Dialogue in Hell: Ninth Dialogue Machiavelli: And where have you ever seen that a constitution, really worthy of the name, really durable, has ever been the result of popular deliberation? A constitution must come forth fully armed from the head of one man alone, or it is nothing but a work condemned to oblivion. Without homogeneity, without linking of parties, without practical strength, it will necessarily bear the imprint of all the weaknesses of sight that have presided at its composition.... Montesquieu: ...One would say, to hear you, that you are going to draw a people out of chaos or out of the deep night of their first origins.... Machiavelli: I do not say no: therefore you will see that I need not destroy your institutions from top to bottom to arrive at my goal. It will suffice me to modify the arrangements and to change the methods.