"Giannotti's mind was independent, forceful, and original, but lacked the unpredictable creativity of genius which we find in Machiavelli; and for this reason it may be taken as displaying in some detail the bent and the limitations of humanist political thought. His chief originality consists in his perception of virtu in a mixed government was a kind of power, and in his consequent attempt to define the four functions of government whose location determined the signore. But he failed to concentrate these functions and was obliged to distribute them instead; and the ultimate reason was that humanist political thought was overmasteringly concerned with the ideal of civic virtue as an attribute of personality, and in the last resort always turned from the establishment of institutionalized authority to the establishment of conditions, termed liberta, in which virtue might have free play and escape corruption."