《乌合之众·第二编·群体的意见与信念·群体意见与信念的间接因素》第10节
To lose time in the manufacture of cut-and-dried constitutions is, in consequence, a puerile task, the useless labour of an ignorant rhetorician. Necessity and time undertake the charge of elaborating constitutions when we are wise enough to allow these two factors to act. This is the plan the Anglo-Saxons have adopted, as their great historian, Macaulay, teaches us in a passage that the politicians of all Latin countries ought to learn by heart. After having shown all the good that can be accomplished by laws which appear from the point of view of pure reason a chaos of absurdities and contradictions, he compares the scores of constitutions that have been engulfed in the convulsions of the Latin peoples with that of England, and points out that the latter has only been very slowly changed part by part, under the influence of immediate necessities and never of speculative reasoning. "To think nothing of symmetry and much of convenience; never to remove an anomaly merely because it is an anomaly; never to innovate except when some grievance is felt; never to innovate except so far as to get rid of the grievance; never to lay down any proposition of wider extent than the particular case for which it is necessary to provide; these are the rules which have, from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments."
注释摘要
勒庞在这一段要论证的核心命题是：制度并非人群信念的能动创造者，而是民族性格与时间的被动产物。在他看来，耗费心力去设计规整的成文宪法，不过是无知修辞家的幼稚作业。真正塑造政制的是必要性和时间，而非理性推演。他用英国宪法的演变作为正面史例，援引历史学家麦考莱的观察。麦考莱指出，英格兰的议会在几个世纪里从来不追求对称，只求便利；从不因某事仅仅是异常就去铲除；只在…