Yet there can be no doubt, that statesmen have written about
politics far more happily than philosophers. For, as they had experience
for their mistress, they taught nothing that was inconsistent with
practice.
3. And, certainly, I am fully persuaded that experience has revealed all
conceivable sorts of commonwealth, which are consistent with men's
living in unity, and likewise the means by which the multitude may be
guided or kept within fixed bounds. So that I do not believe that we can
by meditation discover in this matter anything not yet tried and
ascertained, which shall be consistent with experience or practice. For
men are so situated, that they cannot live without some general law. But
general laws and public affairs are ordained and managed by men of the
utmost acuteness, or, if you like, of great cunning or craft. And so it
is hardly credible, that we should be able to conceive of anything
serviceable to a general society, that occasion or chance has not
offered, or that men, intent upon their common affairs, and seeking
their own safety, have not seen for themselves.
4. Therefore, on applying my mind to politics, I have resolved to
demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce
from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of,
but only such things as agree best with practice. And that I might
investigate the subject-matter of this science with the same freedom of
spirit as we generally use in mathematics, I have laboured carefully,
not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions; and
to this end I have looked upon passions, such as love, hatred, anger,
envy, ambition, pity, and the other perturbations of the mind, not in
the light of vices of human nature, but as properties, just as pertinent
to it, as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, and the like to the nature of
the atmosphere, which phenomena, though inconvenient, are yet necessary,
and have fixed causes, by means of which we endeavour to understand
their nature, and the mind has just as much pleasure in viewing them
aright, as in knowing such things as flatter the senses.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25