This defence, however, is far from convincing. In the "Prince" Macchiavelli maintains the same unconcerned and cool note that prevails in his account of the treacherous assassinations perpetrated in Senigaglia by his hero Cæsar Borgia. The only personal feeling, which peeps out occasionally in both works, is a certain perverse, æsthetic satisfaction, experienced by the artist with the eye of a connoisseur who lingers over a work of nature, perfect in its way, and delights in the harmony of actions which, with absolute logic, almost with mathematical precision, result from the definite premise supplied by a certain character. Des Esseintes, the ideal æsthete invented by Joris Karl Huysmans, may appraise the worth of a monster solely by its beauty, without a thought for its morality. But by such appraisement he cuts himself off from the community of men, though he, in his arrogance, being morally insane, may abuse them as philistines.
Since it first appeared, Macchiavellism has found disciples and admirers in every age; and these, in liberating politics from all fetters of Morality, go further than its originator. The German jurist of the century of the Reformation, Schoppe (1576-1649), declares sententiously that politics differ from Morality and have their own principles, just as Morality has: he considers that the chief difference between them is that the latter takes as its subject of study that which should be; the former, that which is. For this one phrase this pedant, who has otherwise rightly deserved oblivion, has some claim to be remembered. For here he consigns Morality to the realm of pure thought, of theoretical and meditative idealism, while for politics he claims the sphere of practical reality and shows the first dim dawning of that practical policy (_Realpolitik_) which, two hundred and fifty years later, was to be as the light of the sun to statesmen.
The Frenchman, Gabriel Naudé, almost a contemporary of Schoppe's, constituted himself the champion of Coups d'Etat, if they promised political advantages; further, he justifies and praises the Night of Saint Bartholomew, a very energetic measure taken in his lifetime to put an end to the religious strife which was weakening France and causing the government much embarrassment; his only regret is that the happy idea of slaughtering all the Huguenots was not carried out more completely; in other words, that the massacre of the obnoxious Protestants was not continued until they had been completely wiped out.