§ 1. Let no one attempt to remove virtue from the commonwealth. It is an arduous thing; a narrow path leads to it; it has need of a spirited guide and teacher. Vices are learned without a master, and they drag those prone to them down the slope. I commend virtue, as the supreme treasure of the commonwealth, to kings, aristocrats, and the people. Virtue regulates kingdoms, cities, and provinces; it bears laws; it cultivates friendships; it distributes duties among relatives and children. Let princes and the people pursue virtue, but especially the prince, whose virtue has three distinguishing marks: for it both benefits the greatest number, is most conspicuous, and instructs, preserves, and corrects the commonwealth by example, not merely by deed.
No one is ignorant that it benefits the greatest number, since we read that great vices joined with supreme power have destroyed the world, and that all have been restored by the virtue of one good prince. For what floods, fires, famines, and pestilences are, wicked magistrates are; and just as provinces are compelled to endure storms and public brigandage, so too the losses caused by evil princes.
But what fertility of the earth is, what a favorable wind is to the sea, what the sun is to the world, this a prince endowed with virtue provides to the commonwealth. He speaks thus with himself: “Of all mortals I have found favor and been chosen to discharge the office of the gods—of God—upon earth. I am the arbiter of life and death for nations; what condition and lot each person has is placed in my hand. I shall therefore do this: harm no one, benefit all. The fatherland is a sacred thing; to harm it is sacrilege. But he harms the fatherland who injures individuals; and he who possesses power in the fatherland but does not aid individuals does not use his power rightly.”
§ 2. But the principal glory of princes lies in example. The most faithful manner of giving precepts is to teach by examples; for virtue is shown by example, not recommended. The heliotrope and certain other plants are bent toward the movement of the sun by continual turning, and the people, intent upon the morals of princes and aristocrats, are drawn by their example. But they are drawn more powerfully when there is a departure from virtue, because enticements coming from so great an authority do not bring shame with them but wipe it away from those who possess it. Nazianzen truly said: “Subjects imitate the vices of their governors more readily than their virtues.” Accordingly, this too is true: princes harm more by example than by sin. For camps are accustomed to be very like their king; and because those who pursue a contrary life seem to condemn the deeds of magistrates, magnates sin most dangerously, since their crimes are born for the ruin of others. Therefore a good prince is exceedingly praiseworthy, whose condition is such that right deeds possess a double reward from the edification of others, and offenses a greater punishment from the corruption of subjects.
Yet the citizen is not to be excused, although the prince has supplied examples by his vices, although the commonwealth, wounded by another’s deed, has rushed headlong into vices. For he too, because he is a member, is burdensome by his disease not to himself alone, but makes the whole commonwealth worse and infects his neighbors by the contagion of his corruption. And although a disease that descends from the head is more serious, nevertheless that which clings to the members is often more troublesome. We see daily how private and foreign vices increase and spring up in the commonwealth. Nothing can be opposed to these more powerfully than the examples of magnates and of citizens of greater standing, which are stronger than punishments and laws. Moreover, the same change that is accustomed to occur in the prince follows in the people, but more swiftly when it is toward evil.
Next, it is highly fitting that princes and the whole commonwealth labor at this: that they struggle toward virtue especially when placed between contrary vices. For unless the prince’s diligence and the severity of the commonwealth oppose them, custom, like a torrent, will abandon the whole people to the open field of vices. There are often atheists, impious persons, dissemblers, and the ambitious in courts; the prince must therefore take all the greater care lest he become worse through their company. For he who perseveres as good among the wicked must be exceptionally good.
§ 3. I am ashamed to say it, yet it must not be kept silent: in the courts of Christian princes there are often such corruptions that purveyors of vices and peddlers of lust, drunkenness, and vanity seem to have established their seat in them. How often have I heard courtiers complain that they could not tolerate that life any longer, that by the continual practice of drinking their strength was buried, their intellect diluted, and their death hastened—and they drank, and drank down a great cohort of weariness and fevers. This is the supreme evil in courts: that their examples flow out among the common people. At public assemblies a law necessary for the Germans was passed against pledging drinks and compelling men to equal draughts. It could have been observed, but at its first utterance it was crushed by the license of the court, and thereafter employed only in mockery.
Would that what Tacitus says of Roman morals did not apply to our commonwealth: “Modesty is scarcely retained amid honorable pursuits, much less is anything of upright morality preserved amid contests of vices.”
§ 4. The first care of the commonwealth ought also to be divine worship, because it is under one God and can be corrected by him alone. If it publicly repudiates reverence, fear, and love for him, there is nothing by which it may be brought onto the way; it reckons it of little importance that it is vicious if it thinks sin will go unpunished. Nor has any other thing destroyed the highest powers more than liberty to sin. In a private person, poverty, fear of the laws, an accuser at hand, and a mocking neighbor restrain and curb this liberty; in magistrates, unless it is checked by reverence for God, it will burst forth into public disgraces. Therefore, under God alone as judge of the contest and judge, they stand before him who regards
The settled law and divine right of the mind, and the holy recesses
Of the soul, and the heart steeped in noble honor.
This I bid them bring to the temples, and they will sacrifice acceptably with meal.
For the divine power demands not ceremonies but the purity of an undefiled heart. The mind of that man, cultivated more by eloquence than by life, also acknowledged this when he said:
The heavenly powers rejoice not in a slaughtered ox,
But in faith, which must be displayed even without a witness.
§ 5. Fourth, if we seek the end, it lies in virtue while we live, and in the reward of virtue while we die—or rather, while we pass to immortality. If the commonwealth neglects this, it runs beside the way and indeed labors, but falls away from the fruit of its labor; finally, troublesome to itself and dashed against itself, it will either be crushed by its own vices or yield to an external enemy into servitude. This was the outcome of all—of all, I say—commonwealths, when evil morals brought the laws under their power, when laws without efficacy were fastened to the wall, while evil morals insulted those wretched laws and, with their standard raised and in square battle formation, entered the citadel of liberty.
§ 6. Finally, the natural judgment of our conscience impels us to embrace virtue and flee vice. For no good work is ever deprived of its most pleasant fruit, nor is a crime committed without a savage bite; for only after its commission is its magnitude and atrocity understood. The sorrowful thought of duty violated in any manner torments and reproaches the mind; approval of justice and honor preserved raises it up with quiet and joy and kindles it toward better things. Nor can this be torn away from the impious without its always striking with a muffled lash, so much so that it ravages and afflicts not only the mind but the body besides.
Those testimonies are greater than every exception for everyone, because each person announces them to himself, each speaks thus to himself and feels himself convicted. Seneca speaks truly in Epistle 105: “A great portion of security is to do nothing unjustly. The uncontrolled lead a confused and disturbed life; they fear as much as they harm, and are at leisure at no time. For when they have acted they tremble, they remain fixed; conscience does not permit them to do anything else and continually forces them to look back upon themselves. Whoever expects punishment suffers it; and whoever has deserved it expects it. Some circumstance affords safety amid a bad conscience, but none affords security. For even if he is not detected, he thinks that he can be detected; he is disturbed among his dreams, and whenever he speaks of someone’s crime, he thinks of his own.
“It does not seem sufficiently effaced to him, nor sufficiently concealed. The guilty man has sometimes had the good fortune of lying hidden, never the assurance.”
§ 7. Crimes can therefore be safe from a human being, but cannot be secure; from God, however, they cannot even be safe. Epicurus himself, amid his cups, perceives that force. Thus he writes to Menoeceus: οὐκ ἔστι τὸν λάθρᾳ τι ποιοῦντα πιστεύειν ὅτι λήσει, κἂν μυριάκις ἐπὶ τοῦ παρόντος λανθάνῃ· μέχρι γὰρ καταστροφῆς ἄδηλον, εἰ καὶ λήσει. “It is not possible for one who does something in secret to trust that he will escape notice, even if he should escape notice ten thousand times at the present; for until his destruction it is uncertain whether he will escape notice.” Seneca expresses it thus in Epistle 97: “It can befall a guilty man that he lies hidden; confidence that he will lie hidden cannot befall him.” Οὐδεὶς οὕτως οὔτε μάρτυς ἐστὶ φοβερὸς, οὔτε κατήγορος δεινὸς, ὡς ἡ σύνεσις, ἡ κατοικοῦσα ταῖς ἑκάστων ψυχαῖς. “No witness is so formidable, nor any accuser so vehement, as conscience dwelling in the minds of all.”
Take this away from a private person, from a senator, from a king, and you have driven them all together into an evil dwelling. Take it away from a commonwealth, and from so many nations you will make a single slaughterhouse. He therefore puts off humanity who dares deny what nature herself declares. But I desire a prince who not only does not fear himself, but even lives in public, who does not desire to lie hidden; who frequently impresses this upon himself: “What you think secret is the rumor of the people; you are the last to learn of a deed which you ought to have prevented.” Hear, prince, the counselor of a Roman prince, Seneca, Epistle 43: “Then judge yourself happy when you can live in public, when your walls cover you but do not conceal you—walls which for the most part we judge to stand around us, not so that we may live more safely, but that we may sin more secretly. I shall tell you a thing from which you may estimate our morals: you will scarcely find anyone who can live with his door open. Our conscience, not pride, has set doorkeepers before us. We so live that to be suddenly looked upon is to be detected. But what does it profit to hide oneself and avoid the eyes and ears of human beings? A good conscience summons the crowd; a bad one is anxious and troubled even in solitude. If the things you do are honorable, let all know them; if shameful, what does it matter that no one knows, when you know? O wretched you, if you despise this witness.”
Therefore cultivate virtue, whose prerogative is also this: that those who do not imitate it nevertheless admire and look up to it; that it is not removed by calamity but persists unmoved amid either fortune.