The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
of national dissolution might be, at least temporarily, arrested. Machiavelli furnished an answer by a reference to a primitive bias of human nature, a congenital failing in all men. Power breeds appetite; no rulers are ever satisfied; no one has ever reached a position from which he has no desire to advance further. “Ambition is so powerful in the hearts of men that, to whatever height they rise, it never leaves them. The reason is, that nature has created men so that they can desire everything, but they cannot get everything; thus, as the desire is always in excess of the power of gratifying it, the result is that they are discontented and dissatisfied with what they possess. 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 he who has raised himself is for ever pining with new ambition or with fear. This appetite destroys States; and it is the more extraordinary that, while everyone recognises this fault, no one avoids it.” 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. He also by his personal and individual failings led the way to ruin. 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. Then, when a district has been involved in disorder for a time, virtue returns to dwell there once again.”
The periods within which these inevitable revolutions are accomplished, might, with certain limitations, be regulated by human effort. Man, inasmuch as he is by nature a disorderly being, needed, whatever the form of the government, to be held under control by some despotic power; hence the necessity of law. The rights, the duties, and even the virtues of individuals are the creatures of law. The duration of any constitutional form and the life of any State is in large measure determined by the excellence of its laws. “It is true that a Power generally endures for a larger or a shorter time, according as its laws and institutions are more or less good.—Let Princes know that they begin to lose their State at that hour in which they begin to violate the laws, and those customs and usages which are ancient and under which men have lived for a long time.” If the laws are inadequate or unsound, or if they can be ignored with impunity, the obligations hitherto resting upon the citizens are simultaneously removed. 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. “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.” 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. Their severity required to be mitigated, and their restraining force to be supplemented, by some influence potent to control not men’s acts only but their minds. There was a sense, therefore, in which the State could not with advantage be separated from the Church; both were to cooperate to create national customs and habits of thought, not less than to enforce order and maintain the stability of society. Without confounding the domains of politics and theology, Machiavelli urged the familiar view that any community, which has lost or misdirected the religious sentiment, has greatly weakened itself and imperilled its own existence. “The observance of the ordinances of religion is the cause of the greatness of commonwealths; so also is their neglect the cause of ruin. 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; and thus religious toleration would rest, in the first instance, upon a secular sanction. The ruler must be careful to preserve his intellectual balance, and to allow neither religion nor sentiment to intrude inappropriately. Politics and paternosters are distinct. If the auspices are unfavourable, they must be set aside. On the other hand no ceremonies and no creed can of themselves secure success. “The belief that if you remain idle on your knees, God will fight for you in your own despite, has ruined many kingdoms and many States. Prayers are, indeed, necessary; and he is downright mad who forbids the people their ceremonies and devotions. For from them it seems that men reap union and good order, and upon these depend prosperity and happiness. Yet let no man be so silly as to believe that, if his house falls about his head, God will save it without any other prop; for he will die beneath the ruins.” When the supports of law and of religion collapse, a State is approaching its dissolution. It is possible, indeed, that a reformer may be equal to the work of regeneration; but on the other hand it is “very easy for a reformer never to arise.” Under such conditions abnormal methods find their justification; recourse must be had to “extraordinary remedies” and “strong medicines”; the diseased members must be cut away, to prolong, though but for a season, the life of a State.
Such, in broad outline, were the chief views of Machiavelli concerning the nature of man and the general movement of history, separated from the limitations of any particular time and place. At first sight they might perhaps appear visionary, remote, unreal; vitiated in some degree by ambiguities in the meaning of the terms employed and by hasty generalisation; academic in character, and out of relation to the storm and stress of a reawakening world. This impression would be only partially true. Machiavelli, living at a period of transition, endeavoured, in the presence of an unusual problem, to push beyond its barriers, and to fix the relations of what was local and temporal to the larger and more universal laws of political societies in general. It was only by enlarging the area of analysis, and embracing the wider questions of history and ethics, that it was possible to frame a scientific basis on which to erect the structure of practical politics. The theoretical foundation was essential. Interest was naturally most largely centred in that portion of his works which was the most unusual; but in reality it is hardly intelligible by itself. Ideas, long familiar in classical literature, may seem in their new context to bear little relation to what has come to be regarded as Machiavelli’s main object; in reality they are not extraneous nor incidental, but the logical prius of the whole construction. Whoever began without securing his foundations, was obliged to secure them afterwards, though, as Machiavelli reflected, with discomfort to the architect and danger to the building. It was his conception of human nature and of history that logically entitled him to use the experience of the past as a guide for the future; to justify his rejection of constitutional reform where the material to be worked upon was thoroughly corrupt, and virtue imputed for a capital crime; to create new standards, to which appeal might be made in judging practical questions; to throw aside the fetters of medievalism and to treat politics inductively. It was thus that he was led to look to the past, and especially to ancient Rome, for examples and models.