This is why, without paying attention to this particular kind of finance whose mysteries I am willing to ignore, my only subject in this and in the following chapters will be the finances and the general economy of princes and their states taken together as a whole; and I will try to give the principles and the general rules for everything that can arise that is of most importance on this subject, in every state in the world, while nevertheless mainly looking at[^1] Germany, my country, for the good of which I must care the most.
Anyone familiar with (158) the structure and properties of a state will agree with me that the interests of the prince or of those who govern must be the same as the interests of the people; a prince cannot be rich and happy if his subjects are not, and consequently, a prince who mishandles the interests of his people does considerable harm to his own. But since interests so closely linked together often appear with different faces and even disguise themselves entirely before the eyes of those who do not pay the necessary attention or who lack the perspicacity and discernment to distinguish appearances from truth, it is important to bring them to light and to show them in (159) their natural simplicity in order to be able to make an assured and solid judgment on everything that arises. To this end, we must first join the prince and his state together and consider them jointly as a natural body, of which each one is only a part, the Prince representing the head or the soul and the people the members. Since the body politic is only a copy that men drew from natural bodies, it is not out of the question to seek the beauty and perfection of the body of a state in the resemblance to a natural body that is healthy and perfect, especially since this body politic is only an assembly of several natural bodies, which are the men who compose it. (160)
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