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In his Democracy in America, Toqueville states that equality of conditions "exercising domination over civil society as much as over the government it creates opinions, gives birth to feelings, suggests customs, and modifies whatever it does not create." (p. 9) Clearly, to understand Tocqueville, one must understand what he means by equality of conditions. These conditions are common circumstances, origins, education, and mores. The settlers of America came primarily from England. They faced the same uncertainty …

…was more equality. This equality manifests itself, according to Tocqueville in a society where generations face greater and greater equality. As Tocqueville writes America's equality in conditions creates "[a] nation as a body [which] would be less brilliant, less glorious, and perhaps less strong, but the majority of the citizens would enjoy a more prosperous lot, and the people would be pacific not from despair of anything better but from knowing itself to be well-off."