My lord Ottaviano replied:
“With that gentle rule, kingly and civic. And to such men it is well sometimes to give the charge of those offices for which they are fitted, to the end that they too may be able to command and govern those less wise than themselves, but in such manner that the chief rule shall wholly depend upon the supreme prince. And since you said that it is an easier thing for the mind of one man to be corrupted than for that of many, I say that it is also an easier thing to find one good and wise man than many. And to be good and wise ought to be deemed possible for a king of noble race, inclined to worthiness by his natural instinct and by the illustrious memory of his predecessors, and practised in good behaviour; and if he be not of another species more than human (as you said of the bee-king), being aided by the teachings and by the education and skill of so prudent and excellent a Courtier as these gentlemen have described,—he will be very just, continent, temperate, strong and wise, full of liberality, magnificence, religion and clemency. In short, he will be very glorious, and very dear to men and to God (by whose grace he will attain that heroic worth which will make him exceed the limits of humanity), and may be called a demigod rather than a mortal man.
“For God delights in and protects, not those princes who wish to imitate Him by displaying great power and making themselves adored of men, but those who, besides the power that makes them mighty, strive to make themselves like Him in goodness and wisdom, whereby they wish and are able to do good and to be His ministers, distributing for men’s weal the benefits and gifts which they receive from Him. Thus, just as in heaven the sun and moon and other stars show the world as in a mirrour some likeness of God, so on earth a much liker image of God is found in those good princes who love and revere Him, and show their people the shining light of His justice and a reflection of His divine reason and mind; and with such as these God shares His righteousness, equity, justice and goodness, and those other happy blessings which I know not how to name, but which display to the world much clearer proof of divinity than the sun’s light, or the continual revolving of the heavens and the various coursing of the stars.
23.—“Accordingly men have been placed by God under the ward of princes, who for this reason ought to take diligent care of them, in order to render Him an account of them like good stewards to their lord, and ought to love them, and regard as personal to themselves every good and evil thing that happens to them, and provide for their happiness above every other thing. Therefore the prince ought not only to be good, but also to make others good, like that square used by architects, which not only is straight and true itself, but also makes straight and true all things to which it is applied. And a very great proof that the prince is good is when his people are good, because the prince’s life is law and preceptress to his subjects, and upon his behaviour all the others must needs depend; nor is it fitting for an ignorant man to teach, nor for an unordered man to give orders, nor for one who falls to raise up others.
“Hence if the prince would perform these duties rightly, he must devote every study and diligence to wisdom; then he must set before himself and follow steadfastly in everything the law of reason (unwritten on paper or metal, but graven upon his own mind), to the end that it may be not only familiar to him, but ingrained in him, and abide with him as a part of himself; so that day and night, in every place and time, it may admonish him and speak inwardly to his heart, freeing him from those disturbances that are felt by intemperate minds, which—because they are oppressed on the one hand as it were by the very deep sleep of ignorance, and on the other by the travail which they suffer from their perverse and blind desires—are tossed by relentless fury, as a sleeper sometimes is by strange and dreadful visions.
24.—“Moreover, by adding greater power to evil wish, greater harm is added also; and when the prince is able to do that which he wishes, then there is great danger that he will not wish that which he ought. Hence Bias well said that office shows what men are:[[438]] for just as vases with some crack in them cannot easily be detected so long as they are empty, yet if liquid be poured in they at once show where the flaw is;—so corrupt and vicious minds seldom disclose their defects except when they are filled with authority; because then they do not suffice to bear the heavy weight of power, and hence run all lengths and scatter on every side the greeds, the pride, the bad temper, the insolence, and those tyrannical practices, which they have within them. Thus they recklessly persecute the good and wise and exalt the wicked, and in their cities they permit neither friendships nor unions nor understandings among their subjects, but maintain spies, informers and murderers, in order that they may frighten and make men cowardly, and sow discords to keep men disunited and weak. And from these ways there then ensue countless ruin and losses to the unhappy people, and often cruel death (or at least continual fear) to the tyrants themselves; because good princes are not afraid for themselves, but for those whom they rule, while tyrants fear even those whom they rule; hence the greater the number of people they rule and the more powerful they are, so much the more do they fear and so many more enemies do they have.
“How frightened and of what uneasy mind do you think was Clearchus, tyrant of Pontus,[[439]] every time he went into the market-place or theatre, or to a banquet or other public place? who, as it is written, was wont to sleep shut up in a chest. Or that other tyrant, Aristodemus the Argive?[[440]] who made a kind of prison of his bed: for in his palace he had a little room hung in air, and so high that it could be reached only by a ladder; and here he slept with one of his women, whose mother took away the ladder at night and replaced it in the morning.
“A wholly different life from this, then, ought that of the good prince to be, free and safe and as dear to his subjects as their very own, and so ordered as to partake both of the active and of the contemplative, as much as may comport with his people’s weal.”
“And which of these two lives, my lord Ottaviano, seems to you more fitting for the prince?”