stract "political man" as far
divorced from living, breathing, complex reality as the "economic man"
of Ricardo. Men, he thought, are always the same, governed by
calculable motives of self-interest. In general, he thought, men are
ungrateful, fickle, false, cowardly and covetous, to be ruled partly by
an appeal to their greed, but chiefly by fear.

[Sidenote: Politics divorced from morality]

Realist as he professed to be, Machiavelli divorced politics from
morality. Whereas for Aristotle[1] and Aquinas alike the science of
politics is a branch of ethics, for Machiavelli it is an abstract
science as totally dissociated from morality as is mathematics or
surgery. The prince, according to Machiavelli, should appear to be
merciful, faithful, humane, religious and upright, but should be able
to act otherwise without the least scruple when it is to his advantage
to do so. His heroes are Ferdinand of Aragon, "a prince who always
preaches good faith but never practises it," and Caesar Borgia, "who
did everything that can be done by a prudent and virtuous man; so that
no better precepts can be offered to a new prince than those suggested
by the example of his actions." What the Florentine publicist
especially admired in Caesar's statecraft were some examples of
consummate perfidy and violence which he had the opportunity of
observing at first hand. Machiavelli made a sharp distinction between
private and public virtue. The former he professed to regard as
binding on the individual, as it was necessary to the public good. It
is noteworthy that this advocate of all hypocrisy and guile {591} and
violence on the part of the government was in his own life gentle,
affectionate and true to trust. [Sidenote: Public vs. private life]
Religion Machiavelli regarded as a valuable instrument of tyranny, but
he did not hold the view, attributed by Gibbon to Roman publicists,
that all religions, though to the philosopher equally false, were to
the statesman equally useful. Christianity he detested, not so much as
an exploded superstition, as because he saw in it theoretically the
negation of those patriotic, military virtues of ancient Rome, and
because practically the papacy had prevented the union of Italy.
Naturally Machiavelli cherished the army as the prime interest of the
state. In advocating a national militia with universal training of
citizens he anticipated the conscript armies of the nineteenth century.

This writer