《旧制度与大革命·卷一·第三章·何以这是一场政治革命却走了宗教革命的路》第1节
All mere civil and political revolutions have had some country for their birth-place, and have remained circumscribed within its limits. The French Revolution, however, had no territorial boundary--far from it; one of its effects has been to efface as it were all ancient frontiers from the map of Europe. It united or it divided mankind in spite of laws, traditions, characters, and languages, turning fellow-countrymen into enemies, and foreigners into brothers; or rather, it formed an intellectual country common to men of every nation, but independent of all separate nationalities. We should search all the annals of history in vain for a political revolution of the same character; that character is only to be found in certain religious revolutions. And accordingly it is to them that the French Revolution must be compared, if any light is to be thrown upon it by analogy. Schiller remarks, with truth, in his ‘History of the Thirty Years’ War,’ that the great Reformation of the sixteenth century had the effect of bringing together nations which scarcely knew each other, and of closely uniting them by new sympathies. Thus it was that Frenchmen warred against Frenchmen, while Englishmen came to their assistance; men born on the most distant shores of the Baltic penetrated into the very heart of Germany in order to defend Germans of whose existence they had never heard until then. International wars assumed something of the character of civil wars, whilst in every civil war foreigners were engaged. The former interests of every nation were forgotten in behalf of new interests; territorial questions were succeeded by questions of principle. The rules of diplomacy were involved in inextricable confusion, greatly to the horror and amazement of the politicians of the time. The very same thing happened in Europe after 1789. The French Revolution was then a political revolution, which in its operation and its aspect resembled a religious one. It had every peculiar and characteristic feature of a religious movement; it not only spread to foreign countries, but it was carried thither by preaching and by propaganda. It is impossible to conceive a stranger spectacle than that of a political revolution which inspires proselytism, which its adherents preach to foreigners with as much ardour and passion as they have shown in enacting it at home. Of all the new and strange things displayed to the world by the French Revolution, this assuredly is the newest. On penetrating deeper into this matter, we shall most likely discover that this similarity of effects must be produced by a latent similarity of causes.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这里做了一个大胆的比较史学的判断：法国大革命之所以让同时代人感到前所未有的震撼，不是因为它激烈，而是因为它像一场宗教革命那样运作。他先设定了一个普通政治革命的类型——它们都有出生地，被国境框定，成败局限于一国之内。而法国大革命却抹去了旧欧洲的地图边界，它不按民族、语言、传统来划分阵营，而是将同胞变为敌人、外国人变为兄弟。这种超越领土、按信念重新划…