John Addington Symonds

“ But, having already written the Discorsi and the Principe, he carried with him to this new task of historiography the habit of mind proper to political philosophy. In his hands the history of Florence became a text on which at fitting seasons to deliver lessons in the science he initiated. This gives the work its special character. It is not so much a chronicle of Florentine affairs, from the commencement of modern history to the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492, as a critique of that chronicle from the point of view adopted by Machiavelli in his former writings. ”

“ He held that the people, as distinguished from the nobles and the clergy, were the pith and fibre of nations; yet this same people had to become wax in the hands of the politician—their commerce and their comforts, the arts which give a dignity to life and the pleasures which make life liveable, neglected—their very liberty subordinated to the one tyrannical conception. ”

“ The uneasiness of Machiavelli’s mind in the first years of this retirement is brought before us by his private correspondence. The letters to Vettori paint a man of vigorous intellect and feverish activity, dividing his time between studies and vulgar dissipations, seeking at one time distraction in low intrigues and wanton company, at another turning to the great minds of antiquity for solace. ”

“ A keen and positive political intelligence emerged in the Italian race. The reports of Venetian and Florentine ambassadors at this epoch contain the first germs of an attempt to study politics from the point of view of science.
At this moment Machiavelli intervenes. He was conscious of the change which had come over Italy and Europe. He was aware that the old strongholds of medieval thought must be abandoned, and that the decaying ruins of medieval institutions furnished no basis for the erection of solid political edifices. ”

“ He began to study men, not according to some preconception, but as he found them—men, not in the isolation of one century, but as a whole in history. He drew his conclusions from the nature of mankind itself, “ascribing all things to natural causes or to fortune.” ”

“ Dazzled, as it were, with the brilliancy of his own discovery, concentrated in attention on the one necessity for organizing a powerful coherent nation, he forgot that men are more than political beings. ”

“ Somewhere, in actual life, the stress of craft and courage acting on the springs of human vice and weakness fails, unless the hero of the comedy or tragedy, Callimaco or Cesare, allows for the revolt of healthier instincts. Machiavelli does not seem to have calculated the force of this recoil. ”

“ It shows how a bold and plausible adventurer, aided by the profligacy of a parasite, the avarice and hypocrisy of a confessor, and a mother’s complaisant familiarity with vice, achieves the triumph of making a gulled husband bring his own unwilling but too yielding wife to shame. ”

“ The whole comedy is a study of stupidity and baseness acted on by roguery. About the power with which this picture of domestic immorality is presented there can be no question. But the perusal of the piece obliges us to ask ourselves whether the author’s radical conception of human nature was not false. The same suspicion is forced upon us by the Principe. Did not Machiavelli leave good habit, as an essential ingredient of character, out of account? Men are not such absolute fools as Nicia, nor such compliant catspaws as Ligurio and Timoteo ”

“ Machiavelli immediately became their secretary. The country districts of the Florentine dominion were now divided into departments, and levies of foot soldiers were made in order to secure a standing militia. A commander-in-chief had to be chosen for the new troops. Italian jealousy shrank from conferring this important office on a Florentine, lest one member of the state should acquire a power dangerous to the whole. The choice of Soderini and Machiavelli fell, at this juncture, upon an extremely ineligible person, none other than Don Micheletto, Cesare Borgia’s cut-throat and assassin. ”

“ Yet some such isolation of the subject matter of this science was demanded at the moment of its birth, just as political economy, when first started, had to make a rigid severance of wealth from other units. It is only by a gradual process that social science in its whole complexity can be evolved. ”

“ But Machiavelli’s public career was virtually closed; and the interest of his biography still centres in his literary work. We have seen that already, in 1504, he had been engaged upon a comedy in the manner of Aristophanes, which is now unfortunately lost. A translation of the Andria and three original comedies from his pen are extant, the precise dates of which are uncertain, though the greatest of them was first printed at Rome in 1524. This is the Mandragola, which may be justly called the ripest and most powerful play in the Italian language. ”

“ His originality consists in having extended the positive intelligence of his century from the sphere of contemporary politics and special interests to man at large regarded as a political being. He founded the science of politics for the modern world, by concentrating thought upon its fundamental principles. ”

“ That end is the analysis of the conception of the state, studied under two main types, republican and monarchical. Up to the date of Machiavelli, modern political philosophy had always presupposed an ideal. Medieval speculation took the Church and the Empire for granted, as divinely appointed institutions, under which the nations of the earth must flourish for the space of man’s probation on this planet. ”

“ His letters on public affairs in Italy and Europe, especially those which he meant Vettori to communicate to the Medici at Rome, are marked by extraordinary fineness of perception, combined, as usual in his case, with philosophical breadth. In retirement at his villa near Percussina, a hamlet of San Casciano, Machiavelli completed the Principe before the end of 1513. This famous book is an analysis of the methods whereby an ambitious man may rise to sovereign power. ”

“ But they reveal no less acumen combined with imaginative penetration into the very essence of national existence.
Machiavelli returned from Germany in June 1508. The rest of that year and a large part of 1509 were spent in the affairs of the militia and the war of Pisa. Chiefly through his exertions the war was terminated by the surrender of Pisa in June 1509. Meanwhile the league of Cambray had disturbed the peace of Italy, and Florence found herself in a perilous position between Spain and France. Soderini’s government grew weaker. ”

“ It is an athlete’s style, all bone and sinew, nude, without superfluous flesh or ornament.
It would seem that from the date of Machiavelli’s discourse to Leo on the government of Florence the Medici had taken him into consideration. Writing to Vettori in 1513, he had expressed his eager wish to “roll stones” in their service; and this desire was now gratified. In 1521 he was sent to Carpi to transact a petty matter with the chapter of the Franciscans, the chief known result of the embassy being a burlesque correspondence with Francesco Guicciardini. ”

“ From what remains of Machiavelli’s official letters, and from his tract upon the Modo che tenne il duca Valentino per ammazzar Vitellozzo Vitelli, we are able to appreciate the actual relations which existed between the two men, and the growth in Machiavelli’s mind of a political ideal based upon his study of the duke’s character. ”