I have just examined the changes which the equality of conditions
produces in the mutual relations of the several members of the community
amongst democratic nations, and amongst the Americans in particular.
I would now go deeper, and inquire into the closer ties of kindred: my
object here is not to seek for new truths, but to show in what manner
facts already known are connected with my subject.
It has been universally remarked, that in our time the several members
of a family stand upon an entirely new footing towards each other; that
the distance which formerly separated a father from his sons has been
lessened; and that paternal authority, if not destroyed, is at least
impaired. Something analogous to this, but even more striking, may be
observed in the United States. In America the family, in the Roman and
aristocratic signification of the word, does not exist. All that remains
of it are a few vestiges in the first years of childhood, when the
father exercises, without opposition, that absolute domestic authority,
which the feebleness of his children renders necessary, and which their
interest, as well as his own incontestable superiority, warrants. But
as soon as the young American approaches manhood, the ties of filial
obedience are relaxed day by day: master of his thoughts, he is soon
master of his conduct. In America there is, strictly speaking, no
adolescence: at the close of boyhood the man appears, and begins to
trace out his own path. It would be an error to suppose that this is
preceded by a domestic struggle, in which the son has obtained by a
sort of moral violence the liberty that his father refused him. The
same habits, the same principles which impel the one to assert
his independence, predispose the other to consider the use of that
independence as an incontestable right. The former does not exhibit any
of those rancorous or irregular passions which disturb men long after
they have shaken off an established authority; the latter feels none of
that bitter and angry regret which is apt to survive a bygone power. The
father foresees the limits of his authority long beforehand, and when
the time arrives he surrenders it without a struggle: the son looks
forward to the exact period at which he will be his own master; and he
enters upon his freedom without precipitation and without effort, as a
possession which is his own and which no one seeks to wrest from him. *a
[Footnote a: The Americans, however, have not yet thought fit to strip
the parent, as has been done in France, of one of the chief elements of
parental authority, by depriving him of the power of disposing of his
property at his death. In the United States there are no restrictions on
the powers of a testator. In this respect, as in almost all others, it
is easy to perceive, that if the political legislation of the Americans
is much more democratic than that of the French, the civil legislation
of the latter is infinitely more democratic than that of the former.
This may easily be accounted for. The civil legislation of France
was the work of a man who saw that it was his interest to satisfy the
democratic passions of his contemporaries in all that was not directly
and immediately hostile to his own power. He was willing to allow some
popular principles to regulate the distribution of property and the
government of families, provided they were not to be introduced into
the administration of public affairs. Whilst the torrent of democracy
overwhelmed the civil laws of the country, he hoped to find an easy
shelter behind its political institutions. This policy was at once both
adroit and selfish; but a compromise of this kind could not last; for
in the end political institutions never fail to become the image and
expression of civil society; and in this sense it may be said that
nothing is more political in a nation than its civil legislation.]
It may perhaps not be without utility to show how these changes which
take place in family relations, are closely connected with the social
and political revolution which is approaching its consummation under
our own observation. There are certain great social principles, which a
people either introduces everywhere, or tolerates nowhere. In countries
which are aristocratically constituted with all the gradations of rank,
the government never makes a direct appeal to the mass of the governed:
as men are united together, it is enough to lead the foremost, the
rest will follow. This is equally applicable to the family, as to all
aristocracies which have a head. Amongst aristocratic nations, social
institutions recognize, in truth, no one in the family but the father;
children are received by society at his hands; society governs him,
he governs them. Thus the parent has not only a natural right, but he
acquires a political right, to command them: he is the author and
the support of his family; but he is also its constituted ruler. In
democracies, where the government picks out every individual singly from
the mass, to make him subservient to the general laws of the community,
no such intermediate person is required: a father is there, in the eye
of the law, only a member of the community, older and richer than his
sons.
When most of the conditions of life are extremely unequal, and the
inequality of these conditions is permanent, the notion of a superior
grows upon the imaginations of men: if the law invested him with no
privileges, custom and public opinion would concede them. When, on
the contrary, men differ but little from each other, and do not always
remain in dissimilar conditions of life, the general notion of a
superior becomes weaker and less distinct: it is vain for legislation
to strive to place him who obeys very much beneath him who commands; the
manners of the time bring the 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 perfect
colloquial equality.
Thus, at the same time that the power of aristocracy is declining, the
austere, the conventional, and the legal part of parental authority
vanishes, and a species of equality prevails around the domestic hearth.
I know not, upon the whole, whether society loses by the change, but I
am inclined to believe that man individually is a gainer by it. I think
that, in proportion as manners and laws become more democratic, the
relation of father and son becomes more intimate and more affectionate;
rules and authority are less talked of; confidence and tenderness are
oftentimes increased, and it would seem that the natural bond is drawn
closer in proportion as the social bond is loosened. In a democratic
family the father exercises no other power than that with which men
love to invest the affection and the experience of age; his orders would
perhaps be disobeyed, but his advice is for the most part authoritative.
Though he be not hedged in with ceremonial respect, his sons at least
accost him with confidence; no settled form of speech is appropriated
to the mode of addressing him, but they speak to him constantly, and are
ready to consult him day by day; the master and the constituted ruler
have vanished--the father remains. Nothing more is needed, in order
to judge of the difference between the two states of society in this
respect, than to peruse the family correspondence of aristocratic ages.
The style is always correct, ceremonious, stiff, and so cold that the
natural warmth of the heart can hardly be felt in the language.
The language, on the contrary, addressed by a son to his father in
democratic countries is always marked by mingled freedom, familiarity
and affection, which at once show that new relations have sprung up in
the bosom of the family.
A similar revolution takes place in the mutual relations of children. In
aristocratic families, as well as in aristocratic society, every place
is marked out beforehand. Not only does the father occupy a separate
rank, in which he enjoys extensive privileges, but even the children
are not equal amongst themselves. The age and sex of each irrevocably
determine his rank, and secure to him certain privileges: most of these
distinctions are abolished or diminished by democracy. In aristocratic
families the eldest son, inheriting the greater part of the property,
and almost all the rights of the family, becomes the chief, and, to a
certain extent, the master, of his brothers. Greatness and power are for
him--for them, mediocrity and dependence. Nevertheless it would be wrong
to suppose that, amongst aristocratic nations, the privileges of the
eldest son are advantageous to himself alone, or that they excite
nothing but envy and hatred in those around him. The eldest son commonly
endeavors to procure wealth and power for his brothers, because the
general splendor of the house is reflected back on him who represents
it; the younger sons seek to back the elder brother in all his
undertakings, because the greatness and power of the head of the family
better enable him to provide for all its branches. The different members
of an aristocratic family are therefore very closely bound together;
their interests are connected, their minds agree, but their hearts are
seldom in harmony.
Democracy also binds brothers to each other, but by very different
means. Under democratic laws all the children are perfectly equal, and
consequently independent; nothing brings them forcibly together, but
nothing keeps them apart; and as they have the same origin, as they are
trained under the same roof, as they are treated with the same care, and
as no peculiar privilege distinguishes or divides them, the affectionate
and youthful intimacy of early years easily springs up between them.
Scarcely any opportunities occur to break the tie thus formed at the
outset of life; for their brotherhood brings them daily together,
without embarrassing them. It is not, then, by interest, but by common
associations and by the free sympathy of opinion and of taste, that
democracy unites brothers to each other. It divides their inheritance,
but it allows their hearts and minds to mingle together. Such is
the charm of these democratic manners, that even the partisans of
aristocracy are caught by it; and after having experienced it for some
time, they are by no means tempted to revert to the respectful and
frigid observance of aristocratic families. They would be glad to retain
the domestic habits of democracy, if they might throw off its social
conditions and its laws; but these elements are indissolubly united, and
it is impossible to enjoy the former without enduring the latter.
The remarks I have made on filial love and fraternal affection are
applicable to all the passions which emanate spontaneously from human
nature itself. If a certain mode of thought or feeling is the result of
some peculiar condition of life, when that condition is altered nothing
whatever remains of the thought or feeling. Thus a law may bind two
members of the community very closely to one another; but that law being
abolished, they stand asunder. Nothing was more strict than the tie
which united the vassal to the lord under the feudal system; at the
present day the two men know not each other; the fear, the gratitude,
and the affection which formerly connected them have vanished, and not
a vestige of the tie remains. Such, however, is not the case with those
feelings which are natural to mankind. Whenever a law attempts to tutor
these feelings in any particular manner, it seldom fails to weaken them;
by attempting to add to their intensity, it robs them of some of their
elements, for they are never stronger than when left to themselves.
Democracy, which destroys or obscures almost all the old conventional
rules of society, and which prevents men from readily assenting to new
ones, entirely effaces most of the feelings to which these conventional
rules have given rise; but it only modifies some others, and frequently
imparts to them a degree of energy and sweetness unknown before. Perhaps
it is not impossible to condense into a single proposition the whole
meaning of this chapter, and of several others that preceded it.
Democracy loosens social ties, but it draws the ties of nature more
tight; it brings kindred more closely together, whilst it places the
various members of the community more widely apart.