feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Prince/section_7_part_1.txt
feat_book_id: The Prince.chapter xviii
feat_summary_id: chapter xviii
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter XVIII", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section8/", "summary": "In What Way Princes Should Keep Their Word Machiavelli acknowledges that a prince who honors his word is generally praised by others. But historical experience demonstrates that princes achieve the most success when they are crafty, cunning, and able to trick others. There are two ways of fighting: by law or by force. Laws come naturally to men, force comes naturally to beasts. In order to succeed, the prince must learn how to fight both with laws and with force--he must become half man and half beast. When a prince uses force, he acts like a beast. He must learn to act like two types of beasts: lions and foxes. A fox is defenseless against wolves; a lion is defenseless against traps. A prince must learn to act like both the fox and the lion: he must learn, like the fox, how to frighten off wolves and, like the lion, how to recognize the traps. In dealing with people, a prince must break his promises when they put him at a disadvantage and when the reasons for which he made the promises no longer exist. In any case, promises are never something on which a prince can rely, since men are by nature wretched and deceitful. A prince should be a master of deception. However, a prince must be careful to exude a virtuous aura that belies his deceitful mind. Pope Alexander VI was one ruler who excelled at this art. A prince should present the appearance of being a compassionate, trustworthy, kind, guileless, and pious ruler. Of course, actually possessing all these virtues is neither possible nor desirable. But so long as a prince appears to act virtuously, most men will believe in his virtue. If the populace believes the prince to be virtuous, it will be easier for him to maintain his state. Moreover, men will judge their prince solely on appearance and results. Thus, it doesn't matter to the people that a prince may occasionally employ evil to achieve his goal. So long as a prince appears virtuous and is successful in running the state, he will be regarded as virtuous", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and
  to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience
  has been that those princes who have done great things have held good
  faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect
  of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on
  their word. You must know there are two ways of contesting,(*) the one
  by the law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the
  second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it
  is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary
  for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the
  man. This has been figuratively taught to princes by ancient writers,
  who describe how Achilles and many other princes of old were given to
  the Centaur Chiron to nurse, who brought them up in his discipline;
  which means solely that, as they had for a teacher one who was half
  beast and half man, so it is necessary for a prince to know how to make
  use of both natures, and that one without the other is not durable. A
  prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought
  to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself
  against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves.
  Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a
  lion to terrify the wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not
  understand what they are about. Therefore a wise lord cannot, nor ought
  he to, keep faith when such observance may be turned against him, and
  when the reasons that caused him to pledge it exist no longer. If men
  were entirely good this precept would not hold, but because they are
  bad, and will not keep faith with you, you too are not bound to observe
  it with them. Nor will there ever be wanting to a prince legitimate
  reasons to excuse this non-observance. Of this endless modern examples
  could be given, showing how many treaties and engagements have been made
  void and of no effect through the faithlessness of princes; and he who
  has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best.
  
       (*) "Contesting," i.e. "striving for mastery." Mr Burd
       points out that this passage is imitated directly from
       Cicero's "De Officiis": "Nam cum sint duo genera decertandi,
       unum per disceptationem, alterum per vim; cumque illud
       proprium sit hominis, hoc beluarum; confugiendum est ad
       posterius, si uti non licet superiore."
  
  But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic,
  and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and
  so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will
  always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. One recent
  example I cannot pass over in silence. Alexander the Sixth did nothing
  else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he
  always found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power
  in asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would
  observe it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to
  his wishes,(*) because he well understood this side of mankind.
  
       (*) "Nondimanco sempre gli succederono gli inganni (ad
       votum)." The words "ad votum" are omitted in the Testina
       addition, 1550.
  
       Alexander never did what he said,
       Cesare never said what he did.
  
  Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities
  I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them. And
  I shall dare to say this also, that to have them and always to observe
  them is injurious, and that to appear to have them is useful; to appear
  merciful, faithful, humane, religious, upright, and to be so, but with a
  mind so framed that should you require not to be so, you may be able and
  know how to change to the opposite.
  
  And you have to understand this, that a prince, especially a new one,
  cannot observe all those things for which men are esteemed, being often
  forced, in order to maintain the state, to act contrary to fidelity,(*)
  friendship, humanity, and religion. Therefore it is necessary for him to
  have a mind ready to turn itself accordingly as the winds and variations
  of fortune force it, yet, as I have said above, not to diverge from the
  good if he can avoid doing so, but, if compelled, then to know how to
  set about it.
  
       (*) "Contrary to fidelity" or "faith," "contro alla fede,"
       and "tutto fede," "altogether faithful," in the next
       paragraph. It is noteworthy that these two phrases, "contro
       alla fede" and "tutto fede," were omitted in the Testina
       edition, which was published with the sanction of the papal
       authorities. It may be that the meaning attached to the word
       "fede" was "the faith," i.e. the Catholic creed, and not as
       rendered here "fidelity" and "faithful." Observe that the
       word "religione" was suffered to stand in the text of the
       Testina, being used to signify indifferently every shade of
       belief, as witness "the religion," a phrase inevitably
       employed to designate the Huguenot heresy. South in his
       Sermon IX, p. 69, ed. 1843, comments on this passage as
       follows: "That great patron and Coryphaeus of this tribe,
       Nicolo Machiavel, laid down this for a master rule in his
       political scheme: 'That the show of religion was helpful to
       the politician, but the reality of it hurtful and
       pernicious.'"
  
  For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything
  slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five
  qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether
  merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing
  more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men
  judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to
  everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees
  what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare
  not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty
  of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and
  especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges
  by the result.
  
  For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding
  his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be
  praised by everybody; because the vulgar are always taken by what a
  thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are
  only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have
  no ground to rest on.
  
  One prince(*) of the present time, whom it is not well to name, never
  preaches anything else but peace and good faith, and to both he is
  most hostile, and either, if he had kept it, would have deprived him of
  reputation and kingdom many a time.
  
       (*) Ferdinand of Aragon. "When Machiavelli was writing 'The
       Prince' it would have been clearly impossible to mention
       Ferdinand's name here without giving offence." Burd's "Il
       Principe," p. 308.
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter XVIII
target: In What Way Princes Should Keep Their Word Machiavelli acknowledges that a prince who honors his word is generally praised by others. But historical experience demonstrates that princes achieve the most success when they are crafty, cunning, and able to trick others. There are two ways of fighting: by law or by force. Laws come naturally to men, force comes naturally to beasts. In order to succeed, the prince must learn how to fight both with laws and with force--he must become half man and half beast. When a prince uses force, he acts like a beast. He must learn to act like two types of beasts: lions and foxes. A fox is defenseless against wolves; a lion is defenseless against traps. A prince must learn to act like both the fox and the lion: he must learn, like the fox, how to frighten off wolves and, like the lion, how to recognize the traps. In dealing with people, a prince must break his promises when they put him at a disadvantage and when the reasons for which he made the promises no longer exist. In any case, promises are never something on which a prince can rely, since men are by nature wretched and deceitful. A prince should be a master of deception. However, a prince must be careful to exude a virtuous aura that belies his deceitful mind. Pope Alexander VI was one ruler who excelled at this art. A prince should present the appearance of being a compassionate, trustworthy, kind, guileless, and pious ruler. Of course, actually possessing all these virtues is neither possible nor desirable. But so long as a prince appears to act virtuously, most men will believe in his virtue. If the populace believes the prince to be virtuous, it will be easier for him to maintain his state. Moreover, men will judge their prince solely on appearance and results. Thus, it doesn't matter to the people that a prince may occasionally employ evil to achieve his goal. So long as a prince appears virtuous and is successful in running the state, he will be regarded as virtuous