36 Causes of its Success 



totally depraved, it must be beaten into order by 

 any means, and the only effective instrument is an 

 unlimited will. There is no authority above the 

 Sovereign to impose rules of action upon him. He 

 may find religion and morality useful instruments, 

 but for him they are only agencies, not authori- 

 ties. Everything must be sacrificed to the unity, 

 strength, and growth of the State. ^ 



The period of deep unrest, conspiracy, and 

 private warfare of the latter half of the sixteenth 

 century, culminating in the horrors of St. Bar- 

 tholomew's Day evoked another great book, De la 

 Repuhlique by Jean Bodin (i 530-1 596), which has 

 since held its place, as the foundation of nearly all 

 subsequent political thought, with Machiavelli's 

 The Prince. Bodin did not consider it sufficient 

 merely to analyse the existing institution of 

 monarchy, as Machiavelli had done ; he considered 

 that an abstract theory of the State must be 

 created, founded on axioms of reason, which could 

 serve as a new foundation for the monarch's 

 throne, and thus put an end to the anarchy of the 

 Wars of Religion. Bodin found the comer-stone 

 for this theory of the State in the conception of 

 "sovereignty" which he describes as being "ab- 

 solute, indivisible, inalienable." Since it is absolute 

 it admits of no limitation; since it is indivisible, 

 it cannot be shared or partitioned; since it is 



' See II Principe, Burd's edition, Oxford, 1891, and also the 

 admirable discussion of Machiavelli's doctrines in Villari, The 

 Life and Times of Machiavelli, London, 1898, vol. ii., pp. 89, 184. 



