ey 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
dust, scattered on every side, unable to collect, unable to cohere.

Thus, that independence of mind which equality supposes to exist, is
never so great, nor ever appears so excessive, as at the time when
equality is beginning to establish itself, and in the course of that
painful labor by which it is established. That sort of intellectual
freedom which equality may give ought, therefore, to be very carefully
distinguished from the anarchy which revolution brings. Each of these
two things must be severally considered, in order not to conceive
exaggerated hopes or fears of the future.

I believe that the men who will live under the new forms of society will
make frequent use of their private judgment; but I am far from thinking
that they will often abuse it. This is attributable to a cause of more
general application to all democratic countries, and which, in the
long run, must needs restrain in them the independence of individual
speculation within fixed, and sometimes narrow, limits. I shall proceed
to point out this cause in the next chapter.

Chapter II: Of The Principal Source Of Belief Among Democratic Nations

At different periods dogmatical belief is more or less abundant. It
arises in di