to court prosperity in this. Far from attempting to show that these
things are distinct and contrary to one another, they study rather to
find out on what point they are most nearly and closely connected.

All the American clergy know and respect the intellectual supremacy
exercised by the majority; they never sustain any but necessary
conflicts with it. They take no share in the altercations of parties,
but they readily adopt the general opinions of their country and their
age; and they allow themselves to be borne away without opposition in
the current of feeling and opinion by which everything around them is
carried along. They endeavor to amend their contemporaries, but they do
not quit fellowship with them. Public opinion is therefore never hostile
to them; it rather supports and protects them; and their belief owes its
authority at the same time to the strength which is its own, and to that
which they borrow from the opinions of the majority. Thus it is that, by
respecting all democratic tendencies not absolutely contrary to herself,
and by making use of several of them for her own purposes, religion
sustains an advantageous struggle with that spirit of individual
independence which is her most dangerous antagonist.




Chapter VI: Of The Progress Of Roman Catholicism In The United States

America is the most democratic country in the world, and it is at the
same time (according to reports worthy of belief) the country in which
the Roman Catholic religion makes most progress. At first sight this is
surprising. Two things must here be accurately distinguished: equality
inclines men to wish to form their own opinions; but, on the other hand,