ned the morality
of the aristocratic classes. The French Revolution, by dividing the
fortunes of the nobility, by forcing them to attend assiduously to their
affairs and to their families, by making them live under the same roof
with their children, and in short by giving a more rational and serious
turn to their minds, has imparted to them, almost without their being
aware of it, a reverence for religious belief, a love of order, of
tranquil pleasures, of domestic endearments, and of comfort; whereas the
rest of the nation, which had naturally these same tastes, was carried
away into excesses by the effort which was required to overthrow the
laws and political habits of the country. The old French aristocracy has
undergone the consequences of the Revolution, but it neither felt the
revolutionary passions nor shared in the anarchical excitement which
produced that crisis; it may easily be conceived that this aristocracy
feels the salutary influence of the Revolution in its manners, before
those who achieve it. It may therefore be said, though at first it seems
paradoxical, that, at the present day, the most anti-democratic classes
of the nation principally exhibit the kind of morality which may
reasonably be anticipated from democracy. I cannot but think that when
we shall have obtained all the effects of this democratic Revolution,
after having got rid of the tumult it has caused, the observations which
are now only applicable to the few will gradually become true of the
whole community.

Chapter XII: How The Americans Understand The Equality Of The Sexes

I Have shown how democracy destroys or modifies the different
inequalities which originate in society; but is this all? or does it
not ultimately affect that great inequality of man and woman which has
seemed, up to the present day, to be eternally based in human nature? I
believe that the social changes which bring nearer to the same level
the father and son, the master and servant, and superiors and inferiors
generally speaking, will raise woman and make her more and more the
equal of man. But here, more than ever, I feel the necessity of making
myself clearly understood; for there is no subject on which the coarse
and lawless fancies of our age have taken a freer range.

There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different
characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman beings not
only equal but alike. They would give to both the sa