Page "Niccolò Machiavelli" Paragraph 62

... contemporary readers are reminded by Machiavelli's teaching of Thucydides ; they find in both authors the same “ realism ,” i. e., the same denial of the power of the gods or of justice and the same sensitivity to harsh necessity and elusive chance.

Yet Thucydides never calls in question the intrinsic superiority of nobility to baseness, a superiority that shines forth particularly when the noble is destroyed by the base.

Therefore Thucydides ' History arouses in the reader a sadness which is never aroused by Machiavelli's books.

In Machiavelli we find comedies, parodies, and satires but nothing reminding of tragedy.

One half of humanity remains outside of his thought.

There is no tragedy in Machiavelli because he has no sense of the sacredness of “ the common .” —