《旧制度与大革命·卷三·第一章·大革命爆发之际人心的激荡与无所归依》第3节
It is curious to see in the official correspondence of that epoch, civil officers of ability and foresight laying their plans, framing their measures, and calculating scientifically the use they will make of their powers, at a time when the Government they are serving, the laws they are applying, the society they are living in, and they themselves shall be no more. ‘What scenes are passing in France!’ writes Johann Müller on the 6th of August, 1789. ‘Blessed be the impression they produce on the nations and on their masters! I know there are excesses, but the cost of a free constitution is not too great. Is not a storm which purifies the air better than an atmosphere tainted as with the plague, even though here and there it should strike a few heads?’ ‘What an event,’ exclaimed Fox, ‘how much the greatest it is that ever happened in the world! and how much the best!’ Can we be surprised that this conception of the Revolution as a general uprising of humanity, a conception which enlarged and invigorated so many small and feeble souls, should have taken possession at once of the mind of France, when even other countries partook of it? Nor is it astonishing that the first excesses of the Revolution should have affected the best patriots of France so little, when even foreigners who were not excited by the struggle or embittered by personal grievances could extend so much indulgence to them. Let it not be supposed that this sort of abhorrence of themselves and of their age, which had thus strangely fallen upon almost all the inhabitants of the continent of Europe, was a superficial or a transient sentiment. Ten years later, when the French Revolution had inflicted on Germany all sorts of violent transformations accompanied by death and destruction, even then, one of those Germans, in whom enthusiasm for France had turned to bitter hatred, exclaims, mindful of the past, in a confidential effusion, ‘What was is no more. What new edifice will be raised on the ruins, I know not. But this I know, that it would be the direst calamity if this tremendous era were again to give birth to the apathy and the worn-out forms of the past.’ ‘Yes,’ replied the person to whom these words were addressed, ‘the old social body must perish.’
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一段中捕捉了一个极富讽刺意味的历史图景：旧制度末期的行政官员们，即便精明强干、富有远见，仍在仔细地制定计划、设计措施、科学地计算自身权力将如何运用，却浑然不觉他们所服务的政府、所执行的法律、所栖居的社会，连同他们自己，都即将不复存在。这种“精确谋划”与“整个制度即将崩塌”之间的巨大错位，构成了他对革命前夜政治理性的一个根本批判。这里说的绝不仅仅…