only afford a chance of duration when civil society
is itself fixed; under any other circumstances I hold it to be perilous.

We shall have occasion to see that, of all the passions which originate
in, or are fostered by, equality, there is one which it renders
peculiarly intense, and which it infuses at the same time into the heart
of every man: I mean the love of well-being. The taste for well-being
is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic ages. It may be
believed that a religion which should undertake to destroy so deep
seated a passion, would meet its own destruction thence in the end; and
if it attempted to wean men entirely from the contemplation of the good
things of this world, in order to devote their faculties exclusively to
the thought of another, it may be foreseen that the soul would at length
escape from its grasp, to plunge into the exclusive enjoyment of present
and material pleasures. The chief concern of religions is to purify,
to regulate, and to restrain the excessive and exclusive taste for
well-being which men feel at periods of equality; but they would err in
attempting to control it completely or to eradicate it. They will not
succeed in curing men of the love of riches: but they may still persuade
men to enrich themselves by none but honest means.

This brings me to a final consideration, which comprises, as it were,
all the others. The more the conditions of men are equalized and
assimilated to each other, the more important is it for religions,
whilst they carefully abstain from the daily turmoil of secular affairs,
not needlessly to run counter to the ideas which generally prevail, and
the permanent interests which exist in the mass of the people. For as
public opinion grows to be more and more evidently the first and most
irresistible of existing powers, the religious principle has no external
support strong enough to enable it long to resist its attacks. This
is not less true of a democratic people, ruled by a despot, than in a
republic. In ages of equality, kings may often command obedience,
but the majority always commands belief: to the majority, therefore,
deference is to be paid in whatsoever is not contrary to the faith.

I showed in my former volumes how the American clergy stand aloof from
secular affairs. This is the most obvious, but it is not the only,
example of their self-restraint. In America religion is a distinct
sphere, in which the priest is sovereign, but ou