ages of equality. The nearer the citizens
are drawn to the common level of an equal and similar condition, the
less prone does each man become to place implicit faith in a certain man
or a certain class of men. But his readiness to believe the multitude
increases, and opinion is more than ever mistress of the world. Not only
is common opinion the only guide which private judgment retains amongst
a democratic people, but amongst such a people it possesses a power
infinitely beyond what it has elsewhere. At periods of equality men have
no faith in one another, by reason of their common resemblance; but this
very resemblance gives them almost unbounded confidence in the judgment
of the public; for it would not seem probable, as they are all endowed
with equal means of judging, but that the greater truth should go with
the greater number.

When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself
individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is
the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality
of his fellows, and to place himself in contrast to so huge a body,
he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and
weakness. The same equality which renders him independent of each of his
fellow-citizens taken severally, exposes him alone and unprotected to
the influence of the greater number. The public has therefore among a
democratic people a singular power, of which aristocratic nations could
never so much as conceive an idea; for it does not persuade to certain
opinions, but it enforces them, and infuses them into the faculties by a
sort of enormous pressure of the minds of all upon the reason of each.

In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of
ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved
from the necessity of forming opinions of their own. Everybody there
adopts great numbers of theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics,
without inquiry, upon public trust; and if we look to it very narrowly,
it will be perceived that religion herself holds her sway there, much
less as a doctrine of revelation than as a commonly received opinion.
The fact that the political laws of the Americans are such that the
majority rules the community with sovereign sway, materially increases
the power which that majority naturally exercises over the mind. For
nothing is more customary in man than to recognize superior wisdom in
th