Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 27, 2025
The part which it has played in Bohemia and Hungary, Belgium and Holland, Servia and Bulgaria, and, above all, in the unity of Italy and the realization after four centuries of Machiavelli's dream, is a living witness of its power.
Niccolo Machiavelli, the first great Italian historian, and one of the most eminent political writers of any age or country, was born at Florence, May 3, 1469. He was of an old though not wealthy Tuscan family, his father, who was a jurist, dying when Niccolo was sixteen years old. We know nothing of Machiavelli's youth and little about his studies.
It is rarer than anything you may remember of Macaulay's essay upon the everlastingly execrable Florentine. "Men are a little breed" might have been Machiavelli's motto. Or he might have said "the more I see of men the better I like dogs." He is remorseless in seeing only that men are ungrateful, fickle, deceivers, greedy of gain, run-aways before peril, readier to pay back injury than kindness.
A king should reform his own life, that he may be a pattern of godliness to others; and to this he is tied by the covenant. The godly reformers of Judah were pious and religious men. A king should not follow Machiavelli's counsel, who requireth not that a prince should be truly religious, but saith, "that a shadow of it, and external simulation, are sufficient."
And as in the Principe, as its name indicates, Machiavelli is concerned chiefly with the government of a Prince, so the Discorsi treat principally of the Republic, and here Machiavelli's model republic was the Roman commonwealth, the most successful and most enduring example of popular government. Free Rome is the embodiment of his political idea of the state.
That nature, as of a salamander adapted to its element of fire, as of 'a resolute angel that delights in flame, to which nothing was sacred, which nothing could daunt, which never for a moment sacrificed reason to passion, which was incapable of weakness or fatigue, had fascinated Machiavelli's fancy.
To our northern thought, the free and noble nature of the Moor is wrecked through a single infirmity, by a fiend in the human form. To one of Machiavelli's Italians, Iago's keen-edged intellect would have appeared as admirable as Othello's daring appears to us, and Othello himself little better than a fool and a savage.
It will be remembered that Savonarola was now dead, but that his constitution still existed under the presidency of Pietro Soderini the non mai abbastanza lodato Cavaliere, as Pitti calls him, the anima sciocca of Machiavelli's epigram.
Machiavelli's fault is the Renaissance fault. The Renaissance turned to the past to reconstruct everything, and it copied, save in its architecture, only Antiquity's faults. It became diseased, trying to adjust itself to dead things. Life itself became corrupted; the Renaissance was to a large extent a birth out of degeneration. Machiavelli was a scientist a vivisectionist I should say.
The Sincerity of Machiavelli in this Essay Machiavellism His deliberate Formulation of a cynical political Theory Analysis of the Prince Nine Conditions of Principalities The Interest of the Conqueror acknowledged as the sole Motive of his Policy Critique of Louis XII. Feudal Monarchy and Oriental Despotism Three Ways of subduing a free City Example of Pisa Principalities founded by Adventurers Moses, Romulus, Cyrus, Theseus Savonarola Francesco Sforza Cesare Borgia Machiavelli's personal Relation to him Machiavelli's Admiration of Cesare's Genius A Sketch of Cesare's Career Concerning those who have attained to Sovereignty by Crimes Oliverotto da Fermo The Uses of Cruelty Messer Ramiro d' Orco The pessimistic Morality of Machiavelli On the Faith of Princes Alexander VI. The Policy of seeming virtuous and honest Absence of chivalrous Feeling in Italy The Military System of a powerful Prince Criticism of Mercenaries and Auxiliaries Necessity of National Militia The Art of War Patriotic Conclusion of the Treatise Machiavelli and Savonarola.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking