In the interval between Machiavelli and the system of natural law of Grotius, the Netherlander (1625:  De Jure Belli et Pacis), belong the socialistic ideal state of the Englishman, Thomas More (De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia, 1516), the political theory of the Frenchman, Jean Bodin (Six Livres de la Republique, 1577, Latin 1584; also a philosophico-historical treatise, Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cognitionem, and the Colloquium Heptaplomeres, edited by Noack, 1857), and the law of war of the Italian, Albericus Gentilis, at his death professor in Oxford (De Jure Belli, 1588).  Common to these three was the advocacy of religious tolerance, from which atheists alone were to be excepted; common, also, their ethical standpoint in opposition to Machiavelli, while they are at one with him in regard to the liberation of political and legal science from theology and the Church.  With Gentilis (1551-1611) this separation assigns the first five commandments to divine, and the remainder to human law, the latter being based on the laws of human nature (especially the social impulse).  In place of this derivation of law and the state from the nature of man, Jean Bodin (1530-96) insists on an historical interpretation; endeavors, though not always with success, to give sharp definitions of political concepts;[1] rejects composite state forms, and among the three pure forms, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, rates (hereditary) monarchy the highest, in which the subjects obey the laws of the monarch, and the latter the laws of God or of nature by respecting the freedom and the property of the citizens.  So far, no one has correctly distinguished between forms of the state and modes of administration.  Even a democratic state may be governed in a monarchical or aristocratic way.  So far, also, there has been a failure to take into account national peculiarities and differences of situation, conditions to which legislation must be adjusted.  The people of the temperate zone are inferior to those of the North in physical power and inferior to those of the South in speculative ability, but superior to both in political gifts and in the sense of justice.  The nations of the North are guided by force, those of the South by religion, those between the two by reason.  Mountaineers love freedom.  A fruitful soil enervates men, when less fertile, it renders them temperate and industrious.

[Footnote 1:  What is the state?  What is sovereignty?  The former is defined as the rational and supremely empowered control over a number of families and of whatever is common to them; the latter is absolute and continuous authority over the state, with the right of imposing laws without being bound by them.  The prince, to whom the sovereignty has been unconditionally relinquished by the people in the contract of submission, is accountable to God alone.]