might do anything which would win success for his purposes. There was no
grinding of men down to an average.[2237] This code was very widely
applied in statecraft and social struggles. A smattering knowledge of
Plutarch, Plato, and Virgil furnished heroic examples which could
justify anything.[2238] Machiavelli's _Prince_ was only a text-book of
this school of action for statesmen. Given the existing conditions in
Italy, he assumed a man of ability and asked how he should best act. "He
said that, to such a man, undertaking such a task, moral considerations
were of subsidiary importance, and success was the one criterion by
which he was to be judged. The conception was one forced on him by the
actual facts of Italian history in his own time. The methods which he
codified were those which he saw being actually employed."[2239]
Gobineau[2240] supposes a dialogue between Michael Angelo, Machiavelli,
and Granacci about Francis I, Henry VIII, Charles V, and Leo X, in which
the speakers attempt to foresee the development of events. They do not
rightly estimate the royal personages, do not foresee the Reformation,
and do not at all correctly judge the future. It was impossible that any
one could do the last at a time when great historical movements and
efforts of personal vanity and desire were mixing in gigantic struggles
to control the world's history. Italy offered a narrower arena for
personal ambition. Creighton[2241] describes Gismondo Malatesta of
Rimini. He "thoroughly mastered the lesson that to man all things are
possible. He trusted to himself, and to himself only. He pursued his
desires, whatever they might be. His appetites, his ambition, his love
of culture, swayed his mind in turns, and each was allowed full scope.
He was at once a ferocious scoundrel, a clear-headed general, an
adventurous politician, a careful administrator, a man of letters and of
refined taste. No one could be more entirely emancipated, more free from
prejudice, than he. He was a typical Italian of the Renaissance,
combining the brutality of the Middle Ages, the political capacity which
Italy early developed, and the emancipation brought by the new
learning." This might serve as a description of any one of the great
secular men of the period. "Capacity might raise the meanest monk to the
chair of St. Peter, the meanest soldier to the duchy of Milan. Audacity,
vigor, unscrupulous crime, were the chief requisites of success."[2242]
"In Italy it