To respect the Law is to practise a wise selfishness. To act morally is to divest oneself of selfishness and attain the privilege of unselfishness. To behave in strict accordance with the Law earns the merited praise of civic blamelessness. But to act morally is a virtue which is of incomparably higher quality than that of mere blamelessness. The law-abiding man, the honest man, is praised as having been "Integer vitae sceleris purus." That is an acceptable epitaph. But the man of active Morality, willingly suffering for others, provides an example which reconciles millions to the hardships of life. The former is a worthy man, but the latter is a saint.
CHAPTER V
INDIVIDUAL MORALITY AND COLLECTIVE IMMORALITY
Men, who would be deeply offended if their Morality were called into question, quite coolly investigate the problem as to whether the State in its actions and omissions is bound by the same moral laws as the individual, and the majority of them come to the conclusion that in its relation to other States, the State must not be guided, that is to say, hampered, by moral considerations. They go further than this and not only liberate the State in its dealings with other countries from the trammels of Morality, but claim for the government the privilege of standing beyond and above the moral law in the conduct of public affairs, because to their mind both foreign and home politics move on a different plane to that of ethics. If anyone objects to this shameless contention, its advocates contemptuously dismiss him with the disdainful remark: "That is the drivel of a layman, and no man of science would waste his time on it." And if you were to reply: "Your views are those of gaolbirds who try after the event to hatch a theory justifying their misdeeds," they would probably shrug their shoulders and murmur scornfully: "The man is obviously mad."
Professorial wisdom has formulated pedantically what practical politicians, the heads of states and leading ministers have thought, said and done. Napoleon remarked at St. Helena to Count de Las Cases, who respectfully notes the fact in his "Mémorial de Sainte Hélène": "The actions of a ruler who labours for the community, must be distinguished from those of a private individual who is free to indulge his feelings; policy permits, nay, commands, the one to do what in the case of the other would often be inexcusable." Perhaps it was under the influence of this remark, with which he, no doubt, was familiar, that Professor Nisard one day in a lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris propounded the theory that there was a dual Morality, one public or political, the other private, and that these two did not follow the same rules. That was shortly after the Coup d'Etat of Napoleon III, and it was easy to descry, in the words of the celebrated professor of literary history, obsequiousness towards the new Emperor and the effort of a courtier to excuse the violence which the Emperor had just done to the constitution he had sworn to uphold. Nisard was one of the ornaments of the university, a teacher of youth, who was as popular as he was respected. But the sound ethical feeling of his hearers revolted against the depravity of the principles he had just enunciated, and the violent expression of their indignation drove him in shame and disgrace from his chair and out of the lecture hall.
Macchiavelli is the most famous advocate of the Immorality of the State and the right of politics to be unethical, and his name is identified with this infamous theory. An enormous amount has been written about the Florentine statesman, his book of the "Prince" and the doctrines he advances in it; among these works those in which his theories are endorsed preponderate to a horrifying extent over those which oppose and refute them. Mohl and Paul Janet have furnished us with the best abstracts of these very numerous writings, and I refer the reader to them. Here I can only dwell on the main points of the investigation.
Macchiavelli writes: "A man who wishes to be perfectly good is without doubt in danger among those who are not good. It is therefore advisable that a prince should learn not always to be good, so as to be able to put these rules of life into practice, or not, as circumstances may demand." "A prince cannot maintain loyalty to a treaty if it become dangerous to his interests." In short, the prince not only may, but must, do what is in his own interests. He need not stop to think whether his actions are honest. The only measure of their worth and appropriateness is the profit they promise. Their success always justifies them, only their failure proves them to be bad.
The most revolting thing in the arguments of the "Prince" is the equanimity with which the author adduces them. Never does he let slip a word of excitement, never does an indication of feeling appear. He treats his subject not as an investigation of principles to which one adopts a mental attitude and which one should approve or disapprove, but as a description of existing facts which arouse one's emotions as little as, for instance, the enumeration of the qualities and characteristics of a mineral. It has been said in his defence that his book is a concrete study, the presentation of the character of Cæsar Borgia, of his psychology and of his principles of government; and that Macchiavelli wished to give an objective account of the philosophy of the events he had observed, but did not wish to judge them subjectively; and this, if for no other reason, because an expression of his own opinion would have been too dangerous for him. It is further urged that his personal views are revealed in the treatise on Livy.