"Nothing tends to materialize man and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind more than the extreme specialization of labor."

"In America it sometimes happens that the same person tills his field, builds his dwelling, fashions his tools, makes his shoes, and weaves the coarse stuff of which his clothes are composed.  This is prejudicial to the excellence of the work, but it powerfully contributes to awaken the intelligence of the workman.  Nothing tends to materialize man and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind more than the extreme specialization of labor."

"En Amérique, il arrive quelquefois que le même homme laboure son champ, bâtit sa demeure, fabrique ses outils, fait ses souliers et tisse de ses mains l'étoffe grossière qui doit le couvrir.  Ceci nuit au perfectionnement de l'industrie, mais sert puissamment à développer l'intelligence de l'ouvrier.  Il n'y a rien qui tende plus que la grande division du travail à matérialiser l'homme et à ôter de ses œuvres jusqu'à la trace de l'âme."

     Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America I (1835).I.XVIII[.5] ("Of the republican institutions of the United States, and what their chances of duration are"), trans. Henry Reeve, with revisions by Francis Bowen and Phillips Bradley ((New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), vol. 1, p. 418);  =I.ii.X[.5] in Œuvres, ed. André Jardin (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade), II (De la démocratie en Amérique), ed. Jean-Claude Lamberti and James T. Schleifer (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1992), 470.
     In the "Notes et variantes" to the Pléiade edition are (on p. 1041) a variant reading and a related quotation from the working manuscript of De la démocratie in the Beinecke Library, numbered C VI a (James T. Schleifer says "CV Ia", but this is surely a misprint for C VI a).