“For God delights in and protects, not those princes who wish to imitate Him by displaying great power and making themselves adored of men, but those who, besides the power that makes them mighty, strive to make themselves like Him in goodness and wisdom, whereby they wish and are able to do good and to be His ministers, distributing for men’s weal the benefits and gifts which they receive from Him. Thus, just as in heaven the sun and moon and other stars show the world as in a mirrour some likeness of God, so on earth a much liker image of God is found in those good princes who love and revere Him, and show their people the shining light of His justice and a reflection of His divine reason and mind; and with such as these God shares His righteousness, equity, justice and goodness, and those other happy blessings which I know not how to name, but which display to the world much clearer proof of divinity than the sun’s light, or the continual revolving of the heavens and the various coursing of the stars. 23.—“Accordingly men have been placed by God under the ward of princes, who for this reason ought to take diligent care of them, in order to render Him an account of them like good stewards to their lord, and ought to love them, and regard as personal to themselves every good and evil thing that happens to them, and provide for their happiness above every other thing. Therefore the prince ought not only to be good, but also to make others good, like that square used by architects, which not only is straight and true itself, but also makes straight and true all things to which it is applied. And a very great proof that the prince is good is when his people are good, because the prince’s life is law and preceptress to his subjects, and upon his behaviour all the others must needs depend; nor is it fitting for an ignorant man to teach, nor for an unordered man to give orders, nor for one who falls to raise up others. “Hence if the prince would perform these duties rightly, he must devote every study and diligence to wisdom; then he must set before himself and follow steadfastly in everything the law of reason (unwritten on paper or metal, but graven upon his own mind), to the end that it may be not only familiar to him, but ingrained in him, and abide with him as a part of himself; so that day and night, in every place and time, it may admonish him and speak inwardly to his heart, freeing him from those disturbances that are felt by intemperate minds, which—because they are oppressed on the one hand as it were by the very deep sleep of ignorance, and on the other by the travail which they suffer from their perverse and blind desires—are tossed by relentless fury, as a sleeper sometimes is by strange and dreadful visions.