At the beginning of Chapter 15 of The Prince, Machiavelli writes the following remarkable but complex sentence (complex both in structure and content): But, it being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of a matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil. (emphasis added) Here Machiavelli is objecting to, among other things, Plato’s Republic. Machiavelli thinks that in the Republic, Plato’s Socrates paid too much attention to how people should behave, and not enough to how they usually behave in everyday life. Machiavelli seems to be saying that rulers (like the guardians of Plato’s Republic) who worry too much about how people should behave get in trouble as compared to rulers who concentrate upon how people actually behave in everyday life. Which of these positions makes more sense to you? Should governments be concerned with trying to get their citizens to behave in a better way, or should they simply accept that its citizens are what they are, and not try to change them? [you might want to consider this in terms of gender-for instance, should our government be involved in trying to change the way that men behave towards women?)