Some philosophers and historians have said, or have hinted, that the strictness of female morality was increased or diminished simply by the distance of a country from the equator. This solution of the difficulty was an easy one; and nothing was required but a globe and a pair of compasses to settle in an instant one of the most difficult problems in the condition of mankind. But I am not aware that this principle of the materialists is supported by facts. The same nations have been chaste1 or dissolute at different periods of their history; the strictness or the laxity of their morals depended therefore on some variable cause, not only on the natural qualities of their country, which were invariable. I do not deny that in certain climates the passions which are occasioned by the mutual2 attraction of the sexes are peculiarly intense; but I am of opinion that this natural intensity3 may always be excited or restrained by the condition of society and by political institutions.
Although the travellers who have visited North America differ on a great number of points, they all agree in remarking that morals are far more strict there than elsewhere. It is evident that on this point the Americans are very superior to their progenitors4 the English. A superficial glance at the two nations will establish the fact. In England, as in all other countries of Europe, public malice5 is constantly attacking the frailties6 of women. Philosophers and statesmen are heard to deplore7 that morals are not sufficiently8 strict, and the literary productions of the country constantly lead one to suppose so. In America all books, novels not excepted, suppose women to be chaste, and no one thinks of relating affairs of gallantry. No doubt this great regularity9 of American morals originates partly in the country, in the race of the people, and in their religion: but all these causes, which operate elsewhere, do not suffice to account for it; recourse must be had to some special reason. This reason appears to me to be the principle of equality and the institutions derived10 from it. Equality of conditions does not of itself engender11 regularity of morals, but it unquestionably facilitates and increases it. *a [Footnote a: See Appendix T.]
Amongst aristocratic nations birth and fortune frequently make two such different beings of man and woman, that they can never be united to each other. Their passions draw them together, but the condition of society, and the notions suggested by it, prevent them from contracting a permanent and ostensible12 tie. The necessary consequence is a great number of transient and clandestine13 connections. Nature secretly avenges14 herself for the constraint15 imposed upon her by the laws of man. This is not so much the case when the equality of conditions has swept away all the imaginary, or the real, barriers which separated man from woman. No girl then believes that she cannot become the wife of the man who loves her; and this renders all breaches16 of morality before marriage very uncommon17: for, whatever be the credulity of the passions, a woman will hardly be able to persuade herself that she is beloved, when her lover is perfectly18 free to marry her and does not.
The same cause operates, though more indirectly19, on married life. Nothing better serves to justify20 an illicit21 passion, either to the minds of those who have conceived it or to the world which looks on, than compulsory22 or accidental marriages. *b In a country in which a woman is always free to exercise her power of choosing, and in which education has prepared her to choose rightly, public opinion is inexorable to her faults. The rigor23 of the Americans arises in part from this cause. They consider marriages as a covenant24 which is often onerous25, but every condition of which the parties are strictly26 bound to fulfil, because they knew all those conditions beforehand, and were perfectly free not to have contracted them.
b
[ The literature of Europe sufficiently corroborates27 this remark. When a European author wishes to depict28 in a work of imagination any of these great catastrophes29 in matrimony which so frequently occur amongst us, he takes care to bespeak30 the compassion31 of the reader by bringing before him ill-assorted or compulsory marriages. Although habitual32 tolerance33 has long since relaxed our morals, an author could hardly succeed in interesting us in the misfortunes of his characters, if he did not first palliate their faults. This artifice34 seldom fails: the daily scenes we witness prepare us long beforehand to be indulgent. But American writers could never render these palliations probable to their readers; their customs and laws are opposed to it; and as they despair of rendering35 levity36 of conduct pleasing, they cease to depict it. This is one of the causes to which must be attributed the small number of novels published in the United States.]
The very circumstances which render matrimonial fidelity37 more obligatory38 also render it more easy. In aristocratic countries the object of marriage is rather to unite property than persons; hence the husband is sometimes at school and the wife at nurse when they are betrothed39. It cannot be wondered at if the conjugal40 tie which holds the fortunes of the pair united allows their hearts to rove; this is the natural result of the nature of the contract. When, on the contrary, a man always chooses a wife for himself, without any external coercion41 or even guidance, it is generally a conformity42 of tastes and opinions which brings a man and a woman together, and this same conformity keeps and fixes them in close habits of intimacy43.
Our forefathers44 had conceived a very strange notion on the subject of marriage: as they had remarked that the small number of love-matches which occurred in their time almost always turned out ill, they resolutely45 inferred that it was exceedingly dangerous to listen to the dictates46 of the heart on the subject. Accident appeared to them to be a better guide than choice. Yet it was not very difficult to perceive that the examples which they witnessed did in fact prove nothing at all. For in the first place, if democratic nations leave a woman at liberty to choose her husband, they take care to give her mind sufficient knowledge, and her will sufficient strength, to make so important a choice: whereas the young women who, amongst aristocratic nations, furtively47 elope from the authority of their parents to throw themselves of their own accord into the arms of men whom they have had neither time to know, nor ability to judge of, are totally without those securities. It is not surprising that they make a bad use of their freedom of action the first time they avail themselves of it; nor that they fall into such cruel mistakes, when, not having received a democratic education, they choose to marry in conformity to democratic customs. But this is not all. When a man and woman are bent48 upon marriage in spite of the differences of an aristocratic state of society, the difficulties to be overcome are enormous. Having broken or relaxed the bonds of filial obedience49, they have then to emancipate50 themselves by a final effort from the sway of custom and the tyranny of opinion; and when at length they have succeeded in this arduous51 task, they stand estranged52 from their natural friends and kinsmen53: the prejudice they have crossed separates them from all, and places them in a situation which soon breaks their courage and sours their hearts. If, then, a couple married in this manner are first unhappy and afterwards criminal, it ought not to be attributed to the freedom of their choice, but rather to their living in a community in which this freedom of choice is not admitted.
Moreover it should not be forgotten that the same effort which makes a man violently shake off a prevailing54 error, commonly impels55 him beyond the bounds of reason; that, to dare to declare war, in however just a cause, against the opinion of one's age and country, a violent and adventurous56 spirit is required, and that men of this character seldom arrive at happiness or virtue57, whatever be the path they follow. And this, it may be observed by the way, is the reason why in the most necessary and righteous revolutions, it is so rare to meet with virtuous58 or moderate revolutionary characters. There is then no just ground for surprise if a man, who in an age of aristocracy chooses to consult nothing but his own opinion and his own taste in the choice of a wife, soon finds that infractions of morality and domestic wretchedness invade his household: but when this same line of action is in the natural and ordinary course of things, when it is sanctioned by parental59 authority and backed by public opinion, it cannot be doubted that the internal peace of families will be increased by it, and conjugal fidelity more rigidly60 observed.
Almost all men in democracies are engaged in public or professional life; and on the other hand the limited extent of common incomes obliges a wife to confine herself to the house, in order to watch in person and very closely over the details of domestic economy. All these distinct and compulsory occupations are so many natural barriers, which, by keeping the two sexes asunder61, 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 assail62 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 lamentable63 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 enervate64 the morals of the nation. Society is endangered not by the great profligacy65 of a few, but by laxity of morals amongst all. In the eyes of a legislator, prostitution is less to be dreaded66 than intrigue67.
The tumultuous and constantly harassed69 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 relinquish70 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 addicted71 to reverie than the citizens of a democracy; and few of them are ever known to give way to those idle and solitary72 meditations73 which commonly precede and produce the great emotions of the heart. It is true they attach great importance to procuring74 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 abridge75 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 impelled76 several European nations with unexampled force towards democracy, we have not had occasion to observe that the relations of man and woman have become more orderly or more chaste. In some places the very reverse may be detected: some classes are more strict—the general morality of the people appears to be more lax. I do not hesitate to make the remark, for I am as little disposed to flatter my contemporaries as to malign77 them. This fact must distress78, but it ought not to surprise us. The propitious79 influence which a democratic state of society may exercise upon orderly habits, is one of those tendencies which can only be discovered after a time. If the equality of conditions is favorable to purity of morals, the social commotion80 by which conditions are rendered equal is adverse81 to it. In the last fifty years, during which France has been undergoing this transformation82, that country has rarely had freedom, always disturbance83. Amidst this universal confusion of notions and this general stir of opinions—amidst this incoherent mixture of the just and unjust, of truth and falsehood, of right and might—public virtue has become doubtful, and private morality wavering. But all revolutions, whatever may have been their object or their agents, have at first produced similar consequences; even those which have in the end drawn84 the bonds of morality more tightly began by loosening them. The violations85 of morality which the French frequently witness do not appear to me to have a permanent character; and this is already betokened86 by some curious signs of the times.
Nothing is more wretchedly corrupt87 than an aristocracy which retains its wealth when it has lost its power, and which still enjoys a vast deal of leisure after it is reduced to mere88 vulgar pastimes. The energetic passions and great conceptions which animated89 it heretofore, leave it then; and nothing remains90 to it but a host of petty consuming vices91, which cling about it like worms upon a carcass. No one denies that the French aristocracy of the last century was extremely dissolute; whereas established habits and ancient belief still preserved some respect for morality amongst the other classes of society. Nor will it be contested that at the present day the remnants of that same aristocracy exhibit a certain severity of morals; whilst laxity of morals appears to have spread amongst the middle and lower ranks. So that the same families which were most profligate92 fifty years ago are nowadays the most exemplary, and democracy seems only to have strengthened 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 reverence93 for religious belief, a love of order, of tranquil94 pleasures, of domestic endearments95, 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 overthrow96 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 tumult68 it has caused, the observations which are now only applicable to the few will gradually become true of the whole community.
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1
chaste
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| adj.贞洁的；有道德的；善良的；简朴的 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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progenitors
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| n.祖先( progenitor的名词复数 )；先驱；前辈；原本 | |
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malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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frailties
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| n.脆弱( frailty的名词复数 )；虚弱；（性格或行为上的）弱点；缺点 | |
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deplore
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| vt.哀叹，对...深感遗憾 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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derived
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| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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engender
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| v.产生，引起 | |
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ostensible
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| adj.(指理由)表面的，假装的 | |
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clandestine
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| adj.秘密的，暗中从事的 | |
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avenges
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| v.为…复仇，报…之仇( avenge的第三人称单数 )；为…报复 | |
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constraint
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| n.(on)约束，限制；限制(或约束)性的事物 | |
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breaches
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| 破坏( breach的名词复数 )； 破裂； 缺口； 违背 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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illicit
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| adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的 | |
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compulsory
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| n.强制的，必修的；规定的，义务的 | |
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rigor
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| n.严酷，严格，严厉 | |
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covenant
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| n.盟约，契约；v.订盟约 | |
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onerous
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| adj.繁重的 | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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corroborates
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| v.证实，支持（某种说法、信仰、理论等）( corroborate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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depict
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| vt.描画，描绘；描写，描述 | |
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catastrophes
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| n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难 | |
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bespeak
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| v.预定；预先请求 | |
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compassion
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| n.同情，怜悯 | |
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habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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artifice
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| n.妙计，高明的手段；狡诈，诡计 | |
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rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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obligatory
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| adj.强制性的，义务的，必须的 | |
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betrothed
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| n. 已订婚者 动词betroth的过去式和过去分词 | |
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conjugal
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| adj.婚姻的，婚姻性的 | |
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coercion
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| n.强制，高压统治 | |
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conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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dictates
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| n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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emancipate
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| v.解放，解除 | |
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51
arduous
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| adj.艰苦的，费力的，陡峭的 | |
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estranged
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| adj.疏远的，分离的 | |
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kinsmen
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| n.家属，亲属( kinsman的名词复数 ) | |
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54
prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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impels
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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adventurous
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| adj.爱冒险的；惊心动魄的，惊险的，刺激的 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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virtuous
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| adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的 | |
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parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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rigidly
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| adv.刻板地，僵化地 | |
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asunder
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| adj.分离的，化为碎片 | |
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assail
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| v.猛烈攻击，抨击，痛斥 | |
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lamentable
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| adj.令人惋惜的，悔恨的 | |
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enervate
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| v.使虚弱，使无力 | |
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profligacy
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| n.放荡，不检点，肆意挥霍 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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intrigue
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| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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tumult
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| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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harassed
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| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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relinquish
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| v.放弃，撤回，让与，放手 | |
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addicted
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| adj.沉溺于....的，对...上瘾的 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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procuring
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| v.（努力）取得， （设法）获得( procure的现在分词 )；拉皮条 | |
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abridge
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| v.删减，删节，节略，缩短 | |
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impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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malign
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| adj.有害的；恶性的；恶意的；v.诽谤，诬蔑 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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propitious
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| adj.吉利的；顺利的 | |
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commotion
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| n.骚动，动乱 | |
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adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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83
disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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84
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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violations
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| 违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸 | |
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86
betokened
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| v.预示，表示( betoken的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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87
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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89
animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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90
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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91
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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92
profligate
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| adj.行为不检的；n.放荡的人，浪子，肆意挥霍者 | |
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93
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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94
tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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95
endearments
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| n.表示爱慕的话语，亲热的表示( endearment的名词复数 ) | |
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overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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