ip der Selbsthingabe,
fuer den Staat das der Selbstbehauptung. Der Einzelne dient dem Recht;
der Staat handhabt, leitet und schafft dasselbe. Der Einzelne ist nur
ein fluechtiges Glied in dem sittlichen Ganzen; der Staat ist, wenn nicht
dieses Ganze selbst, doch dessen reale, ordnende Macht; er ist
unsterblich und sich selbst genug.--Die Erhaltung des Staats
rechtfertigt jedes Opfer und steht ueber jedem Gebot." Nefftzer, an
Alsatian borderer, says: "Le devoir supreme des individus est de se
devouer, celui des nations est de se conserver, et se confond par
consequent avec leur interet." Once, in a mood of pantheism, Renan
wrote: "L'humanite a tout fait, et, nous voulons le croire, tout bien
fait." Or, as Michelet abridges the _Scienza Nuova_: "L'humanite est son
oeuvre a elle-meme. Dieu agit sur elle, mais par elle." Mr. Leslie
Stephen thus lays down the philosophy of history according to Carlyle,
"that only succeeds which is based on divine truth, and permanent
success therefore proves the right, as the effect proves the cause."
Darwin, having met Carlyle, notes that "in his eyes might was right,"
and adds that he had a narrow and unscientific mind; but Mr. Goldwin
Smith discovers the same lesson: "History, of itself, if observed as
science observes the facts of the physical world, can scarcely give man
any principle or any object of allegiance, unless it be success." Dr.
Martineau attributes this doctrine to Mill: "Do we ask what determines
the moral quality of actions? We are referred, not to their spring, but
to their consequences." Jeremy Bentham used to relate how he found the
greatest happiness principle in 1768, and gave a shilling for it, at the
corner of Queen's College. He found it in Priestley, and he might have
gone on finding it in Beccaria and Hutcheson, all of whom trace their
pedigree to the _Mandragola_: "Io credo che quello sia bene che facci
bene a' piu, e che i piu se ne contentino." This is the centre of unity
in all Machiavelli, and gives him touch, not with unconscious imitators
only, but with the most conspicuous race of reasoners in the century.

English experience has not been familiar with a line of thought plainly
involving indulgence to Machiavelli. Dugald Stewart raises him high, but
raises him for a heavy fall: "No writer, certainly, either in ancient or
in modern times, has ever united, in a more remarkable degree, a greater
variety of the most dissimilar and seemingly the most discordant