11. Chapter XI: That The Equality Of Conditions Contributes To The
Maintenance Of Good Morals In America
Some philosophers and historians have said, or have hinted,
that the strictness of female morality was increased or
diminished simply by the distance of a country from the equator.
This solution of the difficulty was an easy one; and nothing was
required but a globe and a pair of compasses to settle in an
instant one of the most difficult problems in the condition of
mankind. But I am not aware that this principle of the
materialists is supported by facts. The same nations have been
chaste or dissolute at different periods of their history; the
strictness or the laxity of their morals depended therefore on
some variable cause, not only on the natural qualities of their
country, which were invariable. I do not deny that in certain
climates the passions which are occasioned by the mutual
attraction of the sexes are peculiarly intense; but I am of
opinion that this natural intensity may always be excited or
restrained by the condition of society and by political
institutions.
Although the travellers who have visited North America
differ on a great number of points, they all agree in remarking
that morals are far more strict there than elsewhere. It is
evident that on this point the Americans are very superior to
their progenitors the English. A superficial glance at the two
nations will establish the fact. In England, as in all other
countries of Europe, public malice is constantly attacking the
frailties of women. Philosophers and statesmen are heard to
deplore that morals are not sufficiently strict, and the literary
productions of the country constantly lead one to suppose so. In
America all books, novels not excepted, suppose women to be
chaste, and no one thinks of relating affairs of gallantry. No
doubt this great regularity of American morals originates partly
in the country, in the race of the people, and in their religion:
but all these causes, which operate elsewhere, do not suffice to
account for it; recourse must be had to some special reason.
This reason appears to me to be the principle of equality and the
institutions derived from it. Equality of conditions does not of
itself engender regularity of morals, but it unquestionably
facilitates and increases it. [5]
Amongst aristocratic nations birth and fortune frequently
make two such different beings of man and woman, that they can
never be united to each other. Their passions draw them
together, but the condition of society, and the notions suggested
by it, prevent them from contracting a permanent and ostensible
tie. The necessary consequence is a great number of transient
and clandestine connections. Nature secretly avenges herself for
the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man. This is not
so much the case when the equality of conditions has swept away
all the imaginary, or the real, barriers which separated man from
woman. No girl then believes that she cannot become the wife of
the man who loves her; and this renders all breaches of morality
before marriage very uncommon: for, whatever be the credulity of
the passions, a woman will hardly be able to persuade herself
that she is beloved, when her lover is perfectly free to marry
her and does not.
The same cause operates, though more indirectly, on married life.
Nothing better serves to justify an illicit passion, either to the minds
of those who have conceived it or to the world which looks on, than
compulsory or accidental marriages. [6]
In a country in which a woman is always free to exercise her power of
choosing, and in which education has prepared her to choose rightly,
public opinion is inexorable to her faults. The rigor of the Americans
arises in part from this cause. They consider marriages as a covenant
which is often onerous, but every condition of which the parties are
strictly bound to fulfil, because they knew all those conditions
beforehand, and were perfectly free not to have contracted them.
The very circumstances which render matrimonial fidelity
more obligatory also render it more easy. In aristocratic
countries the object of marriage is rather to unite property than
persons; hence the husband is sometimes at school and the wife at
nurse when they are betrothed. It cannot be wondered at if the
conjugal tie which holds the fortunes of the pair united allows
their hearts to rove; this is the natural result of the nature of
the contract. When, on the contrary, a man always chooses a wife
for himself, without any external coercion or even guidance, it
is generally a conformity of tastes and opinions which brings a
man and a woman together, and this same conformity keeps and
fixes them in close habits of intimacy.
Our forefathers had conceived a very strange notion on the
subject of marriage: as they had remarked that the small number
of love-matches which occurred in their time almost always turned
out ill, they resolutely inferred that it was exceedingly
dangerous to listen to the dictates of the heart on the subject.
Accident appeared to them to be a better guide than choice. Yet
it was not very difficult to perceive that the examples which
they witnessed did in fact prove nothing at all. For in the
first place, if democratic nations leave a woman at liberty to
choose her husband, they take care to give her mind sufficient
knowledge, and her will sufficient strength, to make so important
a choice: whereas the young women who, amongst aristocratic
nations, furtively elope from the authority of their parents to
throw themselves of their own accord into the arms of men whom
they have had neither time to know, nor ability to judge of, are
totally without those securities. It is not surprising that they
make a bad use of their freedom of action the first time they
avail themselves of it; nor that they fall into such cruel
mistakes, when, not having received a democratic education, they
choose to marry in conformity to democratic customs. But this is
not all. When a man and woman are bent upon marriage in spite of
the differences of an aristocratic state of society, the
difficulties to be overcome are enormous. Having broken or
relaxed the bonds of filial obedience, they have then to
emancipate themselves by a final effort from the sway of custom
and the tyranny of opinion; and when at length they have
succeeded in this arduous task, they stand estranged from their
natural friends and kinsmen: the prejudice they have crossed
separates them from all, and places them in a situation which
soon breaks their courage and sours their hearts. If, then, a
couple married in this manner are first unhappy and afterwards
criminal, it ought not to be attributed to the freedom of their
choice, but rather to their living in a community in which this
freedom of choice is not admitted.
Moreover it should not be forgotten that the same effort
which makes a man violently shake off a prevailing error,
commonly impels him beyond the bounds of reason; that, to dare to
declare war, in however just a cause, against the opinion of
one's age and country, a violent and adventurous spirit is
required, and that men of this character seldom arrive at
happiness or virtue, whatever be the path they follow. And this,
it may be observed by the way, is the reason why in the most
necessary and righteous revolutions, it is so rare to meet with
virtuous or moderate revolutionary characters. There is then no
just ground for surprise if a man, who in an age of aristocracy
chooses to consult nothing but his own opinion and his own taste
in the choice of a wife, soon finds that infractions of morality
and domestic wretchedness invade his household: but when this
same line of action is in the natural and ordinary course of
things, when it is sanctioned by parental authority and backed by
public opinion, it cannot be doubted that the internal peace of
families will be increased by it, and conjugal fidelity more
rigidly observed.
Almost all men in democracies are engaged in public or
professional life; and on the other hand the limited extent of
common incomes obliges a wife to confine herself to the house, in
order to watch in person and very closely over the details of
domestic economy. All these distinct and compulsory occupations
are so many natural barriers, which, by keeping the two sexes
asunder, render the solicitations of the one less frequent and
less ardent -the resistance of the other more easy.
Not indeed that the equality of conditions can ever succeed
in making men chaste, but it may impart a less dangerous
character to their breaches of morality. As no one has then
either sufficient time or opportunity to assail a virtue armed in
self-defence, there will be at the same time a great number of
courtesans and a great number of virtuous women. This state of
things causes lamentable cases of individual hardship, but it
does not prevent the body of society from being strong and alert:
it does not destroy family ties, or enervate the morals of the
nation. Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a
few, but by laxity of morals amongst all. In the eyes of a
legislator, prostitution is less to be dreaded than intrigue.
The tumultuous and constantly harassed life which equality
makes men lead, not only distracts them from the passion of love,
by denying them time to indulge in it, but it diverts them from
it by another more secret but more certain road. All men who
live in democratic ages more or less contract the ways of
thinking of the manufacturing and trading classes; their minds
take a serious, deliberate, and positive turn; they are apt to
relinquish the ideal, in order to pursue some visible and
proximate object, which appears to be the natural and necessary
aim of their desires. Thus the principle of equality does not
destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of
the earth. No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens
of a democracy; and few of them are ever known to give way to
those idle and solitary meditations which commonly precede and
produce the great emotions of the heart. It is true they attach
great importance to procuring for themselves that sort of deep,
regular, and quiet affection which constitutes the charm and
safeguard of life, but they are not apt to run after those
violent and capricious sources of excitement which disturb and
abridge it.
I am aware that all this is only applicable in its full
extent to America, and cannot at present be extended to Europe.
In the course of the last half-century, whilst laws and customs
have impelled several European nations with unexampled force
towards democracy, we have not had occasion to observe that the
relations of man and woman have become more orderly or more
chaste. In some places the very reverse may be detected: some
classes are more strict -the general morality of the people
appears to be more lax. I do not hesitate to make the remark,
for I am as little disposed to flatter my contemporaries as to
malign them. This fact must distress, but it ought not to
surprise us. The propitious influence which a democratic state
of society may exercise upon orderly habits, is one of those
tendencies which can only be discovered after a time. If the
equality of conditions is favorable to purity of morals, the
social commotion by which conditions are rendered equal is
adverse to it. In the last fifty years, during which France has
been undergoing this transformation, that country has rarely had
freedom, always disturbance. Amidst this universal confusion of
notions and this general stir of opinions -amidst this
incoherent mixture of the just and unjust, of truth and
falsehood, of right and might -public virtue has become
doubtful, and private morality wavering. But all
revolutions, whatever may have been their object or their agents,
have at first produced similar consequences; even those which
have in the end drawn the bonds of morality more tightly began by
loosening them. The violations of morality which the French
frequently witness do not appear to me to have a permanent
character; and this is already betokened by some curious signs of
the times.
Nothing is more wretchedly corrupt than an aristocracy which
retains its wealth when it has lost its power, and which still
enjoys a vast deal of leisure after it is reduced to mere vulgar
pastimes. The energetic passions and great conceptions which
animated it heretofore, leave it then; and nothing remains to it
but a host of petty consuming vices, which cling about it like
worms upon a carcass. No one denies that the French aristocracy
of the last century was extremely dissolute; whereas established
habits and ancient belief still preserved some respect for
morality amongst the other classes of society. Nor will it be
contested that at the present day the remnants of that same
aristocracy exhibit a certain severity of morals; whilst laxity
of morals appears to have spread amongst the middle and lower
ranks. So that the same families which were most profligate
fifty years ago are nowadays the most exemplary, and democracy
seems only to have strengthened the morality of the aristocratic
classes. The French Revolution, by dividing the fortunes of the
nobility, by forcing them to attend assiduously to their affairs
and to their families, by making them live under the same roof
with their children, and in short by giving a more rational and
serious turn to their minds, has imparted to them, almost without
their being aware of it, a reverence for religious belief, a love
of order, of tranquil pleasures, of domestic endearments, and of
comfort; whereas the rest of the nation, which had naturally
these same tastes, was carried away into excesses by the effort
which was required to overthrow the laws and political habits of
the country. The old French aristocracy has undergone the
consequences of the Revolution, but it neither felt the
revolutionary passions nor shared in the anarchical excitement
which produced that crisis; it may easily be conceived that this
aristocracy feels the salutary influence of the Revolution in its
manners, before those who achieve it. It may therefore be said,
though at first it seems paradoxical, that, at the present day,
the most anti-democratic classes of the nation principally
exhibit the kind of morality which may reasonably be anticipated
from democracy. I cannot but think that when we shall have
obtained all the effects of this democratic Revolution, after
having got rid of the tumult it has caused, the observations
which are now only applicable to the few will gradually become
true of the whole community.
[6]
The literature of Europe sufficiently
corroborates this remark. When a European author wishes to depict in a
work of imagination any of these great catastrophes in matrimony which
so frequently occur amongst us, he takes care to bespeak the compassion
of the reader by bringing before him ill-assorted or compulsory
marriages. Although habitual tolerance has long since relaxed our
morals, an author could hardly succeed in interesting us in the
misfortunes of his characters, if he did not first palliate their
faults. This artifice seldom fails: the daily scenes we witness prepare
us long beforehand to be indulgent. But American writers could never
render these palliations probable to their readers; their customs and
laws are opposed to it; and as they despair of rendering levity of
conduct pleasing, they cease to depict it. This is one of the causes to
which must be attributed the small number of novels published in the
United States.