368
PARTISAN REVIEW
Let us cornel now to the most famous and controversial chapter
of the
Prince,
the last chapter where in an apparently unexpected
way Machiavelli sets up the "Prince" and the "lion and the wolf,"
and writes the exhortation to drive out the barbarians from Italy. In
general, aside from paying no attention to this chapter, as many
readers do, there are two theses to explain it: the first, that the
chapter
is
a pure and simple contradiction of what precedes; the
second, that the whole
Prince
was written in the light of this chapter
and in short Machiavelli becomes here the prophet of the liberation
and unifiJcation of Italy. I believe both theses are equally wrong.
The last chapter is a vehement exhortation to drive out the
barbarians and rebuild the
patria.
Yet the entire
Prince
is nothing
but a work of destruction of precisely those elements which constitute
the
patria.
The
patria
is
not an abstract concept nor a pure geo–
graphic expression: apart from the land and the men, it is the
culture, tradition, religion, customs, arts, affects, freedom.
If
all these
elements were non-existent or corrupted or absorbed or destroyed,
very little would remain of the
patria-an
abstraction behind which
would hide forces with different ends and a different nature: for
example the interests of an oligarchy or a dynasty. Now Machiavelli's
Prince must necessarily first destroy all these elements I have just
enumerated, if he is to attain the power which will then uphold him.
If
Machiavelli had really understood the Prince in this way, he would
have done approximately the same thing that the Jesuits and other
casuists of the Counter Reformation did when they put the very
glory of God at the service of their systems of sophistic and calculated
prudence which destroyed all true religious feeling. To make matters
worse there is also this difference: while the men of the Counter
Reformation were trying to restore an aged and defeated order, and
therefore had the excuse of being at the end and not the beginning of
a long and irrevocable historical process, Machiavelli, as everyone
knows, is a herald and a precursor of the absolute monarchies, as
well as a patriot who favored a unified Italy. Now this would be
curious to say the least: that Machiavelli, who judged the Italy of
his time as the most corrupt country in the world, and who in the
Prince
and his other works had given an unforgettable picture of
this corruption, should then not find anything better to redeem Italy
than the bourgeois figure of his Prince, who uses means derived
directly from that corruption.
