The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
In the Discourses on Livy the doctrinal and scientific interest predominated: in The Prince, which became the most influential of all his books, the local and temporary problems lay at the root of the whole discussion. It is therefore necessary to separate, within the limits of a legitimate analysis, the two elements found combined in his writings; and though no firm line can or ought to be drawn between the two parts, which at nearly every point touch and supplement each other, a divided discussion will best conduce to the clearness from which truth most quickly emerges.
The writings of nearly all the Florentine historians and publicists of the sixteenth century involve certain fundamental beliefs or hypotheses, upon which the whole structure of their reasoning rests; these are rarely stated totidem verbis in any passage, although implied in nearly all. The general body of their work forms a perpetual commentary upon a text, which is only incidentally enunciated; the method employed is expository only in appearance, but in reality genetic; the ultimate principles of the argument are the final result at which the reader arrives, and not a guide which he has with him from the beginning. 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. The conception of human nature to which he adhered was used as the foundation for a definite theory of history as a whole. Then the process of reasoning was reversed, and from the collective activity of national life a return was made to the isolated unit or individual, and an ethical supplement added, thus completing a general conspectus of man both in the State and in society. 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. This he regarded as a necessary axiom of political science. It was contested by a few of his contemporaries, but on the whole the political speculation of the Renaissance and the theological teaching of the Reformation issued, in this respect, in the assertion of the same truth. The result at which theologians arrived in their efforts to settle the controversies connected with original or “birth” sin, was reached by Machiavelli through the study of the past, and with the object of obtaining a fixed basis for discussion. For the most part he limited himself to an emphatic iteration of his belief, without attempting analysis or defence beyond a general appeal to the common experience of mankind. It is not certain through what channels the view was conveyed to him; he shared the belief with Thucydides. “Men never behave well,” he wrote, “unless they are obliged; wherever a choice is open to them and they are free to do as they like, everything is immediately filled with confusion and disorder.—Men are more prone to evil than to good.—As is shown by all who discuss civil government, and by the abundance of examples in every history, whoever organises a State, or lays down laws in it, must necessarily assume that all men are bad, and that they will follow the wickedness of their own hearts, whenever they have free opportunity to do so; and, supposing any wickedness to be temporarily hidden, it is due to a secret cause of which, having seen no experience to the contrary, men are ignorant; but time, which they say is the father of all truth, reveals it at last.” This view involved the corollary, that human nature could not be depended upon to reform itself; it is only through repression that evil can be kept below the suicidal point.
Combined with this conviction was another, resting also upon an assumption and likewise applied as a general principle to explain history. The maxim “Imitation is natural to man” would express it in its crudest and most vague form. “Men almost always walk in the paths which others have trodden and in their actions proceed by imitation, and yet cannot keep entirely to other men’s paths, nor attain to the excellence which they imitate.” The idea is often enforced directly by Machiavelli, sometimes expanded or spoken of in a figure. His meaning was that all men, at any given period, must necessarily be in the debt of the dead; the masses cannot help following the beaten paths; the tendency of history is not to initiate, but to reproduce in a debased form. Men, being lazy, are more willing to conform than to pioneer; it is less inconvenient to tolerate than to persecute. Of course such repetition as history appeared to reveal would still be, in the main, not the result of conscious imitation, but the inevitable product of the permanent passions in man, which he believed to have a larger power in determining events than the rational and progressive elements. “The wise are wont to say, and not at random or without foundation, that he who desires to foresee what is going to take place, should consider what has taken place; because all the things in the world, at all periods, have an essential correspondence with past times. This arises because, as they are the work of men who have and always have had the same passions, they must of necessity produce the same effects.—In all cities and among all peoples there exist the same appetites and the same dispositions that have always existed.”
The uniformity of the forces at work in history might be expected to produce a monotonous movement in events, a mere recurring series in the life of nations. 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.” 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. “It has been, is, and always will be true that evil succeeds good, and good evil, and the one is always the cause of the other.” On this assumption, the variety of history became no more than the displacement or dislocation of permanent elements: “I am convinced that the world has always existed after the same manner, and the quantity of good and evil in it has been constant: but this good and this evil keep shifting from country to country, as is seen in the records of those ancient Empires which, as their manners changed, passed from the one to the other, but the world itself remained the same: there was this difference only, that whereas Assyria was at first the seat of the world’s virtue [virtu], this was afterwards placed in Media, then in Persia, until at last it came to Italy and Rome: and though since the Roman Empire no other Empire has followed which has proved lasting, nor in which the world has concentrated its virtue, nevertheless it is seen to have been diffused throughout many nations, in which men lived virtuously [virtuosamente].” And what is true of institutions and civilisation in general, is a valid law also in the political world, where forms of government recur in a series which can be calculated upon. Monarchy passes into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, democracy into anarchy: “so, if the founder of a State establishes in a city any one of these three governments, he establishes it for a short time only; for no remedy can be applied to prevent it sliding off into its opposite, owing to the resemblance which exists, in this case, between the virtue and the vice.—This is the circle within which all States have been and are governed.” Many revolutions of this nature would exhaust the vitality of a State, and render it the prey of a stronger neighbour; but if any people could possess adequate recuperative power, the circular movement might continue for ever: “a State would be able to revolve for an indefinite period from government to government.” Considering the inherent defects of each of these constitutional forms, Machiavelli accorded unreservedly a theoretical preference to a “mixed” government, while rejecting it as practically unsuited to the condition of Italy in his own day.
The next step was to consider, how this tendency to become corrupt and, ultimately, extinct, made itself manifest in a State; what were the symptoms of decay and what the more immediate causes