ABSTRACT
Not only the modern State but also the spirit of modern hisorical research has become imbued with the doctrine of raison l’état. It has produced, in the doctrine of the Best Interest of the State (a separate branch which developed out of it), an important basic element of modern historicism. We have already considered the approaches to this doctrine, namely in Boccalini and Campanella. We must now turn back still further to more general considerations of the problem and to the starting point of the whole movement, that is to say, to Machiavelli.
