* * *
The Roman People had a saying . . . which came from the
mouth of Marcus Cato, the Censor, and expressed the prejudice against Kings
which they had conceived from their memory of the Tarquins and the principles
of their commonwealth; the saying was that Kings should be classed as predatory
animals. But what sort of animal was the Roman People? By the agency of
citizens who took the names Africanus, Asiaticus, Macedonicus, Achaicus and so
on from the nations they had robbed, that people plundered nearly all the
world. So the words of Pontius Telesinus are no less wise than Cato's. As he
reviewed the ranks of his army in the battle against Sulla at the Colline Gate,
he cried that Rome itself must be demolished and destroyed, remarking that
there would never be an end to Wolves preying upon the liberty of Italy, unless
the forest in which they took refuge was cut down.
There are two maxims which are surely both true: Man is a
God to man, and Man is a wolf to Man. The former is true of the relations of
citizens with each other, the latter of relations between commonwealths. In
justice and charity, the virtues of peace, citizens show some likeness to God.
But between commonwealths, the wickedness of bad men compels the good too to
have recourse, for their own protection, to the virtues of war, which are
violence and fraud, i.e. to the predatory nature of beasts. Though men have a natural
tendency to use rapacity as a term of abuse against each other, seeing their
own actions reflected in others as in a mirror where left becomes right and
right becomes left, natural right does not accept that anything that arises
from the need for self-preservation is a vice. It may seem surprising that
prejudice should so impose upon the mind of Cato, a man renowned for wisdom,
and partiality should so overcome his reason, that he censured in Kings what he
thought reasonable in his own people. But I have long been of the opinion that
there was never an exceptional notion that found favour with the people nor a
wisdom above the common level that could be appreciated by the average man; for
either they do not understand it, or in understanding it, they bring it down to
their own level. The famous deeds and sayings of the Greeks and Romans have
been commended to History not by Reason but by their grandeur and often by that
very wolf-like element which men deplore in each other; for the stream of History
carries down through the centuries the memory of men's varied characters as
well as of their public actions.
True Wisdom is simply the knowledge [scientia] of truth in every subject. Since it derives from the
remembrance of things, which is prompted by their fixed and definite names, it
is not a matter of momentary flashes of penetrating insight, but of right
Reason, i.e. of Philosophy. For Philosophy opens the way from the observation
of individual things to universal precepts. . . .
The Geometers have managed their province outstandingly. For
whatever benefit comes to human life from observation of the stars, from
mapping of lands, from reckoning of time and from long-distance navigation;
whatever is beautiful in buildings, strong in defence-works and marvellous in
machines, whatever in short distinguishes the modern world from the barbarity
of the past, is almost wholly the gift of Geometry; for what we owe to Physics,
Physics owes to Geometry. If the moral philosophers had done their job with
equal success, I do not know what greater contribution human industry could
have made to human happiness. For if the patterns of human action were known
with the same certainty as the relations of magnitude in figures, ambition and greed,
whose power rests on the false opinions of the common people about right and
wrong [jus et iniuria], would be
disarmed, and the human race would enjoy such secure peace that (apart from
conflicts over space as the population grew) it seems unlikely that it would
ever have to fight again.
But as things are, the war of the sword and the war of the
pens is perpetual; there is no greater knowledge [scientia] of natural right and natural laws today than in the past;
both parties to a dispute defend their right with the opinions of Philosophers;
one and the same action is praised by some and criticized by others; a man now
approves what at another time he condemns, and gives a different judgement of
an action when he does it than when someone else does the very same thing. All
these things are obvious signs that what moral Philosophers have written up to
now has contributed nothing to the knowledge of truth; its appeal has not lain
in enlightening the mind but in lending the influence of attractive and emotive
language to hasty and superficial opinions. This part of Philosophy is in the
same situation as the public roads, on which all men travel, and go to and fro,
and some are enjoying a pleasant stroll and others are quarrelling, but they
make no progress. The single reason for this situation seems to be that none of
those who have dealt with this subject have employed a suitable starting point
from which to teach it.
* * *
Hobbes and Machiavelli
are usually considered the forerunners of Realism, but from this short extract
we note a series of contrasts in their approach. Whereas Machiavelli glorified early republican Rome for perfecting the ways of military expansion, Hobbes made the people of Rome the villain of the piece. The very
absurdity which Hobbes noted—Cato’s blindness in censuring the tyranny of kings
but not the tyranny of republican imperialism—is also characteristic of
Machiavelli, for whom the “liberty of Florence” seems necessarily to come at
the expense of the liberty of others. Whereas Machiavelli foresaw humanity
gripped by endless war, Hobbes in this remarkable passage forecasts the
possibility of universal peace. Machiavelli and Hobbes are alike in insisting
upon the right of states to self protection, but there are
significant contrasts in their understanding of this right. It makes a great deal of difference whether glory (as with Machiavelli) or safety (as with Hobbes) is your watchword.
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