Niccolò Machiavelli

The teaching

Taught from his own books, above all the Discourses on Livy, with The Prince, The Art of War and The Mandrake.

The Prince, in brief

The Prince teaches what rulers do, not what they ought to do: that a new ruler must learn how not to be good and use it as need requires; that it is safer to be feared than loved if he cannot be both, though never hated; that he must be both fox and lion; and that fortune governs half of what happens, and virtù, skill and nerve made ready beforehand, the other half. That book is taught chapter by chapter on The Prince. The longer book he wrote beside it, the Discourses on Livy, teaches how a free people keeps itself free, and most of what follows comes from it.

Two humours, and the tumults that made Rome free

In every republic there are two humours, the people's and the great's: the great wish to command and oppress, and the people wish only not to be commanded and oppressed. Most writers blame the quarrels between the senate and the plebs of Rome, but Machiavelli holds that those tumults were the first cause of Roman liberty. Every law made in favour of freedom was born of their disunion. Good examples come from good education, good education from good laws, and good laws from the very tumults that so many condemn without thinking.

The mixed state

There are three good kinds of government, rule by one, by the few and by the many, and each slides easily into its own corrupt twin: princedom into tyranny, aristocracy into the rule of a narrow clique, popular government into licence. The cycle can turn for ever unless a lawgiver mixes the three, so that prince, nobles and people each keep watch on the others. Sparta was given such an order at once by Lycurgus; Rome came to hers by chance, through her quarrels, and was the stronger for it.

Where the guard of liberty belongs

The guard of a free state is best placed with the people, because they want only not to be dominated, and so have the greater will to live free. And a people is wiser and more constant than a prince. It is not without reason, he writes, that the voice of a people is likened to the voice of God: a people judges well between two speakers of equal skill, chooses its magistrates better than a prince does, and is less ungrateful.

A people without laws is as bad as a prince without laws. But an unruly people can be brought back by the words of a good man, while a bad prince can be cured only by steel.

Accusation and slander

A republic needs a lawful way for any citizen to accuse another of a public wrong before the magistrates or the people, because the anger of a city must have an outlet. Where it has none, it breaks out by private or foreign means and ruins the state. Slander is the opposite and does only harm: it needs no witness and no proof, and where open accusation is allowed, slander has no room. Florence, he says, suffered for want of such an outlet, and her factions grew from it.

Religion and the signs

Religion is the foundation of good order. Numa gave Rome her religion, and the fear of the gods made it easy to lead armies, keep oaths and bring in new laws; so the heads of a republic must keep the foundations of its religion, and the corruption of a religion is the surest sign of a state's ruin. He blames the Christianity of his day not for its teaching but for an idle reading of it that praises only the humble and contemplative and leaves the world to the wicked; rightly read, he says, it allows the love and defence of one's country.

One chapter turns to foretelling. Before great events in a city or a province there are always signs, he notes, prophecies, revelations and portents in the sky: the friar Savonarola foretold the coming of the French, and lightning struck the cathedral before the death of Lorenzo de' Medici. He leaves the cause to those who know things natural and supernatural, adding that perhaps, as one philosopher holds, the air is full of intelligences who see what is coming and warn people out of pity.

Back to the beginnings

Every body of people, a religion, a kingdom or a republic, decays as its first goodness wears away, and lives long only if it is drawn back from time to time toward its beginnings. That can come from outside, by a disaster that shakes it awake, as the sack of Rome by the Gauls did; or from within, by a good law or by a good man whose example renews it. Saint Francis and Saint Dominic renewed the Christian religion in that way, by poverty and by the example of the life of Christ, when it was close to dying out.

Fortune and the times

A man prospers while his way of acting fits the times and fails when it no longer does, and since few people can change their nature, the same character that raised a man brings him down when the times turn. Fabius won by slowness when Rome needed slowness. A republic is luckier than a prince, because it has citizens of many natures and can bring forward the one the times require.

People can second fortune but cannot oppose her; they can weave her threads but cannot break them. They must never give up, for they do not know her ends, and she goes by crooked and unknown ways.

Arms of one's own, and a comedy

The Art of War, a dialogue in a Florentine garden, teaches that a state must arm its own citizens rather than hire soldiers, and that the ancients are to be imitated in their hard and strong things, their discipline and their love of the common good, not in their soft ones. The Mandrake teaches by laughter: a foolish husband believes that a potion of mandrake will give him an heir, a friar is bought, and the trick succeeds because everyone in it is credulous or for sale. Credulity and greed are the deceiver's best tools.