MACCHIAVELLI'S

"HOW HE THAT WOULD SUCCEED MUST ACCOMMODATE TO THE TIMES."

I have many times considered with myself that the occasion of every man's good or bad fortune consists in his correspondence and accommodation with the times. We see some people acting furiously, and with an impetus; others with more slowness and caution; and because, both in the one and the other, they are immoderate, and do not observe their just terms, therefore both of them do err; but his error and misfortune is least whose customs suit and correspond with the times, and who comports himself in his designs according to the impulse of his own nature. Every one can tell how Fabius Maximus conducted his army, and with what carefulness and caution he proceeded, contrary to the ancient heat and boldness of the Romans, and it happened that grave way was more conformable to those times; for Hannibal, coming young and brisk into Italy, and being elated with his good fortune, as having twice defeated the armies of the Romans, that commonwealth having lost most of her best soldiers, and remaining in great fear and confusion, nothing could have happened more seasonably to them than to have such a general who, by his caution and cunctation, could keep the enemy at bay. Nor could any times have been more fortunate to his way of proceeding; for that that slow and deliberate way was natural in Fabius, and not affected, appeared afterwards, when Scipio, being desirous to pass his army into Africa to give the finishing blow to the war, Fabius opposed it most earnestly, as one who could not force or dissemble his nature, which was rather to support wisely against the difficulties that were upon him than to search out for new; so that had Fabius directed, Hannibal had continued in Italy; and the reason was because he did not consider the times were altered, and the method of the war was to be changed with them. And if Fabius at that time had been king of Rome he might well have been worsted in the war, as not knowing how to frame his counsels according to the variation of the

the war, so, afterwards, when affairs were in a better posture, Scipio was presented to finish and conclude it. And hence it is that an aristocracy or free state is longer lived, and generally more fortunate than a principality, because in the first they are more flexible, and can frame themselves better to the diversity of the times: for a prince, being accustomed to one way, is hardly to be got out of it, though perhaps the variation of the times requires it very much. Piero Soderino (whom I have mentioned before) proceeded with great gentleness and humanity in all his actions, and he and his country prospered whilst the times were according; but when the times changed, and there was a necessity of laying aside that meekness and humility, Piero was at a loss, and he and his country were both ruined.

Pope Julius XI., during the whole time of his papacy, carried himself with great vigor and vehemence; and, because the times were agreeable, he prospered in everything. But had the times altered, and required other counsels, he had certainly been ruined, because he could never have complied. And the reason why we cannot change so easily with the times is twofold: first, because we cannot readily oppose ourselves against what we naturally desire; and next, because when we have often tried one way, and have always been prosperous, we can never persuade ourselves we could do so well any other; and this is the true cause why a prince's fortune varies so strangely, because he varies the times, but he does not alter the way of his administration. And it is the same in a commonwealth: if the variation of the times be not observed, and their laws and customs altered accordingly, many mischiefs must follow, and the government be ruined, as we have largely demonstrated before; but those alterations of their laws are more slow in a commonwealth, because they are not so easily changed, and there is a necessity of such times as may shake the whole state, to which one man will not be sufficient, let him change his proceedings and take new measures as he will.

WITH THE DUKE OF ANJOU. [Sir Philip Sidney, born 1554, was fatally wounded at the battle of Zutphen, September 22, 1586.

As a writer Sidney is best known by the Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia, London, 1590, a romance, and An

The patient I account your realm; the

Therefore carrying no other olive branch of intercession than the laying myself at your feet, nor no other insinuation, either for attention or pardon, but the true vowed sacrifice of unfeigned love, I will in simple and direct terms (as hoping they shall only come to your merciful eyes) set down the overflowing of my mind in this most important matter, importing, as I think, the continuance of your safety; and, as I know, the joys of my life. And because my words (I confess shallow, but coming from the deep well-spring of most loyal affection) have delivered to your most gracious ear what is the general sum of my travailing thoughts therein; I will now but only declare what be the reasons that make me think that the marriage with Monsieur will be unprofitable unto you; then will I answer the objection of those fears which might procure so violent a refuge.

The good or evil that will come by it must be considered either according to your estate or person. To your estate what can be added to the being an absolute born and accordingly respected princess? But, as they say the Irishmen are wont to call over them that die, they are rich, they are fair, what needed they to die so cruelly? not unfitly of you, endowed with felicity above all others, a man might well ask, What makes you in such a calm to change course; to so healthful a body to apply so unsavory a medicine?

Your inward force (for as for your treasures indeed, the sinews of your crown, your majesty doth best and only know) consisteth in your subjects, generally unexpert in warlike defence; and as they are divided now into mighty factions (and factions bound in the never-dying knot of religion). The one of them, to whom your happy government hath granted the free exercise of the external truth; with this, by the continuance of time, by the multitude of them; by the principal of fices and strength they hold; and lastly, by your dealings both at home and abroad against the adverse party; your state is so entrapped, as it were impossible for you, without excessive trouble, to pull yourself out of the party so long maintained. For such a course once taken in hand, is not much unlike a ship in a tempest, which how dangerously soever it may be beaten with waves, yet is there no safety or succor without it; these, therefore, as their souls live by your happy government, so are they your chief if not your sole strength; these, howsoever the necessity of human life makes them lack, yet can they not look for better conditions than presently they enjoy these, how their hearts will be galled, if not aliened, when they shall see you take a husband, a Frenchman and a Papist, in whom (howsoever fine wits may find further dealings or painted excuses) the very common people will know this, that he is the son of a Jezebel of our age: that his brother made oblation of his own sister's marriage, the easier to make massacres of our brethren in belief; that he himself, contrary to his promise, and all grateful

ness, having his liberty and principal estate by the Huguenots' means, did sack Zacharists, and utterly spoil them with fire and sword. This I say, even at first sight, gives occasion to all, truly religious, to abhor such a master, and consequently to diminish much of the hopeful love they have long held to you.

The other faction, most rightly indeed to be called a faction, is the Papists; men whose spirits are full of anguish, some being infested by others, whom they accounted damnable; some having their ambition stopped, because they are not in the way of advancement; some in prison and disgrace; some whose best friends are banished practisers; many thinking you an usurper; many thinking also you had disannulled your right, because of the Pope's excommunication; all burthened with the weight of their conscience; men of great numbers, of great riches (because the affairs of state have not lain on them), of united minds (as all men that deem themselves oppressed naturally are); with these I would willingly join all discontented persons, such as want and disgrace keep lower than they have set their hearts; such as have resolved what to look for at your hands; such as Cæsar said, Quibus opus est bello civili, and are of his mind, malo in acie, quam in fore cadere.

show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better: for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? for to counterfeit and dissemble is to put on the appearance of some real excellency. Now, the best way in the world for a man to seem to be anything, is really to be what he would seem to be. Besides that, it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but he is discovered to want, and then all his pains and labor to seem to have it are lost. There is something unnatural in painting, which a skilful eye will easily discern from native beauty and complexion.

It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at the bottom, nature will always be endeavoring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or other. Therefore, if any man think it convenient to seem good, let him be so indeed, and then his goodness will appear to everybody's satisfaction: so that, upon all accounts, sincerity is true wisdom. Particularly as to the affairs of this world, integrity hath many advantages over all the fine and artificial ways of dissimulation and deceit; it is much the plainer and easier, much the safer and more secure way of dealing in the world; it has less of trouble and difficulty, of entanglement and perplexity, of danger and hazard in it; it

SINCERITY.

[John Tillotson, D. D., born in Yorkshire, in 1630, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1691, died 1694, was a celebrated pulpit orator, and his sermons retained their popularity long after his death.

"The sermons of Tillotson were for half a century

more read than any in our language. They are now

bought almost as waste paper, and hardly read at all. Such is the fickleness of religious taste, as abundantly numerous instances would prove. Tillotson is reckoned verbose and languid. He has not the former defect in nearly so great a degree as some of his eminent predecessors; but there is certainly little vigor or vivacity

in his style. . . . Tillotson is always of a tolerant and

catholic spirit, enforcing right actions rather than orthodox opinions, and obnoxious, for that and other reasons, to all the bigots of his own age."-HALLAM : Literary History of Europe.]

Truth and reality have all the advantages of appearance and many more. If the

VOL. IX.

carrying us thither in a straight line, and will hold out and last longest. The arts of deceit and cunning do continually grow weaker, and less effectual and serviceable to them that use them; whereas integrity gains strength by use; and the more and longer any man practiseth it the greater service it does him, by confirming his reputation, and encouraging those with whom he hath to do to repose the greatest trust and confidence in him, which is an unspeakable advantage in the business and affairs of life.

and needs nothing to help it out; it is alTruth is always consistent with itself, ways near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack, and one trick needs a great many more to make it good. It is like building upon a false

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foundation, which continually stands in need of props to shore it up, and proves at last more chargeable than to have raised a substantial building at first upon a true and solid foundation for sincerity is firm and substantial, and there is nothing hollow or unsound in it, and because it is plain and open, fears no discovery; of which the crafty man is always in danger; and when he thinks he walks in the dark, all his pretences are so transparent that he that runs may read them. He is the last man that finds himself to be found out; and whilst he takes it for granted that he makes fools of others, he renders himself ridiculous.

Add to all this, that sincerity is the most compendious wisdom, and an excellent instrument for the speedy despatch of business; it creates confidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labor of many inquiries, and brings this to an issue in few words; it is like traveling in a plain beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than byways, in which men often lose themselves. In a word, whatever convenience may be thought to be in falsehood and dissimulation, it is soon over, but the inconvenience of it is perpetual, because it brings a man under an everlasting jealousy and suspicion, so that he is not believed when he speaks truth, nor trusted perhaps when he means honestly. When a man has once forfeited the reputation of his integrity, he is set fast, and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood.

RELIGION NOT HOSTILE TO

PLEASURE.

[Robert South, D. D., born 1633, died 1716, was very famous for pulpit eloquence, and one of the wittiest of English divines. Collective editions of his

Works are Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1823, 7 vols.;

Edin., 1843, 2 vols. ; New York, 4 vols.

the common acceptance of it, not only false, but odious. For, according to this, pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent; and therefore he that takes it in this sense, alters the subject of the discourse. Sensuality is indeed a part, or rather one part, of pleasure, such an one as it is. For pleasure, in general, is the consequent apprehension of a suitable object suitably applied to a rightly disposed faculty; and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the body and of the soul respectively, as being the result of the fruitions belonging to both. Now, amongst those many arguments used to press upon men the exercise of religion, I know none that are like to be so successful as those that answer and remove the prejudices that generally possess and bar up the hearts of men against it: amongst which there is none so prevalent in truth, though so little owned in pretence, as that it is an enemy to men's pleasures, that it bereaves them of all the sweets of converse, dooms them to an absurd and perpetual melancholy, designing to make the world nothing else but a great monastery: with which notion of religion nature and reason seem to have great reason to be dissatisfied. For since God never created any faculty, either in soul or body, but withal prepared for it a suitable object, and that in order to its gratification, can we think that religion was designed only for a contradiction. to nature, and with the greatest and most irrational tyranny in the world, to tantalize and tie men up from enjoyment, in the midst of all the opportunities of enjoyment? to place men with the most furious affections of hunger and thirst in the very bosom of plenty, and then to tell them that the envy of Providence has sealed up everything that is suitable under the character of unlawful? For certainly, first to and then to interdict them with a Touch frame appetites for to receive pleasure, not, taste not, can be nothing else than only to give them occasion to devour and prey upon themselves, and so to keep men under the perpetual torment of an unsatis

of the highest order of intellect."-LORD BROUGHAM.]

That pleasure is man's chiefest good (because, indeed, it is the perception of good that is properly pleasure) is an assertion most certainly true, though, under

natural felicity of the creature, and consequently to the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator.

He, therefore, that would persuade men to religion both with art and efficacy, must found the persuasion of it on this, that it interferes not with any rational pleasure,