No
one capable of appreciating them can read them without learning to
feel toward their author not merely respect, but also a strong personal
regard. The two following extracts have a special appropriateness to
the present condition of our own country, while at the same time they
display the qualities most characteristic of Tocqueville's intellect.
They are both from letters addressed to one of the most distinguished
correspondents of his later years, Madame de Swetchine.
"There are, it seems to me, two distinct divisions in morals, one as
important as the other in the eyes of God, but in which in our days his
ministers instruct us with very unequal ardor. One belongs to private
life: it embraces the relative duties of mankind as fathers, as sons, as
wives, as husbands. The other regards public life: the duties of every
citizen toward his country, and toward that human society of which he
forms a special part. Am I deceived in believing that the clergy of our
time are very much occupied with the first portion of morals, and very
little with the second? This appears to me especially observable in the
manner in which women think and feel. I see a great number of them who
have a thousand private virtues in which the direct and beneficent
action of religion manifests itself,--who, thanks to it, are most
faithful wives and excellent mothers, who show themselves just and
indulgent toward their domestics, charitable to the poor.
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