omestic economy. All these distinct
and compulsory occupations are so many natural barriers, which, by
keeping the two sexes asunder, render the solicitations of the one less
frequent and less ardent--the resistance of the other more easy.

Not indeed that the equality of conditions can ever succeed in making
men chaste, but it may impart a less dangerous character to their
breaches of morality. As no one has then either sufficient time or
opportunity to assail a virtue armed in self-defence, there will be
at the same time a great number of courtesans and a great number
of virtuous women. This state of things causes lamentable cases of
individual hardship, but it does not prevent the body of society from
being strong and alert: it does not destroy family ties, or enervate the
morals of the nation. Society is endangered not by the great profligacy
of a few, but by laxity of morals amongst all. In the eyes of a
legislator, prostitution is less to be dreaded than intrigue.

The tumultuous and constantly harassed life which equality makes men
lead, not only distracts them from the passion of love, by denying
them time to indulge in it, but it diverts them from it by another more
secret but more certain road. All men who live in democratic ages more
or less contract the ways of thinking of the manufacturing and trading
classes; their minds take a serious, deliberate, and positive turn; they
are apt to relinquish the ideal, in order to pursue some visible and
proximate object, which appears to be the natural and necessary aim
of their desires. Thus the principle of equality does not destroy the
imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth. No men are
less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy; and few of
them are ever known to give way to those idle and solitary meditations
which commonly precede and produce the great emotions of the heart. It
is true they attach great importance to procuring for themselves that
sort of deep, regular, and quiet affection which constitutes the charm
and safeguard of life, but they are not apt to run after those violent
and capricious sources of excitement which disturb and abridge it.

I am aware that all this is only applicable in its full extent to
America, and cannot at present be extended to Europe. In the course of
the last half-century, whilst laws and customs have impelled several
European nations with unexampled force towards democracy, we have not
had