deserving the same
approval as is due to all those other methods of theirs, which, one with
another, have brought Italy to her present condition.

BOOK III.

* * * * *

CHAPTER I.--_For a Sect or Commonwealth to last long, it must often be
brought back to its Beginnings._

Doubtless, all the things of this world have a limit set to their
duration; yet those of them the bodies whereof have not been suffered to
grow disordered, but have been so cared for that either no change at all
has been wrought in them, or, if any, a change for the better and not
for the worse, will run that course which Heaven has in a general way
appointed them. And since I am now speaking of mixed bodies, for States
and Sects are so to be regarded, I say that for them these are wholesome
changes which bring them back to their first beginnings.

Those States consequently stand surest and endure longest which, either
by the operation of their institutions can renew themselves, or come to
be renewed by accident apart from any design. Nothing, however, can be
clearer than that unless thus renewed these bodies do not last. Now
the way to renew them is, as I have said, to bring them back to their
beginnings, since all beginnings of sects, commonwealths, or kingdoms
must needs have in them a certain excellence, by virtue of which they
gain their first reputation and make their first growth. But because in
progress of time this excellence becomes corrupted, unless something be
done to restore it to what it was at first, these bodies necessarily
decay; for as the physicians tell us in speaking of the human body,
"_Something or other is daily added which sooner or later will require
treatment._"[1]

As regards commonwealths, this return to the point of departure is
brought about either by extrinsic accident or by intrinsic foresight.
As to the first, we have seen how it was necessary that Rome should
be taken by the Gauls, that being thus in a manner reborn, she might
recover life and vigour, and resume the observances of religion and
justice which she had suffered to grow rusted by neglect. This is well
seen from those passages of Livius wherein he tells us that when the
Roman army was 'sent forth against the Gauls, and again when tribunes
were created with consular authority, no religious rites whatever were
celebrated, and wherein he further relates how the Romans not only
failed to punish the three Fabii, who co