ystem of inverted ethics. The abrupt division of the two
realms, ethical and political, which he attempted, was monstrous; and he
ended by substituting inhumanity for human nature. Unable to escape the
logic which links morality of some sort with conduct, he gave his
adhesion to the false code of contemporary practice. He believed that
the right way to attain a result so splendid as the liberation of Italy
was to proceed by force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty arts of a
political adventurer. The public ethics of his day had sunk to this low
level. Success by means of plain dealing was impossible. The game of
statecraft could only be carried on by guile and violence. Even the
clear genius of Machiavelli had been obscured by the muddy medium of
intrigue in which he had been working all his life. Even his keen
insight was dazzled by the false splendor of the adventurer Cesare
Borgia.

To have formulated the ethics of the _Principe_ is not diabolical. There
is no inventive superfluity of naughtiness in the treatise. It is simply
a handbook of princecraft, as that art was commonly received in Italy,
where the principles of public morality had been translated into terms
of material aggrandizement, glory, gain, and greatness. No one thought
of judging men by their motives but by their practice; they were not
regarded as moral but as political beings, responsible, that is to say,
to no law but the obligation of success. Crimes which we regard as
horrible were then commended as magnanimous, if it could be shown that
they were prompted by a firm will and had for their object a deliberate
end. Machiavelli and Paolo Giovio, for example, both praise the massacre
at Sinigaglia as a masterstroke of art, without uttering a word in
condemnation of its perfidy. Machiavelli sneers at Gianpaolo Baglioni
because he had not the courage to strangle his guest Julius II. and to
crown his other crimes with this signal act of magnanimity. What virtue
had come to mean in the Italian language we have seen already. The one
quality which every one despised was simplicity, however this might be
combined with lofty genius and noble aims. It was because Soderini was
simple and had a good heart that Machiavelli wrote the famous epigram--

La notte che mori Pier Soderini
L' alma n' ando dell' inferno alla bocca;
E Pluto le grido: Anima sciocca,
Che inferno? va nel limbo de' bambini.

The night that Peter Soderini died,
His soul flew