His life was, indeed, not marked with
extraordinary incidents. It was the life of a man whose career was
limited both by his own temperament and by the public circumstances of
his times; of one who set more value upon ideas than upon events; who
sought intellectual satisfactions and distinctions rather than personal
advancement; who affected his contemporaries by his thought and his
integrity of principle more than by power of commanding position or
energy of resolute will. Although for many years in public life, he made
little mark on public affairs. But his influence, though indirect,
was perhaps not the less strong or permanent. The course of political
affairs is in the long run greatly modified, if not completely guided,
by the thinkers of a nation. Tocqueville's convictions kept him for the
most part in opposition to the successive governments of France during
the period of his public life. But his reputation and the weight of his
authority are continually increasing, and of the Frenchmen of the last
generation few have done so much as he to extend by his writings the
knowledge, and to strengthen by his example the love of those principles
by which liberty is maintained and secured, and upon which the real
advancement of society depends.
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