What makes it permanently interesting, how ever, is precisely the perpetual recurrence of these questions. In the 18th century, for ex ample, Frederick the Great as Crown Prince wntes an Anti-Machiavel, which, one is not surprised to find, never seriously affected his policy as king; in the 19th century Machi avelli becomes one of the heroes of italics Unita. In the 19th century, too, political Machiavel lianism is strongly supported by a false appli cation of the new competitive theory of evolution — evolution by the survival of those organisms which are stronger than others (Virtii), and which fit, or can malce themselves fit, their environment (Fortuna). This bio logical false analogy strikes back into actual politics in the Machiavellianism of the 20th century war. We are still confronted with a concept of the state which, assuming that sheer power is its end, aims not only to control all within the national territory, but to take in ruthlessly from without whatever the sovereign deems necessary to his quiet.
From being merely the document of a mo ment in history 'The Prince) has thus come to be the textbook of continuing political prac tice, and a perennial source of biological, politi cal and ethical theory. Its method, indeed, which at times seems purely inductive, as based upon the examination of historical facts, with out illusions, prepossessions or hypotheses, is based also upon the generalizations of classical writers, and proves in point of fact highly deductive and dogmatic. It assumes, for ex ample, that men are naturally bad until com pelled by the legislator or Prince (Carlyle's *hero))) to be good; it supposes history to move cyclically; and in the person of the Prince, from whom a moral sense is omitted, it frames a political man who is quite as much an abstraction as is the *economic man)) of the laissez-faire school. So far from being merely
factual, (The Prince) embodies rather pure and universal types. Unhampered by repression or apology, it sets forth, expressly or impliedly, human tendencies that belong to no one time or place — the 'adoption of success as the criterion of conduct; the adoption of *the verdict of history* instead of the verdict of ethics, espe cially in international relations; the implication that what makes ethics is the state itself ; and, as has been already indicated, man's striving for fame, his adaptation to his environment or fortune and his natural self-assertiveness or virtu.
To this universal content, as well as to its lucid straightforward classic style, are due The Prince's) literary eminence and influence. Of the latter it will be possible to mention only a case or two from English literature. Mar lowe's and Shakespeare's 'Rich ard III) belong to a type of Elizabethan trag edy which takes for its theme the virtuoso or individualist on his career of rule and ruin. This theme, though derived, in all probability, from the mediaeval tragic theme of the Fall of Princes, is strongly tinged by Machiavelli, with whom Elizabethan dramatists were well acquainted. Bacon's works, too, are under strong Machiavellian influence — his conception of man's dealings with his fellow-man in poli tics, and with nature in inductive and produe+ tive science, being that of *morigeration,* or pliancy to the environment.
The best edition of 'The Prince' is that by L. Arthur Burd, Oxford, 1891, with an intro duction by Lord Acton, and valuable essays, notes and bibliography. There are convenient modern translations by Ninian Hill Thomson (3d ed., Oxford 1913), Luigi Ricci ((The World's Classics)) and W. K. Marriott Library)).