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Ideology and Utopta 63
the ideological element in his thinking. During the Renaissance,
among the fellow citizens of Machiavelli, there arose a
new adage calling attention to a common observation of the
time-namely that the thought of the palace is one thing,
and that of the public square is another. 5 This was an expression
of the increasing degree to which the public was
gaining access to the secrets of politics. Here we may observe
the beginning of the process in the course of which what
had formerly been merely an occasional outburst of suspicion
and scepticism toward public utterances developed
into a methodical search for the ideological element in all
of them. The diversity of the ways of thought amQng men is \
even at this stage attributed to a factor which might, without1
unduly stretching the term, be denominated as sociological.
Machiavelli, with his relentless rationality, made it his special
task to relate the variations in the opinions of men to
the corresponding variations in their interests. Accordingly\
when he prescribes a medicina forte for every bias of the
interested parties in a controversy,6 he seems to be making
explicit and setting up as a general rule of thought what was
implicit in the common-sense adage of his time.
There seems to be a straight line leading from this point i
in the intellectual orientation of the Western world to thei
rational and calculating mode of thought characteristic of)­
the period of the Enlightenment. The psY~h9~of inter-)
ests seems to flow from the same source. One of the ',hier
characte~i~tics''of"'t'he-method'ol'rational' analysis of human
behaviour, eX~!!1E.!.U!~!L..J:?..Y_Ji!!me·s
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