They have always seemed more
realistic, even when they seemed alarming, because all they had to do
was to generalize the experience that nobody could escape. Machiavelli
is the classic of this school, a man most mercilessly maligned,
because he happened to be the first naturalist who used plain language
in a field hitherto preempted by supernaturalists. [Footnote: F. S.
Oliver in his _Alexander Hamilton_, says of Machiavelli (p. 174):
"Assuming the conditions which exist--the nature of man and of
things--to be unchangeable, he proceeds in a calm, unmoral way, like a
lecturer on frogs, to show how a valiant and sagacious ruler can best
turn events to his own advantage and the security of his dynasty."] He
has a worse name and more disciples than any political thinker who
ever lived. He truly described the technic of existence for the
self-contained state. That is why he has the disciples. He has the bad
name chiefly because he cocked his eye at the Medici family, dreamed
in his study at night where he wore his "noble court dress" that
Machiavelli was himself the Prince, and turned a pungent description
of the way things are done into an eulogy on that way of doing them.
In his most infamous chapter [Footnote: _The Prince_, Ch. XVIII.
"Concerning the way in which Princes should keep faith." Translation
by W. K. Marriott.] he wrote that "a prince ought to take care that he
never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the
above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who hears and
sees him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and
religious.
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