These doctrines, the sameness of human nature and the omnipotent
lawgiver, left no room for anything resembling a theory of Progress.
If not held afterwards in the uncompromising form in which
Machiavelli presented them, yet it has well been pointed out that
they lay at the root of some of the most famous speculations of the
eighteenth century. [Footnote: Villari, loc. cit.]
Machiavelli's sameness of human nature meant that man would always
have the same passions and desires, weaknesses and vices. This
assumption was compatible with the widely prevailing view that man
had degenerated in the course of the last fifteen hundred years.
From the exaltation of Greek and Roman antiquity to a position of
unattainable superiority, especially in the field of knowledge, the
degeneration of humanity was an easy and natural inference. If the
Greeks in philosophy and science were authoritative guides, if in
art and literature they were unapproachable, if the Roman republic,
as Machiavelli thought, was an ideal state, it would seem that the
powers of Nature had declined, and she could no longer produce the
same quality of brain.
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