The Florentine historian and diplomat, Machiavelli, by his
book, The Prince, did much to found the modern science of politics.
Machiavelli, as a patriotic Italian, felt infinite distress at the divided
condition of Italy, where numerous petty states were constantly at war. In The
Prince he tried to show how a strong, despotic ruler might set up a
national state in the peninsula. He thought that such a ruler ought not to be
bound by the ordinary rules of morality. He must often act "against faith,
against charity, against humanity, and against religion." The end would
justify the means. Success was everything; morality, nothing. This dangerous
doctrine has received the name of "Machiavellism"; it is not yet dead
in European statecraft.
CERVANTES, 1547-1616 A.D.
Spain during the sixteenth century gave to the world in
Cervantes the only Spanish writer who has achieved a great reputation outside
his own country. Cervantes's masterpiece, Don Quixote, seems to have
been intended as a burlesque upon the romances of chivalry once so popular in
Europe. The hero, Don Quixote, attended by his shrewd and faithful squire,
Sancho Panza, rides forth to perform deeds of knight-errantry, but meets,
instead, the most absurd adventures. The work is a vivid picture of Spanish
life. Nobles, priests, monks, traders, farmers, innkeepers, muleteers, barbers,
beggars—all these pass before our eyes as in a panorama. Don Quixote
immediately became popular, and it is even more read to-day than it was three
centuries ago.
