two men nearer to one another, and draw
them daily towards the same level. Although the legislation of an
aristocratic people should grant no peculiar privileges to the heads
of families; I shall not be the less convinced that their power is
more respected and more extensive than in a democracy; for I know that,
whatsoever the laws may be, superiors always appear higher and inferiors
lower in aristocracies than amongst democratic nations.

When men live more for the remembrance of what has been than for the
care of what is, and when they are more given to attend to what their
ancestors thought than to think themselves, the father is the natural
and necessary tie between the past and the present--the link by which
the ends of these two chains are connected. In aristocracies, then, the
father is not only the civil head of the family, but the oracle of its
traditions, the expounder of its customs, the arbiter of its manners.
He is listened to with deference, he is addressed with respect, and
the love which is felt for him is always tempered with fear. When the
condition of society becomes democratic, and men adopt as their general
principle that it is good and lawful to judge of all things for one's
self, using former points of belief not as a rule of faith but simply
as a means of information, the power which the opinions of a father
exercise over those of his sons diminishes as well as his legal power.

Perhaps the subdivision of estates which democracy brings with it
contributes more than anything else to change the relations existing
between a father and his children. When the property of the father of a
family is scanty, his son and himself constantly live in the same place,
and share the same occupations: habit and necessity bring them
together, and force them to hold constant communication: the inevitable
consequence is a sort of familiar intimacy, which renders authority less
absolute, and which can ill be reconciled with the external forms
of respect. Now in democratic countries the class of those who are
possessed of small fortunes is precisely that which gives strength
to the notions, and a particular direction to the manners, of the
community. That class makes its opinions preponderate as universally as
its will, and even those who are most inclined to resist its commands
are carried away in the end by its example. I have known eager opponents
of democracy who allowed their children to address them with perf