Even Moses had to kill the envious refractories, while Savonarola, the unarmed prophet, was destroyed.  God is the friend of the strong, energy the chief virtue; and it is well when, as was the case with the ancient Romans, religion is associated with it without paralyzing it.  The current view of Christianity as a religion of humility and sloth, which preaches only the courage of endurance and makes its followers indifferent to worldly honor, is unfavorable to the development of political vigor.  The Italians have been made irreligious by the Church and the priesthood; the nearer Rome, the less pious the people.  When Machiavelli, in his proposals looking toward Lorenzo (II.) dei Medici (died 1519), approves any means for restoring order, it must be remembered that he has an exceptional case in mind, that he does not consider deceit and severity just, but only unavoidable amid the anarchy and corruption of the time.  But neither the loftiness of the end by which he is inspired, nor the low condition of moral views in his time, justifies his treatment of the laws as mere means to political ends, and his unscrupulous subordination of morality to calculating prudence.  Machiavelli’s general view of the world and of life is by no means a comforting one.  Men are simple, governed by their passions and by insatiable desires, dissatisfied with what they have, and inclined to evil.  They do good only of necessity; it is hunger which makes them industrious and laws that render them good.  Everything rapidly degenerates:  power produces quiet, quiet, idleness, then disorder, and, finally, ruin, until men learn by misfortune, and so order and power again arise.  History is a continual rising and falling, a circle of order and disorder.  Governmental forms, even, enjoy no stability; monarchy, when it has run out into tyranny, is followed by aristocracy, which gradually passes over into oligarchy; this in turn is replaced by democracy, until, finally, anarchy becomes unendurable, and a prince again attains power.  No state, however, is so powerful as to escape succumbing to a rival before it completes the circuit.  Protection against the corruption of the state is possible only through the maintenance of its principles, and its restoration only by a return to the healthy source whence it originated.  This is secured either by some external peril compelling to reflection, or internally, by wise thought, by good laws (framed in accordance with the general welfare, and not according to the ambition of a minority), and by the example of good men.

[Footnote 1:  In his Essays on the First Decade of Livy (Discorsi), Machiavelli investigates the conditions and the laws of the maintenance of states; while in The Prince (II Principe, 1515), he gives the principles for the restoration of a ruined state.  Besides these he wrote a history of Florence, and a work on the art of war, in which he recommended the establishment of national armies.]