《旧制度与大革命·序言·致读者》第10节
Democratic communities which are not free may be rich, refined, adorned, magnificent, powerful by the weight of their uniform mass; they may contain many private merits--good fathers of families, honest traders, estimable men of property; nay, many good Christians will be found there, for their country is not of this world, and the glory of their faith is to produce such men amidst the greatest depravity of manners and under the worst government. The Roman Empire in its extreme decay was full of such men. But that which, I am confident, will never be found in such societies is a great citizen, or, above all, a great people; nay, I do not hesitate to affirm that the common level of the heart and the intellect will never cease to sink as long as equality of conditions and despotic power are combined there. Thus I thought and thus I wrote twenty years ago. I confess that since that time nothing has occurred in the world to induce me to think or to write otherwise. Having expressed the good opinion I had of Freedom at a time when Freedom was in favour, I may be allowed to persist in that opinion though she be forsaken. Let it also be considered that even in this I am less at variance with most of my antagonists than perhaps they themselves suppose. Where is the man who, by nature, should have so mean a soul as to prefer dependence on the caprices of one of his fellow-creatures to obedience to laws which he has himself contributed to establish, provided that his nation appear to him to possess the virtues necessary to use freedom aright? There is no such man. Despots themselves do not deny the excellence of freedom, but they wish to keep it all to themselves, and maintain that all other men are utterly unworthy of it. Thus it is not on the opinion which may be entertained of freedom that this difference subsists, but on the greater or the less esteem we may have for mankind; and it may be said with strict accuracy that the taste a man may show for absolute government bears an exact ratio to the contempt he may profess for his countrymen. I pause before I can be converted to that opinion.
注释摘要
这段文字是《旧制度与大革命》序言中极其密集的一个思想段落，托克维尔在这里将他对自由的理解推向了某种近乎信仰告白的高度。他先构筑了一个看似悖论式的场景：那些没有自由的民主社会，照样可以富庶、精致、壮丽、强大，照样可以盛产私德无亏的好人——好家长、诚实商人、正直的有产者，甚至虔诚的基督徒。他特别补充的那句关于基督徒的话暗藏着尖锐的神学—政治判断：正因为信仰者的…