【正确答案】 A

【答案解析】[解析] 14-16
Many historians of the twentieth century look back at the fifteenth century and say,"Michiavelli was the first political scientist in history." They say that he looked at politics for the first time with the factual eye of a scientist. He was only interested in the facts. He thought that politics and morality didn't go together very often, but he studied ideas of right and wrong, along with politics; government leaders, he wrote, could use these ideas to get and keep power.
In Michiavelli's opinion, the nature of human beings is usually evil, so a good person must always fail. He thought it was important for a political leader to know how to be bad. In fact, Michiavelli saw leaders of government as people above ordinary human beings; so, he believed, they are also above ordinary morality. Good and evil, he said, are only ideas that weak people use to excuse weakness; powerful people use their ideas to keep other people weak. They can lead because they want power and because they fight for it. Also, these leaders are not usually afraid to leave morality behind, so they don't have ideas of right or wrong to stop them. They think only of power. It is nice, Michiavellisaid, if political leaders can also be good people, but they must know how to be bad when the time comes.
Michiavelli said that it is natural to fight for power and that there are two methods people use: law and physical force. The first method is the way of human beings, and the second method is the way of animals. Great political leaders very often use the way of animals, but they usually pretend to use the way of good human beings. They do this to get and keep power.
Question 14: What did Michiavelli think of the nature of human beings?