Page:Collected Works of Dugald Stewart Volume 1.djvu/60

42, to rival the severe simplicity of the Grecian masters, and a sagacity in combining historical facts, which was afterwards to afford lights to the school of Montesquieu.—[The opinion of the Cardinal de Retz on the character and talents of Machiavel is entitled to much attention. It is expressed fully by himself in the following sentences. "Un des plus grands malheurs que l'autorité Despotique des Ministres du dernier siècle ait causé dans l'Etat, c'est la pratique que leurs intérêts particuliers mal entendus y ont introduite, de soutenir toujours le supérieur contre l'inférieur. Cette maxime est de Machiavel, que la plupart des gens qui le lisent n'entendent pas, et que les autres croient avoir été habile, parce qu'il a toujours été méchant. II s'en faut de beaucoup qu'il ne fut habile, et il s'est très souvent trompé, mais en nul endroit à mon opinion plus qu'en celuici. ]

Eminent, however, as the talents of Machiavel unquestionably were, he cannot be numbered among the benefactors of mankind. In none of his writings does he exhibit any marks of that lively sympathy with the fortunes of the human race, or of that warm zeal for the interests of truth and justice, without the guidance of which, the highest mental endowments, when applied to moral or to political researches, are in perpetual danger of mistaking their way. What is still more remarkable, he seems to have been altogether blind to the mighty changes in human affairs, which, in consequence of the recent invention of printing, were about to result from the progress of Reason and the diffusion of Knowledge. Through the whole of his Prince (the most noted as well as one of the latest of his publications) he proceeds on the supposition, that the sovereign has no other object in governing but his own advantage; the very circumstance which, in the judgment of Aristotle, constitutes the essence of the worst species of tyranny. He assumes also