nswers to the questions the world presented to them. "The key to their problems they knew to be rooted in the lives and actions of men" and the historians and political thinkers of the era began to look to historical and contemporary examples for lessons about the how people really created and solved their problems (35). Niccol= Machiavelli, as Garrett Mattingly's biography shows, took this principal of observation to its farthest point. After observing a successful prince, Cesare Borgia (whose legendary ruthlessness was probably exaggerated), Machiavelli wrote The Prince, in which he discussed the factors that made Borgia, or any leader, successful. He only observed and then deduced what would, logically, be the surest road to success. Machiavelli wrote that men were self-interested, stupid and greedy and that a prince needed to rule without scruples. For Machiavelli, the "moral laws and standards are merely snares for fools [and] there is no reality but power" (188).
Observation and learning from classical culture were just as important in the
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