More than fifty years ago, political commentator Max Lerner called Machiavelli “the first modern analyst of power,” and identified The Prince as “one of the half dozen books that have done most to shape Western thought.” Machiavelli deserves credit, according to this line of thought (and according to Machiavelli himself) for establishing the first scientific political science, based on steely–eyed scrutiny of actual human behavior and the passions that move human beings in all ages. “Whoever considers present and ancient things easily knows that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same humors, and there always have been,” Machiavelli writes. “So it is an easy thing for whoever examines past things diligently to foresee future things in every republic” (D 1.39). It follows that history, or the register of “past things,” is the laboratory in which the political scientist works. There is a remarkably similar passage in David Hume's writings: