other of politics. Guicciardini considered specifically by what methods
to control and arrange an existing Government. Machiavelli sought to
create a science, which should show how to establish, maintain, and
hinder the decline of states generally conceived. Even Cavour counted
the former as a more practical guide in affairs. But Machiavelli was the
theorist of humanity in politics, not the observer only. He
distinguished the two orders of research. And, during the Italian
Renaissance such distinction was supremely necessary. With a crumbled
theology, a pagan Pope, amid the wreck of laws and the confusion of
social order, _il sue particolare_ and _virtù_, individuality and
ability (energy, political genius, prowess, vital force: _virtù_ is
impossible to translate, and only does not mean virtue), were the
dominating and unrelenting factors of life. Niccolò Machiavelli, unlike
Montesquieu, agreed with Martin Luther that man was bad. It was for both
the Wittenberger and the Florentine, in their very separate ways, to
found the school and wield the scourge. In the naked and unashamed
candour of the time Guicciardini could say that he loathed the Papacy
and all its works. 'For all that, he adds, 'the preferments I have
enjoyed, have forced me for my private ends to set my heart upon papal
greatness. Were it not for this consideration, I should love Martin
Luther as my second self.' In the _Discorsi_, Machiavelli bitterly
arraigns the Church as having 'deprived Italians of religion and
liberty.' He utterly condemns Savonarolà, yet he could love and learn
from Dante, and might almost have said with Pym, 'The greatest liberty
of the Kingdom is Religion. Thereby we are freed from spiritual evils,
and no impositions are so grievous as those that are laid upon the
soul.'

[Sidenote: Religion.]