I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States. . . . in most of the operations of mind, each American appeals only to the individual effort of his own understanding.

America is therefore one of the countries where the precepts of Descartes are least studied, and are best applied. Nor is this surprising. The Americans do not read the work of Descartes, because their social conditions deter them from speculative studies; but they follow his maxims, because this same social condition naturally disposes their minds to adopt them. In the midst of the continual movement which agitates a democratic community, the tie which unites one generation to another is relaxed or broken; every man there readily loses all trace of the ideas of his forefathers, or takes no care about them. . . . Americans are constantly brought back to their own reason as the obvious and proximate source of truth. It is not only confidence in his fellow man which is destroyed, but the disposition for trusting the authority of any man whatsoever. Every one shuts himself up in his own breast, and affects from that point to judge the world.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America