882 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 



formed to the perfect rules of art, and not according to 

 common life the same method is observed by us in this 

 sketch of the self -politician. 



It must be observed that the precepts we have laid down 

 upon this subject are all of them lawful, and not such im 

 moral artifices as Machiavel speaks of, who directs men to 

 have little regard for virtue itself, but only for the show 

 and public reputation of it: &quot;Because,&quot; says he, &quot;the credit 

 and opinion of virtue are a help to a man, but virtue itself 

 a hindrance. 97 He also directs his politician to ground 

 all his prudence on this supposition, that men cannot be 

 truly and safely worked to his purpose but by fear, and 

 therefore advises him to endeavor, by all possible means, 

 to subject them to dangers and difficulties. Whence his 

 politician may seem to be what the Italians call a sower of 

 thorns. 98 So Cicero cites this principle, &quot;Let our friends fall, 

 provided our enemies perish ;&quot; upon which the triumvirs 

 acted, in purchasing the death of their enemies by the 

 destruction of their nearest friends. So Catiline became 

 a disturber and incendiary of the state, that he might the 

 better fish his fortune in troubled waters, declaring, that if 

 his fortune was set on fire, he would quench it, not with 

 water, but destruction. 10 And so Lysander would say, that 

 children were to be decoyed with sweetmeats and men by 

 false oaths; and there are numerous other corrupt and per 

 nicious maxims of the same kind, more indeed, as in all 

 other cases, than of such as are just and sound. Now if any 

 man delight in this corrupt or tainted prudence, we deny 

 not but he may take a short cut to fortune, as being thus 

 disentangled and set at large from all restraint of laws, 

 good- nature, and virtue, and having no regard but to his 

 own promotion though it is in life as in a journey, where 

 the shortest road is the dirtiest, and yet the better not much 

 about. 



97 Libro del Principe. 98 II seminatore delle spine. 



99 Cadant amiei, dummodo inimici intercidant. Orat. pro reg. Deiot. 



100 Cicero pro L. Mursena, and Cat. Conspir. 31. 



