《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第九章·如此相似的人何以更割裂》第2节
In order to ascertain whether caste, with the ideas, habits, and barriers it creates amongst a nation, is definitely destroyed, look at its marriages. They alone give the decisive feature which we seek. At this very day, in France, after sixty years of democracy, we shall generally seek it in vain. The old and the new families, between which no distinction any longer appears to exist, avoid as much as possible to intermingle with each other by marriage. It has often been remarked that the English nobility has been more prudent, more able, and less exclusive than any other. It would have been much nearer the truth to say, that in England, for a very long time past, no nobility, properly so called, has existed, if we take the word in the ancient and limited sense it has everywhere else retained. This singular revolution is lost in the night of ages, but a living witness of it yet survives in the idiom of language. For several centuries the word gentleman has altogether changed its meaning in England, and the word roturier has ceased to exist. It would have been impossible to translate literally into English the well-known line from the ‘Tartuffe,’ even when Molière wrote it in 1664:-- Et tel qu’on le voit, il est bon gentilhomme. If we make a further application of the science of languages to the science of history, and pursue the fate of the word gentleman through time and through space,--the offspring of the French word gentilhomme,--we shall find its application extending in England in the same proportion in which classes draw near one another and amalgamate. In each succeeding century it is applied to persons placed somewhat lower in the social scale. At length it travelled with the English to America, where it is used to designate every citizen indiscriminately. Its history is that of democracy itself. In France the word gentilhomme has always been strictly limited to its original meaning; since the Revolution it has been almost disused, but its application has never changed. The word which was used to designate the members of the caste was kept intact, because the caste itself was maintained as separate from all the rest as it had ever been.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段里提出了一个冷峻而独特的检验标准：要判断一个民族内部那种以出身划界的种姓精神是否真的消亡，不要看法律条文，也不要看政治宣言，而是看婚姻。他斩钉截铁地说，只有婚姻才能给出决定性征象。这个命题背后是一套社会学的直觉——法律上的平等可以一夜宣布，但家庭内部的选择、嫁娶的门槛，却受制于更深层的习惯、羞耻感与身份想象。这些心理积淀远比制度更难撼动。所…