They are, however, less reluctant to join political associations, which appear to them to be without danger, because they adventure no money in them.

But they cannot belong to these associations for any length of time without finding out how order is maintained amongst a large number of men, and by what contrivance they are made to advance, harmoniously and methodically, to the same object.

Thus they learn to surrender their own will to that of all the rest, and to make their own exertions subordinate to the common impulse--things which it is not less necessary to know in civil than in political associations.

Political associations may therefore be considered as large free schools, where all the members of the community go to learn the general theory of association.
But even if political association did not directly contribute to the progress of civil association, to destroy the former would be to impair the latter.

When citizens can only meet in public for certain purposes, they regard such meetings as a strange proceeding of rare occurrence, and they rarely think at all about it.