diversified and perpetually modified; but Christianity itself is a fact
so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or
to defend it. The Americans, having admitted the principal doctrines of
the Christian religion without inquiry, are obliged to accept in like
manner a great number of moral truths originating in it and connected
with it. Hence the activity of individual analysis is restrained within
narrow limits, and many of the most important of human opinions are
removed from the range of its influence.

The second circumstance to which I have alluded is the following: the
social condition and the constitution of the Americans are democratic,
but they have not had a democratic revolution. They arrived upon the
soil they occupy in nearly the condition in which we see them at the
present day; and this is of very considerable importance.

There are no revolutions which do not shake existing belief, enervate
authority, and throw doubts over commonly received ideas. The effect of
all revolutions is therefore, more or less, to surrender men to their
own guidance, and to open to the mind of every man a void and almost
unlimited range of speculation. When equality of conditions succeeds
a protracted conflict between the different classes of which the elder
society was composed, envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, pride, and
exaggerated self-confidence are apt to seize upon the human heart,
and plant their sway there for a time. This, independently of equality
itself, tends powerfully to divide men--to lead them to mistrust the
judgment of others, and to seek the light of truth nowhere but in their
own understandings. Everyone then attempts to be his own sufficient
guide, and makes it his boast to form his own opinions on all subjects.
Men are no longer bound together by ideas, but by interests; and it
would seem as if human opinions were reduced to a sort of intellectual