my ideas come back to it in the end.”

— Russell Kirk , The Roots of American Order →

For the rest, we should look for the improvement of society, as we seek our own individual improvement, in relatively minute particulars. We cannot say: ‘I shall make myself into a different person’; we can only say: ‘I will give up this bad habit, and endeavour to contract this good one.’

So of society we can only say: ‘We shall try to improve it in this respect or the other, where excess or defect is evident; we must try at the same time to embrace so much in our view, that we may avoid, in putting one thing right, putting something else wrong.’

— T.S. Eliot , Notes Towards the Definition of Culture →