Note 87 — III The ‘Clerks’—The Great Betrayal

Machiavellian morality is plainly proclaimed in the following lines, where every open-minded person will recognize, except for the tone, the teaching of all the present teachers of realism, whatever their nationality: ‘In his relations with other States, the Prince should know neither law nor right, except the right of the strongest. These relations place in his hands, under his responsibility, the divine rights of the Destiny and government of the world, and raise him above the precepts of individual morality into a higher moral order, whose content is enshrined in the words: Salus populi suprema lex esto.’ (Fichte, quoted by Andler, op. cit., p. 33.) The advance on Machiavelli is obvious.