《旧制度与大革命·卷二·第十六章·路易十六治世乃旧王朝最繁荣之时又何以加速革命》第2节
About thirty or forty years before the Revolution broke out the scene began to change. It seemed as if a sort of inward perturbation, not remarked before, thrilled through the social frame. At first none but a most attentive eye could discern it; but gradually this movement became more characterised and more distinct. Year by year it gained in rapidity and in extent; the nation stirs, and seems about to rise once more. But, beware! It is not the old life of France which re-animates her. The breath of a new life pervades the mighty body, but pervades it only to complete its dissolution. Restless and agitated in their own condition, all classes are straining for something else; to better that condition is the universal desire, but this desire is so feverish and wayward that it leads men to curse the past, and to conceive a state of society altogether the reverse of that which lies before them. Nor was it long before the same spirit penetrated to the heart of the Government. The Government was thus internally transformed without any external, alteration; the laws of the kingdom were unchanged, but they were differently applied. I have elsewhere remarked that the Comptrollers-General and the Intendants of 1760 had no resemblance to the same officers in 1780. The correspondence of the public offices demonstrates this fact in detail. Yet the Intendant of 1780 had the same powers, the same agents, the same arbitrary authority as his predecessor, but not the same purposes; the only care of the former was to keep his province in a state of obedience, to raise the militia, above all to collect the taxes; the latter has very different views, his head is full of a thousand schemes for the augmentation of the wealth of the nation. Roads, canals, manufactures, commerce, are the chief objects of his thoughts; agriculture more particularly attracts his notice. Sully came into fashion amongst the administrators of that age. Then it was that they began to form the agricultural societies, which I have already mentioned; they established exhibitions, they distributed prizes. Some of the circulars of the Comptrollers-General were more like treatises on husbandry than official correspondence.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段里做出一个极微妙的诊断：法国在革命前三四十年的复兴，并不是旧肌体的痊愈，而是一种最终加速其解体的扰动。他刻意区分了“旧生命”与“新生气息”——全国上下确实动了起来，各个阶级都渴望改善自身处境，但这种渴望带有一种焦灼而任性的质地。它使人诅咒过去，并把目光投向一个与现存社会截然相反的秩序。这个判断并非简单的线性叙事，不是说苦难导向反抗，而是说一…