him.

[2] The two long letters to Fr. Vettori (Aug. 26, 1513) and to
Piero Soderini (no date) should be studied side by side with
the _Principe_ for the light they throw on Machiavelli's
opinions there expressed.

These circumstances make the morality of the book the more remarkable.
To teach political science denuded of commonplace hypocrisies was a
worthy object. But while seeking to lay bare the springs of action, and
to separate statecraft from morals, Machiavelli found himself impelled
to recognize a system of inverted ethics. The abrupt division of the two
realms, ethical and political, which he attempted, was monstrous; and he
ended by substituting inhumanity for human nature. Unable to escape the
logic which links morality of some sort with conduct, he gave his
adhesion to the false code of contemporary practice. He believed that
the right way to attain a result so splendid as the liberation of Italy
was to proceed by force, craft, bad faith, and all the petty arts of a
political adventurer. The public ethics of his day had sunk to this low
level. Success by means of plain dealing was impossible. The game of
statecraft could only be carried on by guile and violence. Even the
clear genius of Machiavelli had been obscured by the muddy medium of
intrigue in which he had been working all his life. Even his keen
insight was dazzled by the false splendor of the adventurer Cesare
Borgia.

To have formulated the ethics of the _Principe_ is not diabolical. There
is no inventive superfluity of naughtiness in the treatise. It is simply
a handbook of princecraft, as that art was commonly received in Italy,
where the principles of public morality had been translated into terms