henry frowde oxford university press warehouse amen corner, ec

18 INTRODUCTION.
independent life of its own, ended by losing all logical connection
with the man who bore it.
When the forms of thought which such criticism tended to produce
had become general and almost inevitable among readers of
Machiavelli, the last stage of alI was reached : personal feelings
and ephemeral considerations were introduced to augment the
confusion; the meaning of words was wrenched sometimes
ignorantly, sometimes dishonestly, so that a sentence should
stand for what it was assumed a wicked man would be likely to
have said ; the value of Machiavelli's doctrines was discredited
by attacks upon his personal character; the historical sense
was lost, and invective took the place of argument. The
recovery of the truth grew more and more difficult; a general
traditional prejudice was created, so that it is now necessary, as
a preliminary to serious study, to clear away the accumulated
rubbish of the past, with the chance of finding here and there a
serviceable hint, perhaps where it was least to be expected.
These are some of the principal causes which have hindered
a fair interpretation of The Prince. In the present century
so much new material has been published, which serves to
illustrate Machiavelli's age and thought, that if the purpose
of T]zePrince is still obscure, this must be due rather to the
'embarras de richesse' which has been thus created than to
any other cause. So many aspects of his life and mind have
been illustrated that, finding what a many-sided, versatile
character Machiavelli was, we are perhaps apt to err in trying
to trace the influence of every passing mood, of every fretful
outburst, of every classical reminiscence upon the final result;
yet all these determined, each in its degree, the composition
of The Prince.
However, though the influences which led Machiavelli to
write as he did were many and various, and in the last
resort simply those which formed his whole character, it is
still clear that there must have been some dominant motive
for the composition of The Prince, which confirmed and
strengthened the ideas he already entertained, and led him
to fix them in this permanent form. In trying to determine
what this motive was, it is clearly desirable to work so far as
possible only upon the materials supplied by Machiavelli himself.
He has given us an account of his life during the time