Il Principe.—In retirement at his villa near Percussina, a ham let 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. It appears to have grown out of the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, begun at an earlier date, but only finished later.
Cast in the form of comments on the history of Livy, the Dis corsi are really an inquiry into the genesis and maintenance of states. The Principe is an offshoot from the main theme of the Discorsi, setting forth Machiavelli's views at large and in detail upon the nature of principalities, the method of cementing them, and the qualities of a successful autocrat. Being more limited in subject and more independent as a work of literary art, this essay detaches itself from the main body of the Discorsi, and has at tracted far more attention. In the Principe its author had more than a speculative aim in view, and brought it forth to serve a special crisis. Machiavelli judged the case of Italy so desperate that salvation could only be expected from the intervention of a powerful despot. The unification of Italy in a state protected by a national army was the cherished dream of his life; and the peroration of the Principe shows that he meant this treatise to have a direct bearing on the problem, though the book was by no means exclusively directed to that end. Together with the Discorsi, the Principe contains the speculative fruits of his experience and observation combined with his deductions from Roman history. The two works form a coherent body of opinion, not system atically expressed, it is true, but based on the same principles, in volving the same conclusions, and directed to the same philo sophical end. 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. Mediaeval speculation took the Church and the Empire for granted, as divinely appointed institu tions. Thinkers differed only as Guelfs and Ghibellines, as leaning on the one side to papal, on the other to imperial supremacy. No new substantial philosophy of any kind had emerged from human ism; the political lucubrations of the scholars of the Renaissance were, like their ethical treatises, for the most part rhetorical. Still the humanists created a new medium for the speculative faculty. Simultaneously wit the revival, Italy had passed into the "age of despots." The yoke of the Empire had been shaken off. The Church had taken rank among Italian tyrannies. Principalities and sovereign cities claimed autocratic jurisdiction. These sepa rate despotisms owned no common social tie, were founded on no common ius or right, but were connected in a network of con flicting interests and changeful diplomatic combinations. 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 aware that the strongholds of mediaeval thought must be abandoned, and that the ruins of mediaeval institutions furnished no basis for solid political edifices. 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 con centrating thought upon its fundamental principles. He began to study 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." In this way he restored a method which had been neglected since the days of Aristotle. Machiavelli's conception of the modern state marked the close of the middle ages, and anticipated the next phase of European development. His prince prefigured the mon archs of the r6th and 17th centuries, the monarchs whose motto was L'etat c'est moi! His doctrine of a national militia foreshad owed conscription. The remedies which he suggested for Italian decadence, in the perorations of the Principe and the Arte della guerra, have since been applied in the unification of Italy. Machia velli saw clearly the ruin of his country, and burned to save Italy and set her in her place among the powerful nations; his very limitations and mistakes were due to an absorbing passion for the state of which he dreamed. Concentrating his attention on the one necessity for organizing a powerful coherent nation, Machiavelli forgot that men are more than political beings. He neglected religion, or regarded it as part of the state machinery. He judged private virtue to be the basis of all healthy national ex istence ; but in the realm of politics he subordinated morals to po litical expediency. He held thqt 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. To this point the segregation of politics from every other factor which goes to constitute humanity had brought him ; and this makes us feel his world a wilderness. Yet isolation of the subject matter of this science was essential at the outset, just as the science of economics had first to make a rigid severance of wealth from other units. Only gradually have we recognized that political economy has unavoidable points of contact with ethics.