even transmute and dilute them so that they become little more than commonplaces in thought in relation to action: and there is no need to make special and pre-eminent appeal to Machiavelli. Rather should we venture to say this, that much of the undoubted ‘Machiavellianism‘ in diplomacy—before as well as after Machiavelli—would never have been called for, had Machiavelli’s own injunction been complied with: Examine well and master betimes the elements in the situation, know your mind, and be decisive: it is only on occasion that you need temporize. Had there been more of Machiavellism, there would have been less that is Machiavellian.
it will scarce deny that in human affairs Fortune rules supreme. . . . And though discernment and vigilance may temper many things, they cannot do so unhelped, but stand always in need of favourable Fortune’); 41, 48 (‘States cannot be established or maintained by conforming to the moral law’); 76 (cf. 336), 78, 109 (freedom, security and ‘self-government’); 140 (‘the people’ ‘a beast, mad, mistaken, perplexed, without taste, discernment, or stability’: cf. 345); and 147 (‘He mistakes who thinks the success of an enterprise to depend on whether it be just or not. For every day we have proof to the contrary, and that it is not the justice of a cause, but prudence, strength, and good fortune that give the victory. It is doubtless true that in him who has right on his side there is often bred a firm confidence, founded on the belief that God will favour the righteous cause, which makes him bold and stubborn, and that from this boldness and stubbornness victories do sometimes follow. In this way it may now and then indirectly help you that your cause is just. But it is a mistake to suppose that directly any such effect is produced.’ Cf. 92: ‘Never say God has prospered this man because he is good, or that another has been unprosperous because he is wicked. For we often see the contrary happen. Yet are we not therefore to pronounce that the justice of God falls short, since His counsels are so deep as rightly to be spoken of as unfathomable.’) For an estimate of Guicciardini, and a comparison of him with Machiavelli, see Villari’s Machiavelli and his time, iii. 236-63. Regarding Guicciardini’s Ricordi politici e civili Villari says, ‘It would be hard anywhere in modern literature to find another series of maxims and sentences revealing, as this does, the whole political and moral structure, not of one individual only, but of an entire century’, 257.
