A History of Western Philosophy

by contact with Byzantine scholarship. Already at the Council of Ferrara ( 1438), which nominally reunited the Eastern and Weste ...

drels put back into their proper place, so that they may be forced to live either without vices or without power." * This is del ...

pope, they brought their own wine and their own cup-bearer, for fear of poison. * Except Savonarola, hardly any Italian of the p ...

CHAPTER III Machiavelli T HE Renaissance, though it produced no important theoretical philosopher, produced one man of supreme e ...

minor post in the Florentine government ( 1498). He remained in its service, at times on important diplomatic missions, until th ...

Pope should be his friend. He pursued this difficult end with great skill; from his practice, Machiavelli says, a new prince sho ...

prominent place in the State, not on the ground of its truth, but as a social cement: the Romans were right to pretend to believ ...

a chapter (XVIIII) entitled: "In What Way Princes Must Keep Faith." We learn that they should keep faith when it pays to do so, ...

most other writers maintain the opposite. It is not without good reason that it is said, "The voice of the people is the voice o ...

But there is also, in politics, the question of means. It is futile to pursue a political purpose by methods that are bound to f ...

it easier with mountaineers than with the men of a large city, since the latter would be already corrupted. * If a man is an uns ...

CHAPTER IV Erasmus and More IN northern countries the Renaissance began later than in Italy, and soon became entangled with the ...

Erasmus ( 1466-1536) was born at Rotterdam. * He was illegitimate, and invented a romantically untrue account of the circumstanc ...

literary trifles. Colet lectured on the Bible without knowing Greek; Erasmus, feeling that he would like to do work on the Bible ...

scholastic sects; popes, cardinals, and bishops--all are fiercely ridiculed. Particularly fierce is the attack on the monastic o ...

from the heart, not the head, and all elaborate theology is superfluous. This point of view has become increasingly common, and ...

fact. All this, however, has taken us far from Erasmus, to whom Columbus was less interesting than the Argonauts. Erasmus was in ...

and he was removed from the university. Thereupon he was attracted to the Carthusians, practised extreme austerities, and contem ...

In Utopia, as in Plato's Republic, all things are held in common, for the public good cannot flourish where there is private pro ...

at the head is a prince who is elected for life, but can be deposed for tyranny. Family life is patriarchal; married sons live i ...