Machiavelli has no opinion to argue about; nothing but men's passions as they were and are. He is alive, always and everywhere, because he shows us men. He maintains, according to Mr. Morley, that the world grows no better and no worse. There is for him no "one far-off, divine event to which the whole creation moves." Nothing for him but Power. Good and evil concern him not. He recited what we call a crime as impassively as he recited a virtue. So-and-so did such and such. This followed. That is all. He is a fatalist with no more sound philosophy than this: "It is better to be adventurous than cautious, for Fortune is a woman, and to be mastered must be boldly handled. He was a republican, but he believed that strength was the secret of government--strength in itself and in mastery of those who make up the State. No half-measures for him. The State is his idol, if he have one. The State must be supreme in will, in vigor, in intelligence; unflinching, unsparing, remorseless. The humility of Christ has no part in his scheme. He knows no mercy and no justice. One almost can admire his inhuman disregard of men. He cared as little for them as Napoleon. He scorns all gentleness. And yet he thought well of the people, of their prudence and stability. He deemed them liable to err as to generalities but apt to be right as to particulars. Our experience, I dare say, is otherwise--no matter how we stand on the financial question. "Better far," he repeats an hundred times, "than any number of fortunes is not to be hated by your people." Not to be hated! That was as near as he could come to love. He is opposed to dictators and he speaks out plainly enough, in his discourses, about the unwisdom of slaying fellow-citizens, betraying friends, being without mercy, without religion. He is conventional enough in all this. When he comes to describe the Prince, who is to save the divided State, he does so in lines that make a picture at once to fascinate and affright mankind.