I remember reading The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli in high school. I don’t remember a whole lot from my original reading of it. I do remember thinking it was just words. I understood each line at a time, but I was not grasping it as a whole. It was way over my head for sure. The one passage I have remembered through my life, about if it is better to be feared or loved, did leave me with the impression that Machiavelli was quite cynical. And for that, I did not respect him or his book. Now that I am less naive, I realize he was just a realist. Machiavelli, without a doubt, had a firm grasp of the nature of the Fallen Man.