56 TRANSACTIONS. 1906-7. 



by material force, but like other weak powers under similar cir- 

 cumstances, they developed boundless resources of craft and 

 diplomacy (a). 



" In order to adjust the interests and balance of power of the 

 different states into which Italy was divided, they were engaged in 

 perpetual and endless negotiations with each other, which they 

 conducted with all the subtlety of a refining and deceitful policy " 

 (b). 



"Power once acquired was maintained by force and the 

 history of the ruling families is one long catalogue of crimes. " 



"The result was a perpetually recurring process of composi- 

 tion, dismemberment, and recomposition, under different forms, 

 of the scattered elements of Italian life. " 



"Audacity, vigor, unscrupulous crime were the chief re- 

 quisites for success. " 



"Capacity might raise the meanest monk to the chair of St 

 Peter, the meanest soldier to the Duchy of Milan. " 



"The life of the despot was usually one of prolonged terror, 

 poison, poniard " (c) . 



Nor was this all. Every reaction goes to excess; and the 

 Renaissance was no exception to the rule : 



" Humanism in its revolt against the Middle Ages was * * 

 mundane, pagan, irreligious, positive, * * * Beneath the 

 surface of brilliant social culture, lurked gross appetites, and 

 savage passions, unrestrained by mediaeval piety, untutored by 

 modern experience. Italian society exhibited an almost unex- 

 ampled spectacle of literary, artistic, and courtly refinement, 

 crossed by brutalities of lust, treasons, poisonings, assassinations, 

 violence" (d). 



Machiavelli. — Now in the midst of all this, Machiavelli is 

 not, as frequently supposed, a mere moralist. He is not a moralist 

 at all. Chiefly he is an observer, an investigator, an 'originator, 

 a philosopher, an historian, an ambassador (twice at Rome and 

 three times in France), and a statesman. His environment is not 

 such as he made it, but as he found it; and he had to tread his way 

 amid its distracted perplexities as best he could. 



Several things were clear to his penetrating eye: first, that 

 the strong and over-ruling tendency of the times was towards 



(a) Dunning, 288. 



(6) Prescott, I, p. 54. 



(c) J. A. Symonds: Universal Anthology, XI, 167. 



{d) Enc. Br. tit. "Renaissance." 



