《旧制度与大革命·卷三·第六章·三级会议陈情书的撰写把彻底革命的念头送进了人心》第3节
Providence, which had resolved that the spectacle of our passions and our calamities should be the lesson of the world, permitted the commencement of the Revolution to coincide with a great scarcity and an extraordinary winter. The harvest of 1788 was short, and the first months of the winter of 1789 were marked by cold of unparalleled severity--a frost, like that which is felt in the northern extremity of Europe, hardened the earth to a great depth. For two months the whole of France lay hidden under a thick fall of snow, like the steppes of Siberia. The atmosphere was congealed, the sky dull and sad; and this accident of nature gave a gloomier and fiercer tone to the passions of man. All the grievances which might be urged against the institutions of the country, and those who ruled by those institutions, were felt more bitterly amidst the cold and want that prevailed; and when the peasant left his scarcely burning hearth and his chill and naked abode, with a famished and frozen family, to meet his fellows and discuss their common condition of life, it cost him no effort to discover the cause of all his calamities, and he fancied that he could easily, if he dared, put his finger on the source of all his wrongs.
注释摘要
托克维尔在这一节里讨论的是一个容易被单线因果论掩盖的微妙机制：自然灾难本身并不制造革命，但它彻底改变了人们归因苦难的方式。他把偶然事件放进一种近乎神学的叙事框架，一开头的「天意」不是单纯的修辞，而是对他一贯秉持的历史哲学的重申——大革命之所以具有世界意义，正是因为这场人间灾难提供了普遍性的教训。但在展开论证时，他立刻把这种近乎预言式的口吻落到了最具体的历史…