The Book of the Courtier
him understand, before he sets out, which is the good way and the one to
follow, and which is the bad way and the one to avoid: in short whether
his mind ought to be first imbued and implanted with the virtues through
the reason and intelligence or through practice.”
My lord Ottaviano said:
“You start me upon too long a discourse; still, in order that you may
not think I abstain from lack of will to answer your questions, I say
that just as our mind and body are two things, so too the soul is
divided into two parts, of which one has the reason in it, and the other
has the appetite. Then, just as in generation the body precedes the
soul, so the unreasoning part of the soul precedes the reasoning part:
which is clearly perceived in children, in whom anger and lust are seen
almost as soon as they are born, but with the lapse of time reason
appears. Hence care must be taken of the body earlier than of the soul,
and of appetite earlier than of reason; but care of the body with a view
to the soul, and of the appetite with a view to reason: for just as
intellectual worth is perfected by instruction, so is moral worth
perfected by practice. We ought, therefore, first to teach through
habit, which is able to govern the as yet unreasoning appetites and to
direct them towards the good by means of that fair use; next we ought to
establish them through the understanding, which, although it shows its
light more tardily, still furnishes a mode of making the virtues more
perfectly fruitful to one whose mind is well trained by
practice,—wherein, to my thinking, lies the whole matter.”
30.—My lord Gaspar said:
“Before you go further, I should like to know what care ought to be
taken of the body, since you said that we ought to take care of it
earlier than of the soul.”
“As to that,” replied my lord Ottaviano, laughing, “ask those who
nourish their bodies well, and are plump and fresh; for mine, as you
see, is not too well conditioned. Yet of this also it would be possible
to say much, as of the proper time for marriage, to the end that the
children may not be too near or too far from their father’s age; of the
exercises and education to be followed from birth and during the rest of
life, in order to make them handsome, strong and sturdy.”
My lord Gaspar replied:
“That which would best please women for making their children handsome
and beautiful, methinks would be that community wherein Plato in his
Republic wishes them to be held, and after that manner.”[441]
Then my lady Emilia said, laughing:
“It is not in the compact that you should fall to speaking ill of women
again.”
“I think,” replied my lord Gaspar, “that I give them great praise in
saying that they wish to bring in a custom approved by so great a man.”
Messer Cesare Gonzaga said, laughing:
“Let us see whether this could have place among my lord Ottaviano’s
precepts (I do not know if he has rehearsed them all), and whether it
were well for the prince to make it law.”
“The few that I have rehearsed,” replied my lord Ottaviano, “might
perhaps suffice to make a prince good, as princes go nowadays; although
if one cared to look into the matter more minutely, he would still have
much more to say.”
My lady Duchess added:
“Since it costs us nothing but words, tell us on your faith everything
that it would occur to your mind to teach your prince.”
31.—My lord Ottaviano replied:
“Many other things, my Lady, would I teach him, provided I knew them;
and among others, that he should choose from his subjects a number of
the noblest and wisest gentlemen, with whom he should consult on
everything, and that he should give them authority and free leave to
speak their mind to him about all things without ceremony; and that he
should preserve such demeanour towards them, that they all might
perceive that he wished to know the truth about everything and held all
manner of falsehood in hatred. Besides this council of nobles, I should
advise that there be chosen from the people other men of lower rank, of
whom a popular council should be made, to communicate with the council
of nobles concerning the affairs of the city, both public and private.
And in this way there would be made of the prince (as of the head) and
of the nobles and commonalty (as of the members) a single united body,
the government of which would spring chiefly from the prince and yet
include the others also; and this state would thus have the form of the
three good kinds of government, which are Monarchy, Optimates, and
People.[442]
32.—“Next I should show him that of the cares which belong to the
prince, the most important is that of justice; for the maintenance of
which wise and well-tried men ought to be chosen to office, whose
foresight is true foresight accompanied by goodness, for else it is not
foresight, but cunning; and when this goodness is lacking, the pleaders’
skill and subtlety always work nothing but ruin and destruction to law
and justice, and the guilt of all their errours must be laid on him who
put them in office.
“I should tell how justice also fosters that piety towards God which is
the duty of all men, and especially of princes, who ought to love Him
above every other thing and direct all their actions to Him as to the
true end; and as Xenophon said, to honour and love Him always, but much
more when they are in prosperity, so that afterwards they may the more
reasonably have confidence to ask Him for mercy when they are in some
adversity.[443] For it is impossible to govern rightly either one’s self
or others without the help of God; who to the good sometimes sends good
fortune as His minister to relieve them from grievous perils; sometimes
adverse fortune, to prevent their being so lulled by prosperity as to
forget Him or human foresight, which often repairs evil fortune, as a
good player repairs bad throws of the dice by placing his board
well.[444] Moreover I should not cease reminding the prince to be truly
religious—not superstitious or given to the vanities of incantation and
sooth-saying; for by adding divine piety and true religion to human
foresight, he would have good fortune too and a protecting God always to
increase his prosperity in peace and in war.
33.—“Next I should tell how he ought to love his land and people, not
holding them too much in bondage, lest he make himself odious to them,
from which thing there arise seditions, conspiracies and a thousand
other evils; nor yet in too great freedom, lest he be despised, from
which proceed licentious and dissolute life among his people, rapine,
theft, murder, without any fear of the law; often the ruin and total
destruction of city and realms. Next, how he ought to love those near
him according to their degree, maintaining among all men an even
equality in some things, as in justice and liberty; and in certain other
things a judicious inequality, as in being generous, in rewarding, in
distributing honours and dignities according to the inequality of their
merits, which always ought not to exceed but to be exceeded by their
rewards; and that in this way he would be not merely loved but almost
adored by his subjects. Nor would there be need that he should turn to
aliens for the safeguard of his life, because his own people for their
very profit would guard it with their own, and all men would gladly obey
the laws, when they found that he himself obeyed and was as it were the
guardian and incorruptible minister of the same; and thus he would make
so strong an impression in this matter, that even if he sometimes
chanced to infringe the laws in some particular, everyone would feel
that it was done for a good end, and the same respect and reverence
would be paid to his wish as to the law itself.
“Thus the minds of his subjects would be so tempered that the good would
not seek for more than they needed, and the bad could not; for excessive
riches are oftentimes the cause of great ruin, as in poor Italy, which
has been and still is exposed as a prey to foreign nations, both because
of bad government and because of the great riches of which it is full.
Hence it were well to have the greater part of the citizens neither very
rich nor very poor, for the over-rich often become insolent and rash;
the poor, base and dishonest; but men of moderate fortune do not lay
snares for others, and live safe from being snared: and being the
greater number, these men of moderate fortune are also more powerful;
and therefore neither the poor nor the rich can conspire against the
prince or other men, nor can they sow seditions; wherefore, in order to
avoid this evil, it is a very wholesome thing to preserve a mean in all
things.
34.—“I should say then, that the prince ought to employ these and many
other suitable precautions, so that there may not arise in his subjects’
mind a desire for new things and for a change of government; which they
most often bring to pass either for gain or else for honour which they
hope for, or because of loss or else of shame which they fear. And this
unrest is engendered in their minds sometimes by hatred and anger
driving them to despair, by reason of the wrongs and insults that have
been wrought upon them through the avarice, insolence and cruelty or
lust of their superiors; sometimes by the contempt that is aroused in
them by the neglect and baseness and unworthiness of their princes.
These two errours ought to be avoided by winning the people’s love and
obedience; as is done by benefiting and rewarding the good, and by
prudently and sometimes severely precluding the bad and seditious from
becoming powerful, which is much easier to prevent before they have
become so than to deprive them of power after they have once acquired
it. And I should say that to prevent a subject from running into these
errours, there is no better way than to keep him from evil practices,
and especially from those that spread little by little; for they are
secret pests that infect cities before it is possible to cure or even to
detect them.
“By such means I should advise that the prince contrive to keep his
subjects in a tranquil state, and to give them the blessings of mind and
body and fortune; but those of the body and of fortune, in order to be
able to exercise those of the mind, which are the more profitable the
greater and more superabundant they are; which is not true of those of
the body and of fortune. If, then, the subjects be good and worthy and
rightly directed towards the goal of happiness, their prince is a very
great lord; for that is a true and great dominion, under which the
subjects are good and well governed and well commanded.”
35.—Then my lord Gaspar said:
“I think that he would be a small lord under whom all the subjects were
good, for in every place the good are few.”
My lord Ottaviano replied:
“If some Circe were to change all the subjects of the King of France
into wild beasts, would he not seem to you a small lord for all he ruled
over so many thousand animals?[445] And on the other hand, if only the
flocks that roam our mountains here for pasture were to become wise men
and worthy cavaliers, would you not think that those herdsmen who
governed them and were obeyed by them, had become great lords instead of
herdsmen? You see then, that it is not the number but the worth of their
subjects that makes princes great.”
36.—My lady Duchess and my lady Emilia and all the others had been for a
good space very attentive to my lord Ottaviano’s discourse; but since he
now made a little pause, as if he had finished his discourse, messer
Cesare Gonzaga said:
“Verily, my lord Ottaviano, it cannot be said that your precepts are not
good and useful; nevertheless I should think that if you fashioned your
prince after them, you would rather deserve the name of a good