SLSL Intro "Two Other Mighty Influences"

[Dave Monroe]

"Much later I got around to two other mighty
influences, Edmund Wislon's To the Finland Station and
Machiavelli's The Prince, which helped me to develop
the interesting question underlying the story--is
history personal or statistical?" (SL, "Intro," p. 18)


>From Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in
the Writing and Acting of History (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1972 [1940]), Ch. 1, "Michelet
Discovers Vico," pp. 3-6 ...

"Vico, by reason of his humble origin and his
reputation of being a crank, had missed his academic
career; but, finding his path of advancement blocked
and driven back upon his own resources, he pushed
further his unpopular ideas.  He composed, and
published in 1725, a work called Principles of a New
Science Dealing with the Nature of Nations, Through
Which Are Shown Also New Principles of the Natural Law
of Peoples.  Vico had read Francis Bacon, and had
decided that it ought to be possible to apply to the
study of human history methods similar to those
proposed by Bacon for the study of the natural world. 
Later he had read Grotius, who had advocated an
historical study of philosophy and theology in terms
of the languages and actions of men ...." (pp. 3-4)

"It is strange and stirring to find in the Scienza
Nuova the modern sociological and anthropological mind
waking amid the dusts of a provincial school of
jurisprudence of the end of the seventeenth century
and speaking through the antiquated machinery of a
half-scholastic treatise....  What we see now are men
as we know them alone on the earth we know.  The myths
that have made us wonder are projections of a human
imagination like our own and, if we learn how to read
them correctly, they will supply us with a record,
inaccesible up to now, of the adventures of men like
ourselves.
   And a record of something more than mere
adventures.  Human history had hitehrto always been
written as a series of biographies of great men or as
a chronicle or remarkable happenings or as a pagenat
directed by God.  But now we can see that the
developments of societies have been affected by their
sources, their environments; and that like individual
human beings they have passed through regular phases
of growth...." (pp. 4-5)

"... the organic character of human society and the
importance of reintegrating through history the
various forces and factors which actually compose
human life.... we find Michelet preaching as follows
....  'Woe be to him who tries to isolate one
department of knowledge from the rest....  All science
is one: language, literature and history, physics,
matematics and philosophy; subjects which seem the
most remote from one another are in reality connected,
or rather they all form a single system.'" (p. 6)

Ch. 11, "The Myth of the Dialectic," pp. 210-33 ...

   "The Dialectic ... is a religious myth,
disencumberd of divine personality and tied up with
the history of mankind." (p. 227)

   "But conversion to the belief in a divine power
does not have always an energizing effect.  In was in
vain that Marx tried to bar out Providence.... as long
as he keeps talking as if the proletariat were the
chosen instrument of a Dialectic, as if its victory
were predetermined, he does assume an extra-human
power." (p. 229)

"... insofar as this movement involves, under the
disguise of the Dialectic, a semi-divine principle of
History, to which it is possible to shift the human
responsibiliy for thinking, for deciding, for
acting--and we are living as the present time in a
period of decadence of Marxism--it lends itself to the
repressions of the tyrant...." (p. 231)


And from Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince (trans. W.K.
Marriott, London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1908 [1505]), Ch.
XXV, "What Fortune Can Effect In Human Affairs, And
How To Withstand Her" ...

IT is not unknown to me how many men have had, and
still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world
are in such wise governed by fortune and by God that
men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no
one can even help them; and because of this they would
have us believe that it is not necessary to labour
much in affairs, but to let chance govern them. This
opinion has been more credited in our times because of
the great changes in affairs which have been seen, and
may still be seen, every day, beyond all human
conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in
some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless,
not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true
that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our
actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the
other half, or perhaps a little less. 

I compare her to one of those raging rivers, which
when in flood overflows the plains, sweeping away
trees and buildings, bearing away the soil from place
to place; everything flies before it, all yield to its
violence, without being able in any way to withstand
it; and yet, though its nature be such, it does not
follow therefore that men, when the weather becomes
fair, shall not make provision, both with defences and
barriers, in such a manner that, rising again, the
waters may pass away by canal, and their force be
neither so unrestrained nor so dangerous. So it
happens with fortune, who shows her power where valour
has not prepared to resist her, and thither she turns
her forces where she knows that barriers and defences
have not been raised to constrain her. 

[...]

... the prince who relies entirely upon fortune is
lost when it changes. I believe also that he will be
successful who directs his actions according to the
spirit of the times, and that he whose actions do not
accord with the times will not be successful. Because
men are seen, in affairs that lead to the end which
every man has before him, namely, glory and riches, to
get there by various methods ... and each one succeeds
in reaching the goal by a different method. One can
also see of two cautious men the one attain his end,
the other fail; and similarly, two men by different
observances are equally successful, the one being
cautious, the other impetuous; all this arises from
nothing else than whether or not they conform in their
methods to the spirit of the times....

Changes in estate also issue from this, for if, to one
who governs himself with caution and patience, times
and affairs converge in such a way that his
administration is successful, his fortune is made; but
if times and affairs change, he is ruined if he does
not change his course of action. But a man is not
often found sufficiently circumspect to know how to
accommodate himself to the change, both because he
cannot deviate from what nature inclines him to, and
also because, having always prospered by acting in one
way, he cannot be persuaded that it is well to leave
it; and, therefore, the cautious man, when it is time
to turn adventurous, does not know how to do it, hence
he is ruined; but had he changed his conduct with the
times fortune would not have changed. 

[...]

I conclude therefore that, fortune being changeful and
mankind steadfast in their ways, so long as the two
are in agreement men are successful, but unsuccessful
when they fall out. For my part I consider that it is
better to be adventurous than cautious, because
fortune is a woman, and if you wish to keep her under
it is necessary to beat and ill-use her; and it is
seen that she allows herself to be mastered by the
adventurous rather than by those who go to work more
coldly. She is, therefore, always, woman-like, a lover
of young men, because they are less cautious, more
violent, and with more audacity command her. 

http://www.the-prince-by-machiavelli.com/the-prince/title.html

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com