§ 1. Certain matters are disputed not because they are doubtful, but for the sake of order. Of this kind is what I am about to say concerning the necessity, utility, and dignity of civil doctrine, which I judge especially necessary among all doctrines. For since human beings are borne by their nature toward society and mutual intercourse, and make use of the benevolence and assistance of other human beings—for God has not permitted the human race universally to live after the manner of the Scythians, the Wagon-Dwellers, or the σποράδων (“scattered”) Arabs, although not even that savagery of the barbarians could have existed altogether without government—it was necessary that commonwealths be constituted. Human beings therefore entered into society with one another and established the commonwealth.
Within it, “τῶν ἀρχόντων καὶ ἀρχομένων”—the order and alternation of rulers and subjects—is necessary. This order is so necessary that God preferred to permit power to evil men rather than that human beings should be restrained by no power, and accordingly judged it better that many just men should be subject to one impious man than that they should be subject to no one. But if a polity is necessary, political science is also necessary. For how will either command or obedience be rightly exercised if they are destitute of the prudence required for governing and obeying?
The ruin and happiness of kingdoms generally arise from the error or prudence of the ruler. As Augustine teaches [City of God, Book V, chapter 19], if those who are endowed with true piety and live well have pursued this knowledge of governing peoples, nothing is more fortunate for human affairs than that, through God’s mercy, they should possess power.
The difficult dispositions of subjects declare this necessity still more fully, so much so that it is far easier to find a brave man who can conquer an enemy than a prudent man who can govern a citizen. “Δύσκολόν ἐστι τὸ θρέμμα ἄνθρωπος”—man is a difficult and troublesome animal. He can bear neither servitude nor liberty; under a mild government he grows wanton, under a harsh one he becomes exhausted, and under either he rises against his ruler. Or, if his attempt is restrained through fear of a more severe power, he avenges and consoles himself with complaints.
How great an art is therefore needed so that this animal—fierce, proud, changeable, unstable, presumptuous, and equitable toward no one less than toward him whom it is compelled to obey—may walk according to the standard of right; so that so many thousands of human beings may tend toward the same point and, indeed, may attain one and the same best end by such diverse roads? We entrust a field and a vineyard only to an experienced cultivator; no one entrusts himself to a shipmaster ignorant of the sea and its waves; we do not admit even an unskilled flute-player to our banquets. And shall we allow that great ship, carrying so many souls, to be endangered by the ignorance and indolence of one man?
Government, therefore, is necessary, as is knowledge of administering government. This knowledge is more difficult because it is compelled to prescribe the law and measure of life to both good and evil persons. Every good man is governed very easily, but an evil man with the greatest difficulty. Nevertheless, he must be governed, lest he harm the good man, and so that, although he does not cease to be evil, he may nevertheless be unable to do the evils he desires. Here perpetual vigilance is needed, so that the spring of vices may be stopped up and not pour itself forth into shameful deeds; and the matter must be handled with distinguished dexterity and knowledge, so that, if it pours out its poison, the poison may be diverted and flow away with the least possible injury to others.
§ 2. Great and plainly divine is the knowledge of physicians. They so care for the human body—a structure composed of so many and such various members, comprising organs assigned to such contrary functions, veins, arteries, internal organs, muscles, humors, and spirits—that they preserve the analogy, symmetry, and friendly concord of all its parts with all the others. They thereby bring it about that the temperament and constitution of all the parts is agreeable and favorable to them all, and that every member is sustained by every other member.
But in a prince this knowledge is more laborious by as much as the body of the commonwealth is larger and more at variance with itself than the human body; and it is more sublime by as much as it is more worthy to take thought for all than for individuals. The great philosopher, the unhappy teacher of an unhappy Caesar, said prudently: “All this that you see is one; we are members of a great body.” It is your task, O prince, to preserve the concord, tranquility, unity, and love of a great body—a free body, of members separated from one another, of members mutually hostile, of members rebelling against their own head, that is, their ruler. How exquisite an art and how enlightened a prudence this requires is taught us by the small number of those who have been able to do it and the multitude of those who have not. If one wished to contend by examples, I should oppose hundreds to every single one. It is a great power of divine ordination that power should exist in the world and that power should be from God, even when it is conferred by good men upon evil men, or upon good men by better men; but it is great rashness to exercise power without the knowledge of governing.
§ 3. When the commonwealth is badly administered, all other things are deprived of their proper ends. For commerce will terminate in frauds and impostures; navigation in piracy; agriculture in disputes; judgments in robberies; military service in brigandage; the liberal arts in idleness; religion in superstition; and sacred rites in bare and empty ceremonies. For a public vice communicates its poison to all the actions of private persons, and the very ornaments of the city are turned toward its destruction. The necessity of this knowledge—and the utility contained within that necessity—has therefore been demonstrated. A few words must now be said concerning its dignity, for nothing sufficient can be said on behalf of that dignity.
§ 4. When we name the knowledge of commanding, we appear to have praised it sufficiently. It is the mistress of all arts, the moderator of all civil actions, the preserver of human society, and the greatest of all human branches of knowledge. Thus judges the most prudent of the philosophers, Aristotle, Politics, Book I, chapter 1: “Since,” he says, “we see that every city is a certain society, and that every society has been joined together for the sake of some good—for all men do all things for the sake of that which appears good—it is manifest that all societies tend toward a good as toward some goal; μάλιστα δὲ, καὶ τῷ κυριωτάτῳ πάντων, ἡ πασῶν κυριωτάτη, καὶ πάσας περιέχουσα τὰς ἄλλας. αὕτη δὲ ἐστὶν ἡ καλουμένη πόλις, καὶ ἡ κοινωνία πολιτική”—“but that society which is the chief and mistress of all societies has proposed to itself that good which is most excellent of all; and this is the society that is called a city or commonwealth, or civil society.”
The knowledge of establishing and preserving human society must therefore be the most excellent, since it has the public good proposed to itself. Hence divine majesty has surrounded kingship with such splendor and attached so many ornaments to it, in order to show that governing the world is the greatest work. Hence it honors princes with the name of gods, because they are participants in divine power.
But I do not wish to linger longer upon this matter. The restless ambition of many is sufficient even if it is not inflamed by the praise of kingdoms. Would that it endeavored to acquire the knowledge and faculty of commanding before dominions themselves. But we experience that for the most part it happens otherwise. “Τυραννὶς χρῆμα σφαλερόν, πολλοὶ δὲ αὐτῆς ἐρασταὶ εἰσιν”—government is indeed a slippery thing, but it has many lovers. The bright splendor of kingship blinds the eyes with a false brilliance. The beginnings of honor are joyful, while a sick mind is tickled by public congratulation; care and the true heat of labors soon follow. But those who have been deceived praise majesty and government, for, as the disciple of Socrates rightly judged, they see “τὸ μὲν πρόσωπον ἡδύ, τὰ δὲ ἐν δόμοισι λυπηρά”—a flattering frontage and entrance, but miserable things within the house.
§ 5. Eternal majesty, which administers the world without anxiety, will compensate good princes for such immense care, labor, misery, and endurance with the appearance of worldly honor and the reality of supermundane glory. Evil rulers, however, gaping after empty things and content with vanity alone, undertake government—that is, the care of another’s welfare—often amid public hatred. It is indeed a miserable but customary thing to undertake so many evils with no fruit, and not even with the hope of any good.
I have also judged that the reader must be admonished of this: in political disputations there cannot and ought not to be that subtle, acute, demonstrative exactitude—ἀκριβολογίαν—which is customarily employed in physics or mathematics. For I have undertaken to instruct a prince not so that he may dispute in the schools, but so that he may govern peoples. Nor, in moral and human affairs, in which equitable moderation—ἐπιείκεια—indulgence, clemency, and often even severity and threats graver than the truth intervene, do the nature of the subject and the method of treatment permit apodictic demonstrations to be employed.
§ 6. Finally, I judge that this too must not be concealed. I do indeed seek the best commonwealth and seek to fortify it with religion, virtues, education, laws, ecclesiastical and civil magistrates, and civil and military power against the internal and external enemy;
nevertheless, I do not seek to constitute a Platonic commonwealth. For Plato describes for us a city such as can be wished for, not one that can exist in this world—that is, in this heap of evils and province of wickedness. For I shall institute a discourse not about commonwealths that never have existed and never will exist, but about those that exist or can exist.
I indeed desire a commonwealth in which the best and wisest prince always commands the citizens with love and equity, as a father commands his children; in which good citizens, harmonious among themselves and obedient to the prince, all desire and pursue honorable things. But those commonwealths are in Utopia [printed: Outopia]; I have resolved to treat of our own. I have resolved to instruct commonwealths in which there are a few very good men, many of middling character who are free from vices rather than possessed of virtues, and not a few very bad men who are restrained by fear of the laws alone, so that they are not criminals in public. Neither the rising nor the setting sun has ever seen another and better commonwealth, although it has often seen many worse ones.
Why, therefore, should I indulge in ideals and superfluous speculations by which present goods can neither be defended nor advanced, remedies applied to evils already implanted, nor approaching evils met? Therefore, as Aristotle rightly admonishes in Politics, Book IV, chapter 1, let us consider Τὸν δυνατόν—that which is possible—as the condition of the commonwealth. And if we cannot make it the best, let us nevertheless draw it as far away as possible from the worst. Otherwise, if it were established that such a commonwealth had ever existed, it could also be hoped for now.
What Seneca says in Epistle 90 is not altogether empty: “A world not yet exhausted produced better things.” And the poet, the hater and mocker of his own age, says:
Then, in a new world and beneath a fresh heaven, human beings lived otherwise.
And perhaps Plato suspected that so holy a commonwealth had once existed. “οἱ παλαιοὶ,” he says, “κρείττονες ἡμῶν, καὶ ἐγγυτέρω θεῶν οἰκοῦντες.” (Politics, Book II.) “The ancients were better than we are and dwelt nearer to the gods.” I shall concede this concerning many, but deny it concerning more. I remember that the inheritance of the world was too narrow for two brothers; that afterward arose the wars of the Giants; and that soon the entire human race, with eight souls left as seed, was swallowed by the waters—and that even among these there was Ham the mocker. I remember wars of kings before the very ark and the aged Noah; the fires of Sodom; and the destructions of the Canaanites and Horites. Therefore, vices existed then as well—very many and atrocious vices—and times more criminal than our own. While reading history, I perceive each man to be an accuser of his own times and a praiser of ancient ones. But the cause is surely that we experience our own evils with grief and fear, whereas we read of past evils in order to beguile time.
Shame, truth, and fidelity have fled; into their place have succeeded frauds and deceits.
These three good things have fled, but from those places in which they once existed; for in many places neither shame, truth, nor fidelity ever existed except in very few persons. Therefore, in treating of the commonwealth, I shall so compose my arguments as to establish that many within it are evil; that all the good are in greater danger of becoming evil; that the evil have less hope of becoming good; and that the prince ought to take thought for both.
Some who have professed to transmit the secrets of dominions, under a flattering title, have brought forward nothing except the best-known matters, already long ago written down by Plato and Aristotle. There exists a treatise by Arnold Clapmar On Secrets, but secrets already made public in books and practice. If there is any secret, it is this: to conceal the art of governing. For no one desires to be deceived by artifice and governed in that way, but rather to be directed toward a good end by charity and prudence. The highest thing is piety, and authority is its effect—an authority that cannot be retained if God pours contempt upon the prince.