feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Prince/section_6_part_1.txt
feat_book_id: The Prince.chapter xv
feat_summary_id: chapter xv
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapter XV", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210303115306/https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/prince/section7/", "summary": "Concerning Things for Which Men, and Princes Especially, Are Praised or Censured Machiavelli turns the discussion from the strength of states and principalities to the correct behavior of the prince. Machiavelli admits that this subject has been treated by others, but he argues that an original set of practical--rather than theoretical--rules is needed. Other philosophers have conceived republics built upon an idealized notion of how men should live rather than how men actually live. But truth strays far from the expectations of imagined ideals. Specifically, men never live every part of their life virtuously. A prince should not concern himself with living virtuously, but rather with acting so as to achieve the most practical benefit. In general, some personal characteristics will earn men praise, others condemnation. Courage, compassion, faith, craftiness, and generosity number among the qualities that receive praise. Cowardice, cruelty, stubbornness, and miserliness are usually met with condemnation. Ideally, a prince would possess all the qualities deemed \"good\" by other men. But this expectation is unrealistic. A prince's first job is to safeguard the state, and harboring \"bad\" characteristics is sometimes necessary for this end. Such vices are truly evil if they endanger the state, but when vices are employed in the proper interests of the state, a prince must not be influenced by condemnation from other men", "analysis": ""}
text: 
  It remains now to see what ought to be the rules of conduct for a prince
  towards subject and friends. And as I know that many have written on
  this point, I expect I shall be considered presumptuous in mentioning it
  again, especially as in discussing it I shall depart from the methods of
  other people. But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall
  be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to
  follow up the real truth of the matter than the imagination of it; for
  many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never
  been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one
  ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to
  be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who
  wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with
  what destroys him among so much that is evil.
  
  Hence it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know
  how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.
  Therefore, putting on one side imaginary things concerning a prince, and
  discussing those which are real, I say that all men when they are spoken
  of, and chiefly princes for being more highly placed, are remarkable
  for some of those qualities which bring them either blame or praise; and
  thus it is that one is reputed liberal, another miserly, using a Tuscan
  term (because an avaricious person in our language is still he who
  desires to possess by robbery, whilst we call one miserly who deprives
  himself too much of the use of his own); one is reputed generous,
  one rapacious; one cruel, one compassionate; one faithless, another
  faithful; one effeminate and cowardly, another bold and brave; one
  affable, another haughty; one lascivious, another chaste; one sincere,
  another cunning; one hard, another easy; one grave, another frivolous;
  one religious, another unbelieving, and the like. And I know that every
  one will confess that it would be most praiseworthy in a prince to
  exhibit all the above qualities that are considered good; but because
  they can neither be entirely possessed nor observed, for human
  conditions do not permit it, it is necessary for him to be sufficiently
  prudent that he may know how to avoid the reproach of those vices which
  would lose him his state; and also to keep himself, if it be possible,
  from those which would not lose him it; but this not being possible, he
  may with less hesitation abandon himself to them. And again, he need
  not make himself uneasy at incurring a reproach for those vices without
  which the state can only be saved with difficulty, for if everything is
  considered carefully, it will be found that something which looks like
  virtue, if followed, would be his ruin; whilst something else, which
  looks like vice, yet followed brings him security and prosperity.
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapter XV
target: Concerning Things for Which Men, and Princes Especially, Are Praised or Censured Machiavelli turns the discussion from the strength of states and principalities to the correct behavior of the prince. Machiavelli admits that this subject has been treated by others, but he argues that an original set of practical--rather than theoretical--rules is needed. Other philosophers have conceived republics built upon an idealized notion of how men should live rather than how men actually live. But truth strays far from the expectations of imagined ideals. Specifically, men never live every part of their life virtuously. A prince should not concern himself with living virtuously, but rather with acting so as to achieve the most practical benefit. In general, some personal characteristics will earn men praise, others condemnation. Courage, compassion, faith, craftiness, and generosity number among the qualities that receive praise. Cowardice, cruelty, stubbornness, and miserliness are usually met with condemnation. Ideally, a prince would possess all the qualities deemed "good" by other men. But this expectation is unrealistic. A prince's first job is to safeguard the state, and harboring "bad" characteristics is sometimes necessary for this end. Such vices are truly evil if they endanger the state, but when vices are employed in the proper interests of the state, a prince must not be influenced by condemnation from other men