《论美国的民主·卷二·二部·第一章·何以爱平等甚于爱自由》第4节
What I have said is applicable to all democratic nations: what I am about to say concerns the French alone. Amongst most modern nations, and especially amongst all those of the Continent of Europe, the taste and the idea of freedom only began to exist and to extend themselves at the time when social conditions were tending to equality, and as a consequence of that very equality. Absolute kings were the most efficient levellers of ranks amongst their subjects. Amongst these nations equality preceded freedom: equality was therefore a fact of some standing when freedom was still a novelty: the one had already created customs, opinions, and laws belonging to it, when the other, alone and for the first time, came into actual existence. Thus the latter was still only an affair of opinion and of taste, whilst the former had already crept into the habits of the people, possessed itself of their manners, and given a particular turn to the smallest actions of their lives. Can it be wondered that the men of our own time prefer the one to the other? I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism--but they will not endure aristocracy. This is true at all times, and especially true in our own. All men and all powers seeking to cope with this irresistible passion, will be overthrown and destroyed by it. In our age, freedom cannot be established without it, and despotism itself cannot reign without its support.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段做了一个清晰的切割：之前讲的是所有民主民族的普遍倾向，现在他要专门谈法国了。这个切割本身就有分量——他等于承认，同样是热爱平等甚于自由，法国人的这种激情有其独特的历史成因，不能简单当作普遍人性的必然。 他提出的关键解释是时间顺序：在欧洲大陆各国，平等是先到的，自由是后来的。这不是一个抽象的哲学命题，而是对旧制度历史的一种精炼概括。绝对君主为…