Laurence Arthur Burd

“ Even with an author like Machiavelli, who was not averse to repeating himself, and less reticent than many others, it is not always easy to be certain that the latent hypotheses and scattered hints have been correctly elicited and grouped. Still, it is in any case clear that what controlled his views of the movement of events, whether in his own day or in earlier times, and of the lessons which they convey, was, in the last analysis, a specific notion of man's nature as a permanent force realising itself and imposing itself upon external things, shaping and subjecting them. ”

“ Hence arise the vicissitudes of their fortunes; for as some desire to have more, and some fear to lose what they have already, enmities and wars ensue, which lead to the ruin of one country and the rise of another.—That which more than anything else throws down an empire from its loftiest summit is this: the powerful are never satisfied with their power. Hence it happens that those who have lost are ill-contented and a disposition is aroused to overthrow those who come off victors. Thus it happens that one rises and another dies ”

“ And if our religion requires us to have any strength in us, it calls upon us to be strong to suffer rather than to do." Christianity, as understood by medieval society, appeared to add to the difficulties of combining the characters of the good man and the good citizen. Machiavelli looked for power: "whereas this mode of living seems to have rendered the world weak, and given it over as a prey to wicked men, who can with impunity deal with it as they please; seeing that the mass of mankind, in order to go to Paradise, think more how to endure wrongs than how to avenge them." ”

“ Some element of permanence in the source of authority is the more indispensable, because there is a point in the career of every society at which laws would otherwise be too feeble to cope with the general corruption: "there are no laws and no institutions which have power to curb a universal corruption.—Laws, if they are to be observed, presuppose good customs."
Machiavelli by no means overestimated the power of laws; alone, they could never be an adequate instrument of empire. ”

“ When the problem was, not how to establish a new government in the face of apparently overwhelming obstacles, but only how to carry on what was already well instituted, a republic would be found far more serviceable than a monarchy; "while a prince is superior to a people in instituting laws, in shaping civil society, in framing new statutes and ordinances, a people has the same superiority in preserving what is established." It is doubtful whether Machiavelli ever contemplated the creation of an enduring monarchy in Italy ”

“ Machiavelli, however, believed that there can be extremely few cases in which a man is entitled to judge for himself of the working of law. "Men ought to give honour to the past, and obedience to the present; they ought to wish for good princes, but to put up with them, whatever their character." Innovation is hazardous both for the subject and for the ruler. True political wisdom will be revealed in the organisation of government on a basis so firm that innovation becomes unnecessary. ”

“ It may be taken for a general rule that a republic or kingdom is never, or very rarely, well organised at its beginning, or fundamentally renovated by a reform of its old institutions, unless it is organised by one man.... Wherefore the wise founder of a commonwealth, who aims, not at personal profit but at the general good, and desires to benefit not his own descendants but the common motherland, ought to use every effort to obtain the authority for himself alone ”

“ I reckon unhappy those princes who, to secure their State, are obliged to employ extraordinary methods, having the many for their enemies; for he who has the few for his enemies, readily and without serious difficulties secures himself; but he who has for enemy the whole people never secures himself, and, the more cruel he is, the weaker his rule becomes. So the best remedy within his reach is to try to make friends with the people. ”

“ Unfortunately, human nature is apt to recoil from the extreme of evil and to fall short of the ideal of good; "men know not how to be gloriously wicked or perfectly good; and, when a crime has somewhat of grandeur and nobility in it, they flinch." Yet a great crisis often brings to the front a great man, and in 1513 Machiavelli believed the moment had come: "this opportunity must not be allowed to slip by, in order that Italy may at last see her redeemer appear." The right man was, he believed, a Medici, who, with far greater resources, might succeed where a Borgia had failed. ”

“ Success became the solvent of moral distinctions, and judgment must follow results. And in the particular case of Italy, a further sanction for the reformer's acts might perhaps be found in the desperate condition of the country, and in the high end in view: "where the bare salvation of the motherland is at stake, there no consideration of justice or injustice can find a place, nor any of mercy and cruelty, or of honour and disgrace; every scruple must be set aside, and that plan followed which saves her life and maintains her liberty." ”

“ It is only as an author that Machiavelli has any abiding place in the world's history. He has a claim upon the attention of the modern world because, living at a time when the old political order in Europe was collapsing and new problems both in State and in society were arising with dazzling rapidity, he endeavoured to interpret the logical meaning of events, to forecast the inevitable issues, and to elicit and formulate the rules which, destined henceforth to dominate political action, were then taking shape among the fresh-forming conditions of national life. ”

“ Here the suggestions and examples of classical authors, and especially of Polybius, were decisive for Machiavelli, in whom after the manner of his age ancient and modern modes of thought were fancifully blended. "I am not unaware," he wrote, "that many have held and still hold the opinion that human affairs are so ordered by Fortune and by God, that men cannot by their prudence modify them; rather, they have no remedy at all in the matter; and hence they may come to think they need not trouble much about things, but allow themselves to be governed by chance. ”

“ The safety of a republic or a kingdom consists, not in having a ruler who governs wisely while he lives, but in being subject to one who so organises it that, when he dies, it may continue to maintain itself. ”

“ The truism "Circumstances alter cases," was interpreted by Machiavelli to mean that the pressure of external forces is usually stronger than the resistance of individual principle. This formed the rational basis of his complaints that no one who attempted to govern in Italy would alter the courses to which his genius inclined him, when facts had altered; yet any one who was sufficiently versatile would always have good fortune, and the wise man would at last command the stars and fate. In political life such reasoning led to the rejection of morality, as the plain man understands it. ”

“ No struggle against the tendency to corruption and extinction can be permanently successful, just as no man can prolong his existence beyond a certain point. But while decadence is in progress in one part of the world, the corresponding principle of growth may predominate elsewhere. In every case, when the highest point has been reached, the descent begins. Machiavelli did not flinch from the consequences of this reasoning, when translated into the moral order: evil is the cause of good, and good is the cause of evil. ”

“ They are mischievous in every republic and in every country; yet more mischievous still are those who, besides being so situated, command fortified places and have subjects who obey them. The kingdom of Naples, the territory of Rome, the Romagna, and Lombardy are filled with these two classes of men. For this reason there has never been in those provinces any republic or free State; for such kinds of person are absolutely antagonistic to all civil government. The attempt to introduce a republic into countries so circumstanced would not be possible. ”

“ For though Machiavelli inferred that ethics and politics are distinct, and that the art of government is out of relation to morals, he founded both upon the same assumptions. The ethical portion of his work is, of course, of little importance in comparison with the political, and is usually wholly ignored.
The conception which had the widest influence upon Machiavelli's teaching is that of the essential depravity of human nature. Men are born bad, and no one does good, unless obliged. ”

“ On the other hand, having regard rather to the general body of citizens than to their rulers, Machiavelli believed, like Bacon, that wars were necessary as a national tonic; peace is disruptive and enervating; "war and fear" produce unity. So long as a community continued young, all would be well; but "virtue produces peace, peace idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin.—Virtue makes places tranquil; then, from tranquillity results idleness; and idleness wastes country and town. ”

“ This is not the case, because whatever, whether in the intellectual or material order, is the outcome of man's activity is subjected to a law similar to that which controls the progress and decay of the individual life; everything contains within itself the seeds of its own dissolution; "in all things there is latent some peculiar evil which gives rise to fresh vicissitudes." ”

“ The primary impulse towards evil thus comes from within the ruler: the direction in which political changes tend is not determined by the progress of general enlightenment among the citizens, by the growth of new ideas, or by the development of new needs in a country. Machiavelli deemed the individual supreme: a "new prince," like the Greek νομοθέτης, brought into existence an artificial structure, formed on arbitrary lines, and called a State: under this his subjects had to live. ”

“ No State could repose confidence in a government, in which political secrets could not be kept and where it appeared impossible to fix responsibility on anyone. From time to time efforts were made at Florence to remove this source of weakness, and the appointment in 1502 of a Gonfaloniere holding office for life seemed to many men, including Machiavelli, to have at last furnished some real guarantee for a stable policy. ”

“ In order to reorganise them—supposing any one had authority to do it—there would be no other way than to establish a monarchy; the reason being this: where the body of the people is so corrupt that the laws are unable to curb it, it is necessary to establish together with the laws a superior force, that is to say, the arm of a King (mano regia) , which with absolute and overwhelming power may curb the overwhelming ambition and corruption of the nobles. ”

“ Machiavelli had formed definite opinions upon some of the fundamental questions of moral science. He has recorded his views upon what is now called the origin of morality, and also attempted to determine the real nature of good and evil. Believing men naturally bad, and holding therefore that morality is non-natural, in the sense that it is distasteful to the untrained impulses in men and not to be arrived at by evolving anything of which perhaps they are, in some unexplained way, capable, the question confronted him, How is right action to be enforced? ”

“ Consequently, when they had afterwards to elect a ruler, they did not seek out the strongest, but the most wise and the most just.—There is a saying that hunger and poverty make men industrious, and the laws make them good."
Thus moral action in a civil society meant for Machiavelli chiefly conformity to a code; the moral sense is the product of law or, in the last analysis, of fear. The sanction of conduct was derived from positive institutions; where no law existed, no action could be unjust. ”

“ Machiavelli, though his sympathies were republican, knew that the times required the intervention of a despot. He had no hesitation in deciding the relative merits, in the abstract, of the democratic and the monarchical forms of government: "the rule of a people is better than that of a prince." ”

“ But the drastic reform contemplated by him could not be achieved under republican institutions, which could only work satisfactorily among a people whose character was sound. Corruption had gone too far in Italy; "it is corrupt above all other countries." Moreover "a people, into whom corruption has thoroughly entered, cannot live in freedom, I do not say for a short time, but for any time at all." By "corruption" Machiavelli understood primarily the decay of private and civic morality, the growth of impiety and violence, of idleness and ignorance ”

“ For where the fear of God is wanting, a kingdom must either go to ruin, or be supported by the fear of a Prince as compensating for the lost influences of religion.—Rulers of a commonwealth or kingdom ought to preserve the existing foundations of religion; if they do this, it will be easy for them to keep their State religious, and consequently virtuous and united." A politician is not called upon to examine the truth or the absolute value of religion; in some cases it may even be incumbent upon a prince to protect a form of religion which he believes to be false ”

“ There will, of course, be some few men who cannot be cheated; the new prince must not hesitate to kill them. "When men individually, or a whole city together offend against the State, a prince for a warning to others and for his own safety has no other remedy than to exterminate them; for the prince, who fails to chastise an offender so that he cannot offend any more, is reckoned an ignoramus or a coward." Elsewhere the language is even more explicit: "he who is dead cannot think about revenging himself." ”

“ The regular failure of so many repeated attempts to overpower Pisa disheartened the Florentines, but their hatred was insatiable. Everything tended to confirm the opinion, to which many men had been long inclining, that success could only be achieved by a thorough reform of the military system. The year 1506 witnessed the actual carrying out of a scheme which was to supersede the employment of mercenary troops. Machiavelli was the leading spirit in the whole movement; he was supported both by Soderini and by Antonio Giacomini. ”

“ When the exact place of Machiavelli in history has been defined, the issues which he raised will still subsist. The difficulties can only ultimately disappear, when the progress of thought has determined in some final and conclusive form the necessary relations of all men to one another and to God. ”

“ The danger from the papal troops was at the moment more directly pressing than any other: to declare for France would not only have exposed the Florentine territory to an immediate attack, but would have also alienated the sympathies of all those citizens who dreaded a conflict with the head of the Church, and wished also to stand well with the Medici. The city was full of antagonistic parties and irreconcilable interests, and an abortive conspiracy was formed to murder the Gonfaloniere. In order to gain time Machiavelli was sent upon a mission to France. ”

“ The constant recurrence of the question in Machiavelli's writings is the measure of the importance it possessed for him. He gave much consideration to this primitive problem, which he called il sopraccapo della filosofia; he perceived that it was at least necessary to devise some intellectual compromise which, while in no way claiming to offer a logical solution, should be clear and manageable enough for practical life. ”