《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第九章·如此相似的人何以更割裂》第8节
At no period of French history had it been so easy to acquire nobility as in 1789, and never were the middle classes and the nobility so completely separated. Not only did the nobles refuse to endure, in their electoral colleges, any one who had the slightest taint of middle-class blood, but the middle classes also as carefully excluded all those who might in any degree be looked upon as noble. In some provinces the newly-ennobled were rejected by one class because they were not noble enough, and by the other because they were too much so. This, it is said, was the case with the celebrated Lavoisier. If, leaving the nobility out of the question, we turn our attention to the middle classes, we shall find the same state of things: the man of the middle classes living almost as far apart from the common people as the noble was from the middle class. Almost the whole of the middle class before the Revolution dwelt in the towns. Two causes had principally led to this result--the privileges of the nobles and the taille. The Seigneur who lived on his estates usually treated his peasants with a certain good-natured familiarity, but his arrogance towards his neighbours of the middle class was unbounded. It had never ceased to augment as his political power had diminished, and for that very reason; for on the one hand, as he had ceased to govern, he no longer had any interest in conciliating those who could assist him in that task; whilst, on the other, as has frequently been observed, he tried to console himself for the loss of real power by an immoderate display of his apparent rights. Even his absence from his estates, instead of relieving his neighbours, only served to increase their annoyance. Absenteeism had not even that good effect, for privileges enforced by proxy were all the more insupportable. I am not sure, however, that the taille, and all the taxes which had been assimilated to it, were not still more powerful causes.
注释摘要
这是一个极其精致的悖论，托克维尔此处的推理是这样展开的：表面上看，大革命前夜的法国比历史上任何时候都更容易让平民通过购买官职等方式获得贵族头衔，按理说阶级壁垒正在松动；但他紧跟着就指出，恰恰是在这一时刻，第三等级与贵族之间的相互排斥达到了史无前例的强度。他把逻辑反转过来——通道虽然打开了，但通道两端的人反而用更加激烈的姿态来守卫各自的边界。真正的线索不在于…