ABSTRACT
In our observations hitherto about Richelieu, the greatest practitioner of raison d’état in the seventeenth century, we have, as it were, come in a circle; we have contented ourselves with following out the way in which his statesmanlike mind illumined Campanella, the author of the Discours of 1624 and the Duke of Rohan, and then we observed the way in which light was reflected back from these three to fall on Richelieu’s own life-work. We shall now proceed further with this, by attempting to set up a fresh mirror which not only reflects light, but also sends out light of its own; this is the book by Richelieu’s contemporary, Gabriel Naudé, called Considérations politiques sur les coups d’état. Our justification for this is that the intellectual connections and undertones of raison d’état do not find such clear and complete expression in the work of executive statesmen as in the work of those who are close enough to the world of action to know it well, but at the same time stand far enough back from it to be able to reflect on the subject of its problems in a contemplative manner. It is only in exceptional instances, such as that of Frederick the Great, that action and reflection are so effectively united that our investigation is justified in lingering over them. The curious fact is, then, that Naudé, the only pure scholar out of the four contemporaries and satellites of Richelieu whom we discuss, succeeded in noting certain connections and effects exerted on the human mind by action prompted by raison d’état, and in bringing these out more consciously and distinctly than did any of the other three who were of a more active type.
