,,the ,,pedigree ,,of ,,fascism ,a ,,popular ,,essay ,,on ,,the ,,western ,,philosophy ,,of ,,politics ,,by ,,aline ,,lion ,lady ,margaret ,hall1 ,oxon4 ,,london3 ,,sheed ,,ward #ca1 ,,paternoster ,,row1 ,e4,c4 #d ,,to ,,john ,,walter1 ,,esq41 ,,to ,,whose ,,questions ,i ,,owe ,,the ,,first ,,idea ,,of ,,this ,,book4 ,a4 ,l4 ,first ,published1 #aibg ,,contents ,part ,i ,,the ,,political ,,antecedents ,,of ,,fascism ,,chapter ,,page ,i4 ,is ,fascism a ,revolution8 #c ,,ii4 ,liberalism in ,italy #aj ,,iii4 ,nationalism and ,socialism #bc ,,iv4 ,the ,european ,war and its ,effects #cg ,part ,,ii ,,philosophical ,,antecedents ,,of ,,fascism ,i4 ,philosophical ,antecedents #eh ,,ii4 ,humanism and ,renaissance #gj ,,iii4 ,the ,seventeenth ,century #ib ,,iv4 ,the ,seventeenth ,century in ,france #aad ,v4 ,giambattista ,vico #abe ,,vi4 ,illuminism in ,england and ,france #acg ,,vii4 ,nineteenth ,century in ,italy #aed ,,viii4 ,benedetto ,croce #agj ,,ix4 ,giovanni ,gentile #ahi ,x4 ,benito ,mussolini #baa ,index #bce ,,author',s ,,note ,i should1 perhaps1 say from the first that ,i am neither ,italian nor ,fascist4 ,yet1 having lived in ,italy from #aiac to #aibg1 ,i cannot but be conscious of the fact that the country has undergone a deep change1 and have come to the conclusion that it is a change for the better4 ,my purpose in writing this book has been to bring to the knowledge of people possessed of a fair amount of general knowledge1 the conclusions that might be formed by a specialist with regard to this change and the value of it4 ,incidentally ,i have endeavoured to discourage both those who would import ,fascism1 as it flourishes in ,italy1 into other countries1 and those who would hinder the spread of that philosophy which1 ,i hold1 is its basis4 ,it is necessary to avoid1 when possible1 definitely partisan sources of information2 therefore ,i have turned to the works of ,michele ,rosi for the history of politics and to ,frederick ,windelband for the history of philosophy wherever general reading has proved inadequate or my memory failed4 ,in conclusion ,i must offer special thanks to ,sir ,frank ,fox for his careful reading of my manuscript and his invaluable suggestion with regard to it4 ,i am also most grateful to the following whom ,i have consulted as to historical or philosophical accuracy--,professor ,g4 ,a4 ,smith1 ,professor ,g4 ,c4 ,webb1 ,mrs4 ,anne ,mac,cormick1 ,miss ,jamison1 ,miss ,mary ,coate and ,mr4 ,r4 ,g4 ,collingwood4 ,,aline ,,lion4 ,lady ,margaret ,hall1 ,oxford4 ,part ,i ,,the ,,political ,,antecedents ,,of ,,fascism ,,chapter ,i ,,is ,,fascism ,a ,,revolution8 ,if one may judge of the importance of a political event by the number of articles and books printed on the subject there is no question but that ,fascism is one of the most important movements of the post-war world4 ,strange to say1 however1 the light thrown by most of these publications fails to illuminate the points most interesting to foreigners4 ,this is probably due first of all to the fact that most of the writers have written either for or against it2 moreover1 this movement1 being peculiarly ,italian1 is difficult for a foreign mind to grasp4 ,in any case1 it is a fact that in spite of all the good or bad will of the journalists this revolution is far from being understood4 ,the lack of intelligent information regarding it is felt everywhere2 and it would be difficult to say whether the misrepresentation is greater among those who admire it and1 seeing in it a universal remedy for all modern woes1 want to introduce its method in other countries2 or among those who consider it just as a matter of incidental and local politics4 ,i shall try to put it in its historical setting1 and ,i shall consider myself fortunate if ,i can throw light on its relation to the political past of ,italy1 and to the present political conceptions of other countries4 ,the first question that invariably arises is whether ,fascism is or is not a revolution4 ,this1 however1 must be answered by another3 what is a revolution8 ,no word stands in greater need of a sound1 common-sense definition1 yet a definition of it stands on the very threshold of any impartial research on ,fascism4 ,is revolution merely a change of government8 ,this is not sufficient4 ,if it were1 the fall of ,louis ,philippe from the throne of ,france would be a revolution2 yet it is obviously by a license that one speaks of it as the ,revolution of '#dh4 ,the form of government may change without any substantial alteration of the rgime4 ,then does revolution imply a change of rgime8 ,yes1 but1 again1 what is exactly a change of rgime8 ,without following any further this method of investigation let us define ,fascism as the introduction of a new conception of the relation between ,state and ,citizen1 a new conception of political reality4 ,it is1 therefore1 a doctrine1 a system1 and as such is philosophy expressing itself in history4 ,this admitted1 it is necessary to guard against the abstract bent4 of philosophical researches4 ,the deepest currents of speculative thought would never bring about a single change of government by themselves2 but then they do not exist by themselves4 ,it is only in the synthesis of history that we find them at play in the world of historical reality1 which is what it is because thoughts and deeds are one4 ,the ,march on ,rome did certainly mark the confluence of two streams coming to mingle their waters between the banks of the ,tiber4 ,one was torrential1 the impulse coming from a fifty years' accumulation of economic and political mistakes in ,italy4 ,the other was deeper1 slower1 the contribution of centuries of ,italian philosophy enriched by the intellectual thought of all ,europe4 ,the torrent is represented by the political antecedents of ,fascism3 the deep stream by the philosophical antecedents of ,fascism4 ,to illustrate my figure a period of history presents itself as an example4 ,it does not correspond exactly to the present movement in ,italy1 but it is at any rate familiar to one and all3 the ,french ,revolution4 ,we see there1 also1 the typical stream of philosophical life carving a deep bed for the river to come3 in the minds of intellectuals1 in the consciousness of the people1 abstract theories or works of artistic vulgarisation1 prepare the bed for the river that will become1 under the impulsion of actual circumstances1 an irresistible torrent4 ,so that this revolution whose intellectual pedigree makes it the offspring of ,descartes1 and ,hobbes1 of ,grotius1 ,locke and the ,english political writers1 besides the ,encyclopdists1 ,voltaire and ,rousseau1 has to the highest degree the qualities that make it an element of universal life1 and a fertilising principle in the politics of all ,europe4 ,on the other hand it receives1 undoubtedly from the economic and political conditions of ,france1 the particular determinations that distinguish it as ,french1 as belonging to the eighteenth century4 ,the form it took actually between #agij and #agie could not be introduced anywhere else2 under that form it was exclusively ,french1 because--we must insist on the point--it had received it as its actual and concrete determination from its immediate antecedents4 ,actuation1 realisation1 concrete life1 whatever the field we move in1 whether we consider politics1 artistic creation1 or natural life1 it requires two elements1 the one universal1 the other particular4 ,now history shows that the universal element spreads1 notwithstanding frontiers and the will of men4 ,its force of expansion is a quality common to all ideas2 but the particular is not to be imported1 and it is as impossible to introduce it in foreign lands as it is to confine the other to any land4 ,hence the political applications of the same theories in different countries differ from each other as do the countries themselves4 ,these differences1 economic1 political1 religious1 intellectual1 in a word the historical differences existing between two countries determine the differences that the same theory will undergo when it is adopted by the people of different nations4 ,the ,italian patriots at the end of the eighteenth century were very few1 and all1 without exception1 intellectuals4 ,some belonged to the higher or lower aristocracy1 some belonged to the upper middle class1 but all were scholars1 men of the widest reading4 ,it would be difficult to find nowadays a body of men so well informed4 ,for one thing1 production has increased immensely and life has lost the leisure that allowed intellectual tastes to be satisfied4 ,the fact remains that at the close of that century ,italy could boast of men aware of its inferior position1 of its non-existence as a nation4 ,such men were ready to try anything1 and did try to imitate the ,french revolution in so far as they could by founding the small republics that lasted one season or two1 dying away like plants of distant countries1 when they are planted in our soil4 ,their zeal1 however1 was not sterile1 they failed in their immediate purpose1 because they wanted to introduce not only ideas but the actual form in which these were expressed4 ,a constitution1 a battle1 the plan of a town1 a project of economic reform1 each of these things is an expression endowed with an sthetic value varying with the degree of perfection attained by the man who worked it out1 and gave the idea that prompted him a suitable realisation4 ,but the essential quality of the sthetic creator is to be on a particular theme1 the voice of his time and of the body of men he represents in his act of creation4 ,the men of the revolution were by no means fair representatives of the people of ,france2 but when they drew up the constitution they certainly realised on the whole the desiderata of most ,frenchmen4 ,giving expression1 giving form to the ideas that had agitated the whole century1 they did it in the only way that could be a ,french way in those days4 ,now the will of ,napoleon1 when he wished ,italy to be politically a copy of ,france1 was a very empirical will1 and the men who tried to carry out his wishes because they loved ,italy were not any more transcendental4 ,in this question they took no notice of what were the spiritual and political conditions of their country1 and yet surely a constitution is an expression of mind4 ,in all this however their blunder paved the way to a better understanding of the matter4 ,everybody realised that in order to have anything like an independent government the first thing was to be a great and unified country4 ,when the ideas that had led in ,france to the ,revolution and ,republic were developed in ,italy1 according to the mentality of the great ,italians1 they blended with all that was particular to ,italy and expressed themselves in an ,italian movement3 the ,risorgimento4 ,it cannot be over emphasised1 for the importance of the point is great2 the same ideas that caused the ,republic to become for more than a century the form of ,french government1 gave birth to the ,kingdom of ,italy4 ,roughly1 the same can be said of ,fascism4 ,its ideas and doctrine will spread whether they meet with favour or hostility1 because they are ,italian just as ,liberalism is ,english1 that is to say they are ,italian in their methods of actuation and perfectly universal in their philosophical content4 8,equality1 fraternity1 liberty10 was the eighteenth century cry1 and it might be the cry of the ,fascists4 ,their revolutionary contribution to the history of politics is the denial of natural rights1 natural rights being understood as something the determination of which is anterior to the birth of man1 as the quality of a cabbage or a rose tree is anterior to its birth4 ,right is so narrowly linked to duty that for this school of thought it cannot be anterior to consciousness4 ,therefore man must be considered and rated in the ,state only according to spiritual value and actual economic or intellectual interest4 ,the natural rights of man are denied4 ,the spiritual value1 entitling man to citizenship1 cannot be acquired by him once for all and enjoyed without effort4 ,he must daily and continuously be working for the vindication of the rights he has won1 and for the conquest of those he seeks4 ,citizenship is not a chattel lying in a man's possession3 its only reality is bound to the performing of the duties correlative of rights4 ,there ,fascism meets with all our religious communities2 in all ,israelite and ,christian ,communities or ,churches the new-born child is admitted on the pledge1 taken for him by sponsors1 that he will discharge his duties and accept the law of the community of which he becomes a member4 ,such a pledge he has to confirm on his coming to adult state4 ,citizenship becomes1 finally1 with the whole of political reality1 a moral1 spiritual and ,christian reality1 and the only real equality of men can be attained in a ,state in which each man is rated according to actual value4 ,for citizenship1 taken as a birthright of man1 is a remains of ,pagan times1 when it was the lot of some to be born slaves and of some to be born citizens4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,liberalism ,,in ,,italy ,for the foreigner interested in the political affairs of ,italy a study of the pedigree of the two elements of ,fascism is essential in order to distinguish what is exclusively ,italian from what is to become universal4 ,it is therefore necessary to trace1 or at least attempt to trace1 this pedigree in spite of the difficulty of the task4 ,fascism presents itself at first as being essentially the expression of the national consciousness of ,italy4 ,so it is2 but it must be stated at once that it is the national consciousness recently acquired by the people of ,italy1 which1 like an uncontrollable force1 has worked itself out1 taking ,fascism as its expression4 ,without this distinction the student is induced by its nationalist character to see in the present movement the last act of the long drama of wars and agitations that led to the independence and unification of the country4 ,the truth is1 that though it is practically the epilogue of that drama1 ,fascism cannot be identified with the ,risorgimento4 ,the spirit which animated the men of the days of ,cavour and ,garibaldi is totally and essentially different from that which impels the followers of ,mussolini to act as they do4 ,the wars of independence were due to the initiative of an aristocratic minority2 whose aristocratic and intellectual qualities distinguished them and perhaps ensured their success4 ,the leaders of the ,risorgimento were not hampered by anything like a popular following2 and their eventual agreement as to what was best for their cause was always made certain by this intellectual selectness4 ,all were able1 like ,garibaldi and ,mazzini1 to see things as they were and to act accordingly1 not only to the extent of sacrificing their lives but of sacrificing their dearest ideals as well4 ,republicans1 they accepted monarchy2 ministers1 of their own free will they relinquished power to place it in hands they thought more fit than their own to realise their dream2 staunch ,catholics1 during their life they fought the ,church in its temporal politics1 in an age when the best educated priests would not admit and could not even see the possibility of distinction between temporal and spiritual power4 ,only religious and idealistic men can realise by how much such sacrifices surpassed for them the gift of money1 liberty1 or even life4 ,there is one ,english word that sums up what these ,italian liberators were1 whether noblemen1 solicitors1 writers1 professors1 officers1 doctors3 they were gentlemen of good classical education and wide reading who had assimilated what was best in ,europe4 ,the common people1 one cannot insist too much upon the fact1 remained indifferent at best1 and that only as long as their interests were not affected2 the lower middle class were hostile1 that is to say the shop people and all the multitude of small functionaries who saw their daily bread dependent on the existing state of things1 were openly against any change4 ,how could such people feel the need or see the possibility of building up a nation1 one nation1 out of the harlequin coat presented by the map of ,italy8 ,thus a free hand was guaranteed to the small number of ,italian gentlemen then endowed with heroic souls4 ,they had nobody to consult1 they were a ,state in themselves1 a ,state without a lower class4 ,perhaps for the last time in the history of the world we see there realised the classical republic without a political plebs4 ,no wonder that they worked a miracle2 they belonged politically to different states1 and yet by the force of their ideal they attained that oneness of conscience which gives personality and reality to a nation4 ,the spirit of the nation existed before its material realisation2 there is no better illustration of the new notion that ,fascism is bringing to the fore in the world of concrete history1 that of the nation as a spiritual reality1 independent of geographical and ethnographical determinations4 ,never in history has this notion received a more complete and actual realisation than in this first dawn of the national life in ,italy4 ,the reality of the nation had its first affirmation in the sacrifice of these men1 for it is obvious that no sober man would give up life1 liberty1 wealth1 for something unreal2 and1 in fact1 the reality of ,italy as a nation ceased to be questioned then and there4 ,every advantage1 of course1 has its disadvantage4 ,as the pioneers of the ,risorgimento did not need the people1 they overlooked all the problems that the necessity of obtaining popular collaboration would have compelled them to face4 ,all economic and social questions were overlooked except by a very few2 the spiritual education of the lower class was not even suggested in their programme of action4 ,their aims were the independence and the political unity of ,italy1 and to that goal they directed their hearts and minds indifferent to the needs of practical life1 and to all the obstacles that seemed to make their dream a theme for the lyrical effusions of poets4 ,in fact they were poets1 all of them1 for they created a reality out of an ideal vision that was more an intuition than an intellectual conception4 ,the very manner in which they carried out their revolution was sthetic more than practical2 they shut their eyes to all that was in contradiction to their dream1 exactly as the artist does who strives to express an intuition through material realisation1 and in order not to let the objective world crowd his mind deliberately shuts his eyes to it1 to everything that is not his present ideal4 ,the economic and social questions could not in any case have been faced1 still less dealt with1 as long as the nation was not a political reality4 ,any attempt would have been sterile and perhaps even harmful4 ,first1 it would have led the people to believe that under the then present conditions the economic organisation of each little state might have been so planned as to ensure the material well-being of the population1 that they could receive a greater share of political importance and therefore of administrative attention from the local governments and thus be better off in the harlequin coat than under the flag of a united ,italy4 ,it was1 moreover1 expedient to hold to the singleness of purpose that was more likely to make action coherent all through the peninsula2 only such singleness of aim made it possible to men of so different temperament and breeding as professional men and noblemen1 ,tuscans and ,sicilians1 ,freemasons and ardent ,catholics1 to think and therefore to act in positive harmony4 ,when a bullet has hit the bull's-eye it has fulfilled its purpose1 and stays there in helpless immobility or falls to the ground a useless thing4 ,it was meant for that shot1 and is bound to be purposeless when it has made its mark4 ,the generations of ,carlo ,alberto and ,mazzini1 of ,vittorio ,emmanuele and ,cavour1 had certainly hit the mark when ,rome had become the capital of ,italy4 ,was it to be expected that men who had identified themselves with the goal should be able to take another goal and fit themselves to a new task8 ,or could it be that the realisation of the new ,state should bring1 as its immediate consequence1 a ready-made generation of statesmen8 ,indeed1 if there is one thing that cannot be produced by a magic wand1 it is a body of able and trained political men4 ,when the days of heroic deeds were over the makers of ,italy turned to the government of the new realm and found themselves faced by all the problems of national life4 ,inspiration and idealism proved out of place1 and although theirs was1 what would have been called in ,england or in ,france1 a ,conservative government1 they had to rely on a very strange electoral body4 ,while they did not extend the vote at once1 they found in the middle class a set of ,arrivists with an imperative egoism that was to prove the curse of political life in ,italy4 ,it is difficult for an ,english1 ,french1 or ,american citizen to realise the kind of problems with which these men were beset4 ,above all it is difficult to an ,englishman2 ,england has had five or six centuries of political experience1 a length of time sufficient to produce electors and mandatories able to realise what are the duties of the executive as well as of the legislature4 ,in ,italy1 on the other hand1 the nineteenth century has seen all stage of political development succeeding one another in a hurly-burly that has a good deal in common with the succession of the events of a man's life on a cinema film4 ,he passes from childhood to youth1 and on to manhood1 maturity and old age in a couple of hours4 ,if he actually could crowd all experience into a couple of years the proportion would be better2 but he would have no fairer notion of reality and of his own rights and duties at any stage of his life than the ,italians could be expected to have when they had to pass in less than fifty years through the political stages successively experienced by the people of other countries in several centuries4 ,now no student of the history of politics1 or even of art1 ignores the fact that when a nation has reached a political or artistic form it is in the process of getting a mastery of that form that criticisms arise1 and that out of criticism comes the idea1 confused at first1 then clearer and clearer1 of the form that is to supersede it4 ,this is1 in fact1 the process of dialectic3 it is the dialectic of history2 and in spite of the wish to avoid any special terminology1 it is better to call the process by its own name4 ,at first people struggle to reach a certain form of government1 and that moment of dialectic ends when the form is reached2 they then apply it more and more fully and1 during its application1 discover its limitations2 this second moment ends in criticism of the whole theory2 finally they set themselves to remedy its shortcomings4 ,this last moment coincides in the people with the free consciousness of dissatisfaction1 and in the leaders with a clear understanding of the new tendencies to be satisfied1 so that it is not theoretical to say that the people learn to use a new form whilst they are using1 then discarding1 the one that came before it4 ,in ,italy nothing of the sort happened4 ,the international culture of its scholars put them in contact with all that was best or worst in the politics of ,europe4 ,they would have been ashamed to be behindhand in what was considered social progress4 ,then two uncommon factors came into play after #ahgj4 ,to make ,italy1 it had been necessary to trample upon a good deal of historical tradition4 ,not all the local governments were as bad during the eighteenth century as they were said to be4 ,moreover1 paramount had been the prestige of the ,popes4 ,against all the ,conservative forces the men of the ,risorgimento had appeared as a lot of ,jacobins2 they had to fight the ,church in its temporal power1 and although this power was not essential to religion it had behind it a tradition of ten centuries4 ,with the government of the ,popes the whole ,italian civilisation was closely connected2 indeed1 the best brains of ,italy have always realised that1 whatever the faults of the ,church1 ,italy is first of all a ,catholic country4 ,anti-clericals in their political activity1 men like de ,sanctis1 would not have printed a word against the ,church as historians4 ,indeed1 the greatest thinkers of the time1 ,gioberti and ,rosmini1 tried very hard to be good ,catholics and great philosophers at the same time4 ,yet since they could not doubt that ,italy must have ,rome for its capital as the seal of its political unity1 the ,popes had to be deprived of their temporal sovereignty4 ,the feeling about ,rome was one of historical mysticism1 and seldom1 if ever1 have men found themselves thrown into an irreligious attitude by a sentiment of that kind4 ,no contradiction could have been more profound1 for it brought these ardent lovers of their remotest past to make use of forces that were antagonistic to the one institution that linked their present to this same past4 ,however1 there was no alternative2 adopting ,illuminism as one of the chief currents animating modern life1 they had as their most precious support the anti-,catholic movement1 to which1 as a matter of fact1 a great many of them belonged4 ,anti-,catholicism had a great weakness in that it was not a national product1 but had been introduced into political life as a necessary stimulant to rouse the people from their slumbers1 as will be seen later on2 now that they were awake it divided the nation and prevented the welding of the new tradition to its history of twenty centuries4 ,the statesmen of this epoch had no experience of the administration and government of a big ,state3 they were not conscious of the problems of international relations2 they knew nothing of the economic and social exigencies of a population exceeding thirty millions of souls4 ,the people had no political education whatsoever4 ,on the other hand1 the leaders would not be retrograde and became more and more liberal1 at a rate that did not allow the people to be prepared by experience for successive steps in popular government4 ,the sequence of reforms was not historical1 was not dialectical3 it did not correspond with the spiritual and economic development of the people1 but was introduced to make up for lost time and bring ,italy up to the ,western ,european level as fast as possible4 ,with no tradition to make up ballast1 the so-called 8,right0 could not be termed ,conservative because it originated in a revolution1 and it kept its old ideal as a target after it had been realised1 and therefore had ceased to be a principle of action4 ,what was to be expected under such conditions8 ,the wonder is that the nation did not go to pieces1 and that the work of two generations of constructive men was not destroyed by their incapacity to husband what they had created4 ,in the face of such facts one cannot help thinking of ,vico and his identification of divine ,providence with the rationality of history4 ,this people was politically at the nursery stage2 it had no modern political science of its own1 and therefore none of its legislative acts were based on actual and practical understanding of what were the national necessities4 ,they were inspired by the example of foreign governments and1 consequently1 could not meet ,italy's peculiar necessities4 ,what did for the others could not do for ,italy4 ,yet it was impossible to keep back a people so well informed of modern progress4 ,the ,italian ,liberals1 it must be said for their immortal fame1 had the clear-sightedness necessary to attain their aims1 inasmuch as they had reduced them to a formula that could be accepted by all the other patriots4 8,italy1 one and free10 was their aim1 and to this aim nobody could object4 ,the flaw of such an aim is that it is too simple to correspond to actual reality4 ,it sounds like an algebraical axiom1 and1 indeed1 is just as abstract in its basis as any mathematical formula4 ,for the ,liberals the nation was exclusively constituted by its territorial expansion and by the unification of the people of the different states therein included4 ,they could not change their aim1 and when they had to administer the new realm their eagerness and singleness of purpose often blinded them to reality4 ,as the unity they had reached was formal1 if one can term it so1 their legislation purposely ignored the differences between ,sicilians and ,tuscans2 and in their haste to unify internally what was already externally one1 they imposed what could at best be formal and artificial unity4 ,every annexation had been preceded by a local struggle1 and success was not sufficient to cause equanimity in the triumphant party4 ,all that had existed under the old rgime was an object of hatred to the ,liberals2 and their ministers1 even when they kept above such feelings1 were none the less unable to discriminate between the antiquated local laws and those that were still useful and even good4 ,they destroyed local institutions1 often created to meet actual requirements1 to impose1 for instance1 upon the people of ,sicily ,piedmontese laws1 the inspiration of which was usually imported from ,france or ,england4 ,they had the impression that it would be dangerous to the unity of the country to keep some of the local laws1 or to make new ones to meet the particular needs of this or that province4 ,in the minds of these passionate creators of unity1 unity was a quite fragile affair1 produced by them ex tempore2 they did not see that it could only be the result of a slow elaboration1 bound to go on for generations1 and that the final success of their enterprise was more likely to be ensured by an intelligent interpretation of tradition than by the application of exotic doctrines that did not fit any of the historical characteristics of the country4 ,the same singleness of vision was to prove blinding in regard to several other points2 but it will be enough to state here that the fact that the men who had sacrificed themselves to the cause of unity had all been gentlemen1 led those in power to consider the higher classes as exclusively constituting the nation they had brought into being4 ,the rest were politically non-existent2 and in the haste to develop the commercial and industrial possibilities of the country a good deal too much was done to enthrone capital and invite thereby the advent of ,socialism4 ,finally1 another cause of trouble--indeed1 another consequence of the same lack of political tradition and education--was the impossibility of forming proper party organisations4 ,who was ,left--and who was ,right8 ,discrimination was impossible4 ,parties1 like all historical organisms1 are called into being and developed according to1 and in consequence of1 the political development of the country4 ,in ,italy they had to be produced1 planned and organised all at once1 by the mere empirical decisions of men1 who1 whatever their ability1 or the loftiness of their ideals1 could not avoid the arbitrariness and the errors to which the best individual men are subject1 limited as their views are by their personal feelings or ambitions4 ,therefore1 what happened was this3 some followers of ,mazzini who had joined the ,liberals in the struggle for liberty1 stood out as republicans2 some who had followed ,garibaldi and who had for ten years longed to take ,rome from the ,pope1 became anti-clerical democrats2 the rest were not to be clearly distinguished from one another because a man who was a staunch monarchist may have been in the same time anti-,catholic if he was a ,freemason1 whilst another might have had strong democratic tendencies and yet stand for tradition4 ,the best instance of this may have been ,crispi3 he belonged to the ,left1 and certainly often acted and felt like a man of the ,right4 ,such confusion was to reach its climax when1 after #ahff and #ahgj1 it was understood that the king and the government1 having obtained the ,veneto from ,austria1 had given up the intention of adding ,trento and ,trieste to the kingdom4 ,then the extreme ,left joined irredentism to its anti-,catholic activity4 ,they went on speaking of the ethnographic right that such provinces had to claim themselves as ,italian1 and they artfully bound their anti-religious campaign to a programme that sounded highly idealistic4 ,no wonder that the different governments that succeeded each other should lose their time fighting the ghost of financial bankruptcy4 ,one thing only can be brought against them1 and it is that though all men of great culture they did not understand how unhistorical were their actions4 ,they should have known that their conception of ,state and citizen1 their idea of what is the function of the government1 had been taken ready made from other countries and lazily accepted without any proper study of its antecedents4 ,some were ,anglophile1 some under their new ,germanophilism hid the most perfect assimilation of ,french doctrines taken in their easiest and1 therefore1 most abstract formulas4 ,none took liberty for what the word had meant of actual and positive political conquest to the average ,englishman of the seventeenth century2 they did not even take it for what it had meant of practical improvement to the ,frenchman of the eighteenth century2 they took it as a rhetorical figure with an abstract concept behind it1 as soon as it ceased to mean independence from foreign rule4 ,they termed themselves ,liberals1 however1 and when they came to be ministers of a ,liberal government they professed sometime a very curious notion of what such a government should be2 ,cairoli put it down in three words1 reprimere non prevenire2 an excellent motto perhaps1 when the citizens are used to the exercise of their duties and rights1 but soon proved to be dangerous in a country where traditions had been trampled upon during half a century4 ,in less than a decade ,italy was the prey of anarchy1 for in #ahgh1 the same ,cairoli1 had to defend the king's life in ,naples at the risk of his own1 and in ,florence and ,pisa bombs were thrown against the crowds rejoicing over the king's narrow escape4 ,the ,liberals looked at the way legislation worked in ,france and in ,england1 but1 like all followers of ,illuminism1 they took it for granted that there existed a certain kind of animal which was the same wherever and whenever you find ,man1 and they looked at the application of the system1 not at its origin1 not at its philosophical and political antecedents2 in short1 they did not see that it was brought about by the whole history of the countries in which it flourished1 and they believed that it would work wherever men lived together in nations4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,nationalism ,,and ,,socialism ,under such circumstances what was the government for the political classes8 ,a coach in a land of brigands2 for the most popular elements a coach to be attacked on the roadside2 for the better elements1 a coach they had a right to drive1 whip in hand4 ,every man stood up against the government either begging or threatening2 so that it is no wonder that the next generation of gentlemen mostly stood aside and shunned politics1 seeing that at best the men who mixed in it were moved by selfish ambition1 or were a vulgar crew of ,arrivists and mischief plotters4 ,abstention on the one side was1 however1 a form of selfishness1 as harmful to the state as ,arrivism on the other4 ,provided they kept clean hands1 the abstentionists did not mind that the national conscience should be either corrupted or lulled to sleep by the people whose interest it was that it should slumber4 ,obviously their withdrawal from public life had the same cause as the ambition and the unscrupulous opportunism of the others4 ,after fifty years of heroic life and feelings1 they wanted to attend to their own business and enjoy life privately4 ,public cares and struggles had been the order of the day for half a century1 and public conscience relaxed2 with a sudden eclipse of national consciousness1 ,italy lost the pride of autonomy in foreign affairs and ceased to realise in deeds the part it had to play in the history of the world4 ,its foreign policy is the best index of the spiritual conditions of the period1 and according to the historian1 ,michele ,rosi 7who is neither a ,fascist nor a ,liberal1 nor a ,socialist1 because he is a man born to put together facts1 historical facts1 and live a passionate life among them instead of living it among men7 the line of conduct of ,italian foreign ministers at this stage can be described as the policy of men who distrusted themselves more then they distrusted others4 ,rosi does not say so1 but the facts he puts together do say so4 ,of this the best proof was the ,triple ,alliance4 ,in #ahgc ,marco ,minghetti went with ,king ,vittorio ,emmanuele ,,ii to ,berlin and to ,vienna to discuss a second alliance with ,germany and more cordial relations with the ,austrian court4 ,the followers of ,garibaldi raised an outcry as they saw in this a sure proof that the ,king of ,italy was giving up ,trento and ,trieste1 whereas it had never been thought in the past that ,rome or ,venice might have been so abandoned4 ,in ,parliament1 however1 the ,left was quite willing to lean on the shoulder of ,germany1 and was submitting even to an alliance with ,austria1 although some of the members had dark remembrances of its rule4 ,but at the same time they flirted with ,france1 who was going more and more to the ,left1 and whose anti-clericalism seemed to cheer on their own anti-,catholicism4 ,in #ahgg ,francesco ,crispi1 the best statesman of ,italy at the time1 one of those men of the ,left whose mentality brought them mostly to think and often to act as if they had belonged to the ,right1 made a diplomatic tour to the capitals of ,germany1 ,austria1 ,france and ,england4 ,he had one open aim1 and another one not quite so fully acknowledged1 which was to look for support against a possible aggression that was feared both from ,paris and ,vienna4 ,the impression he received was that ,berlin might accept an alliance with ,italy against ,france1 on the understanding that ,austria would be left free to do what she liked in the ,east4 ,thirty years before1 ,italy1 still in the making and far from seeing yet her way to unity1 had attacked single-handed the greatest empire of ,europe in an offensive war2 now1 out of fear of a possible attack from ,france1 which ,bismarck himself declared very unlikely1 she entered into an alliance from which she received only orders and prohibitions4 ,when the ,congress of ,berlin took place1 all that the representative of ,italy could do was of so little avail1 that the ,germans declared that the ,french and the ,italians had to settle the question of ,tunis between themselves4 ,this did not admit of any compensation to ,italy for the ,austrian occupation of ,bosnia-,herzegovina and expansion in the ,east4 ,the ,italian policy at that congress betrayed a total incapacity to display the policy of a great ,state in foreign affairs4 ,the reasons were threefold1 the men in power had a very poor understanding of the forces and the interests of the country and1 in consequence1 could not act according to these2 they were holding on to ideologies1 that had served their time and whose high-sounding rhetoric could only help them to hide the vacuum of their minds2 finally1 they had a sense that their home affairs were getting more and more out of hand and this feeling may have been the most cramping of all the circumstances in which they stood4 ,negative as it was1 the attitude of the government was in harmony with that of ,parliament4 ,when1 in ,january1 #ahgi1 the ,senate disapproved of its foreign policy1 the head of the government1 who was ,depretis1 shifted all responsibility by saying that1 as ,prime ,minister1 he had in that department followed faithfully the traditions of the ,right1 although he belonged to the ,left4 ,in ,february of the same year1 ,mussolino strongly advised them to enter into an alliance with ,germany2 he knew1 said he1 that ,bismarck would accept it unwillingly1 as he believed the ,italians to be unfaithful1 but that he would do so nevertheless1 needing ,italy against ,france4 ,nothing could be less heroic1 than a ,senate which had good grounds to feel pride in the newly achieved national independence1 and was yet so low spirited that it could accept an alliance on such grounds4 ,the ideal of the ,risorgimento had been realised1 and as the new leaders had no new ideals they had nothing further to realise2 they were bodies without souls1 with nothing that might give them a chance to display the gifts with which nature had so largely endowed them4 ,materialists in philosophy they strove to make the country more and more materialist1 fighting religion under the names of clericalism and obscurantism4 ,obviously what kept the various governments of ,italy from having a dignified foreign policy was that the country was in a state bordering on anarchy4 ,one cause of this was lack of experts in all the political classes1 devoid1 as the best men were1 of personal or traditional experience to help in the application of their imported legislation2 but the main cause was undoubtedly the amorphous state of the working classes4 ,if man is to be called a political animal1 the labourers of ,italy were not men fifty years ago4 ,they did not care what happened and did not think they had anything to say in the matter3 they were politically unconscious4 ,not that they were stupid3 their art1 their songs1 their traditions attest the contrary4 ,their political unconsciousness1 far from making things easier1 rendered a good ,liberal government very nearly impossible2 for apathy and indifference in the lower class1 while it may be very well under an absolute monarchy of the patriarchal type1 under a ,liberal constitution is apt to prove a curse4 ,first1 the lower middle class kept drawing men from the people1 and these men1 with the natural gift of adaptation the ,italian shows to a greater degree than the slower northern races1 rose too quickly and too quickly became conscious of their plebian force and of the opportunities offered to them by the difficulties under which the government was working4 ,among these men and among the crowds of half-intellectuals employed by the ,state in the innumerable offices created by the centralising administration1 in the national schools1 in the railways1 post services and so on1 the members of ,parliament1 who belonged to the ,left1 recruited their votes4 ,how quickly these electors realised that their chances of getting all the political importance in their hands rested on the extension of the franchise need not be emphasised4 ,the dates are eloquent1 ,rome became the capital of ,italy in #ahgj1 in #ahhb the franchise is extended1 and immediately a workman1 ,maffi1 and a pure ,socialist1 ,andrea ,costa1 are elected4 ,without attempting a sketch of the development of ,socialism in ,italy1 it must be said that it certainly did a great deal of good to the country4 ,it aroused the working masses from their slumber and bettered their material conditions1 which badly wanted bettering4 ,to stir the people out of their amorphous state and make them conscious of their rights was a very wholesome operation4 ,it would have been better to have made them realise at the same time that rights never go without duties1 and that to co-operate in public life they had to undertake the one in order to get the other4 ,but this1 however1 was more than could be expected from agitators1 who often had1 themselves1 a very poor notion of the relation of right and duties4 ,their incitement to the people was to make material well-being1 the ultimate end of all effort4 ,vulgar as it was1 yet it was the proper aim for a materialistic age1 and it had the advantage of being concrete1 positive1 and within range of the people's rudimentary political understanding4 ,therefore it worked4 ,it had the first quality that an idea must have to move people to action2 it corresponded to the real needs of the workers4 ,the nobler side of ,socialism1 that which had made it highly idealistic and has made its ultimate end a dreamy ,messianism1 did not strike root in ,italy4 ,it did not appeal to the people1 and whenever it fascinated some stray poet or idealist1 like ,andrea ,costa or ,mussolini's father1 they failed to arouse an echo in the minds of the labourers4 ,this should have been sufficient to show that it did not suit the ,italian mentality4 ,mankind1 the fraternity of mankind1 the lost paradise reconquered by the mutual love of men1 could not mean much to ,italian ears4 ,it sounded abstract1 and at best did not show much chance of being realised by the present generation4 ,the ,socialist leaders had to attract followers with more concrete things1 with plans that could be realised1 and to arouse in them a passion for an actual object4 ,consequently they harped on the necessity of getting better wages for less work4 ,they planned ,labour organisations which gradually grew stronger1 and they taught the workers to hate their employers4 ,yet this was not the worst part of the leaders' activity2 that was the corrupting consciousness they gave the workers of an unlimited political power without any corresponding duties4 ,out of unfairly treated men they made bullies1 most unhappy bullies1 the worst kind of bullies4 ,the torture of ,mussolini's youth was this rapid decadence of ,socialism in ,italy1 although it had the advantage over other parties of a stock of general ideas and a definite programme4 ,it was only the weakness of other parties which made it look strong until the war and during the years that followed the peace2 for as far back as #aiaj the historic ideas it had brought to ,italy had yielded their crop4 ,had it not been so1 ,socialism1 between #aiah and #aibj1 would have worked out in open revolution4 ,as it was1 it had built up a class organisation that was the first regular ,party in modern ,italy1 and this meant considerable experience for the whole nation2 it had besides bettered the material conditions of life of the lower class and awakened them to political consciousness1 which is a contribution to the development of the country as a modern ,state that cannot be overrated4 ,liberalism1 be it of the ,right or of the ,left1 had had an ,italian form1 which had proved its consonance with the historical position of the country by the efficiency with which it had realised its ideal4 ,italy1 free from foreign rule and politically one under the ,house of ,savoy1 was doubtless the creation of ,italian ,liberalism4 ,but as a home governing party its inefficiency was obvious2 one may think that its failure was due to its non-national stock of ideas1 which led to the application of foreign legislation to a country whose needs were not the same as those of the nations in which this administrative and political ,liberalism had come out of a long historical evolution4 ,socialism1 on the other hand1 was yeast1 and as yeast it was very good for ,italy1 for the unleavened masses rose into shape and life under its action2 thereby emerging from their amorphousness they entered into the political world and brought with them the force and life of numbers4 ,it brought them also to the level of the ,european proletariat and introduced the ,party discipline and organisation that the other ,italian parties had not needed1 as their singleness of aim and the loftiness of their ideals had been sufficient to keep their high-minded members in unity4 ,yet it proved a curse1 as its leaders were unable to realise that the wretched means they had to resort to1 in order to arouse men into action1 were due to the fact that the higher side of ,socialism did not fit the mentality of the people4 ,another party must be now considered1 and that commands a great deal of respect from any foreigner that may have watched with loving eyes the life of ,italy3 ,nationalism4 ,corradini and ,federzoni may be looked upon as its leaders1 and their followers were a mere handful of men4 ,they had a clear notion of what they wanted1 and to a certain extent they may be considered as the rightful heirs of the ,risorgimento4 ,again they were all gentlemen1 gentlemen being taken as the ,english equivalent of vir1 implying the sterling quality of the individual and not at all his social position or his sthetic refinement1 which may be merely the consequence of wealth4 ,small minorities are always to be found at the origin of any great political movement as it is the conviction of the few which carries away the multitude of men4 ,but then the crucial point is that their convictions must have magnetic attraction for the general public4 ,and the ,nationalists had not this4 ,their ideas were too high and1 at the same time1 they were obsolete1 besides being no more ,italian than those of ,liberalism or ,socialism4 ,the ,nationalists' idea of a nation was as materialist as their aims were idealist4#a ,now this would be sufficient to condemn to sterility the best wills in the world4 ,to state this plainly1 the easiest way is to take man as a simile for nation4 ,there are two ways of looking at a man3 he is one out of many1 or he is the one central reality4 ,as one out of many he knocks in every sense against the reality of the many1 and is therefore identified by his very limitations4 ,such a conception of the man is evidently negative4 ,he is appreciated not so much by what he actually does1 but by what he has done1 or possesses2 not so much by what he is1 but by the rank he occupies1 and which may often be determined independently of his ,,actual value4 ,but as the one central reality a man cannot come into competition with other objects of appreciation2 he can no longer be gauged from outside4 ,now1 obviously1 from the world of objective and natural reality1 we are shifting to the subjective and spiritual world4 ,we have in front of us no longer an individual belonging to the world of things--we have a person4 ,common wisdom has for centuries professed that to understand a person's motives it is necessary to put oneself in that person's position2 and daily experience shows that we understand the people we love better1 because we can make ourselves one with them and judge them from their own point of view4 ,to appreciate a personality this method is indispensable2 for it is not in the deeds of his past that a man must be judged--he may have been a hero in the last war and be a coward in his present family life--they are now extrinsic to him1 unless he goes on living them and making them for ever his spiritual experience4 ,he must be judged by what he is doing actually4 ,neither must one measure him by his property1 but by what he is still able to produce2 nor by the regard or contempt of the people who surround him1 which is based on what he has done2 nor on what his people were1 but by what he actually is4 ,none of these conditions of appreciation is fulfilled as long as we look at a man from outside and weigh his manly worth by comparing his achievement1 or his property1 to that of other people4 ,past deeds should not raise him one whit in our appreciation unless he continues them with perfect conscience of their value1 for their actual and his personal value depend exclusively of the conscience he has of such value and of his aptitude to keep it actual4 ,of this fact ,corradini and his friends had excellent examples in ,italy4 ,some of the landlords1 who owned relatively small estates and quite insufficient capital1 managed to bring their land to the highest rate of productiveness1 so that the actual production was superior to that of estates of a much bigger acreage4 ,the owners of the latifondi1 on the other hand1 were not all sufficiently rich to have their lands ploughed1 and those who were did not always do so1 although some ,roman princes did cultivate thoroughly1 very often as much from patriotism as from the wish to increase their incomes4 ,conspicuous among them were some leading ,nationalists4 ,they could see from this that the importance of a man as a landlord was not altogether dependent on the area of his estate and on his capital1 and that it varied according to the consciousness he had of what the value of his estate should be and the capacity he had for realising it4 ,but they did not think of the nation as of a man whose value1 practically as well as spiritually1 depends not so much on the capacity he has for doing things1 as on his being conscious of such capacity4 ,therefore1 they looked at ,italy measuring it by the poor figure it cut in foreign policy1 by its colonies1 by its financial weakness1 comparing it always in their minds with other countries2 in a word1 judging it from outside as if it had belonged to the field of natural science instead of belonging to the world of history1 which is after all the world of ,mind4 ,thank ,god1 however1 8le coeur a des raisons que la raison ne connat pas10 and some of these men1 ,corradini above all1 were men with great hearts and deep souls4 ,out of faith and love of their country they realised what their conception of political reality would have kept them from seeing1 namely that the root of all the evil was that the people of ,italy had almost allowed the stifling of their souls4 ,religion in some provinces had been1 so to speak1 extirpated by the anti-,catholic democrats1 republicans and radicals2 both religion and patriotism had been lulled to sleep by the ,socialists4 ,the only political cell still living and strong was the family4 ,the ,nationalists were beset by another cause of sterility1 the men these leaders recruited 444 did they share their religious and truly patriotic motives8 ,all did not1 and that was the misery of it4 ,yet ,corradini and some others were men of faith1 just as much as ,cavour and ,mazzini had been2 they could get men to join them in holding aloft a torch whose flame flickered in the cold twilight of ,garibaldi's ,italy4 ,they kept the sacred fire of ,rome burning1 and openly preached self-sacrifice1 whilst great artists and sceptic scholars invited the youth of the upper class to enjoy life and shut themselves up in selfish existence4 ,the ,nationalists were men of faith1 and as everything is possible to him that believeth1 they kept working for their cause a certain number of followers who had joined them in the hope that better openings would be obtained for the export of ,italian products and for ,italian emigrants if a strong ,nationalist foreign policy could be substituted for the existing weak one4 ,for the ,nationalists the nation was a transcendent reality1 objectively considered as to the individual4 ,such conception is not peculiar to ,italy by any means2 yet it was modified in its ,italianisation1 but always in a way that made it more and more a policy for the gentry4 ,a good deal of culture 7,i don't mean philosophy1 but a true sense of history and a sound judgment7 was at the basis of it1 and this did not tend to make it a popular movement4 ,to sacrifice oneself to something transcendent1 to an historical construction1 is not for the mob3 not even for the lower middle classes1 absorbed as they are by the problems of daily life4 ,there we touch what really distinguishes the ,fascists from the ,nationalists1 for whom the ,state belongs to natural reality1 is transcendent in its relation to the individual1 and negatively conceived in its relation to other states1 where it appears one amongst many4 ,it is a great engine that needs the co-operation of all the citizens to make it work1 but it does exist independently of the citizens4 ,philosophically this conception belongs to the eighteenth century4 ,for the ,fascists1 the ,state is not transcendent in its relation to the citizens3 it is immanent2 it is their own spiritual and economical life in its political summing up4 ,in its relation to other states it is not negatively conceived as one amongst many2 for its citizens1 it is their national self1 whilst the other nations are constitutive of their national non-self4 ,the positiveness of the ,state for its citizens implies therefore1 for them1 the negativeness of the other states4#b ,such a conception sounds merely theoretical1 and yet it was not born in words4 ,its painful birth was the outcome of ,mussolini's experience as a ,socialist and a party leader4 ,words have never been given to this newest of all the conceptions that ,italy is contributing to the world of politics except in an answer he gave to the judges who1 in #aiaa1 were condemning him at ,forli4 ,besides this very curt answer1 he never expressed it except in deeds1 so that the form under which it is given here is contributed by the author4 ,the rest of the doctrine that can be inferred from his four years' speeches1 legislation and administration1 can be traced in the whole of the philosophical works produced by ,italian idealism2 but this1 although perfectly consonant above all with ,gentile's theories1 was certainly one of ,mussolini's most original ideas4 ,the task of the government is to raise the level and increase the value of the citizens1 attending not to the organisation of every branch of life manifestation1 but to the regulation or rather systematisation of such organisation in order to have always the most intimate fusion of state and citizens4 ,the empirical self requires that the peasant should plough his field1 sow the seed and reap the harvest4 ,all this he is bound to do to satisfy his material needs and the work thus considered is certainly not ennobling1 since man works as the slave of hunger4 ,fascism says to the peasant3 8,thou shalt no longer plough1 sow1 reap for thyself1 that is to say exclusively for thy material self1 but for the ,state1 which is that same empirical self plus its transcendental complement40 ,hence ploughing1 sowing and reaping are no longer the work of man1 slave of his material needs1 but of man transcending them1 without disregarding them1 however1 and lifting thereby his daily occupation to the dignity of moral realisation of his own economic value4 ,the only precedent that this application of ,fascism seems to have had is the ,christian sanctification of work1 which is undoubtedly one of the noblest gifts bestowed by our religion upon mankind4 ,the study of ,fascism as a doctrine will offer many such coincidences4 ,the ,state must be universally present as a moral factor in every branch of its citizens' activity4 ,it is in fact the all-pervading consciousness that man must have of his citizenship which expresses itself as the government4 ,obviously extension of territory should be immaterial if the people of a country could actually be lifted to this high state of political realisation4 ,but even at the stage reached by ,fascism it is easy to see how it affects the policy of foreign states towards ,italy4 ,bring the people to such a degree of political consciousness that every activity may be so directed that it ensures at the same time personal and national increase of value1 then you can very nearly cease to trouble about foreign policy1 which must be the projection of the home policy1 that is to be the supreme affair of a government intent on the valorisation of its country4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,european ,,war ,,and ,,its ,,effects ,in ,march1 #aiad1 the cabinet of ,giolitti retired owing to some differences with the ,radicals4 ,the moment was full of difficulties and the new ministry was likely to have to deal with strikes and riots at home and complications out of ,italy4 ,sonnino1 leader of the ,opposition and one of the best men that the ,right could boast of1 refused to form a new cabinet and managed to have the office entrusted to ,salandra4 ,the ,german ,emperor1 passing through ,venice on his way to ,corfou1 had a long talk with the king and the ,marquis of ,san ,giuliano1 the fact being considered a new proof of ,italo-,german friendship apparently even by the government1 whose endeavours were all directed to secure a majority in both ,houses and to avert the storm that was threatening at home4 ,the railways were on the verge of a general strike1 the state officials were demanding better wages and tried to enforce their requests by forming a trade union2 workmen and peasants made riots in various provinces1 especially in the ,romagne and ,marche1 where in ,june the ,red ,week gave the spectacle almost of a revolution4 ,there however the ,socialists and ,republicans made such a poor show that it is likely to have done a good deal towards shaking ,mussolini's faith in popular revolution4 ,salandra and his ministers were so beset that they let foreign affairs go unheeded or at least treated them as a matter of minor urgency4 ,it must have been a great shock to them to realise the imminence of war4 ,when the war broke out involving all the great ,european ,powers the public generally believed ,italy to be bound to back the ,triple ,alliance4 ,immediately the ,socialists and the extreme ,left stirred up a campaign on the ground that the ,italian people were pacifists and supporters of international ,socialism4 ,it is not easy to say whether1 even had it been pledged to do so1 the government would have been able to obtain the support of the nation to enter war immediately4 ,morally the people were not ready to accept a war without attack or without provocation from somebody4#c ,on the first of ,august ,italy declared neutrality and on that day the ,giornale d',italia clearly stated that such neutrality was not like that of ,holland or ,switzerland1 and above all should not be considered as definitive4 ,the tenor of the press showed on which side an eventual intervention of ,italy would take place4 ,everybody was either neutralist or interventionist1 but nobody was in favour of an intervention on the side of the ,triple ,alliance4 ,the most ,germanophile never went farther than neutralism2 all that they hoped and prayed for was the non-intervention of ,italy4 ,the argument of the neutralist papers was based on a statement of the economic and individual sacrifices that war would involve1 and a plea that ,italy could not yet be fit to enter such a conflict4 ,anti-idealists or sceptics 7as many of the sons of the heroes of the ,risorgimento were7 they all agreed to regard life as the supreme value and material well-being as its natural frame4 ,of war they only saw the destructive side4 ,they were certainly logical4 ,a conception of life so thoroughly materialist could not permit of a higher view of war2 for war certainly does destroy life and if it can and does promote an improvement in the material conditions of life it is only as a remote consequence of the class changes1 and the industrial and commercial stimulus carried in its trail4 ,the immediate consequences are certainly unsettling and paralysing to business4 ,on the other hand the interventionists had as the basis of their argument a set of platitudes the abstract ideology of which was nearly as objectionable as the materialism of their opponents4 ,france1 ,belgium and ,england were identified with right and civilisation1 ,germany and ,austria with wrong and barbarity4 ,therefore ,italy should have the honour of being among the righteous avengers of liberty and civilisation against their traditional foe1 barbarity4 ,this opposition of two abstractions to the materialism of their opponents betrayed the ideologic heirloom of the eighteenth century1 so dear to the self-admiring minds of the educated mob4 ,for there is such a thing as an educated mob and it is sure to be on the side that offers a high sounding rhetoric1 a certain number of stock phrases and a fascinating ideology4 ,it is so much easier to accept ready-made ideas than to work them out from actual reality4 ,it was not likely1 however1 that such claptrap should move the people to war4 ,fortunately1 there was another side to the question and that was the chance of getting ,trento and ,trieste1 in whose intellectual life the old spirit of the ,risorgimento had kept two strongholds4 ,all that was ,liberal and traditional in the ,italy of the nineteenth century rose to the bait4 ,the highest form of ,italian ,liberalism and its aftermath ,nationalism1 unfurled their standard with the old zest and their followers displayed their immortal eagerness to make this last addition to their forerunners' building of ,italy4 ,not only were they splendid in the propaganda days1 but they were the first to enlist1 and both young ,nationalists and old ,liberals made it a point that 8no gentleman should stay at home40 ,naturally the echo they aroused was far from being general4 ,if all the ,liberals and the ,nationalists were gentlemen not all the so-called gentlemen belonged to these parties2 there was as much political indifference among the higher classes as among the lower4 ,but it is only fair to say that the war which gave rise to the national and political consciousness whose first expression is ,fascism was mainly due to the pressure and the enthusiastic campaign of ,italian ,liberalism and its offspring ,nationalism4 ,this much being said in praise of the ,nationalists1 it may be remarked from the ,italian point of view that the misrepresentation of the time and of the character of the world conflagration could not have been carried much farther4 ,it was indeed the last flare of their imported notions of political reality4 ,for nearly five centuries intellectual tradition had bestowed upon ,italians a mentality which is historical nearly beyond understanding for foreigners4 ,it will be traced back in another chapter from ,dante's ,de ,monarchia1 but it may be here taken from its first practical assertion4 ,machiavelli1 at the end of the fifteenth century1 acting as ,chancellor and ,secretary of ,florence1 was honoured with the unlimited trust of the ,gonfaloniere a vita and in every respect proved himself worthy of such high consideration4 ,he was exceedingly grateful to the man who entrusted him with missions1 the official charge of which could not have been legally bestowed upon him4 ,yet1 whatever his regard for the high-mindedness of his principal1 from a close study and strict observation of political facts he came to the conclusion that nothing could prevent the ,gonfaloniere's policy from failure4 ,dino was elected ,gonfaloniere a vita when the son of ,lorenso il ,magnifico had to leave ,florence in a hurry after having failed to avert the transit of ,charles the ,,viii and his troops through ,florence4 ,cosimo and ,lorenzo dei ,medici had only ruled for about half a century but the changes which had taken place during that time in ,tuscany and in the whole of ,italy were so great that history shows whole centuries which have not displayed half of the difference made1 for bad or good1 by the civilisation of the time4 ,history was indeed at a turning of the road so that when ,dino came in power there was as much difference between the political world anterior to the ,medicean rule and his own as there is between the sweet and gentle art of the ,beato ,angelico1 and that of ,signorelli who introduced realism in his own vigorous art4 ,good ,dino1 however1 having been chosen ,gonfaloniere to bring ,florence back to its former virtuous ways1 looked to the old ,republican days for a model of government1 and he failed to give his fellow citizens the political advantage that would have met their needs just as ,signorelli would have shown himself a failure if he had painted exactly as the ,beato had done4 ,machiavelli was no optimist1 but whatever the weakness of his conception of history due to the philosophical notions of his time1 he did not give himself up entirely to abusing the wickedness of the people4 ,sure enough1 they were wicked--far more so than they had been before the ,medicean had corrupted them--yet they were above all different and had1 therefore1 to be governed according to different ideas4 ,it is no wonder1 therefore1 that the ,florentine ,secretary should have spent so many hours of his enforced leisure after the realisation of the event1 the inevitability of which had so long haunted him1 to warn his contemporaries and the posterity of the necessity of governing not according to a mummified ideal1 but in harmony with one's own time4 ,bisogna riscontrarsi coi propri tempi and to do so he recommends the statesman again and again to get direct information of that which he calls la verit effettuale delle cose1 that is effective or actual truth in matter of politics4 ,it is both the experimental method of ,galileo and ,vico's historical understanding of society that are alluded to in this constantly recurrent admonition of the man whose shrewdness was to blind posterity for several centuries and throw the power and depth of his political genius in the dark4 ,in #aiae such an excellent jurisconsult as ,prof4 ,salandra and such a first-rate diplomat as ,sonnino seemed to realise but little that such a principle existed4 ,at best they harped on ,trento and ,trieste1 when they did not display their rhetoric on the conflict between civilisation and barbarity4 ,still this territorial conquest1 whatever its importance as a traditional ideal to realise1 was presented above all as a rectification of the northern frontiers strictly necessary for the safety of the nation and ethnologically justified4 ,nobody ever seemed to realise that this aim should not have been the first objective to a nation which lacked that which is the very essence of the national entity1 that which entitles a collectivity to have ethnological frontiers1 in short a national conscience and a national will4 ,nobody seemed to realise it1 but there was one man who did1 and there we have the second flare of genius to be credited to ,mussolini4 ,he had become gradually conscious through constant contact with the working class1 and the middle class as well1 that they would never be fit for political life unless they acquired what they lacked through sacrifice4 ,the recent ,red ,week had shown him that they would not fight1 that they might set traps for other people's lives1 but they would not face either blows or death for anything2 and when the war came he saw that there ,italy had the one chance it could have to acquire what the genial people who called themselves its citizens lacked to lift themselves into the higher sphere where human beings are prepared to live and to die for their political ideas4 ,it is1 in fact1 this national conscience1 this spiritual and1 therefore1 unlimited gift that the war has bestowed upon ,italy1 and it is only now that ,carducci1 the most typically civic of all ,italian poets1 could write with perfect truth3 8,ei dipinga il trionfo dell ',italia ,assorta novella tra le genti40 ,nevertheless it is not ,fascist ,italy1 it is not the real friends of ,italy1 who will ever find fault with the ideas that brought ,italy to join the ,allies and face the tragic ordeal of war4 ,for it was the war1 the mystery of death faced by millions of her sons1 which has made ,italy a moral value1 and a first-rate historical factor in the present political world4 ,the select minority that was the brain and soul of the ,risorgimento has disappeared2 national consciousness now fills the individual consciences of the majority1 and this extension of the national conscience had nothing to do with the extended vote2 it is a consequence of the war4 ,personality1 national personality means actual unity of conscience and will just as much as individual personality4 ,such personality has effectively been born in ,italy out of the ordeal that meant direct or indirect sacrifice from every man and woman1 for nobody would doubt the reality of the object for which his sacrifice was made4 ,italy and her star were1 up to #aiae1 a good theme for popular or academic literature1 but when it had required blood and tears from every home it became that which could easily be transformed into the most awful and objective reality4 ,hence the religiousness of their new realisation of ,italy4 ,it loomed indeed awful1 like an obscure divinity1 when it called men who did not quite know why they had to fight to the supreme sacrifice4 ,one has to keep in mind how little civilisation and barbarity1 pompous words1 meant to the ,italian lower class1 and how little ,sicilians or ,neapolitans cared for ,trento and ,trieste4 ,after ,caporetto it was a different matter4 ,the traditional foe was on their land1 and by then they had realised what war meant4 ,therefore1 one may say that their national soul was tempered between ,caporetto and the ,armistice1 and that only then they became an ethical value1 a spiritual entity or rather personality fit to play a part in the constructive history of the world4 ,the point cannot be over-stated4 ,it is only through the war that the spiritual reality of the country was enabled to strike roots in the souls of the labourers and middle class men1 ceasing thereby to be the monopoly of a small intellectual and aristocratic minority4 ,the subjects of the ,king of ,italy all became ,italian citizens1 and the people was finally one in its full independence2 it was1 indeed1 the last act of the ,risorgimento4 ,few foreigners1 no foreigner so to speak1 had in #aiae a fair idea of what was the state of mind of the ,italians and still less of what could be their mentality4 ,it will not be too daring to say that in this ignorance lay the cause of all the diplomatic difficulties and of the fallacious appreciations of what that country could give1 or has actually given1 with the consequent mutual vexations that were to strain the relations between the ,allies and ,italy4 ,the author had already1 in #aiae1 spent two years in ,italy and studied a good deal2 yet youth did not allow at the time more than an intuition of the fact--the conviction of which was to be acquired by ten years of experience1 observation and study4 ,the ,allies expected too much of a generation whose fathers had fought the ,wars of ,independence with sheer heroism and with material means that ,england or ,france would have considered hardly fit for a colonial campaign4 ,on the other hand1 they overlooked the possibilities of a people who had in front of itself the whole of its national future1 an historical mentality which was likely to keep it from the sterilising conception of positivism1 abstract idealism or materialism1 once it should have reached a clear sense of its own secular reality1 a ,lacedemonian frugality1 and finally intellectual forces not inferior to those of the ,kantian and ,hegelian ,germany4 ,the ,italians for their part had to overcome a radical scepticism4 ,they had a very poor opinion of what military achievement they could get out of their lower class1 their traditional financial deficiency made them fear economic destruction almost more than the life sacrifice of so many men4 ,munitions were a nightmare1 renewal of their coal and wheat stocks a puzzling problem4 ,they had to trust blindly to the ,allies4 ,in fact it is a wonder that they should have overcome the sense of despondency that might have paralysed them altogether4 ,thus it happened that the ,italians did actually achieve far more than they expected1 far surpassing their own opinion of their military efficiency2 whilst doing far less than the ,allies had expected4 ,hence no end of misunderstandings4 ,they thought that they had surprised us by an unsuspected revelation of force and efficiency and they ascribed our rather disappointed attitude to envy and fear of their new power4 ,before the war they thought too little of themselves1 because1 as we have said1 they were still nationally unconscious1 while the ,british and ,french governments overrated the forces that they might contribute without acknowledging their ambitions to develop the latent forces of which they were conscious4 ,such misunderstanding was to breed all the difficulties that we knew of at the end of the war4 ,the ,italians had been victorious in war1 they had triumphed over their enemies1 and above all over themselves1 since they had asserted their reality as an actual political value4 ,but they were defeated in peace1 or at least were on the very point of being defeated and destroyed by peace4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the several ,treaties of peace1 the conferences of the ,allies1 were a long sequence of disappointments to the people of ,italy4 ,the incomprehension of the real state of things in that country reached such a degree that had ,socialism in ,italy been endowed with a more violent vitality ,bolshevism would have flourished4 ,the propaganda of the ,socialist party increased daily on ground most favourably prepared by the general discontent and received moreover the collaboration of the so-called ,popolari--a kind of ,social ,catholic party that in theory was to take the place of the clericals4 ,whether their leader1 ,don ,sturzo1 a man of remarkable power1 realised the sacrilegiousness of using ,catholic priests to pervert the minds of the peasants or not1 the ,popolari brought their violences to such a pitch in some provinces that they not only matched1 they surpassed the ,reds4#d ,naturally1 these parties and the men who were not supposed to belong to them1 but were flattering them in case of an eventual revolution1 were wont to represent the war and the sacrifices that had been made by the country as the cause of all the social and economic difficulties4 ,to them1 the only consequence of the war was the destruction of what had been laboriously done between #ahgj and #aiae4 ,it was at this juncture that some people banded together their aspirations1 which seemed in the main to be the realisation in the ,adriatic of all the value of what they called 8their mutilated victory40 ,they had mostly been in the trenches1 and they clustered round ,gabriele d',annunzio who led them to occupy ,fiume1 which was still under the control of the ,allies4 ,the ,allies left the whole affair to ,italy and had the ,italian government1 or a strong party1 backed d',annunzio and his friends1 the course of events would have been different4 ,the country wanted ,fiume1 certainly1 but with what will did they want it8 ,with a will that was national at last1 because it was not moved exclusively by ,irredentism1 and did not identify itself with the will of the upper classes1 but was a feeling with the whole people4 ,they had deserved it2 they were conscious of a right acquired through the common trial of the whole nation4 ,it was1 however1 more a velleity than a will4 ,the new spiritual life was quivering1 it could express itself in a puerile gesture of the hand towards the object of its passion1 but it could not yet express itself in action4 ,will or velleity--it was certainly the first manifestation of a really national life striving against the paralysing scaffolding of its political organisation4 ,the professional politicians had been trained when politics were merely a question of technical detail1 when to be a ,deputy meant merely a job as a bargainer1 to get the votes of the people for a party on the understanding that the party would satisfy the arbitrary and personal requirements of its electors1 with the possibility of coming to power any day in one of the incredible combinations that came to life almost daily and made the ,chamber a nursery of ministers4 ,on the #bhth of ,september1 #aiai1 the government appointed ,general ,badoglio ,extraordinary ,commissioner of the ,venezia ,guilia and accepted a discussion on the matter in the ,chamber4 ,neither the men in power nor the opposition felt it possible to accept the suggestions of the ,press1 of various associations1 and even of their friends who were urging the necessity of ,fiume's annexation4 ,the ,ministry gave in its resignation after dissolving the ,house and the elections returned #aeg ,socialists1 among whom were moderate men like ,turati and ,treves and many new men whose programmes were openly revolutionary1 and over a hundred ,popolari4 ,these parties had a good deal in common4 ,their propaganda had been nearly perfect and had appealed to the people by that definiteness and practicalness of purpose which is the main string to pull in order to move ,italians to action4 ,they were not dreamers and even in their worst or best ideals they were for definiteness of means and purpose4 ,there is in the ,italian mind such a strong tendency to take a realistic view of things that to this characteristic the best and the worst of their history might be traced for twenty centuries4 ,the ,nationalists had been returned in very small number1 but were mostly young1 with considerable intellectual culture1 fit and ready to assume responsibilities4 ,they had all done active service in the war and were sorry to see its meagre result4 ,they required an audacious and strong policy without being able1 however1 to see clearly how this was to be realised4 ,liberals held a good many seats but they were so split up that they should rather be considered as a set of groups than as a party2 they even called themselves different names and had no common programme4 ,after these elections one had the impression of watching the systematic extinction of the flickering flame that had signalised the coming to light of the new national conscience4 ,one must have spent those years in ,italy1 have actually lived the life of the ,italians1 felt all their actual experiences and at the same time have had a good historical and intellectual grounding in all that concerns the country1 to understand fully the tragedy of it4 ,they seemed to precipitate themselves from the soaring heights of national conscience to the lowest and vilest egotism4 ,material well-being was again the order of the day and not yours or theirs or the children's1 but mine4 ,beyond that nothing4 ,reality was again atomistic and the atoms constitutive of it were absolutely irrelatives4 ,nobody seemed to reflect2 all were acting and behaving like children4 ,truly it is the subjectiveness of the period that must be taken as its characteristic4 ,they seemed to move each in his own world4 ,even financially they seemed to have reached an unbridled licence4 ,the constant principles that regulate economic relations which form the basis of society were disregarded4 ,objective reality was ignored just as it is ignored by children and to a certain degree by artists4 ,they had the economic deficit constantly on their lips--but never had such spendthrift way of living been displayed in their country--and they seemed to overlook the moral deficit betrayed by such an atomistic subjectiveness4 ,consider the factories4 ,it is evidently a high rate of production that will ensure the interests of both labour and capital4 ,well1 the workmen1 or women1 set themselves to get higher wages as they have done in most countries1 but in the north and centre of ,italy they did it with such a childish and1 therefore1 savage and lawless will that the works had to be shut in many instances and were not reopened until the advent of ,fascism4 ,so that it can be said that by not taking into consideration the actual production as a whole1 and the owner's interest1 they reduced their legitimate desire for a better life to the destructive whims of children and ruined their own interest4 ,the schools reflected the same destructive state of mind4 ,that which makes the school is surely not the building2 the children are not pupils if they do not learn1 and neither is the master a teacher except inasmuch as he does actually teach4 ,discipline having slackened to such a degree that it bordered on anarchy the pupils had one fixed idea to do no work1 and a great many of the teachers--not all indeed1 for the teaching body has always counted in ,italy a number of first-rate men--had the same purpose4 ,teaching and learning were reduced to a ghostly shadow by the reduction of schools to a subjective purpose by both parties4 ,the professors saw in their function the title it gave them to their stipend and the pupils attended school just for the degree or the promotion to which such attendance entitled them4 ,such a false vision of life is certainly not natural to the ,italian people1 and it had taken a great deal of trouble to introduce it in a country the mentality of which is above all realistic4 ,it is natural to think that the ,socialist and ,popolari leaders were guilty of the most criminal falsehoods4 ,on the #aeth of ,june1 #aibj1 when ,giolitti was called upon to form a new ministry1 the government of ,nitti had wrought such havoc in the few months he had been in power that the old statesman was hailed ,salvatore della ,patria on his coming to power by the very people who had called him a traitor five years before4 ,yet the new government found that the best thing to do was to let things go on as they were1 with the result that factories were taken possession of by workmen1 and a strong reaction took shape under the wings of the new-born ,fascism1 which came out with the simple programme of restoring order even against the state if it was necessary4 ,public opinion at the end of the year gave a clear proof of the depressing influence the government had had on the national conscience allowing ,giolitti1 who had truly never been a ,nationalist1 to compel d',annunzio and his men to evacuate ,fiume without any protest against the bombardment inflicted upon them4 ,when1 in the next spring1 the elections took place1 all the old parties were there again with the addition of ,fascism4 ,the men of the new party were mostly new to politics altogether1 whilst some came from all the old parties 7including the ,socialist7 and they had all of them taken an active part in the war4 ,in the districts they had made national blocks with ,nationalists and ,liberals and the few seats they obtained were not lost by the ,popolari or ,socialists1 who were returned in the same proportion as they had been in the last ,house4 ,the first characteristic of the ,fascists was that they seemed to have the same programme as the ,nationalists1 whilst they were displaying the power of mass organisation that had been till then the privilege of ,socialists and ,popolari4 7,this characteristic holds good up to now47 ,they wanted to realise the political programme of the best men of ,italy by lifting the working class up to it4 ,as to their aim it was then exclusively the political and moral realisation of the practical and spiritual value they ascribed to the war victory4 ,they had nothing like an abstract programme4 ,when realisation is not one with conception--and such has been the case for the last two centuries--the political systems stated on paper appear all harmony1 and their consequences all for the best2 but the trouble begins as soon as their application is sought4 ,fascism has no ideologies but a cogent system of ideas able to give what ideologies will never give1 promptitude and coherence of action4 ,these ideas serve as a criterion of action rather than a theory4 ,if it draws the attention of foreigners as a beacon light it is because it does show a way out of the abstraction that in a certain sense seems to have perverted our modern vision of social and economic reality4 ,the method it enforces of looking invariably at both the terms of any one relation is practical1 as only can be a method the axle of which is a highly philosophical conception4 ,for the divorce between thought and action pronounced by the philosophy of the sixteenth1 seventeenth1 and eighteenth centuries might induce us to believe that speculative thoughts had nothing to do with everyday life1 whereas the simplest and humblest action or relation to be productive has to be the direct and immediate expression of a thought1 scientific or speculative4 ,the peasant who lifts his axe over his head before striking it into the wood is not making a choreographic flourish with his tool2 its weight is augmented by the height to which he lifts it and the combination of the force of gravitation with his own sends his blade to the core of the wood4 ,he certainly does not think of the force of gravitation1 but he acts upon it4 ,in the first contract1 tacit though it may have been1 the man who lacked hands to plough his fields and the men who had no field to plough1 came into a relation that was the typical relation of the one and the many which has stood as the fundamental problem of ethics and politics in the philosophy of all ages4 ,when synthesis rules theory and a synthetic view of reality rules practice then the relation is kept in consideration as the living bond of the two parties1 and the greater product of the harvest is the common aim4 ,but when analytic methods1 either empirical or rational1 prevail in philosophy1 practical life is infected with a ferocious individualism1 the necessary consequence of which is the unjust attribution of the harvest to one of the two terms1 to the ruin of the relation which has to be bilateral if it is to be at all4 ,this concrete way of looking upon every economic and social problem does not indeed present itself as a miraculous way of removing the class struggles1 which are1 after all1 one of the main forces at play in the civilising process of mankind4 ,it is merely the way of looking at it that befits the intellectual level reached by man through the efforts of genius and through the blood and tears of the many by which social and economic progress is achieved4 ,after all that has been said it is surely unnecessary to point out the absurdity of considering ,fascism as a reactionary tendency4 ,it goes indeed steadily forward and its leader would not have the historical mind he has1 if it meant to reject the labourers' claim to preserve the recognition of their interests1 which is the one noble conquest of socialism4 ,the 8reaction0 was never against the working classes' rights2 it was against all rights that did not spring from duties4 ,it was against exclusive power--tyrannical as all exclusive powers are bound to be--that it reacted with the full consent of the population1 as sick of being bossed by a mob minority as the mob had been to be bossed by the gentry fifty years before4 ,truly it would be a strange illusion of the upper classes if they were to believe that ,fascism had come to restore 8the good old times02 for that which it has come to restore or rather to establish is the really ,christian equality of men4 ,christian because it intends rights to be consonant with spiritual value and actual recognition of duties4 ,the revolutions of the past were always justified by the necessity of enforcing the claims of a single class4 ,fascism in its synthetic view of life strives to enforce the rightful claims of all classes1 and considers them rightful as far as they present rights and duties on the same plane4 ,if it looks to the past it is to understand the present1 but its knowledge and understanding of history do not allow it to believe that history proceeds backwards4 ,part ,,ii ,,philosophical ,,antecedents ,,of ,,fascism ,,chapter ,i ,,introduction ,,to ,,the ,,philosophical ,,antecedents ,fascism is the concrete way of considering any organisation or relation in the light of the aim for which it was created4 ,such a method sweeps away a good deal of claptrap rhetoric and a great many prejudices4 ,what matters is the actual working of an organisation towards its aim1 and not at all the exclusive interest of one of the two contracting parties4 ,obviously this is the practical application of one of the most famous propositions of the philosophy of ,mind4 ,it is just as obvious that after a first period of political system exclusively for gentlemen and by gentlemen1 and a second period of a political system exclusively drawn for the benefit of the lower class1 it was natural that any sane party should have tried a synthetic policy1 above all in a country where the mentality is essentially realist4 ,the motto of ,fascism is order and hierarchy4 ,this is the necessary consequence of its taking into consideration always the aim and its actual realisation4 ,if efficiency is to be ensured to any organisation from the family upward it is evident that every member of it must play his part in the way which is most likely to ensure efficiency4 ,yet this notion of discipline is a trifle more modern than it sounds1 at least in ,italy4 ,nothing can better illustrate it than the example of a football ,captain and his men4 ,the boy who acts as ,captain1 let us say ,john ,smith1 has no authority over his fellows1 except when1 ceasing to be ,john ,smith1 he is ,captain of the team1 and while they are actually playing1 practising or arranging a game4 ,his authority is not personal1 it is actual to the sport interests of the team1 or the school they represent1 so that it is not demeaning to any of his team to accept the dictates of his authority4 ,indeed the boys' commonsense is strong enough1 in ,england at least1 to make them realise an idea which they would comprehend with great difficulty in its speculative form4 ,to them it is obvious that their ,captain's authority is as absolute as it is actual and impersonal4 ,he is ,captain as long as he is an actual value1 as long as he is a factor of efficiency to the general play of his side4 ,his authority does not diminish one whit of the players' liberty1 because the will of every single player is that his side should win1 and such identity is that which makes the actual reality both of the team as an individual1 or rather as a person1 in the world of sport and of the single players as members of that team4 ,the ,captain is entrusted with the co-ordination of a number of wills1 and their welding into one in his own person1 so that each boy freely wants what all want4 ,divergencies are merely negative--as is constantly shown by the negative scoring of sides in which first-rate men play without this unification of their single wills4 ,thus football comes to illustrate perfectly the most difficult of all the ,gentilian notions instinctively acted upon by people who will never be able to read one line of ,gentile's works1 the notion of liberty taken as actual identification of each single will which is liberty with the common will which is law4 ,again the boys' commonsense would find it as ridiculous to argue over their ,captain's orders when playing1 as to go on considering him as their superior when the game is over1 or when they have detected among themselves a better ,captain4 ,thereby they teach the world a deep truth1 that is to say that no value can be considered as static1 and that its realisation being dynamic and actual it cannot be achieved once for all1 but is a continuous process of developing one's own efficiency4 ,hence the notion of discipline and liberty acted upon by boys playing football results in a conception of hierarchy which is also shared by ,fascism1 and is pregnant with so much social and political reformation that one cannot insist too much upon it4 ,nor can one abstract it from ,gentile's system1 of which it is theoretically and practically the centre4 ,in their organisation the boys certainly do not consider the team's hierarchy as being definitely settled any more than ,fascists would consider any one political constitution or method of governing as final1 that is to say as perfect4 ,to their young minds1 full of freshness and elasticity1 it would sound absurd not to be able to alter their arrangements and to modify their play in the best interests of the team4 ,if a boy slackens in his practice his unfitness will soon betray the fact and his contribution to the positive scoring of the team will be thereby diminished4 ,but with this new view of hierarchy which ,fascism takes as being grounded on actual value1 the most unstable of all living reality thereby destroying every notion of any permanent class or organisation--the contribution to international politics of ,fascism as the immediate consequence of its national and political antecedents comes to an end4 ,passing now to the exposition of the philosophical genealogy of ,fascism it may be well to remember first that there are no such things as 8national0 philosophies1 philosophy being the historical process of infinite ,mind2 secondly1 that as a consequence of the oneness of such a process1 there are no such things as brand new conceptions either in the most sublime of theoretical systems or in their practical realisation such as pedagogy or politics4 ,neither is there any such thing as an international system1 and this ought to be sufficient to destroy any hope of internationalisation of mankind4 ,every great nation is a contributor to the life of ,mind1 and may be said to take in international politics a part which is proportioned to its theoretical contribution4 ,each school of thought takes the problems in the solution of which it displays the peculiarities which distinguish its genius from another school1 either when this has given to it all the development of which its own genius was capable1 or when it is developing it on unilateral lines4 ,in philosophy good examples of this are the obvious derivation of ,bacon's and ,descartes' problems from the ,italian philosophers of the ,renaissance1 and the mutual influence of ,english empiricism and ,french rationalism2 in politics the influence of ,england on ,france during the whole of the eighteenth century and of both countries on ,italy during the nineteenth century4 ,looking at any history of philosophy or politics serves to illustrate the point4 ,for one follows the living process through which theoretical notions are born one out of the other1 and one realises the part played by the characteristics of each nation in the constructive play of historical forces4 ,there could be no stronger evidence both of the intellectual interdependence of countries1 and the absolute necessity of their political independence4 ,the relation of theoretical and practical life ought no longer to be one of exclusive opposition4 ,pragmatism has done something towards the simplification of it and the oncoming idealism is achieving it in a way that may be said radical4 ,in the history of the last three centuries1 however1 we see philosophy considering thought and action as the two terms of an irreducible dualism2 yet such dualism must not be considered a product of the perverseness of modern thought4 ,ovid has left us a verse which settles the point even for people unfamiliar with pagan philosophy4 ,it is only the deliberate application of a given system which may follow after its conception1 but the spontaneous conformation of political reality to the actual life of the mind is generally simultaneous with the conception of the theories of which it is the practical expression4 ,a good illustration of the point can be had from ,germany4 ,lvy ,bruhl has sketched the parallel development of ,german philosophy and national consciousness in a work which is not as famous as it deserves4 ,after ,hegel's death1 when his system has given birth to its two political offsprings1 the statolatry of ,imperialism and the myth of ,marx's ,communism1 the maximum force of expansion is on the verge of being reached by ,germany and the country is not far from becoming the prey of national fanaticism1 which is as blinding as the religious fanaticism that appears in the history of all churches when1 having exhausted the force of expansion that is dependent on the immediacy of their faith1 they want to go on expanding artificially through arbitrary force4 ,few legacies of the first centuries of modern thought have been as harmful as the divorce between the two manifestations of human activity4 ,it was1 however1 inevitable4 ,faith in the positive teaching of the ,church was the first snare into which early thinkers fell2 for it is not exact to say that they professed the existence of two truths merely to escape danger4 ,they firmly believed it4 ,most of them were good ,catholics1 and as sure in their scientific maturity as in the days of their childhood that the ,church was right4 ,on the other hand they were sure of the result of their observations and experiments4 ,they were sure in both cases1 and so they simply inferred the co-existence of two truths4 ,nowadays1 it sounds childish and the reciprocal limitation of the two truths would be obvious to any modern student1 but in those days the problem had not received the light that it has received since2 and they were perfectly in earnest4 ,the philosophers followed suit for two obvious reasons2 science was still for a very long time identified with philosophy1 and the sixteenth century thinkers1 when they were faced by the dilemma of being heretics or of discarding their passionate researches1 took to considering religion as belonging to the practical manifestation of mind whilst scientific and philosophic researches were its theoretical activity4 ,one more step and religion was to be identified as the enemy of science4 99 99 99 99 99 ,when ,europe emerged from what has been called the ,dark ,ages of obscurantism--in antithesis to the age of light to which belonged the writers who thus labelled an epoch1 which was dark and obscure to them merely because they knew very little about it--intellectual life was so full of buoyancy that men fretted at the tethers of a school of thought which they could disregard after having come to such efficiency under its discipline that they felt like boys coming intellectually of age4 ,scholasticism having patronised ,aristotle as 8,the ,philosopher10 ,plato was for the first time opposed to him1 then ,neo-platonism2 then modern 8national0 schools of thought arose at the breaking up of the intellectual world4 ,for a ,united ,intellectual ,states of ,europe existed during the ,middle ,ages2 and the biographies of ,st4 ,anselm and ,st4 ,thomas tell us eloquently how1 in their centuries1 a man could pass from country to country to follow his studies with the greatest simplicity4 ,at the time of ,st4 ,anselm1 nationality could not be traced in a man's works4 ,by the time ,roger ,bacon wrote the differences had developed1 and it is not impossible to find his character as a sturdy ,briton standing out distinctly in his works4 ,such national tendencies expressed themselves only in matters of little moment1 and it is a fact that the wonderful correspondence which passed between scholars kept the humanism of each country in touch with that of all others2 it is none the less obvious that there were essential differences between the character it gradually assumed in various countries1 a character and an attitude that may be identified as the initial stage of the various ,european mentalities4 ,the best proof of this is to be had in the essential and irreducible differences manifest in the conclusions to which ,italian1 ,english and ,french philosophy came on the very same problem1 which they found on the threshold of modern civilisation4 ,giordano ,bruno1 ,francis ,bacon and ,ren ,descartes treated the same question when their respective countries emerged from the later ,middle ,ages with their respective schools coming to light from scholasticism through humanism4 ,the problem of knowledge faced them in this dawn of modern intellectual life2 and the same passionate reaction against ,aristotelianism and scholasticism compelled their researches to take the same bent4 ,yet they came to widely different conclusions and the differences hold good even to-day as characteristic of ,italian1 ,english and ,french mentalities4 ,bruno1 whose metaphysic is wonderfully synthetic and pregnant with a lyricism the echo of which runs through the work of ,vico1 faces the problem of truth1 of scientific truth according to him1 in order to find theoretical ground to reject the authority of antiquity considered by his forerunners as the well of all worldly wisdom4 ,a conception known to that same antiquity but very uncommonly acted upon takes hold of his mind4 ,truly old age must be wiser than youth1 but antiquity is1 compared to his age1 the nursery age of mankind1 and a fairly good student of the sixteenth century knows far more than ,aristotle1 because he may know1 if he chooses1 all that ,aristotle knew1 and all that has come afterwards to the knowledge of men4 ,each generation brings its stone to the constructive activity of man's experience4 ,hence the idea he expressed veritas filia temporis4 ,thus he proclaims that which will be the motto of every true ,italian thinker2 reality is essentially and above all1 ,historical ,reality4 ,in ,england1 ,bacon1 starting on the same errand1 through his researches1 was induced also to consider more and more that the regard of man for the authority of tradition is one of the greatest obstacles to the progress of science1 and that servile veneration for ,aristotle is1 above all1 to be condemned as paralysing the initiative of modern thinkers4 ,learning is not to be considered as the work of antiquity1 as a work already done2 it is instead an arduous task still to be accomplished and the first step on the way towards its accomplishment must be the rejection of the old logic and its syllogism4 ,man must trust to his personal experience1 the immediate experience of his senses4 ,nothing could be more anti-historical in its consequences than this assertion1 the unilateralness of which would be astonishing from a man who felt the whole of historical and social world as a pulsing reality1 if it was not justified by the intellectual antecedents of the ,english national consciousness coming to realise its own personality just at the time in which ,bacon thought and wrote4 ,he could not very well be expected to see the condition of his own experience in the experience of his forerunners1 in the age in which self-assertion was the successful motto of every great man flourishing in ,england4 ,the abstraction thus made of all the historical past conditioning of man's experience was balanced for the time being by his own historical and political sense and by the love of life as a whole so strong in ,elizabethan days4 ,yet henceforth reality in the eyes of any true ,briton was to be ,empirical ,reality4 ,a ,french thinker faces the same problem4 ,ren ,descartes at first sight is everything that ,bacon is not2 whilst the ,english philosopher is a mixture of recklessness and worldly wisdom1 anxious to enjoy everything that power and wealth can beget1 and drink to the dregs the cup of life1 the ,french metaphysician recoils from the cares of power and the noisy turmoil of society4 ,a longer consideration1 specially from a more philosophic point of view1 reveals affinities that were going to tell on their theories4 ,both lack the youthful enthusiasm common to ,german and ,italian thinkers1 and both give shape to their theories with a cautious prudence that marks them as men of the world4 ,their conclusions betray their divergencies and affinities much better than any analysis of their life and character could2 for ,descartes certitude is reached by way of induction when in the silence of meditation he comes to his famous statement ,cogito1 ergo sum4 ,the touchstone of certitude is identified with the actual consciousness of man in the act of thinking4 ,if ,i think surely ,i am2 but of the rest1 that is to say of the knowledge of the exterior world ,i have no control1 and traditional science is communicated to me and was originally obtained through the senses just as my actual objective knowledge1 therefore it cannot be accepted as certain4 ,aristotle and all the traditional fetishism come to nought4 ,the tabula rasa is implied as definitely in this as in ,bacon's work2 in both cases man must begin his work from the foundation and put to the test of his own experience1 empirical in one case1 rational in the other1 the legacies of his predecessors4 ,the difference however implied in the terms empirical and rational is fundamental and the pedagogy and politics grounded on ,english philosophy whilst laying down rules and formulas inferred from systematic theories1 will always be susceptible of being tempered by a direct call to experience and commonsense4 ,the rationality of ,french philosophy does not allow of such adaptation4 ,to this day the cogency for good or bad which is characteristic of ,french theories is the consequence of their perfect deduction from a first principle2 hence the radicalness that mars some of their practical application4 ,with the exception of men greatly influenced by foreign philosophy1 the ,french thinkers all took reality as being ,rational ,reality2 and all their systems were bound to be radical in their applications4 ,in their rationalism or empiricism1 ,france and ,england threw overboard the past that loomed indeed rather oppressive1 and in so doing they assert man1 in his individual determination1 as the ground of all reality4 ,it is perfectly allowable to consider that the two schools were bound to stimulate and temper each other4 ,the atom1 the monad at the basis of their system is always man1 but at the outset the unilateralism of ,bacon's gnoseology1 a method based so to speak exclusively on sense knowledge1 called for the mathematical and deductive method of ,descartes in order to display all that it held virtually of scientific progress4 ,on the other hand the ,french deductive method1 although admitting the inference and resorting to it in its research of first principles1 stood in sore need of a well-balanced recognition of the part played by sense perception in human knowledge4 ,this will be specially obvious in the political consequences of the two theories4 ,for both had their political system1 in which their common character prevailed1 inasmuch as the seventeenth century was for ,france and ,england the century of metaphysics whilst the eighteenth drew the conclusions of their premises1 seeing to the application or realisation of all that was fertile as a suggestion of a renovating process to be undergone by society4 ,bruno's historical reality was left in a corner1 for it could not have been integrated in our system to which it was then contradictory1 and still less in the political conditions that were to be the outcome of our theories1 since it was consonant with them only as far as the individual was the basis of his reality as well as of ours4 ,his individual is1 however1 neither rational1 nor empirical2 he is historical1 and this implies that he cannot be considered bereft either of his roots in the past nor of his projection on the future4 ,nothing therein tends to diminish man2 on the contrary everything adheres to him1 dilating his personality right into infinity4 ,but this notion of man was far too difficult to be realised even theoretically in the sixteenth century1 and the arduous task of the ,french and ,english schools was to pave the way for the ,german and modern ,italian thinkers and provide them with a starting-point to reach the heights from which the relation of the transcendental and empirical selves can be detected1 and the historical notion of man realised in the light of such a conception4 ,in ,bruno it is not1 however1 a mere intuition although it is realised only as far as the conception of science and its historical development are concerned4 ,the practical realisation of this notion implied a new conception of tradition and authority1 which1 far from being shaken to pieces1 are in it invested with a new and nearly sacred character4 ,antithetic thereby to ,protestantism1 it knocked no less against the transcendent reality of ,god as understood then by decadent scholasticism and by most ,catholics4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,humanism ,,and ,,renaissance ,,shaping ,,the ,,historical ,,mind ,,of ,,italy ,the spirit of ,humanism--the veneration for antiquity which animated it--was quite obviously different in ,italy from what it was elsewhere4 ,that the difference consisted in the closer affinity of the scholars to the world they studied is obvious also4 ,no greater proof is needed than the difference between the architecture of the twelfth1 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in ,western ,europe and in ,italy4 ,art1 as conceived by modern sthetics1 is that degree of mind1 the function of which is neither theoretical nor practical1 but consists in expressing through intuition the whole life of the mind4 ,we can1 therefore1 rightly appeal to art as the most faithful witness to the spirit that animates an epoch4 ,ample documents illustrating the difference between the spirit of ,humanism in ,france and in ,italy can be found in the works of ,emile ,mle on the ,gothic art of ,france1 and in any illustrated book of ,italian medival ,art1 such as the small but excellent album of ,ojetti4 ,romanic architecture flourished in both countries between the eighth and twelfth centuries1 and its monuments in ,france1 such as ,st4 ,sernin of ,toulouse1 leave no doubt as to the debt of the country to its ,roman conquerors4 ,even at that time1 when the ,south of ,france had not yet altogether lost its traditions as the ,roman ,province1 we can see new tendencies at work4 ,in ,italy1 the contemporary buildings1 pieced together with fragments of ancient columns1 capitals1 architraves1 employed as simple building material1 point to the more intimate co-existence in ,italy of the old and new elements4 ,it is sufficient to recall two churches of the ninth century in ,rome1 ,st4 ,maria in ,domnica and ,st4 ,prassede1 both following the model of the great ,constantinian ,basilicas4 ,while their architecture is inspired by the classic age of ,christian art1 and the materials are stolen from ,pagan monuments1 their mosaics evince a healthy realism that asserts the living tradition of local art1 despite the obvious and predominant influence of the ,east4 ,but this persistence of ,roman influences does not exclude those of the ,north2 ,carolingian art greatly influenced ,italy1 especially in certain forms of decorative work4 ,the golden altar of ,st4 ,ambrogio in ,milan1 the canopy above it1 and some of the stuccoes at ,cividale1 prove the force of these influences in districts ethnically and historically favourable to their reception4 ,by the eleventh century feudal society had either lost or assimilated the pre-,christian elements1 legacy of the ancient world1 which at first had cemented together the various racial tendencies extant in ,europe at the close of the ,roman ,empire1 thereby preparing the way for new thoughts and ways of living4 ,the ,northern world had fully realised a new social order1 developing a new spiritual life and consequently a new art to express it4 ,although this art contains numerous and important classical and ,eastern elements its originality is manifest4 ,we are confronted with a new world with its own idealistic and naturalistic tendencies4 ,the boldness of the architecture1 together with the minute rendering of nature in the decoration testify to that union of abstract speculation and close study of reality that will characterise all the subsequent developments of ,northern thought4 ,mle has clearly shown how the artists have drawn upon all the theology1 the philosophy and the literature of the age to express at the same time both the highest spiritual and the plainest practical life4 ,italian architecture of the same period1 following more faithfully the old tradition1 stands in great contrast to this originality4 ,st4 ,ambrogio in ,milan is an excellent example of this traditional growth of ,italian art in the days that witnessed the full development of communal liberty4 ,very different from the ,constantinian ,basilica1 even as the ,commune was not the exact counterpart of the ,roman ,municipium1 its heavy structure1 so eloquent in its massiveness1 must have appealed to its middle-class builders4 ,in other ,lombard churches we meet with the same attempt to create a new style with classical elements4 ,in seeking to harmonise traditional disposition with the new needs1 they tried to avoid the extreme novelties of the ,north1 too alien to the ,roman well-balanced and unlyrical mentality4 ,the style of such buildings is present to every mind and reveals better than any description the unbroken descent from ,imperial ,rome4 ,indeed1 from ,lombardy to ,sicily1 from ,venice to ,genoa1 various are the styles flourishing in the ,peninsula2 yet it is easy to detect everywhere strong traces of such descent4 ,the ,baptistery of ,florence is a very good instance of this traditionalism and recalls faithfully that of the ,lateran of the time of ,constantine4 ,in entering ,san ,miniato in ,florence1 where the fanciful details of the decoration follow and are subordinate to the severely classical architecture1 we almost feel on the threshold of the ,renaissance1 although still in the eleventh century4 ,in the monuments of ,pisa1 ,lucca and ,pistoia we find the same classical qualities in the architectural scheme1 united to the more poetic fancies displayed in the decoration4 ,there is thus a conscious dependence on antiquity in the main architectural features1 together with the utmost readiness to accept foreign accessories4 ,st4 ,mark's in ,venice displays1 even as the history of the amphibious ,republic1 all the sumptuousness of the ,east1 but even in such an exotic scheme the architecture still relies on ,imperial ,rome1 which had itself absorbed many ,eastern elements4 ,torcello1 ,trieste1 ,murano1 show as clearly as the ,lombard communes the slow process of evolution that was to lead to the ,renaissance4 ,byzantine elements are not as alien as ,gothic to ,roman tradition4 ,the contemporary jurists had shown the great contribution of ,byzantium to the development of ,roman law1 and ,byzantine motives were assimilated more easily than those from the ,north4 ,the ,roman legions had brought the great expanses of the ,north into the orbit of history1 but though they left deep and undying traces behind them1 they were unable to destroy the virile qualities of the ,northern races4 ,so when ,christianity brought a new intuition of life to the ,western world it developed locally according to the tendencies of the various nations4 ,the result was bound to be more original where men were less influenced by the old ,pagan culture and further from the mentality that had produced it1 among peoples who 8a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt40 ,even though their growth was to be slower in some respects1 such as the cultural1 such peoples were bound to absorb more completely the full import of the new faith and thus produce a thoroughly original civilisation4 ,it was1 therefore1 necessary in order to glorify the new religion to produce an art as novel as the civilisation which inspired it4 ,in contrast to this affirmation of an entirely new mentality ,italy was influenced by the ,roman traditions that weighed upon her2 they stimulated a premature efflorescence that exhausted her virility for centuries4 ,her people were not forced to elaborate afresh all the elements of life2 the ,church had preserved for them the framework of ,roman life and law4 ,thus the energy expanded in ,france and in ,england in working out a radically new society and civilisation1 in ,italy drifted partly into adapting the old formulas to the new necessities and partly into acquiring a deeper consciousness of the intimate relations with the past4 ,in all the struggles from the twelfth to the fifteenth century with the ,empire and with the ,church1 the ,italians invariably appealed to the traditions of ,ancient ,rome2 and their appeal was not to a remote civilisation1 but to a living tradition of their own1 opposed to the feudal institutions of the barbarians4 ,at the time of the ,communes this attitude is particularly striking4 ,the peasantry had taken shelter from feudal oppression in towns protected by the authority of a bishop1 and there with the developments of commerce they grew in wealth and political power4 ,we thus find a new social class1 the burgher1 that contributed immensely to the growing importance of the cities4 ,these strong practical men were distinguished by that common sense and pride that to-day distinguishes the sturdy and self-assertive ,fascists4 ,having established their institutions1 they considered them a living part of their own persons1 and brought into political life their sense of personal dignity and the energy of the medival ,christian1 ready to die for the ideas represented by his ,corporation1 even as the ,fascist is ready to die for his symbolic ,black ,shirt4 ,the ,communes1 in spite of their novelty1 perhaps indeed in consequence of the novelty of their self-assertion1 were responsible for one of the strongest historical bonds with the past4 ,for in their opposition to the feudal rights acknowledged by medival law1 they appealed to ,roman jurisprudence in order to prove the legal grounds of their liberties4 ,they instinctively conformed to the past1 creating forms of government rich in future possibilities1 and such conformity was not1 according to ,professor ,reggio1 a mere question of high-sounding names4 ,the ,communes reproduced of the actual and essential features of the ,city-,state1 all those that could be revived4 ,their classicism was by no means artificial1 it was intimately felt as the surest means of destroying feudalism1 at that time the most assertive form of individualism4 ,even the present ,fascist appeal to ,rome is far from being mere rhetoric2 ,rome is considered the one force antagonistic to that anti-historical mentality due to illuminism1 that has given rise to abstract demagogy and individualism4 ,the burghers1 backed by the recently liberated peasantry1 formed the strength of the ,commune1 and upheld the memories of ,roman municipal organisation against the prevalently ,germanic nobility4 ,the ,government of the ,communes consisted of a college of ,rectors with an ,assembly of ,elders1 very much like the ,senate of old1 with various dependent clientele that recall the gentes2 the heads of the various ,guilds were called ,consuls and took command of their men in any emergency4 ,their defence of civic liberties was essentially the defence of freedom to attend to their trades and occupations4 ,here again they anticipated ,mussolini4 ,what matters to the ,commonweal is not the individual but the interest he represents4 ,they considered that this freedom of work was incompatible with the dependence of the ,commune on any superior temporal authority4 ,this was so deeply felt that the city was placed under the protection of a ,patron ,saint1 who1 according to ,ercole ,reggio1 was not unlike the eponymous ,hero of an ancient city4 ,in attempting to justify these forms of political and professional life the citizens of the ,commune came still more to consider themselves the lawful descendants of the ,romans4 ,studies of ,roman ,law were pursued with as much zeal and vigour as any other form of practical or religious life4 ,as long as ,pisa1 ,milan1 ,cremona1 ,pavia1 preserved their municipal liberties their whole life was imbued with a strong sense of classicism which expressed itself both in the intensified study of ,roman ,law1 as ,professor ,solmi has clearly pointed out1 and in the art of ,niccol ,pisano4 ,such ,roman and classical qualities were to disappear when the towns lost their municipal autonomy1 only to reappear at the present day in the idealism of ,gentile1 whose ,filosofia del ,diritto is as much impressed by the seal of their realism as it is influenced by the thought of ,hegel4 ,they reappear in the ,reform of the ,italian ,constitution1 tending to substitute actual interest as the dynamic basis of the ,state in the place of the static and naturalistic foundation it has had up till now4 ,they reappear above all in ,mussolini1 who told the author he did not wish that a theoretical legislation should regulate or rather paralyse the development of the new corporations1 but that1 following the example of the ,romans1 he wished the legislation to grow out of the minutes of every single case submitted to the ,corporation ,court4 ,before they disappeared they had pervaded all ,italian life to such a degree that scholars could say we in talking of the ancient ,romans1 and consider ,latin as their own language4 ,ricordano ,malespini says that ,frederick ,,ii spoke 8la nostra lingua latina e il nostro volgare40 ,they had two national languages1 ,latin and the vernacular1 the latter itself a degenerate offspring of ,latin1 known as the 8romano rustico10 to which could be traced all the various dialects in spite of their local corruptions4 ,the ,communes had also a great influence on the formation of the ,italian language1 and this influence tended to unification not to differentiation1 as many historians have taken for granted in consequence of their political individualism4 ,francesco de ,sanctis says that intellectual culture necessarily stimulates new ideas1 far superior to the material necessities of man1 and thereby calls into existence a more educated and refined class of citizens1 putting it in communication with foreign intellectual life4 ,the ultimate consequence is a closer connection of languages that develops not their local1 but their common elements4 ,according to him the first effects of renewed ,italian intellectual life were both to restore the purity of ,latin and favour the formation of the vernacular4 ,thus we see how the classical revival started at the very moment when the new ,italian consciousness should have been born4 ,this revival was aided by the establishment of great international centres such as the ,court of ,palermo at first1 and later the cities of ,tuscany and ,lombardy4 ,as the studies of ,latin improved1 the local dialects became purer and more refined4 ,the weakness of the contemporary writers for rhetoric1 for verbosity1 their exaggerated love for the mere word1 to which they attributed an almost religious value1 seems very often the nave pleasure of reasserting a family claim on a cherished property4 ,both ,guelphs and ,ghibellines are followers of ,rome1 the former1 as we have seen1 finding in ,roman ,law the legality of their municipal institutions1 the latter appealing to the traditions of ,imperial ,rome to justify the sovereign rights of ,csar4 ,the whole public life assumes a religious character as in all constructive periods of history and as is the case in ,italy to-day1 where the previous lack of seriousness has been considered by the greatest thinkers to have been the product of religious scepticism4 ,at that time the object of the common veneration1 the one universal feeling of the most factious of peoples in the most factious period of its history was the cult of ,rome4 ,and as ,religion played such an immense part in their whole life1 the ,italians were obliged to christianise ,rome and associate it with ,christian idealism4 ,for ,dante1 ,christ1 and ,rome dominate the history of a thousand years4 ,he views history as a vast moral and religious evolution1 as an indissoluble whole1 each portion of which converges irresistibly to its pre-ordained end4 ,the ,birth of ,our ,lord at the moment when ,csar ,augustus ordained that all the world should be taxed testified to ,god's approval of the ,empire4 ,christ1 in submitting ,his ,godhead to the judgment of a ,roman magistrate1 gave ,divine sanction to ,roman ,law4 ,dante does not consider the miraculous origin of the ,seven-,hilled ,city as the only proof of the privileges it holds from ,god1 nor does he ascribe to it the more important favour of a special historical process4 ,rome for ,dante is equivalent to ,catholicity1 to conformity to the plans of the ,divine ,providence1 and the history of ,rome raises the ,roman ,state almost to ,divine rank4 ,guelphs and ,ghibellines find in the ,roman ,jurists and the ,roman ,legions arguments in support of their opposite claims1 and when the advent of the ,signorie involved them in a common downfall1 the consciousness of an unbroken descent from ,rome could never after be erased from ,italian mentality4 ,the influence of ,rome on all the medival institutions of ,italy is obvious to anyone familiar with the period4 ,but the ,italians1 at the dawn of modern history1 were led by this unbroken tradition of ,rome into a habit of going to ,roman history and law for a solution of contemporary problems1 and this1 while it secured their supremacy in the field of jurisprudence1 kept their mentality from developing on original and modern lines4 ,even when ,italy seemed almost to have withdrawn from all competition in theoretical research1 her jurists and historians stood out to proclaim the immortality of the national genius4 ,the intimate relations of the past with the present could never be lost sight of by people who found in the political and legal activities of ancient ,rome the principles from which arose their chief political idea1 the dignity of man as a citizen4 ,they overlooked the fact that such wonderful citizenship had never been bestowed on man as man1 that the municipal liberties1 the privileges of the ,collegia1 the rule over the barbarians1 were the reward of the ,romans1 not the pre-ordained lot of ,rome4 ,italian scholars felt with the deepest conviction that her genealogy alone endowed ,italy with a primacy which they could not renounce4 ,even had they so wished they could not have been a modern nation in a modern world4 ,the more they studied1 the more did they convince themselves like ,petrarch that they descended in an unbroken line from ,marius and ,sulla4 ,their historical mentality was already formed and they could not consider the human world otherwise than as a narrow collaboration of successive generations4 ,dante1 in his preface to the ,de ,monarchia1 has stated his idea of this historical succession4 8,all men whom a loftier nature leads to the love of truth seem to be most greatly concerned to hand down to posterity the fruits of their efforts so that1 even as they themselves have been enriched by the labours of their ancestors1 they may to the same degree endow their successors4 ,indeed1 he who is steeped in the knowledge of public affairs is certainly far from fulfilling his duty should he not trouble to bestow the fruit of his studies on the ,republic1 not like unto #8a tree by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season1' but rather unto a baneful whirlpool that swalloweth up all things nor ever restoreth what it hath once swallowed40 ,here we find the empirical expression of what ,giordano ,bruno was to conceive theoretically three hundred years later1 thus foreshadowing the ,immanentist doctrine of history and society that ,vico was to develop some hundred and fifty years later still4 ,vico had1 in his turn1 to wait until the second half of the nineteenth century in order to be properly understood4 ,his ideas in #aiaf formed the basis of ,giovanni ,gentile's ,philosophy of ,law1 and at the present day are realised in the ,italian ,constitution as elaborated by the ,government of ,mussolini4 ,but ,dante's scholastic training could not allow him to have the least inkling of the doctrine of ,immanentism2 his ideal ,monarch is merely a magistrate appointed and endowed by ,god4 ,for ,dante all political power could only be lawfully derived from the ,divine law4 ,scholastic philosophy could not conceive a law that should not be dependent upon a superior will or a pre-existing law4 ,none the less1 this empirical statement1 such as it is1 shows already how no speculation could satisfy the ,italian mind unless it avoided the unhistorical position more natural in those countries that had themselves evolved an original form of society4 ,the removal of the ,papal court to ,avignon gave ,italy a rude shock in affecting the good fame of the whole country4 ,the humiliation of the ,papacy is resented all over the ,peninsula1 and the eclipse of the ,papal dignity diminishes the prestige not only of ,rome but of ,italy4 ,a new religion1 the cult of ,rome1 spreads in all ,italian hearts1 and its ruined monuments are scarcely less venerated than the relics of the ,apostles4 ,the glorious memories of the ,roman ,republic1 the pride of the ,roman name1 give rise both to the unfortunate statesmanship of ,arnold of ,brescia and1 a hundred and fifty years later1 to the rash adventure of ,cola di ,rienzo4 ,all those who cannot boast such an illustrious descent are contemptuously designated as barbarians1 and this distinction gives rise to the feeling of the unity of the ,italian races4 ,the mystical and religious fervour with which the men of the ,risorgimento felt for ,rome1 so strong that it led them to trample on their religion1 was not stronger than that of the first humanists4 ,petrarch and ,boccaccio were already preparing the way for the ,renaissance1 of which they are rightly considered as the first pioneers4 ,these enthusiasts1 who brought such inestimable benefits to the intellectual life of the whole world1 nevertheless introduced into their own country the germ of many ills4 ,the men of ,france and ,england could never feel at home in the ample folds of ,cicero's toga as the ,italians did4 ,it was for them1 indeed1 a useful garment worn with perfect ease of manners as a ceremonial robe donned on state occasions1 or a protective covering unfurled in their intellectual battles4 ,despite its assimilation and survival as late as the eighteenth century in the ample periods of ,dr4 ,johnson or in the well-balanced sentences of ,bossuet1 it did not modify to any degree the mentality of countries with which it did not have a close affinity1 although it left in the minds a certain number of ideas distinctly pagan1 such as that of birthright4 ,french and ,english scholars looked upon ,rome as something definitely outside their own world1 like the moon or the sun1 and just as illuminating to them as the former is to the night wanderer and the latter to all the labours of mankind4 ,this transcendental quality rendered ,rome indeed semi-divine in their eyes1 but fortunately kept them from considering themselves the lineal progeny of ,marius or ,csar4 ,their cult of antiquity was just as profoundly religious as that of the ,italian scholars with whom they were often in the closest relations1 only their attitude was more detached4 ,they were thus able to cut themselves adrift from their masters with perfect ease when they had assimilated all that was needful to develop their own natural gifts4 ,an abyss stood between them and antiquity2 they were unable to appreciate their real connection with antiquity4 ,their historical information as to the intervening centuries could only be drawn from medival chronicles which1 full of detail though they were1 did not offer any comprehensive view even of a reign and much less of a century4 ,they failed to understand the essential continuity of the history of all countries1 and1 while not making the mistake of considering the ,romans as their ancestors1 they could not conceive history and society as immanent in man4 ,petrarch1 on the contrary1 considers himself perfectly ,roman1 although his lyrics are almost the first assertion of modern individualism4 ,his familiarity with ,livy1 ,cicero1 ,virgil1 gave him an appreciation of classical ,latin that led him to consider that of ,dante barbarous4 ,what matters to him is the form in which thoughts are expressed1 not the thoughts themselves2 he wanted art for art's sake4 ,fortunately1 his genius and the fervour of his cult for ,rome sometimes animates his consciousness of the continuity of the past with the present4 ,in the ,canzone di ,signori d',italia the new ,italy that was trying to recover her ,roman and ,latin tradition appears as a fully grown personality4 ,guelphs and ,ghibellines1 ,romans and ,florentines have disappeared1 and ,italy speaks the proud language of the ,queen of ,civilisation4 ,as ,francesco ,de ,sanctis puts it1 the poet is an ,italian1 conscious of the superiority of his race4 ,marius is mentioned as if he were an almost contemporary person4 ,so deeply does the young poet feel the classical world that henceforth he considers the heroes of ,greece and ,rome as his ancestors4 ,with personal pride he assumes the military glories of ,marius and ,csar no less than the ample rhetoric of ,cicero4 ,and in this assumption of a ready-made glory as ,italy's inherent right1 cause of much subsequent political and moral weakness1 we may find the first signs of the contribution that modern ,italy is perhaps now on the verge of bringing to civilisation4 ,it is therefore natural that ,fascism should attack with energy the negative side of the legacy of ,humanism1 the ,italian fondness for rhetoric1 union of lofty words and mean deeds1 while accepting and proclaiming the historical conception that links man to the generations past and future4 ,the ,italians of the fifteenth century continued to revel in the glory of ,rome and gradually forgot that there was an actual and living reality1 hardly consistent with their superior attitude as the sons of ,csar and ,augustus4 ,prose and verse improved so long as the cult of antiquity retained its initial mystic fervour1 that provided the religious element indispensable to all creative art4 ,but when devotion to classical studies became a question of interest or vanity1 it was only from the very greatest artists1 from men whose real religion was the worship of art1 that one could expect sincerity4 ,all the others were only extraordinarily adept at the clever wording of other people's ideas4 ,they could never fail to deck any subject1 no matter how mean1 no matter how repulsive1 in the full pomp of a ,ciceronian oration1 rich in beautiful sentences and displaying the careful study of all the figures of speech to be found in the classics4 ,fraccastorius describes a loathsome disease in the finest of post-classical hexameters4 ,politicians could act as meanly as they pleased1 sure that the glory of ,rome would raise them above the rest of mankind4 ,even their real superiority in historical feeling and in the interpretation of antiquity was a source of weakness4 ,for when beaten in war they could always express contempt for the victors and call them barbarians1 consoling themselves with their real intellectual and artistic superiority for their political humiliation4 ,in #adid ,charles ,,viii of ,france invaded ,italy1 meeting with no resistance worth mentioning4 ,it is not surprising1 since the despairing cry of ,boiardo 8,mentre che io canto1 ,o ,dio ,redentore4 ,vedo l',italia tutta a fiamma e a foco0 is almost the swan-song of medival ,italy4 ,at the same time a twenty-year-old youth1 destined to become the greatest poet of the age1 ,lodovico ,ariosto1 could sing with perfect ,horatian art and with an equally perfect indifference for his country 8asperi furore militis tremendo ,turribus ausoniis ruinam0 and with all the selfishness of unconscious indifference 8,rursus quid hostis prospiciat sibi ,me nulla tangat cura1 sub arbuto ,iacentem aquae ad murmur cadentis40 ,he has adopted the measures and harmonies of ,horace and ,virgil and1 wrapped up in his pride in the glory of ,rome1 goes on singing his classical bucolic loves in complete indifference to the fate of his country3 8,est mea nunc ,glycerae1 mea nunc est cura ,lycoris1 ,lyda modo meus est1 est modo ,phyllis amor40 ,reality is a horrible dream1 8improba seclis conditio60 he is shocked that 8nuper ab occiduis illatum gentibus1 olim pressa quibus nostro colla fuere iugo40 ,such a perfect ,latinist could but seek to dismiss this hideous reality by ignoring it and to find refuge in the glorious memories of the past or in the creation of a world of fanciful chivalry4#e ,the sixteenth century witnesses the final divorce of ,italian culture from real life1 so that for two subsequent centuries1 instead of developing the moral and social qualities of the individual citizen1 as in ,england1 in ,france and in the ,netherlands1 it tended rather to the atrophy of all real patriotism4 ,but at this very moment1 in opposition to this dissolving and negative influence of ,italian ,humanism1 one of the greatest men produced by a land ever 8magna parens virum0 stands forth to proclaim that man alone is the creator of the historical world and arbiter of his own destiny4 ,the public life and the posthumous fame of the ,florentine ,secretary are equally unfortunate1 but the present age is better prepared to appreciate the truths contained in the works of ,niccol ,machiavelli4 ,he1 like all the intellectuals of the period1 would have said 8we0 in speaking of the ,romans1 and he might have used the phrase of ,leonardo ,aretino1 8,graecos 1 ,,nostros ,,civitas appellavisse10 had he desired to trace the etymology of that political reality so dear to his heart4 ,but this identification was not sentimental2 he analyses closely the differences between past glory and present shame4 ,strictly speaking1 he is not a ,humanist at all2 like ,galileo1 he repudiates ,neoplatonism and follows1 rather1 the experimental method4 ,he carefully dissects the past for the benefit of the present1 and deftly probes the wounds of the body politic4 ,this empirical standpoint indeed would be a grave defect1 did not his genius and sense of history as a living reality often lead him to intuitions that transcend both his method and outlook4 ,the intuitions1 the proof of the truth of which was to be one of the chief conquests of modern thought1 are clouded by his prejudices or obscured by the inevitable limitations of his knowledge of facts4 ,his conception of 8virtue0 is perhaps the most characteristic of those intuitions that allowed him to foresee ideas only to be understood by the end of the nineteenth century1 and only to be acted on by the present day4 ,of course1 the idea in itself was not entirely new4 ,one of the ablest historians of the fifteenth century1 ,philippe ,monnier1 has clearly pointed out that already in the twelfth century the centre of reality had been lowered from the celestial heights and firmly planted in the breast of man4 ,the polemics on ,frederick ,,ii's definition of nobility are an assertion of the part played by man's individuality in the formation of the world4 ,after two centuries of ,humanism1 noble birth is an absurdity4 ,for ,piccolomini1 ,ficino1 ,landino1 man cannot be born noble1 he can only become noble through his own exertions4 ,the ,stoic precept of the absolute autonomy of the human will is frequently alluded to in discussion on the power of ,fortune1 against which ,leone ,battista ,alberti strenuously asserts the power of man to forge his own destiny4 ,alberti1 typical representative of the ,renaissance1 in all his moral works1 emphasises the freedom of man from all external influences and above all from the dominion of ,chance1 and for him man's life is a consequence of man's actions4 ,neither ,fate nor ,chance are a cause of the varying circumstances of individuals4 ,having these doctrines before him1 ,machiavelli was able to apply to the life of nations the ideas that governed the life of the individual4 ,rome had been powerful and glorious2 ,italy is weak and contemptible3 the cause is the moral corruption of the ,italians4 ,machiavelli does not always consider ,italy's invaders as barbarians2 he is always ready to study their institutions and ways of living in order to discover the reasons for their military superiority4 ,he firmly believes that ,fortune can only display her power where no 8virtue0 has prepared a resistance4 ,italy1 8vituperio del mondo10 will certainly return to her former strength could the ,italians be aroused from their torpor4 ,his attitude is identical with that of ,mussolini's government3 ,italy is slighted by the ,allies1 she is financially weak1 the cause is the scepticism and self-indulgence of the people1 the remedy a stricter conception of life for adults and a more religious education for children4 ,fortune1 however1 is not quite identified with ,fate1 and1 while the latter is unhesitatingly rejected1 the former is retained as a kind of background against which man can display more efficiently his will and 8virtue40 ,this background1 which he calls ,fortune or ,opportunity1 is no less a conception than ,croce's 8situation of facts40 ,his 8verit effettuale delle cose0 is the objective knowledge of the ,crocian 8situazione de fatto0 and must be ascertained anew before embarking on any new action1 for1 according to the shrewd ,florentine1 8sono le cose umane sempre in moto40 ,it is1 therefore1 necessary to take one's bearings before embarking on any course to realise one's will4 ,the best type of will is that which draws its strength from an intimate knowledge of actual circumstances and is consequently steady and resolute4 ,hence the profound morality of such will-power1 pursuing its end without hesitation or incertitude1 disdainful of half measures1 its moral value immanent in the very act of volition4 ,it is no longer possible to continue to identify ,machiavelli with immorality or amorality1 now that his doctrines have been profoundly analysed by philosophers1 jurists1 and critics of the value of ,ercole1 ,croce or ,gentile4 ,we only find in his works a transposition of the fundamental principles of ethics4 ,what he calls 8virtue0 is not to be understood in its ,christian sense4 ,it is closely allied to efficiency but is an efficiency displayed in the accomplishment of the common good1 in the realisation of a strong ,state4 ,hunger and necessity can render men industrious but only wise laws can make them good4 ,indeed the laws bring people to realise the necessity of justice2 social intercourse gives rise to all the various conditions of life1 including education1 religion1 habit1 law1 and ultimately to the standard of goodness4 ,as ,gentile points out1 for ,machiavelli as for ,spinoza the common good is a product of society2 the distinction between good and evil presupposes society1 that is to say a system of laws4 ,hence the saying put into the mouth of ,rinaldo degli ,albizzi3 8,no good man will ever find fault with anyone trying to defend his country1 whatever the means he may employ40 ,in commenting upon this passage ,gentile rightly says that those who extend the common good from the country to the whole of mankind do not expand but rather restrict the meaning of the writer4 ,machiavelli by 8,patria0 understands the entirety of social and civilised life1 that is to say that the ,state is the only historical and concrete form of mankind4 ,he is fundamentally opposed to any indefinite1 unsubstantial idea of man that would strip him of all the historical influences that determine his social and political life1 and that would make of mankind a shadowy abstraction4 ,such ideologies could mean nothing to the sixteenth century ,florentine1 but they do not mean much more to the modern ,italian1 and this is the reason why ,socialism in ,italy never developed its nobler side4 ,men who1 like ,andrea ,costa1 were real idealists of the ,marxian school were devoid of any influence1 despite the respect due to their high standard of personal life4 ,if the whole of mankind is to be the object of the duties of every individual1 one might as well abolish those duties2 what is the business of everybody is the business of nobody4 ,therefore1 ,italian ,socialism was obliged to adopt not the high1 if impractical1 ideals of ,northern ,socialism1 but an entirely materialistic form of propaganda1 harping constantly on higher wages and shorter hours1 in order to arouse the interest and secure the support of the masses4 ,machiavelli was obviously too much a man of his age to be able to surpass the theory of man as an individual attempting to realise his personality in a world in which he could expand as freely as possible4 ,he could not conceive the objectivity and consequent importance of the ,state as moral reality1 and still less the intimate subjectivity of the objective world in which man realises his will4 ,the very word 8,fortune0 kept to indicate actuality was misleading1 and veiled his real notion of freedom2 he severed liberty from law and by only retaining the former he gave the careless or ignorant an opportunity for the vulgar interpretation of his doctrines4 ,time and the works of ,bruno and ,campanella1 stripped of their heretical outlook1 were to further in the mind of ,vico the first maturity of the fruits of which the seed was to be found in the ,florentine statesman's ideas of 8virtue0 and political morality4 ,thus1 while the other modern nations were necessarily getting more deeply embogged in their anti-historical attitude towards life1 ,italy1 in the political idleness of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries1 was slowly elaborating those doctrines that may yet prove to be the ballast needed by all countries to weather the present political and social storms4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,the ,,seventeenth ,,century ,,in ,,england ,,and ,,italy ,the contribution of ,england to the history of the world during the seventeenth century is so considerable that the very attempt to sketch it is almost an impertinence4 ,it cannot be reduced into schematic lines1 for there never was a richer synthesis of life4 ,never have religion1 art1 and philosophy pervaded the whole life of a people as they did in ,england at the end of the sixteenth and during all the seventeenth century4 ,very highly refined periods do not produce great arts and it must be said that with very few exceptions the creative generations are bound to be rather trivial4 ,strong minds1 deep religious feelings1 the virile consciousness of personal efficiency1 do not make for tolerance and refinement in practical life2 but they yield a philosophical1 an artistic1 a political harvest on which their progeny continue to live for centuries1 elaborating and refining until tolerance is the order of the day in philosophical1 religious and political matters1 whilst dilettantism and criticism flourish1 preparing the way for new generations of creative men4 ,the philosophy of ,bacon was essentially oriented towards the world exterior to man1 but it had already taken to consider moral and especially political life in the light of natural causes4 ,the divine origin of the king's majesty was in due time to be denied in consequence of such a view1 although ,bacon little suspected the fact and was ready to uphold such divine origin with all the force of his genius4 ,another consequence was to be the consideration of human society ruled by the same laws that rule the mechanism of nature1 and this was certainly pregnant with political revolutions4 ,the systematic empiricism so characteristic of ,english politics need not be traced farther back4 ,yet before coming to the political conception of ,hobbes1 who was the first great follower of ,bacon and one of the first great political thinkers of ,england1 the contribution of ,grotius must be considered as ,hobbes has a good deal in common with him4 ,hugo ,grotius was born #aehc1 twenty-two years after ,bacon and five years before ,hobbes4 ,like ,bacon this ,dutchman was a statesman and an ambassador4 ,the practice of business had therefore a great influence on his ideas and was apt to temper the excess of doctrine of the man4 ,his idea of natural law is a heritage both of ,pagan times and of ,scholasticism1 and based both on the distinction established by the ,roman jurists1 between the jus civile and jus naturale1 and on the medival notion of sociability1 a special sense of which he supposes man to be endowed by ,nature4 ,the way such a notion is applied is1 on the contrary1 due to the more modern theory of ,nature2 and there we meet with an assertion that would have roused ,machiavelli from his grave if he had heard it1 and that undoubtedly has given origin to the negative understanding of history against which ,idealism and ,fascism are reacting with all their forces4 ,according to ,grotius such jus naturale--the only branch of legal studies that can be treated is philosophy--is based on the essence of the nature of men4 ,but such nature is the same all over the world just as ,nature is4 ,it will be the same for ever in spite of historical oscillations just as ,nature will4 ,the presupposition of this nature of man1 postulated out of and against every experience1 is a negation of history as the process of the gradual development of mankind4 ,yet unquestionably its introduction in modern politics was the cause of a great progress towards justice1 and in ,grotius himself it is balanced by his insistence on not taking positive law out of history4 ,the lack of good metaphysical ground brought him to the postulation of an unhistorical reality whilst the recent improvement of historical researches at the hands of ,jean ,bodin and others induced him not to consider positive laws except in the light of history4 ,to be fair1 this instinct of society deeply inset in the nature of man was not of his own invention4 ,it is to be found in ,aristotle4 ,it is to be found in ,st4 ,thomas4 ,but then the instinct compelling man to live in community is understood in a very different way by the ,greek philosopher1 by the great ,scholastic doctor and by the ,dutch statesman4 ,for if it is true that historical facts which are political1 artistic1 military1 receive their definite character from the ideas of the generation that achieved them1 it is equally true that the meaning attached to traditional ideas by any one man is to a certain extent modified by the whole life of his generation4 ,so that ,aristotle understands by ,nature the transcendental power which planned the life of man as a part of its universal scheme2 ,thomas ,aquinas sees in the nature of man that which was determined as characteristic of mankind by the ,divine will2 whilst ,grotius sees in this sense of society something very much like the law of gravitation--not quite1 however1 since in him we see looming out already the ghost of man anterior to society1 of whom nobody ever heard anything and which is1 therefore1 a pure conjecture4 ,considering this nature of mankind as his basis1 it was inevitable that ,grotius should think the best constitution of the state to be one the origin of which made it more likely to meet the requirements of such nature4 ,once the filiation of law as the product of this nature of man was established1 private and public law obviously derived from the jus naturale1 and the state must originate from an agreement of its components4 ,if ,grotius had been able to realise theoretically the immanence of the jus naturale in society he would have foreshadowed all the political theories of the eighteenth century1 and worked out his scheme with far more cogency than the men who came after him4 ,as it is1 the rationality immanent to human society is too difficult for him and his time1 and unable to realise the moral will of the collectivity he is thrown back with ,machiavelli on a very empirical notion of liberty4 ,the subjectivism of ,grotius is the subjectivism of the philosophy of his time alternatively empirical and rational1 so that the contract by which men give themselves a form of government is irrevocable3 they are free to assume it1 not to reject it4 ,obviously the souvenir of the ,reformation with its political struggles must have been quite fresh in the mind of his contemporaries and influenced him1 as the ,revolution of ,england was to influence ,hobbes2 otherwise it would be difficult to understand how men could be considered as free to choose a constitution and not to discard it4 ,the contradiction was too patent not to be noticed1 but there again the philosophy of ,bacon and his followers influenced too much the thought of the whole century to allow any resolution of the difficult problem4 ,it was the nature of man that led mankind to form communities1 and the mechanicalness of this conception was so much a consequence of the mechanism of the philosophy of the time that once such communities had come to a contract entrusting their government to one man or a body of men1 the government itself was conceived of as mechanical as ,nature1 and its laws as irrevocable as natural law4 ,the contradiction inherent in the twofold notion of man's nature1 held by men like ,grotius1 led them to deny the liberty of man which was the ground of their theory4 ,hobbes has a metaphysic so clear1 so well determined1 that his political conception is bound to have that cogency which belongs exclusively to the works of men whose philosophical grounds are theoretically first rate4 ,that ,cromwell should have offered him a high office in his government is not surprising4 ,obviously the mind and character of ,hobbes are for prompt decisions and coherency of action4 ,yet his political theories are not fit for actual application4 ,it is not impossible that his ideas should have influenced the political men of his days2 but his ,leviathan is the conception of a man to whom philosophy was doctrina corporum4 ,bodies can be natural or artificial1 and the state is the most important of all the artificial bodies1 man being both a natural body1 the most perfect natural body1 and an element of the state1 the most perfect of all artificial bodies4 ,psychology is bound to occupy the foreground in his anthropology1 and no philosopher ever laid a greater emphasis on the distinction between theory and practice4 ,thought is considered after the ,cartesian doctrine as relatively free1 and will as dependent upon thought2 the superiority of the former is acknowledged indeed by all the thinkers of the time and of the following century4 ,in psychology the consequence of this distinction is a conception of the volitive activity that foreshadows the more modern theories of determinism1 against which all idealisms have fought their most strenuous battles and ,fascism is actually leading a political crusade4 ,for ,hobbes asserts the necessity of surpassing the state of ,nature1 in which all men are free1 by the sacrifice of some liberties and by the sacred preservation of the engagements of the contract4 ,but on what ground can he require such sacrifice and faithfulness1 except that of self-preservation8 ,thus selfishness is at the basis of the edifice and there looms already the capital sin of the more modern conception of ,liberalism4 ,the state is conceived as the algebraical sum of the citizens1 the selfishness of whose life is guaranteed by the legislature4 ,but ,hobbes was ,english and1 despite the influence of ,french ,rationalism1 his logic was not so imperious as to prevent his views on actual life from taking the upper hand in some important parts of his system4 ,such an artificial agglomeration of political atoms1 understood as it was to be the most realistic and naturalistic view of political life1 could not have stood the test of application2 and ,hobbes is carried away by his own notion of the contract into a theoretical view of it which is distinctly superior in moral truth1 and much nearer to historical truth4 ,when men come to an agreement for the defence of the peaceful life of each of them the state comes into being2 but it is not a temporary1 mechanical agglomeration--it is unity wanted by men4 ,in his natural state man enjoys some kind of security based on the concordia multorum1 but this concord is not sufficient to ensure peace1 it is merely enough for animals4 ,to ensure human peace something more than common consent is needed4 ,union1 the union of citizens becomes something superior to the sum of their particular selfishnesses4 ,hobbes realises that such union is a living reality and even if he does not work out the way by which the notion of the state as a person can be reached1 he none the less joins hands with all political idealism4 ,in the middle of the seventeenth century he had an intuition of the conception upon which the ,nationalism of all countries was to live and act2 whilst ,hegel was to work it out in an abstract theory and ,italian ,idealism to make it a reality by its good fortune in having met with a political movement able to realise this most historical of all the philosophical conceptions of the state4 ,hobbes had had enough political experience to realise intuitively that which his natural mechanism did not allow him to conceive on theoretical grounds4 ,such a happy intuition does not1 however1 take him any farther4 ,his state has nothing of a moral reality1 and the union of the citizens which it implies falls back on the ground of the law of self-preservation4 ,the fact is that the state so conceived by ,hobbes was an abstraction despite the happy intuition of the oneness of will implied in the contract2 and his natural man another abstraction not to be met with anywhere4 ,the identification of man and state only happens in history and there it was to remain1 unlooked for in ,england until ,hume1 whilst in ,italy ,vico was to herald the reality of society and history as the creation of man between #agbj and #agcj4 ,thus1 like ,grotius1 ,hobbes ended by denying the freedom of will that the very possibility of the contract had implied4 ,his ideal state1 his empirical state1 his natural state1 are so conceived that they continually oppose each other or are identified one with the other in his theory4 ,the state is therein as mysterious as ,nature1 and its laws are no less imperious than the laws of ,nature1 calling as they do merely for passive obedience1 and at least in ,hobbes' theory the state is no less eternal than ,nature1 for after the contract the less the citizens have to say in the matter the better4 ,yet ,hobbes was an ,englishman and the fact was to tell2 even in this most abstract theory he cannot lose sight of the realm of experience4 ,and if the ruler was a bad one8 ,like all his countrymen the father of the ,leviathan is ready to trip up his logic rather than to offer a scheme which after all might not work4 ,if the ruler proved an inefficient or bad one the citizens could discard him4 ,in his opposition to the kingdom by the grace of ,god the father of the ,leviathan is led by his methodical ,naturalism--and not at all by a repugnance for any form of tyranny4 ,the social contract is a purely human affair and nothing could be so ridiculous as the grounding of so human a reality as the authority of the state upon an act of the grace of ,god4 ,but the more absolute is this authority the better2 and his indifference as to the choice of the state-religion did not make for tolerance4 ,not to think of ,cromwell when one studies ,hobbes is impossible2 for the philosopher in front of ,nature1 his almighty though mechanical ,nature1 is just a fanatic observer as intolerant as ,cromwell and as energetic in the systematic application of his philosophical faith4 ,only men of faith can alter the historical world1 for religion remains one of the greatest factors in men's life1 although it does not always appear under the cloak of a definite church4 ,in such cases1 however1 it is often apt to be more intolerant and certainly more dangerous--as all abstract dogmas are bound to be--than those which have through their historical organisation received some kind of adaptation to the society in which they flourish4 ,cromwell was intolerant1 was a fanatic1 but no more and even perhaps less essentially so than ,hobbes1 and both are a perfect embodiment of the genius of ,england during the first half of the seventeenth century4 ,never has the life of a country expressed itself more fittingly in its theoretical and practical term4 ,hobbes like a bee had gathered after ,bacon the best of ,italy1 and the echo of ,campanella is to be detected in the most characteristic part of his theory of knowledge2 he had1 besides1 imported the result of the most recent scientific works of the ,french and ,dutch thinkers4 ,england could prepare on his intellectual contribution to put forth the genius of ,locke just as it could on the assumption to political life of new elements make ready for the organisation of the state that under ,william of ,orange was to arouse the envy of the world4 ,the two fanatics1 one in the immediateness of his faith in the righteousness of ,god1 the other in the elaboration of his faith in ,nature1 had done a great deal in the way of shaping the character of modern ,england1 and the theory of one and the revelation of the other held in germ much that meant progress for the whole of mankind4 ,but both by their superlative intolerance and despotism called for the reaction that was to oppose most formally man to the state4 ,for ,hobbes at least the fact was inevitable1 his ,leviathan engulfs all rights and interests2 at the same time in his theory of knowledge he picks up the trend of ,campanella and sets the basis for a nearly ,protagorean subjectivism4 ,how far the theory of the ,leviathan was from ,italian mentality cannot be judged from contemporary opinion4 ,the ,italians1 or at least the greatest number of ,italy's scholars1 were giving themselves up to academical or to immoral pastimes4 ,the ,cinquecento had been personified by ,ariosto1 ,machiavelli1 ,aretino1 the three expressions of the ,italian society during the sixteenth century4 ,the characteristics of the times had been an artistic fancy1 full of serenity1 aware of its being a mere play of imagination and making fun of itself2 an adult thought that swept away the illusions of fancy and feeling1 to make its own way towards the shrine of science1 at the very core of what is the world of ,man and ,nature2 then a moral licentiousness1 remorseless because unconscious1 therefore shameless and cynical4 ,ariosto's fancy is displayed to such an extent that it mostly aroused mere irony from his contemporaries4 ,machiavelli brings realism and logic to their ultimate consequence1 arousing thereby a sense of repulsion in men far more wicked than he was4 ,aretino's cynicism reaches such a monstrous pitch that the most dissolute men turn away sickly from his books4 ,that was the era in which the great nations of ,europe were taking their definitive personal physiognomy4 7,england1 as has been said1 had already the features that were going to be the family likeness to be reproduced all over the ,anglo-,saxon world by her sons47 ,as ,de ,sanctis points out1 the ,european races were building up the 8,patria0 so fondly dreamed by ,machiavelli for his own people1 a 8,patria0 which was to be a political unity1 fortified and cemented by religious1 moral1 and cultural elements4 ,at this same time ,italy not only failed to build up a 8,patria10 but was losing her independence1 her liberty1 and her beloved and treasured pre-eminence in the historical world4 ,not that such a catastrophe was realised except by the keen mind of ,machiavelli4 ,it was unconscious1 it was bound to be unconscious1 since it happened just because national consciousness had vanished4 ,how could it have assumed national shape8 ,the name of ,italy was to become a geographical expression1 for its inhabitants were not citizens1 they were mere inhabitants1 subjects by natural determination of this or that petty ,prince4 ,the geographical name of a region becomes the name of a nation through the very long or extremely short process of formation of national consciousness that permits of all its inhabitants coming on the historical stage of the world as a person1 through the manifestation of a personal will in foreign politics1 which are the country's assertion as a personal conscience4 ,thus a people is acknowledged as a nation by the rest of the world the moment when1 through an action1 the final scope of which is purely national1 it asserts itself as a living organism able to manifest a will and act upon it4 ,what ,machiavelli had termed the corruttela of ,italy was the absence of national and religious consciousness1 and he had pointed a way out of it4 ,he was too much of a positive mind not to realise that the difference between past and modern times was due to a spiritual difference4 ,not knowing what to attack in the mentality of his countrymen1 both clever and learned beyond words1 he thought that the only great difference between ancient ,rome and the ,italy of the ,cinquecento were the political institutions which of old had been based on a religion that pervaded the whole of civic life1 and now were quite a practical affair modified continually by the chance of other countries waging war in ,italy4 ,his great blunder1 the notion he had that the ,roman state-religion of ,pagan times would be the one chance of salvation for his own time is to be considered with due allowance for the ignorance of the sixteenth century as to the real import of the notion of progress4 ,machiavelli pronounced human things to be always in movement1 but in spite of this intuition he could not detect the processional character of such movement4 ,as it was1 it was sufficient to induce him to reject the notion of the natural state of ,man as a constant so dear to ,grotius4 ,yet it could not help him to realise that his own times1 with all their wickedness1 might be thought superior to ,roman times2 and ,guicciardini1 a friend of his1 felt himself much wiser than ,machiavelli because he had no illusion on the possibility of making a nation out of his countrymen4 ,it was absurd to him1 to be always calling on the ,romans for example1 it was just like wanting a donkey to gallop horsewise6 ,but whatever the wisdom of ,guicciardini1 who made his ,god of his own private peace and well-being1 a ,god no less exacting than the ,state of ,machiavelli1 and considered the world as his world1 thereby enforcing to irrelativism the subjective atomism that was disintegrating ,italy1 ,machiavelli was a wonder child of genius whilst his wise friend was merely a clever gentleman making egotism the special study of his life4 ,mussolini's view on the civic regeneration of the ,italian politically amorphous classes is very much like ,machiavelli's4 ,political indifference is also to him a result of the lack of religiousness in the spirit animating ,italians in their public life4 ,but four hundred years have passed and he could not if he wished turn to the state religion of ,pagan ,rome4 ,if the basis of social life has to be religion1 the positive religion has to be the one historically belonging to the people4 ,in spite of the ,machiavellian conception of history1 the sixteenth century was to see the introduction of the experimental method1 as practised in natural science1 in the treatment of history at the hands of no less a man than ,guicciardini4 ,his ,storia d',italia is in twenty books and covers the period between #adid and #aecd1 thus beginning with the invasion of ,charles ,,viii of ,france and ending with the fall of ,florence4 ,francesco de ,sanctis1 with the heart of a man of the ,risorgimento1 commenting upon this work1 so remarkable from many points of view1 says that the historical period of which it treats could rightly have been called 8,the ,tragedy of ,italy10 but that the historian has not the slightest notion either of the unity or of the import of this tragic drama4 ,one could object to the great critic that to realise such oneness of drama was impossible to ,guicciardini1 as the tragedy had its root in the historian's unconsciousness of this oneness or rather of the possibility of this oneness1 since such oneness did not exist in ,italy when ,guicciardini wrote1 except perhaps in the heart of his friend ,machiavelli4 ,people of other countries provided them with the political events and the philosophical theories that kept their brains going4 ,the works of ,grotius were taken and easily studied in the land of jurisprudence1 for the studies that went on flourishing were law and history4 ,but the purpose was a sterile erudition1 at least at the moment1 for apathy had reached such a superlative degree that the martyrdom of men like ,bruno and ,socino passed unheeded--worse than unheeded1 not understood--so that it is absurd to hear modern ,free-thinkers reproach the ,church with the death of ,bruno1 who was far from questioning the right of the ,church to burn him4 ,the ,church in its practical policy1 like all the institutions in ,italy1 was lacking in ideas and in life4 ,the centre of civilisation had moved northward1 and south of the ,alps people were getting more and more away from it1 more and more effeminate4 ,in a land where indifference was the shroud of a martyr1 ,churchmen who knew ,bruno for the heretic he truly was could not be expected to realise that apart from his heresy he had given the world an idea that would enable modern thought to realise the part played by religion in man's life and to reject the very idea which had severed man from authority4 ,the seventeenth century1 inaugurated in ,italy by the burning of ,bruno1 had in literature little to boast of besides the ,jerusalemme liberata of ,tasso1 for it began with the ,arcadia of ,sannazaro and ended with the ,arcadia of ,guarini4 ,on the other hand ,campanella1 the most eminent philosopher1 was not the only one4 ,although the philosophers became less and less original they maintained a sufficient theoretical interest to accept all that ,france and ,england were throwing on the world4 ,perhaps nothing is more expressive of the life of the mind than this temporary intellectual dearth and sterility of a race whose faculties were1 even then1 far above the average4 ,reduced to political non-existence and therefore to speculative unproductiveness1 the whole country seemed to have gone to pieces just on purpose to let the new nations shake off the yoke of history1 of a history too heavy with its pagan heritance to allow full play to the new forces of modern1 that is to say ,christian1 civilisation4 ,for modern thought and modern politics seemed to reject authority and history1 in order to have the possibility of displaying what they held virtually in their medival and ,christian youth4 ,they rid themselves of the past just as the ,church had done at her start1 throwing overboard ,pagan culture4 ,but is it not allowable to think that just as the ,church ceased to be anti-philosophical as soon as it had asserted its original intuition1 modern nations will cease to be anti-historic now that the value of man as a man has been asserted1 and has even been over-asserted8 ,for if such were the case then ,italy's standing out of the game1 in order to elaborate slowly the historical forces that may contribute to give back to the world the ballast it seems to have lost1 would appear to be in harmony with the developing process of ,mind4 ,nations have their dawn1 their twilight1 and their night1 but ,mind never rests or sleeps1 and through their individual characteristics all the races tell more or less directly on the whole life of mankind4 ,if ,italy had to stand aside to let ,england and ,france assert the individual worth of the most inferior human beings1 and work up systems where the weakest may be heard in legal circles1 then her attitude all through the sixteenth century is that of a boxer training for his next match4 ,to rid politics and law of the idea that legitimised all authority by appeal to the ,will of ,god 7as it was commonly understood to be a kind of ,deux ex ,machina7 something had to be appealed to that could be considered as a religious support on the modern side4 ,nature was upheld as antagonistic to superior authority and religious interference4 ,yet ,nature1 at least to the men of the seventeenth century1 was the work of ,god1 and if mankind was endowed with a longing1 or beset with a necessity for society1 surely the ,creator of mankind was responsible for it4 ,the fact is that it was not of the will of ,god that the jurists and philosophers wanted to be rid1 for they could have found cogent arguments to uphold the thesis1 so dear a century later to ,rousseau1 that ,god had created man free1 and that he was therefore at liberty to choose the political constitution that suited him best--conforming by so doing to the ,will of ,god3 it was the authority of men1 the authority of tradition1 which taught that it had always been the natural lot of some men to obey1 and the natural lot of others to command2 and that is far more ,pagan in its political origin and ,aristotelian in its theoretical form than ,catholic4 ,it was the hierarchy of birth1 quite a ,pagan notion1 that men were fighting against in ,northern ,europe during the sixteenth1 seventeenth1 and eighteenth centuries4 ,aristotle's first book on politics settles the point for the hellenic world4 ,some men are born to be masters2 some are born to be slaves4 ,he that is to be a master is born with the qualities that befit command2 he that is to be a slave is born with the qualities required to fulfil orders4 ,were it not so1 ,nature would have failed to fit each of them for the end to which it brought them into life4 ,man was what he was to be anterior to his birth4 ,as to slavery1 as an institution it was to be deplored2 it was rather sad for the people who were born slaves1 and terribly immoral at best1 but it was an evil that could not be avoided inasmuch as it was essential to the nature of society4 ,the metaphysics and religion of the day could not conceive of any alteration in the nature of things4 ,the ,stoics and ,epicureans did improve1 but not much1 the idea of liberty4 ,the best thing for men to do was to know ,nature and their own natural disposition1 not to go against the natural bent of things and of their constitution4 ,thus the part of ,fate was reduced and the dignity of man asserted4 ,but the reduction and assertion would have been more verbal than actual had it not been for the ,romans1 who with their realistic mind could not overlook the fact that man's virtus1 or lack of it1 made a lot of difference in his life4 ,their religion and philosophy though lacked originality and had no adequate notion of liberty4 ,christianity was to relieve mankind from such a fate4 ,man is in the world to save his soul4 ,the grace of ,god is necessary to him1 but he only can achieve his own salvation4 ,if you want your horse to jump1 as the sportsmen of the old school used to say1 give him his head2 the freedom to use his neck1 head and shoulder to the best of his ability4 ,if ,god means man to save his soul1 he must have given him sufficient freedom to be made responsible4 ,and in fact the proclamation of this power of man is the import of the ,new ,testament4 ,everything is possible to him that believeth4 ,this is far from ,aristotle1 so far that men could not at first realise what it meant1 and that the abolition of slavery is only recent is sufficient to show the slowness of the process through which the good word of the ,gospel has reached theoretical consciousness and practical realisation4 ,man's liberty1 man's dignity1 were asserted all through the ,scholastic period and the prayer of ,thomas ,aquinas thanking ,god for the dignity ,he had bestowed upon man is a good proof of the fact4 ,it could1 therefore1 only be through the greatest misrepresentation of historical facts that ,pagan times were identified with the cause of liberty and equality of men1 two ideas that are essentially ,christian and were in their present form unknown to ,paganism4 ,such perversion of facts cannot be1 however1 ascribed to a wilful adulteration of history4 ,the men who upheld it are too many and some are too obviously sincere4 ,yet on the other hand it is impossible to ascribe it to an instinctive foreboding of immanence as nowadays understood4 ,the only possible explanation is the force of repulsion for the immediate past that is inherent in the historical assertion of any new social force4 ,a new age always asserts itself by fighting its antecedents and often the very cause of its coming to light4 ,hobbes1 rejecting sovereignty by the grace of ,god to enforce his own conception of the sovereignty of his ,leviathan grounded on the ,bellum omnium contra omnes1 is merely conforming to the philosophy of ,nature1 which1 as materialism1 was to him a religion1 a new religion that must take the place of the old one1 at least amongst educated men4 ,in its objectivity ,nature stood to him as ,god2 an awful divinity that had a good deal in common with the ,god of ,calvin in the inalterability of its will4 ,but few of the new thinkers had the courage to be as coherent as he was4 ,for he was quite aware that the substitution of ,nature for the ,god of ,christianity1 as the ultimate reality to which political forms had to be traced back1 made for a greater implacability of political laws4 ,the others sometimes pretended to believe and mostly did believe that the unknown quidditas which they call human nature had a luminous social instinct that had been marred through what they called the ,dark ,ages2 and they did not realise that the belief in such nature of man was elaborated in the schools of the ,middle ,ages1 and that if it was taken for granted as much as the geometrical postulate that makes the three inner angles of a triangle equivalent to two right angles1 it was just as abstract and could no more be proved on experimental ground4 ,the nature of man taken as implying the necessity of or longing for social arrangements is illustrated in history2 but it is the essence of history to relate to men the deeds of men1 thereby is enforced the necessity of having society in order to have history4 ,so that isolated man cannot enter history4 ,of men anterior to society we can1 therefore1 know nothing4 ,but prehistoric times are not of necessity presocial2 indeed1 the art that flourished in such periods shows the existence of social intercourse in times of which we have1 up to now1 no historical knowledge4 ,in any case the philosophy of politics if it wants to borrow the experimental method of natural science must take history for its basis1 with all the limitations that this implies1 in order to reach positive conclusions4 ,the political thinkers of the seventeenth century thought and acted as men of deep convictions1 but of very faulty methods2 the world they cast into shape reposed on an assumption which is the most metaphysic of all the metaphysic axioms they hated so much2 it will be more and more obvious through the eighteenth century4 ,italy stood aside4 ,italian minds could not have made such a position theirs4 ,the attitude of a ,bacon1 of a ,descartes1 of a ,hobbes1 could not be assumed in the land of ,machiavelli and ,bruno1 the fathers of the idea of history understood as a constructive process of ,science and ,society1 of ,campanella1 the man who foreshadowed in the sixteenth century the phenomenologic conception of reality and the notion of immanence3 which may have been1 which was in fact heretic1 but is undoubtedly the offspring of ,christianity1 and knows that it is4 ,the race whose energy and virility had been maimed by the constant contemplation of the past1 by thorough identification with the past1 had been politically stunned like the people of the ,bible who turned back when they should have been looking and proceeding forward4 ,italian scholars kept assimilating and admiring the philosophical production of foreigners1 and the more readily praised and the more truly appreciated the new theories that they felt farther from imitating them4 ,what they could give they gave1 in legal and historical erudition1 preparing the materials on which ,vico was to build his imposing ,scienza ,nuova and preparing the historical ground for the philosophy that flourishes two centuries after him1 just as ,scholasticism had prepared the abstract ground on which the theories1 that were to give their democratic or individualistic impulsion to the modern world1 flourished two centuries after a reaction had started against the abstractness of ,scholasticism4 ,francesco de ,sanctis realises it because he has lived for this oneness of ,italy1 thereby giving it the full reality of an historical person4 ,guicciardini was as interested in the calamities that befell the individuals as de ,sanctis was in the tragedy of his country1 and if he filled twenty books with the matter of two good books it was because ,italy's genius had lost for the time being its synthetic power4 ,he was an accurate man1 with immense knowledge and great acuteness of mind taking each fact in its most minute particularity1 but losing sight of the importance of such events as the ,reformation4 ,he was a naturalist and uses the same methods as if he studied vegetables or minerals1 looking into the intimate structure of facts to find out why they are as they are4 ,men therefore appear in his work like a product of ,nature1 whose actions are as fatally determined as those of an animal4 ,it is impossible1 therefore1 to find in ,guicciardini's twenty books a single page alive with the feelings that throb in ,machiavelli's historical works2 he keeps the calm brow of the naturalist counting the legs of an insect4 ,and ,italy1 until ,vico comes1 will go on between these two ideas of history and society4 ,guicciardini sees man free in appearance1 but in reality bound to act according to the determinations of his character1 of his temperament1 of his circumstances2 and the wise historian can very nearly make out beforehand that what he shall do with the same approximate certainty with which the naturalist can tell the way the swallows will take when the wind and atmospheric pressure are known4 ,machiavelli foreshadows a kind of sociology and in his truly ,italian synthetic view of history he sees the play of the various forces1 spiritual forces1 that make of the human world a different realm of reality from that of nature1 where forces exclusively physical are at play4 8,patria10 liberty1 nationality1 humanity1 social classes1 interests and passions1 are to him forces that move man1 but would never move a plant or a tree4 ,but the fact is1 to quote again ,de ,sanctis1 that ,machiavelli is the starting point of a period and ,guicciardini is the ultimate end of the preceding age4 ,france1 ,spain1 ,england1 ,germany and the ,netherland1 were overrun with blood1 shed either through the ,war of ,religion or in consequence of the ,inquisition1 in the proceedings of which the governments of the different states interfered to further their political interests though seldom on the side of mercy4 ,in ,italy there was no struggle2 men do not face death or torture without passionate convictions2 and while other races1 young as they were1 had such strong convictions the country which had reaped too easy and too rich a harvest between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries1 had given all that her assimilation of ancient wisdom could give1 and at the end of her career she sat exhausted on the wayside to watch the young ones at play1 as a connoisseur watches a boxing-match and takes all the hints which may be useful to him4 ,metaphysics could not flourish under such circumstances1 as virility is the first requisite for original thinking1 so ,italian scholars stood on the watch taking law and thought from abroad4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,seventeenth ,,century ,,in ,,france ,the history of ,france from the advent of ,louis ,,xi to that of ,louis ,,xiv displays in its development constructive tendencies so definite and constant that its edifice1 at once harmonious and imposing1 seems the realisation of an architectural scheme perfectly in keeping with the genius of ,france4 ,everything tended to that unification of the country1 to that union of the provinces the necessary consequence of which must be the centralisation of administration and the concentration of political power in the hands of the sovereign4 ,the idea of absolute monarchy has never been conceived and realised in exactly the same way as in ,france4 ,m4 ,jacques ,bainville is fully justified in holding that the kings of ,france made it their main duty to concentrate all their efforts on identifying themselves and their dynasty with the development and consolidation of the unification of the country4 ,but it has yet to be shown what is really the origin of a conception of political reality that so far seems to be unique4 ,monarchy was indeed just as absolute in ,spain and in ,austria4 ,but in both countries it remained comparatively feudal4 ,so that the bourgeois origin ascribed by ,m4 ,bainville to the ,capetian ,monarchy1 its intimate relations with the ,middle ,class amounting to a sort of mutual league against the great feudal lords1 is sufficient to endow it with the modern character that attracts the student1 eager to penetrate to the living core of the life of political institutions4 ,it could not1 however1 account for the rationality of its development1 for the harmony and beauty of its historical features4 ,in the last half of the sixteenth and all through the seventeenth century ,france and her monarchy are endowed with a beauty that exercises a permanent fascination4 ,it would be true to say that the part played by ,france at that time in the civilisation of the world was to a large degree sthetic4 ,modern philosophy1 above all in ,italy1 understands art as the expression of the life of mind4 ,hence1 a battle1 a treaty of peace1 a law1 a form of government1 can be considered an artistic masterpiece just as well as a poem or a monument4 ,now between the coronation of ,henry ,,iv and that of ,louis ,,xiv the monarchy of ,france perfectly expresses all that is positive and1 therefore1 historically constructive in the life of the country4 ,its spiritual and practical forces meet in the king's person and receive thereby their historical realisation4 8,l',etat c'est moi10 says ,louis ,,xiv4 8,cogito ergo sum10 says ,descartes4 ,the self-assertion of the king identifying the whole of political reality with his empirical person is not without affinity with the import of the ,cartesian assumption in which the criterion of certitude1 the root of all reality1 was identified with the individual act of thinking4 ,the self-assertion spontaneously coming on the lips of the ,sovereign and that coming out of the meditation of the philosopher is one and the same thing4 ,it is the consequence of sixteen centuries of ,christianity1 and in their mathematical conciseness the two formulas are the best proclamation of the genius of ,france in all its clear1 simple and luminous logic4 ,they are1 however1 at the same time a revelation of what is weak in that genius4 ,to be so clear1 so luminous and so simple1 ,french philosophy was bound to be abstract and radical4 ,the radicalness of mind common to the ,jacobins and to the more modern anti-clericals and democrats caused the elimination of the feudal class as a factor in political life1 a fact which was bound to carry in its trail the political revolution of the eighteenth and the economic one of the nineteenth century4 ,when a government reduces a class to political non-existence the part formerly discharged by that class must be entrusted to another1 which is bound to claim in exchange for the support offered to the government in the struggle against the class displaced the privileges previously granted to its rival for services rendered to the state4 ,france one1 under the government of one man4 ,it bears a family likeness to the tragedies of ,racine and ,corneille4 ,such an idea is great and beautiful as ,horace and ,le ,cid4 ,but it owes its grandeur to a simplicity that condemns it to leave out much of political reality1 which is indeed as complex and multiform as life itself4 ,therefore1 though it is beautiful1 its beauty is bound to be a tragic one4 ,when the concept had become a fact1 when ,louis ,,xiv could say l',etat c'est moi2 when ,france was at least one under her ,king1 the ,french monarchy was in the position of the bullet that has been shot right in the bull's-eye4 ,the aim is perfectly caught1 the steely little thing is helplessly stuck there1 useless4 ,the funeral knell of absolute monarchy is rung by this identification of the ,sovereign with the ,state4 ,as a political institution it was perfect4 ,perfection is static and cannot1 therefore1 belong to life1 which moves towards perfection but never is perfect4 ,politically the feudal nobility was hewn down with the indifference with which a venerable forest is razed to the ground to make a ,french garden4 ,the trouble was that society is not a garden which once laid down can be kept by a succession of good gardeners in consonancy with the plans of the architect4 ,in ,france society was to go on living its historical life of eternal alteration and formation4 ,the political abolition of the nobility was a most active ferment to breed more speedily the modifications to come4 ,the ,french nobility lost its virtues2 corrupted by the idleness enforced upon its members1 it infested the moral atmosphere and this in spite of the very remarkable men produced by some of the old stocks4 ,soon the other classes required its social elimination and they wanted it to be as radical as the political annihilation had been4 ,undoubtedly the kings had been obliged to destroy what should have been their natural support in order to conform with the political conception that had been elaborated by logical ,french minds4 ,the king and his people making one without the intervening links of classes--no constitution could be more simple2 but its realisation required the amputation of what is necessary to the life of any monarchy4 ,descartes and the ,roi-,soleil are so adequate an expression of their epoch that they may be considered as the characters of the prologue to the tragedy that was to bring the next century to its close4 ,m4 ,jacques ,maritain has rightly bestowed on ,descartes the epithet of revolutionary1 but it could be extended to ,louis ,,xiv if one did not run the risk of seeming paradoxical4 ,for both their self-assertions1 politically and theoretically absolute1 are equally anti-religious and anti-historical4 ,the position assumed by ,mind whenever man is really religious implies self-negation4 ,if ,god is1 ,he must be infinite and ,man1 by comparison1 nothing2 at least such is the logical sequence of the doctrines upheld by most religious people4 ,and when ,mind is speculatively too poor to realise the necessity of the religious moment in which man bows down to everything that is not his beloved self and accepts the law that such recognition begets1 man can turn to history and trace there intuitively 7as the first great thinker of ,italy has done71 the part played by each one of mind's activities4 ,religion then appears independently of personal conviction1 a constant element in the life of man1 more or less preponderant1 always there1 as the recognition of all that is to man not-self4 ,it is where modern thought has failed to realise this1 either theoretically or historically1 that it knows only the first term of the relation which is the basis of every social organisation4 ,liberty and law are correlative terms just as are light and shadow4 ,liberty is the claim of the subject and law springs from the recognition of the object4 ,louis ,,xiv and ,descartes1 thanks to their unbounded selfishness1 assert emphatically their empirical individuality4 ,for them the self swallows up the other term the not-self1 that the modern world after them seems to ignore4 ,descartes was endowed with the most precious gifts that make the scientist and the thinker4 ,yet it can be said that his greatest fortune lay in the fact that he embodies most perfectly all that is characteristic of the ,french mind4 ,foreigners1 even when their knowledge of his language is far from perfect1 can take his ,discours sur la ,mthode and read it with perfect ease and a feeling of intellectual and sthetic well-being4 ,to read this and to walk through the park of ,versailles are equally indispensable to understand that great century in ,france4 ,and both walk and reading make very much the same impression4 ,it is true that the reader will easily pick up in the ,cartesian theories ideas known to ,st4 ,augustin and to the ,scholastic ,doctors against whom ,descartes reacted so violently4 ,the visitor might just as well notice in the park or on the noble faade of the palace lines and decorative patterns reminding him of the ,renaissance ,villas seen in ,italy1 but this does not deprive the palace and its setting of their purely ,french character4 ,the fact is that the seventeenth century with the last half of the sixteenth and the first of the eighteenth1 appears in the life of ,mind1 i4e4 in history1 as an ,anglo-,french period1 whereas the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth had been in their artistic and intellectual production mainly ,italian4 ,the ideas elaborated in ,france and in ,england had come from everywhere and from all centuries1 ,italy being chiefly the historical and natural agent of communication1 a sort of historical point of convergence between antiquity and modern times as she is geographically between east and west4 ,the idea of originality1 without playing upon words1 can be called the 8original sin0 of our modern world2 born from the contempt of ,bacon and ,descartes for the past1 it is ending now in ,futurism and ,bolshevism4 ,to attempt to create something new without roots in the past in art1 politics1 science or philosophy is not merely absurd1 it is impossible4 ,the living dialectic we term history displays each of its moments as the logical sequence of the preceding one and the elaborating stage of the next4 ,the work of ,descartes will live as long as our intellectual life lasts4 ,yet this very work1 in which he inaugurates the anti-historical method1 is the best illustration of the law of history1 displaying as it does the riches of a mind in which were interwoven the legacies of the past and the germs of all that was to be subjective and positive in the philosophy of several centuries4 ,louis ,,xiv brought a political form to the precision of a mathematical formula1 that is to say he made it absolute and by so doing rendered the evolution1 characteristic of all social organisation1 impossible for the monarchy he represented4 ,that which is absolute is unalterable4 ,to be absolute this ,french monarchy had to be static2 whereas every political system must be dynamic4 ,perfection is the negation of development4 ,the person of ,louis ,,xiv was the perfect realisation of ,france's ideal of an absolute ,sovereign and as such it was1 therefore1 the conclusion of the process which had brought him to the throne4 ,the method of ,english empiricism1 which consisted1 after ,bacon1 in looking at the exterior world with wide open eyes to get a notion of reality based on sense knowledge1 was taken up in ,france with as much enthusiasm as the theories of ,descartes were taken up in ,england4 ,the two countries balanced each other1 ,france tending to the unity of man's consciousness1 ,england to the full realisation of the world of senses4 ,life obviously is neither of these but their combination or more properly their synthesis4 ,so that the mutual influence of both countries is the best illustration of the life of mind1 single in its development1 multiform in its manifestation4 ,what is tragic in the philosophy of ,descartes is almost perfectly illustrated in his own life4 ,no one has more eloquently proclaimed the subjectivity of life and reality than he has through his own scholarly selfishness4 ,only ,louis ,,xiv could be his rival in this self-assertion4 ,the self-centred monarch1 the self-centred scholar1 can vie with each other4 ,therefore he may be held to be just as anti-religious and anti-historical as ,louis ,,xiv2 the one could not forget the majesty1 the other the genius1 with which he felt himself invested to bow down in worship of the ,king of ,kings1 in worship of the ,word of eternal thought4 ,yet both were believers and convinced ,roman ,catholics4 ,the contradiction of fact thus introduced in their lives find its most exquisite expression in the vow of ,descartes1 when he pledged himself to make a pilgrimage to ,our ,lady of ,loreto if he could get rid of all the duties that fell to him as a soldier1 as a man of the world4 ,they prevented him from attending freely to the satisfaction of his longing for scientific researches4 ,hence his impatience to retire from this vast world1 full of rights and duties1 where men suffer and require help and love4 ,the anti-religiousness of such feeling need not be emphasised1 it is obviously worse than that of many people who1 calling themselves atheists1 were drawn into deifying nature or their own negation of ,god6 ,to tell man that he has only to turn his mind inwards to find in the most intimate recess of his soul the criterion of ,truth and consequently of ,justice1 is a most ,christian saying4 ,but in the works of ,st4 ,augustin1 where ,descartes found it1 it implies either the belief in ,god's presence in the heart of every believer1 or the immanence of the transcendental self in every empirical self1 whereas in ,descartes' own writings and mind neither of the two is to be found4 ,his rationalism seems brutally to reject belief outside philosophy1 outside the theoretical and intellectual world altogether4 ,it only seems to do so1 because it is one of the first stepping-stones of ,idealism1 but of this he could not even dream and he went on establishing between will and knowledge such a relation that every rational act ought to be good and every irrational one bad4 ,hence the duty of vulgarising rational thinking through education1 which was to become paramount in pedagogy and politics4 ,hence again the radicalness of the difference between educated and uneducated which was to produce in our modern democracies a class difference far stronger than that of the ,middle ,ages when a man could be made squire or even knight provided he proved his personal valour in actual deeds4 ,english philosophy received through ,hobbes all the rationalism it needed to balance the excessive empiricism of ,bacon and the world was ready for ,illuminism1 which1 originating in ,england1 became one of the greatest and noblest movements recorded in history in spite of its many flaws4 ,italy could not1 indeed1 offer anything to make up for such rationalism and empiricism4 ,with her political virility the whole country was daily losing its speculative originality and fecundity1 for as ,vincenzo ,cuoco was to realise a century and a half later1 the two manifestations of man's genius1 political and theoretical1 usually go hand in hand4 ,the intellectual gifts of ,italian scholars were wasted in academic pastimes or devoted to works of erudition1 which prepared for the genius of ,vico the materials of his historical vision of reality1 but were of little avail to counteract the impatience displayed by ,france and ,england1 turning their backs upon history in order to feel free to shake off the yoke of every traditional authority4 ,feeling1 intention1 worship1 so many elements of spiritual life1 were almost discarded to make room for the goddess ,reason4 ,art and ,religion were thus denied in their essence4 ,art could only be at best didactic or hedonistic1 it was1 therefore1 considered at the service either of thought as a means of vulgarisation of scientific knowledge1 or of sensation as capable of causing agreeable emotions4 ,as to ,religion it was disposed of in a more radical way4 ,theoretically misrepresented1 historically ignored1 it was to be tolerated by ,english philosophy for practical reasons as a political instrument and as the best educative force4 ,it had been useful and necessary in the centuries of dark ignorance1 but to the century that was to call itself the age of light it was a hindrance1 an impediment of which mankind was to be rid at all cost4 ,illuminism1 that is to say the enlightenment of the people1 and the anti-religiousness of the philosophers were identified4 ,the war waged against religion was confused with the war waged against ignorance4 ,one step only was needed to make of ignorance a synonym for religion4 ,nobody waited to enquire why religion was everywhere and why it was always a factor in social life2 nobody anyway could have answered the question as it would have implied historical research1 a synthetic view of history1 for which no one was fit4 ,the ,italians lacked the philosophical basis for such work1 ,france and ,england lacked the turn of mind necessary to do it with intelligence4 ,germany was still in her teens until ,leibniz came to proclaim the intellectual coming of age of his country4 ,thus religion was a puzzling problem to philosophers and the lack of intelligence towards this enigmatic ,x was to breed a great many political difficulties4 ,religion alone could have made up for the oncoming individualism1 first social1 then economic1 which threatened universal destruction4 ,man was raised to the honours of the altar1 hailed as ultimate reality in what is most negative and empirical in him4 ,his intellectual activity was to become the principle of reality1 which indeed it is in so far as it is transcendental and1 therefore1 divine4 ,but the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries could only know this activity as far as it is empirical and1 therefore1 non-divine4 ,illuminism1 with all its generosity and noble impulses1 was unable to realise what transcends the reason and experience of every single man4 ,it was to be the lot of ,germany and1 above all1 ,italy to conceive in speculative form the life of ,mind and to realise the natural function of religion throughout history4 ,,chapter ,v ,,giambattista ,,vico ,in their studies of the ,neapolitan philosopher1 ,croce and ,gentile have done their work so thoroughly that to anyone approaching the same subject it would be very nearly impossible to say anything both new and good4 ,the material here used to illustrate the contribution of ,italy's most original thinker to modern speculation and practical life will be drawn from the works of ,gentile and ,croce4 ,vico is the most ,italian of ,italy's thinkers4 ,yet a close survey of his ideas reveals in his works1 besides the most ,italian of intellectual heritage1 the presence of the deepest and richest tendencies of the modern philosophy of ,europe1 be it ,french1 ,english1 or ,german4 ,he is thus the best illustration of his own theory4 ,in the man of genius the most concrete historical determinations blend with the broadest universality of ideas4 ,but his critics have usually chosen to look exclusively to either of these according to their own nationality2 and this way of abstracting from one of his qualities has made him obscure and baffling4 ,while his countrymen lived upon the contribution of ,france and ,england1 ,vico1 to the naturalistic intuition of atomism1 which implies individualism in morals and politics1 opposed the idealistic intuition of history as the developing process of mankind4 ,to the abstract contemplation of clear ideas that were a matter of mathematical intuitions and deductions he opposed the self-generated progress of mankind that goes on creating its own world4 ,in this he revealed himself as a direct son of the ,italian ,humanism and ,renaissance1 an anachronism1 and the fact was nearly fatal to his fame1 as this put him1 as a writer1 in a position of great inferiority to ,locke or ,descartes4 ,he never deals with the question he had sat down to treat1 because he never realised beforehand where he was going1 and it was only on his way that his mind became properly fixed on the point that was obscurely tormenting him4 ,one ought not to read either the titles or prefaces of his books1 for he usually starts on a traditional and even stale matter4 ,thus it is that starting as a good ,platonist to write what ,michelet took his ,scienza ,nuoa to be1 that is to say a philosophy of history1 he got stranded in the deepest speculation on the nature of man's mind quite in contradiction to the doctrine of ,plato4 ,he had begun by considering the origin of man's intellectual activity4 ,the difficulty was great1 but he casually observes that whatever the difficulty of the problem and its obscurity1 one always has the steady light of the conviction that the world of the ,gentile nations is the achievement of men2 and that the principles of it must be found in the nature of our human mind and in the force of our understanding4 ,such proclamation of man's power to create his own world1 the only historical world1 was indeed a revolution and ,rousseau's theories1 evolved to ensure the liberty of man to arrange society to suit his requirements1 are childish compared to this sublime thought of a man who was a ,catholic with all the humility and simplicity of a child4 ,the qualities of the historian were in him balanced by those of the jurist and through the researches that were meant to give a philosophy of history he went on building a philosophy of ,mind4 ,but before starting to expound the forms of ,mind's activity1 for which he claimed the right of historical citizenship1 it may be good to note that ,vico's criticism or continuation of previous systems was simply dialectical2 inasmuch as he contradicted the main thesis of his favourite authors just as well as those of ,descartes1 who was his pet aversion1 or accepted them to transform them4 ,for instance1 he took the ,cartesian certitude and opposed it to truth2 calling certain that which is the result of particularising knowledge if one may term it so1 or of knowledge directed to the particular4 ,and he took the nature of man as ,grotius or ,hobbes had misunderstood it1 a kind of mechanism the laws of which were as fatally unalterable as the instinct of beasts1 and changed it into the nature of ,mind1 quite spiritual and--there is no other word--,christian4 ,vico turned to the periods of history which were the most remote from the psychology of his time4 ,consequently he was led to study the inferior forms of mind such as imagination1 violence1 simplicity2 whereas others had meditated only upon the nature of man as they found him refined by ,religion and laws1 and had grounded their theories on his mature intellect4 ,they ignored the imagination of his youth4 ,they studied his will morally trained and overlooked the wild passions of his forefathers4 ,it is1 therefore1 legitimate to say that ,vico came to reject the basis of man's natural rights grounded as they were on a false notion of human nature2 and gave concrete ground for the assertion of man's spiritual rights and duties4 ,art1 or as he calls it1 poetry1 is not born through the caprice of man to give pleasure or clothe philosophic sayings4 ,it was born out of natural necessity1 it is in short the first operation of man's mind4 ,man1 before he can conceive a notion1 such as table or dog1 realises them with an operation not of the intellect1 but of his imagination4 ,before he can reflect with a pure mind1 he perceives with emotion4 ,before he can speak in prose he speaks in verses4 ,the nearer poetry gets to the particular1 the better it is2 the higher reflection rises towards the universal the more perfect it is4 ,yet if one can say that the poet is the sense of mankind and philosophy its intellect1 one's conclusion coincides with the saying of ,scholasticism1 ,nihil est in intellectu qui prius non fuerit in sensu1 since without poetry it is impossible to have philosophy and civilisation4 ,after many views on the subject1 often contradictory1 his real idea is undoubtedly that the first form of mind is poetry1 anterior to the intellect and free from reflection and reason4 ,myths1 he holds1 do not refer inevitably to real men1 they are essentially historical truth under the form it is wont to take in primitive minds4 ,any myth is an individual1 as ,hercules1 and accomplishes individual actions--as he kills the ,hydra or cleanses the stables--but it is also a concept1 the notion of useful and glorious activity4 ,it is1 therefore1 both a universal as the expression of a concept and a creation of man's imagination as a particular fancy4 ,passing to morality and to society1 although he reacted against rationalism1 ,vico's assertion of the irrational has nothing to do with ,rousseau's4 ,he took for his ground history1 literature1 archology and above all1 law4 ,thus his first discovery led him to substitute for the ,golden ,age that had been postulated as the initial stage of mankind1 8the natural state of man10 an obscure period in which man did not differ much from the wild beasts and was at best an irrational and non-intellectual being4 ,he was to develop the great and immortal notion that lay hidden at the core of 8jus naturalism10 the notion of society as immanent in man1 which had been in the air since ,thomas ,aquinas had spoken of it as of a sixth sense of man4 ,utilitarianism is the first target on which ,vico opens fire1 and he takes it as ,hobbes and ,spinoza had formulated it4 ,utility cannot be a sufficient ground for morals since it springs from the temporal part of man whilst morals are grounded on his eternal part4 ,no principle of utilitarianism1 whatever the forms ascribed to it by philosophers1 can justify the process of differentiation1 which is the constant development of social organisations4 ,deceit1 force1 need1 imply as already in existence the society they are supposed to have produced4 ,how could the supposedly happy and simple first owners of the soil be deceived into giving up their claims1 if they had no desire whatever and no relation of any kind4 ,for relations imply some kind of social state even if tacitly agreed upon4 ,as to force1 the first rulers were not merely strong in their individual force2 their power had a far deeper root as they invariably appear at first as protectors of the weak and as antagonists of all anti-social and destructive tendencies2 and their law was force indeed1 but force a natura prstantiori dictata4 ,the real ground of society is1 therefore1 moral1 and as such essentially spiritual4 ,yet at first sight ,vico's view of the origin of law and society appears very much akin to that of 8jus naturalism02 but as soon as it is understood that ,vico's notion of man's nature is the ,christian or spiritual one1 then the difference is quite evident4 ,law to him is natural to man because what is not natural can neither stay nor last4 ,fear is certainly the origin of society2 not1 however1 the mere fear of wild beasts or hunger but the fear of oneself2 fear of solitude due to remorse and shame4 ,out of shame ,vico sees arising the senses of honour1 fidelity1 probity1 trust in promises1 truth in words1 honesty in deeds4 ,so that society comes to have moral consciousness for its ground1 and one can indeed consider society as the realisation of man's best nature1 of man's spiritual conscience4 ,this sense of shame or modesty could be called by empiricism the sense common to all men that enables them to realise without judgment what is necessary or useful to men4 ,it is through this sense of decency or shame that the moral consciousness is enabled to embody itself in institutions and give stability and certitude to the freewill of man which is of its nature most uncertain4 ,the nature of this fear1 manifesting itself in remorse or shame1 of this sense of decency giving rise to moral consciousness1 is easy for us to understand on account of the systematic treatment ,mind has received in subsequent studies1 above all in the works of ,croce and ,gentile4 ,this fear is what we usually call self-consciousness2 and when we say that a child has grown self-conscious we mean that he thinks too much of the opinion of the people who surround him4 ,now in this case common language1 as in many instances1 lays a trap for our understanding1 since at first sight it seems to imply that the child's uneasiness of manners is due to a self-centred conception of himself2 whereas it is in fact his realising the importance of his surroundings that makes him wish to please his elders1 to attract their notice1 or to appease their indignation when he feels guilty4 ,it is1 therefore1 the consciousness of the non-self that we term self-consciousness4 ,but this trap is easily avoided1 for philosophy knows nowadays that it is impossible to reach self-consciousness except through the conscience of that which we are not1 for ,we without the rest of the world in opposition to which we are ,we1 means nothing at all4 ,thus the self-awe in which ,vico sees the first origin of society is the consciousness man has of his not-self1 of the exterior world1 or1 to use an image1 of the immense shadow that surrounds him and is in reality his own negativity1 all that which he is not4 ,so that if man knows shame and remorse in the most absolute solitude it is because in his own heart he feels the presence of a nameless ,power4 ,vico's is not a speculative hypothesis4 ,primitive men wandered savage and ferocious1 without family ties or matrimonial bonds1 were the prey of the wildest passions4 ,whence could they receive the law that would prevent their mutual destruction8 ,they cannot be saved by the wisdom of men since human wisdom does not exist as yet1 neither by ,god1 ,he has retired among ,his chosen people and left to its fate the rest of mankind4 ,but ,he has left them the character of men and their humanity is sufficient to save them4 ,thunder strikes them with fear1 and the consciousness of their impotency1 of their own limitation1 suggests the confused and obscure notion of that which is not limited4 ,and to appease the ,almightiness of this infinite and enjoy its favour they refrain from some things and do others4 ,they refrain from satisfying some of their physical cravings and ,mind's liberty is the result2 so that liberty is born with her twin sister1 moral law1 out of the fear of ,god1 out of the awe-inspiring consciousness of the not-self4 ,the land becomes covered with altars2 the caves behold the union of men and women eager to ensure the ,divine favour to their nuptials2 the soil is broken to receive the body of the dead who return to the gods4 ,ethics are born with the three fundamental institutions of society1 the cult of the ,deity1 matrimony as the first call of society1 the veneration of the dead as the first assertion of immortality4 ,why has ,croce been able to state1 after this energetic assertion of ,vico on the essentially religious origin of society1 that the father of the philosophy of ,mind agrees with the school of natural law in their purely immanent notion of ethics8 ,because like them he constructs his science of society independently of revelation4 ,the natural law of the ,gentile nation spontaneously created by men is the matter of his research not the supernatural law that came down on ,sinai for the benefit of the ,chosen ,people4 ,it is not on the idea of law and its origin that he criticised ,grotius1 ,pufendorf1 and the rest1 it is their idea of religion that is distinctly quite alien to his4 ,religion for ,vico can be understood first as a conception of reality as such2 and this is the reason why it is in ,gentile's theories one of the essential moments of ,mind as recognition of the not-self1 or object4 ,second1 it belongs to practical reality as the basis of ethics4 ,in this case religion is the very essence of ethics as it is the very essence of truth4 ,it is1 therefore1 evident that what ,vico intuitively1 perhaps1 unconsciously1 is striving to assert is the eternity of religion1 historically proved apart from any revelation4 ,thus in his search for the ground of morality he can abstract from positive religion1 but how could he abstract from the knowledge of truth1 or more than knowledge1 the consciousness of truth8 ,plutarch1 after describing the primitive religions and their horrors1 wonders if it would not have been better not to have had any religion than to worship the gods in such impious ways4 ,and ,vico1 after quoting him1 observes that surely when he wrote this he must have lost sight of the fact that from such atrocious superstitions luminous civilisation developed in due time1 whereas nothing ever grew on atheism4 ,there is no such thing as historical or social life without a religion1 full either of tenderness or ferocity1 rational or fantastic1 but in any case providing man with the idea1 more or less clear1 more or less noble1 that there is something which transcends the individual1 in which all individuals weld into one1 and which provides man's morality with the object of his moral will1 and thereby means ,law4 ,in his understanding of the period in which man had been a brute1 ,vico was much nearer to the ,bible than the ,protestants had been4 ,he accepted as a matter of fact the distinction between the ,gentiles and the ,jews1 as implying the radical privation of any supernatural help bestowed on the former1 and he thought of them as being in a pre-moral state1 a state that was indeed devoid of morality1 but full of moral tendencies1 and from which mankind emerged through the realisation of those tendencies4 ,such realisation is not on the other hand the effect of a ,divine grace1 it is ,,natural1 due merely to the development of the natural light granted to every man that comes to life4 ,man's free will is weak and between passions and virtue might succumb if he was not upheld in his efforts by ,providence4 ,for ,vico makes an absolute distinction between the grace of ,god and ,providence4 ,the grace of ,god1 in which he firmly believed1 is an extraordinary help granted to some men and particularly to the ,chosen ,people2 ,providence is the ordinary help of ,god granted to all men as their birthright so to speak1 as inherent in their nature as men4 ,vico stood henceforth as the best antidote to the dangerous side of ,anglo-,french speculation4 ,the philosophy of ,mind had yet to be developed1 but it was sufficiently asserted to claim man and all his activities as belonging to spiritual reality1 to historical reality4 ,thus what ,vico called ,providence provided the ground for a more human1 that is to say1 more spiritual1 idea of liberty1 just when the men who were going to popularise ,illuminism were preparing for their task4 ,but his was a far more difficult idea1 and less palatable as well1 for his liberty springing as it does from ,religion1 hand in hand with morality1 is a double-faced divinity4 ,one never can1 according to such a conception of life1 grasp liberty without law1 or enjoy a right without satisfying the corresponding duty4 ,passing from religion to law1 ,vico in his objective understanding of history rejects a justice that should consist in measuring everything1 for says he1 first this would not be the philosophy but the mathematics of law2 then it is the duty of men to share the common goods in such a way as to preserve the differences required by the differences of deserts1 and thus to maintain that which is the only true equality of men4 ,the natural law1 according to him1 was born at first under the form of just desires1 just violences2 then it took the form of moral fables2 ultimately it was asserted in all its rationality and generosity4 ,away goes with this the abstract and anti-historic notion of an eternal and natural law1 superior to positive laws4 ,vico goes on bowing to the jus naturale philosophorum but instead of putting it high above history1 he looks for it exclusively where it can be found--that is to say in history1 making it thus historical4 ,after accepting ,plato's idea of an eternal ,republic1 ,vico breaks it to pieces to come out with a quite different conception of his own4 ,the only really eternal ,republic is the eternal process of history in all the variety and succession of its modes of realisation1 from the man-brute down to ,plato4 ,every single truth has its practical manifestation1 its practical consequences2 to think in this or that way implies living and acting in this or that way4 ,the divorce of theory and practice resulting from the difficulties that arose a century before between scientific men and their churches is here absolutely annulled4 ,vico calls men to realise that in the human world of history1 the only one real to man1 since it is the work of man as ,nature is the work of ,god1 thought and action go hand in hand4 ,theories bring inevitably a modification of practical life4 ,man does not exist1 at least not to our knowledge1 as an individual devoid of a social and therefore historical frame4 ,art is the moment in which man moves in a self-centred world1 abstracting from the universal1 and is therefore the subjective moment of liberty1 the moment of intuition4 ,religion is the moment in which man stands full of awe in front of the world which is his not-self1 abstracting from the individual he is1 and is therefore the objective moment of ,law1 the one link from the intuitive to the rational realisation of life as morality and1 therefore1 society4 ,history1 however1 never shows the one apart from the other1 as nature never shows one of two correlative terms absolutely apart from the other4 ,light or darkness may be prevalent1 both are always there4 ,liberty and law have alternately held their sway over our modern1 that is to say ,christian world1 and their synthesis may now be called into being by the grandsons of ,vico4 ,his theories could not be understood by the general public before practical life had shown the soundness of his criticism of the theories that were fostering the abstract individualism and liberty against which ,fascism is reacting2 and reacting through not a retrograde process1 but through a forward movement which shall enforce liberty as the correlative term of law1 and allow religion to discharge its function as the essential basis of man's spiritual life and not as an instrument of politics4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,illuminism ,,in ,,england ,,and ,,france ,the characteristic that distinguishes ,english ,illuminism is the reasonable adaptation of its theories to practical circumstances2 this is best illustrated in the greatest man it has produced4 ,locke was for the preservation of faith in ,revelation and tried to make it agree with reason4 ,it was as impossible for him as for ,thomas ,aquinas to think that ,god's world should mean anything in contradiction with the natural light ,he has granted to man4 ,he sees in the ,scriptures the revelation of truths which would have been out of reach of man's natural powers1 limited as they were to sense knowledge4 ,such a view was characteristic of the fair-mindedness of the practical and political man1 but it held a snare in the sanction thus granted to the most unphilosophical and unhistorical notion of ,deism and natural religion4 ,the fact is that the most energetic champion of ,subjectivism after ,descartes could not realise at all the religious position of man towards the ,divinity which is assertive of objectivism4 ,his ethics take human felicity as the higher aim of theoretical and practical activity1 which is not original at all1 but has the merit of being quite consistent with his subjective assertions4 ,in his contribution to pedagogy the commonsense of the practical man comes to temper the theoretical individualism which inspired him and he thus keeps generally on a level above the theory afterwards formulated by ,rousseau4 ,but nowhere does this inconsistency of his practical application with his main system appear as clearly as in his work on the ,state4 ,william of ,orange stands to ,locke as ,cromwell does to ,hobbes1 not that the king can be compared to the dictator1 but his reign beheld the inauguration of the political system which is the greatest gift of ,england to mankind2 and this practical manifestation of the political genius of that country shows by its coincidence with its greatest theoretical contribution to philosophy how little practice and theory are severed in actual life1 that is to say in history4 ,yet ,locke was enforcing the distinction with all his might to avoid the inconsistency already noticed between the theoretical and practical aspects of his work4 ,as ,hobbes had done before him in ,england1 and ,grotius in ,holland1 he saw the basis of the ,state in a contract1 but he was the first 7although ,algernon ,sydney had prepared public opinion for such an idea7 to assert that the collective will was embodied not in any single person1 but in the majority of the people4 ,there he was perfectly consistent with his gnoseology1 the multiplicity of the data of sense knowledge destroyed the unity of the metaphysical conception4 ,only legislation1 however1 fell to the share of the majority2 the executive and foreign policy were to be entrusted to hereditary monarchs4 ,the exigencies of the new notions of liberty and equality of man were tempered by the practical necessity of insuring the continuity and unity of national development1 which was the last assertion of historical necessities4 ,hence politics went on gradually losing touch with historical consciousness4 ,yet the necessity under which ,locke and the best thinkers of ,english ,illuminism were of tempering their theories through practical considerations was symptomatic of the fundamental weakness of the whole system4 ,theories springing from a synthetic conception of life do not want readjusting to practical life1 do not want a period of assimilation under their theoretical form and another of elaboration into practical systems4 ,the best example of this is the simultaneous production of ,gentile's most important theoretical work known to the ,english-speaking scholars as the ,pure ,act and of its practical offspring the ,fondamenti della ,filosofia del ,diritto1 both of #aiaf1 followed at five years' distance by their political application by the ,fascists who had1 so to speak1 no direct knowledge of such works2 to say nothing of his pedagogy1 the application of which the author has had the opportunity of carrying out with her own pupils4 ,but then such theories are conceived without abstracting one minute from practical life1 and their basis is history and society as they are in real life4 ,of ,fascism the same may be said2 its idealism does not prevent it from being the most thoroughly practical and realistic of movements4 ,the philosophy of the seventeenth century had1 however1 made this consistency of theory and practice an obviously unrealisable chimera for the men of the eighteenth century1 and whilst ,french rationalism brought people to think of rational theories as capable of radically reforming society1 ,english empiricism held that ideas may work very well in theory and very badly in practice4 ,such a distinction was the source of great difficulties4 ,if thought and action were the terms of an irreductible dualism it was natural to say ,meliora video2 deteriora sequor4 ,indeed1 the moral imperative of ,kant could not be reached on such ground and in the literature and philosophy of the eighteenth century moral treatises and dissertations take such a place that there is no doubt as to the men of the period realising the difficulties of the problem4 ,they had separated religion from philosophy1 religion from law and politics1 and as they had the jus naturale they must have natural morals4 ,a sense of right and wrong due to the natural light granted to man by ,god was to be found in ,scholasticism as the natural tendency to sociability already mentioned4 ,it could1 in fact1 be traced to the ,stoic school and even farther back4 ,but this did not make things easier to the people who held positive religions to be useless1 whilst on the other hand they were ready to admit their value as establishments providing for the moral care of the lower classes4 ,in their abstention from history1 the only use of churches they could see was to curb the egoistical tendencies of man in the classes which were denied the enlightenment that could provide educated people with principles of discrimination between right and wrong4 ,they could not realise that this function of the churches is merely a consequence of the position of the believer towards his divinity1 that such a position brings man to realise what is to him not-self1 thereby giving to the moral law the objectivity which alone can free it from the constant alteration of selfish motives1 and bestow the stability necessary to its efficiency4 ,a natural sense of right and wrong was acknowledged in order to find in ,man himself an explanation of his moral life4 ,this original predisposition1 that was to ensure autonomy to man's higher life having been admitted1 the psychological mentality of the time did not hesitate to make it a matter of psychology to determine which was the organ of this natural function of man4 ,whilst such researches proceeded1 ,cumberland having already illustrated the ,ciceronian doctrine of the lex naturae as the natural reaction of altruistic tendencies against the selfish motives of ,hobbes's theory1 the ,earl of ,shaftesbury1 a friend of ,locke1 contributed the best of all these theories4 ,he claimed the autonomy of morals1 freeing it no less from physiological than from theological fetters4 ,for the intrinsic value of morals is equally destroyed whether you make good deeds dependent of the fear of punishment and hope of reward or on the mechanism of nature4 ,goodness1 righteousness1 and virtue are real of themselves1 a reality2 they can be conceived and understood2 they cannot be inferred from anything else4 ,why he did not work out so original a notion is easily understood2 the philosophy of his time afforded him little more than psychology1 and his personal gifts and breeding fitted him rather for sthetics than for so arduous a task2 hence it was perfectly natural that his idea should have developed into a real eudemonism4 ,the nature of virtue is to him harmony1 he thus blends the conclusions of materialism and of the doctrine which upheld the social instinct of man2 the supremacy was to be ascribed to the egoistic motives by the school of ,hobbes1 to the sense of altruism by the others4 ,to ,shaftesbury each of these schools held half of the truth and only the combination of both tendencies could produce in their harmony real morality4 ,neither lax nor ascetic morals must result from the harmonious combination of the two opposites4 ,such a theory implies the perfection of the individual as the ultimate end of all intellectual life2 it throws light on the nobler side of ,illuminism1 and if it is not theoretically sound it is the blending of all that was best in a movement that was generous in its optimism4 ,the variety of the grounds which were ascribed to morality is sufficient to betray the original flaw of such philosophy4 ,even ,lord ,shaftesbury had been unfaithful to ,locke1 mainly owing to his own strong sense of the sthetic1 but also owing to the unsuitability of the great philosopher's doctrine1 as it was understood then1 as a basis for a theory of ethics4 ,thus ,utilitarianism came into being4 8,the best for the greatest number10 was to remain as the ideal or ideology of ,illuminism2 and the best in question became more and more the material best1 and less and less the moral best4 ,after the natural sense of sociability which had taken the place of the will of ,god at the basis of the state1 after the natural sense of right and wrong which had been elaborated as a substitute for the ,decalogue1 very little was left of the tabula rasa idea of man's soul upheld by ,locke4 ,all these natural senses were anterior to experience and when natural religion was added to them it was understood that all these innate faculties were constitutive of rationalness in practical life2 and ,nature was gradually opposed to history as rational to irrational4 ,this natural religiousness had had its first ,english assertor in ,herbert of ,cherbury4 ,to him man's soul is far from being tabula rasa2 it is a book that opens naturally and displays its hidden treasure4 ,and ,john ,toland1 in his efforts to retrieve free thinking from the interference of the ,state1 determines the limitation of the state's jurisdiction1 to which the citizen's actions must be subject but never his opinions2 whilst he limited his request for tolerance for the benefit of that class of men whose social position enabled them to afford a sufficient culture to make a harmless use of such liberty4 ,then the negativeness of any liberal government was obvious1 since in ,toland's notion of it it became like a simple set of brakes destined to act when the machine goes wrong and to keep the serene impossibility of an impeccable butler until order and peace are actually broken4 ,thus again the radical difference between educated and uneducated which had been fostered by the cultural movement of ,humanism and ,renaissance1 assumed a religious and political significance which made the new idea of class a greater impediment to the self-making man than that of the feudal hierarchy which had always admitted the admission to knighthood of a valorous man whatever his condition4 ,this cautious exclusion of the people from the new intellectual religion was a condemnation2 the rational cult proved an artificial theory and could have no vitality4 ,yet it would be a perversion of facts to present it as due to the personal feeling of ,toland or any other man4 ,it was the consequence both of the predominance of ,rational ,reality in the systems then in honour1 and of the traditional ,humanism according to which there was the same difference between a scholar and a non-scholar as there had been once between the citizen and the non-citizen of the old pagan world4 ,but the main feature is the anti-historical vision of life that made men incapable of suspecting first the social origin of the religious notions which had flourished from pre-historic time1 then the impossibility of introducing social partitions in the life of the ,mind4 ,of religion they only saw its practical organisation in the different churches2 of the need from which the pre-,christian forms of religion had sprung they had not the slightest suspicion4 ,the rough and obscure notion they had of the ,middle ,ages was too often identified with religion and they had no possibility of realising the part played by the ,church to keep the objectivity of a religious creed as a counterpoise to the anarchy-breeding self-assertion of man4 ,christianity had revealed the profound humanity1 that is to say spirituality1 of the world1 and ,man1 feeling himself to be the main agent of ,god in the world1 realised his subjective importance4 ,only ,god had remained above him--only the notion of ,god's presence could enforce objective law4 ,it is not the ,decalogue and the ,church's precepts which are meant here4 ,it is the recognition1 essential to religion1 of a reality existing besides his own self that compels man to realise such objectivity of law4 ,st4 ,paul laid an emphatic stress on the fact4 ,but the caritas sibi is that which raises the subject1 raises us and enlarges our capacity until we are capable of taking in the object1 all that we are not1 the world in short2 what modern philosophy calls the not-self4 ,when man does realise this objectivity1 this distinction of the world from him1 his attitude is that of respect not only towards ,god but towards the world4 ,thus we have the religiousness1 that ,fascism is striving to enforce until it will pervade the whole of life1 practical and theoretical life1 since it does not part them4 ,this notion of religiousness1 however1 is ultra-modern1 and could not have been conceived in pre-,kantian days1 in pre-,hegelian1 pre-,gentilian days4 ,it is not medival by any means1 and ,illuminism is one of the stages through which ,mind has had to pass1 to realise a subject capable of taking in the object without going back to ,pagan objectivism4 ,for this objective world must at all cost be such through subjective objectivity4 ,if it is to remain a ,christian world in its very objectivity it must remain a human world1 the world of man1 the world of the subject whose religious recognition of his not-self is a supreme self-assertion4 99 99 99 99 99 ,before the end of the century ,reason fell from her enthroned glory1 and sentiment was glorified as the purest activity of man's soul4 ,so that the century of light ended by raising the less rational motives of man's life to semi-divine honours4 ,this reaction was due to the unilateral dogmatism assumed by philosophy in ,france owing to the political circumstances of the country4 ,with a democratic sense that is partly due to the democratic origin of the ,french monarchy1 which to be absolute1 had to rest on the support of the people1 the thinkers of ,france did not dream of keeping their conclusions to themselves4 ,what they considered true should be public4 ,perhaps1 in their feeling that it is the duty of the man of science to communicate to the people the result of his studies1 they hid the most beautiful motive of the whole century--one that is not brought out by the historians of philosophy--the imperative exigency of ,truth that impels divulgation4 ,it is frequently remarked that they were the real champions of ,illuminism inasmuch as they claimed the right of the people to be enlightened2 the idea of ,truth which prompted such a claim is the loftiest part of their contribution to philosophy4 ,the ,french mathematical mentality1 after having exported ,descartes1 had imported ,newton1 and as ,hobbes and1 before him1 ,bacon1 had come to ,france to find the yeast they needed to develop their own theories1 so now men like ,voltaire and ,rousseau made their leaven out of ,locke's and ,hume's doctrines and studied the political institutions of ,england4 ,in ,france1 from ,montaigne1 from ,pascal1 men had learned the cautious prudence1 and the self-dedication to the object of faith that are nearly antithetic and usually never appear together ,montaigne's influence is due to the fact that he reflects the state of mind of all the western world1 tired of religious struggles and the emphatic expressions of dogmatism on all sides2 it was due also to his charming style and the purity of his ,french mind4 ,so ,french is he1 so much a man of the ,west1 that his charm is felt alike by ,french and ,anglo-,saxon minds4 ,one cannot resist him4 ,in his analytic scepticism he is so logically methodic1 that his style is like the colour of a piece of antique bronze1 inviting the onlooker to touch it whilst its lines1 its lights and shadows reveal the powerful mind of the sculptor4 ,montaigne through his very respect for the ,church helped to ruin the religious spirit of his countrymen1 and the genius of ,pascal could not have made up for it1 even if its mysticism and its repugnance for the ,moi haissable had not been tinged as they were by the self-assertive spirit of his time4 ,both mysticism and scepticism take their practical form in ,pierre ,bayle4 ,few men ever enjoyed the gift of sympathy with which he was endowed because few men are so superlatively sincere4 ,he does not renounce religion1 he is indeed quite a religious man1 but his religion is negative on account of his mysticism as a believer and of his scepticism as a scientist4 ,to him the ,thomist and ,lockian point of view of the super-rationality of the ,revelation is an illusion4 ,in perfect sincerity he could say credo quia absurdum1 and like ,tertullian proclaim definitely the divorce of science from religion1 of rationality from irrationality4 ,his next move was to divorce morality from religion4 ,men could be excellent in ,pagan times and they can be wicked in ,christian times1 yet ,christianity is superior to ,paganism2 obviously religious opinions are independent of the morality of men4 ,he then passed to politics4 ,his idea of religion was far too high to allow him to consider it as an auxiliary of the state's police as ,english theorists had often done1 and since it had nothing to do with morals the ,church could have nothing to do with man as a citizen4 ,this evidently made not only for tolerance1 but for indifference on the part of the state in all religious matters4 ,expelled from science1 morality1 and politics1 religion was thus as good as expelled from life by a mystic simply because he had the sincerity and coherency to be practically consistent with the theoretical ground of the philosophy of the time4 ,voltaire overshadows the century as ,louis ,,xiv had done the preceding one4 ,his greatness does not depend on his contribution to philosophy1 but on his immense efficiency as a propagandist of the conclusions reached by philosophy4 ,like all the great and best men of ,illuminism he was absorbed in the moral and religious problem and had most obviously assimilated the best ,english theories4 ,less sincere than ,bayle1 he took up his sceptical conclusions1 without1 however1 sharing his mysticism1 and in the prose of the greatest ,french writer of the century1 he set to work to popularise the destructive criticisms of all dogmas4 ,voltaire may have been convinced that dogmas were harmful1 but as he did not bring forward anything to put in their stead his influence was negative4 ,what it would have been without the constant recall to present experience of ,english empiricism cannot be gauged2 as it was1 present experience was rather an incentive to dissolve and destroy the whole social order than to build2 and towards past experiences there could be no recall whatsoever1 or rather there was only one and an original one1 but it could not be heard4 ,to ,voltaire history offered no direct lesson4 ,his belief in the supremacy of reason could only bring him to despise the incoherency of historical facts through which very often the rationality of history displays itself4 ,his clearness of sight limited his outlook to the present1 and this focussing of life was an abstraction which prevented him from realising the historical forces at play in the political and social circumstances of his country4 ,his religiousness is strongly tinged with utilitarianism1 as he held1 like many ,englishmen had done1 that the purpose of ,churches was to act as moral check to the lower class4 ,all these fathers of ,liberalism and ,radicalism are more aristocrats than democrats4 ,their worship of culture and reason makes for political tyranny and a social system of caste as distinct as that of the ,indians4 ,hence it evoked a reaction1 and this found its spokesman in ,jean ,jacques ,rousseau4 ,people were tired of dry reason and its negativeness1 they felt parched and longed for affirmative works2 he came out1 a man of genius1 devoid of the mathematical and classical grounding of the others2 entirely led by feelings and1 alternately1 by the most generous and lowest impulses he was a democrat4 ,until ,rousseau appeared the writers on political matters had been either followers of the jus naturalism or of the constitutionalist schools4 ,in ,rousseau two streams mingle their waters1 for he is an artist as well as the most original thinker ,france had after ,bayle4 ,as an artist he is the spokesman of his generation1 and it is as such that his contemporaries took to him as they did in spite of his disreputable personal life4 ,as a thinker1 although the statement may sound very daring1 he ought to share with ,berkeley and ,hume the honour of being considered as one who made the way for ,kant4 ,his were mere intuitions2 they could not be more as he had no scientific or philosophic training4 ,but as ,professor ,saitta has pointed out1 his reaction against rationalism transcends very much what was grasped by most of his readers and even sometimes by recent critics4 ,his passionate claim for the important part played by sentiment in the life of man and by all irrational forces1 original though it is1 is the impulsive reaction of an artist1 whereas by the time he wrote1 ,italy had already had for some quarter of a century the works of a man who had claimed1 with a speculative genius far superior to his1 the acknowledgment of all the different activities of mind4 ,and ,giambattista ,vico had been a jurist and an historian as well as a philosopher4 ,so that his notion of ,man was capable of taking in1 not only his rational activity1 or his sense relation to the exterior world1 or his sentimental life1 or his religious position1 as rationalism1 empiricism1 sensism and mysticism had respectively done2 but the whole range of man's spiritual manifestations4 ,therefore1 is it that ,rousseau's greatest intuitions are those that could not affect ,italy in a speculative way4 ,the man who was to pick them up was a ,german whose genius had all the robustness of his country at that stage1 coming as it was to the fore after having fed on the intellectual production of ,italy1 ,france and ,england4 ,what affected ,italian thought most was the weakest part of ,rousseau4 ,the idea to which he owed his immediate fame is that nature made man happy and good1 but that society had made him bad and unhappy4 ,he was thereby contradicting rationalism and empiricism1 he was flinging his glove in the face of all ,illuminism4 ,and he could do it not on philosophical ground1 but merely calling upon life to justify his assertion4 ,that age of light was an age of corruption and misery4 ,the lack of religion had brought in its trail the lack of seriousness2 the abstract subjectivism of a century had made of each man a self-centred world4 ,liberty was1 so to speak1 constantly cried for out of tune since it could not be accompanied by the assertion of law4 ,for all that the ,jus-naturalists and ,constitutionalists had admitted the liberty of men to make a contract and give themselves the form of government which suited them best2 they had denied the citizens the liberty of declaring such contract lapsed when it had ceased to satisfy them4 ,as this was due to their training in a philosophy that considered the world as a machine1 ,rousseau had no reason to follow them nor to see in the state a mechanism subject to laws as inalterable as those of nature4 ,therefore he realised the real essence of liberty as inalienable4 ,it could be transferred1 not alienated4 ,strong in this sense of liberty ,man must fight all the unnatural edifice of society which1 according to him1 is the cause of all immorality through the inequalities of men it begets4 ,once men accepted the notion of ,rousseau--that ,nature had made man good and society had made him bad--it became not only permissible but morally right to destroy the order of things which had been evolved by society and to invest man1 every single man1 with the consciousness of his sovereignty4 ,of the two tendencies which have been compared to two streams1 one was the naturalistic individualism rooted in the thoughts of his contemporaries and which he expressed merely as an artist1 as the greatest artist of the time2 the other was the idealistic universalism which was personal to him as a thinker1 but that was bound to remain a source of fleeting intuitions on account of his incapacity to raise it to speculative consciousness4 ,he roused a powerful echo where men like ,voltaire and the ,encyclopdists failed to command attention2 and even his art of writing could not have provided him with so great a fascination if most of the ideas and feelings he expressed had not been a living reality throbbing in the hearts of his readers1 even of the lowest classes4 ,it was the lowest side of his doctrines that spread amongst the people1 the part which appealed to envy and hatred1 two very powerful levers indeed1 but of which ,rousseau might not have chosen to make use had he been able to choose4 ,his insistence on the distinction between the will of all and the general will tells eloquently of the intuition he had of transcendental self and of the ethic essence of the state2 but all this comes to nought on account of his lacking a theoretical ground for such a notion1 and he is obliged to fall back on the intellectual stock of his time2 in spite of his genius1 in spite of all sentimental intuition of a universal will1 he is thrown back on a will which is merely the sum1 the numerical sum1 of the single wills4 ,thus it is that he gave us the system which enthrones quantity while it aims at quality4 ,his first principle that men are made all alike by ,nature1 happy and good1 is1 as most of the philosophy against which he was the first to react with the power of genius1 perfectly anti-historical and1 therefore1 abstract4 ,when it had received at the hands of ,kant and ,hegel a systematic and speculative treatment this principle was bound to have as necessary consequences ,socialism and ,communism4 ,if the nature of man1 thus hypothetically accepted1 is as abstract and as unreal as an algebraical axiom1 it was bound to lead to political and economic hypothesis just as abstract and as unreal4 ,since history shows us in the class struggles and individual competitions the main spring of progress1 the condition sine qua non of all social life1 it is impossible even to dream of the elimination of such class and individual differences4 ,life would cease to be dynamic1 cease to be a moving process1 it would be static1 everything being brought to a standstill1 which is death4 ,to look at real life1 to turn away from atomistic individualism towards a subjectivism capable of comprehending all the objective world in order to realise finally what should be the ,christian world which must be ,liberty and ,law1 another century and a half was needed4 ,now we can look back to ,rousseau and detect in him the obscure foreshadowing of the school of thought which was to redeem in the face of reason the irrational activities of ,mind1 not as the handmaids of reason but in their full autonomy and necessity4 ,mind is no longer pure reason1 and philosophy does not exclude but imply religion and art1 the two moments of law and liberty1 although such distinction of activities does not destroy the vital unity of man's conscience4 ,mankind is no longer the arithmetical sum of ,x beings reduced to the same type and value1 it transcends the individual and can be realised as well in the smaller cell of society which is the family as in the greater cell which is the country4 ,consequently1 for the abstract man of ,rousseau a ,man can be now substituted who never is ,man as ,man1 but ,man in his full reality as son1 as brother1 as husband1 as father1 as worker1 as citizen1 as believer1 as artist4 ,to make this possible1 however1 a long process was required1 the first stage being ,rousseau and the application of his theories even in their negativity4 ,for to reach ,fascism1 which really puts men on the same level1 it was necessary to break through class distinctions as they existed then1 that is to say as static partitions meant to stay as they were4 ,it was necessary so that power should slip from the hands of people1 who considered it as their natural birthright1 into the hands of those who are actually fit to hold it4 ,again such a revolution was necessary so that a day should come in which neither the aristocracy nor the proletariat could think of eliminating politically each other4 ,and1 as the philosophy of ,italy proclaims1 ethical reality is neither of the subject in itself1 nor of the object1 but of their actual relation2 so ,fascism does not allow class elimination but protects class competition as the best means of raising the spiritual and economical standard of the nation4 ,,chapter ,,vii ,,the ,,nineteenth ,,century ,,in ,,italy ,it is not surprising that ,german philosophy found an adoptive country in ,italy4 ,most of the speculative notions of ,kant were formulated fourteen years before ,kant was born in ,vico's ,de ,antiquissima ,italorum ,sapientia1 and ,hegel's most original conception1 forty-five years before ,stuttgart had the honour of producing him1 was acted upon in the ,scienza ,nova4 ,even if ,vico had never been realised in his totality1 people in ,italy knew more or less that such ideas as those of the ,german philosophers were in the air and found them easier in ,kant than in ,vico since the former had brought them to systematic cogency4 ,vico1 independent of any knowledge of ,leibniz's theories1 had come to share several of his ideas merely because they faced the same problems and both had practical and synthetic speculative minds4 ,also ,vico with his hostility for rationalism1 his sympathy for empiricism and his criticism of both found himself very nearly in what was to be ,kant's position4 ,his preparation1 which was more legal and historical and archological than ,kant's1 closed the way to a clear and precise view2 but it was superior in one sense inasmuch as that preparation provided him with a richer1 a fuller view of reality1 thus allowing him to foreshadow ,hegel as well as ,kant4 ,the greatest man who reacted against ,rationalism and ,empiricism in politics as factors of a sterilising ,utilitarianism1 reducing man to the most abject egoism1 ,mazzini1 is an intuitive genius like ,rousseau and like him a son of the eighteenth century1 rising above his generation4 ,but whilst the one showed little or no sense of history the other saw it as it really is1 animated by ideas and created by the will of men4 ,one writer had had a very great influence on the great ,genoese1 who never knew even as much as his name1 ,vincenzo ,cuoco4 ,he was what might be called a writer of political pedagogy1 as the problems he faced are always practical and usually political4 ,the education of which he was an ardent apostle was the civic education of the inhabitants of ,italy2 and like all men whose aim is practical he sets his ideal in life and not in science4 ,he is the pedagogue of the first dawn of ,italy's national consciousness at the time of ,napoleon4 ,born in #aggj in the ,molise he died in ,naples in #ahbc4 ,among the ,neapolitan ,jacobins he stood as an exception in the lack of enthusiasm with which he viewed the ,french ,revolution4 ,he had assimilated all the ideas of the ,french writers1 but he was a student of all social1 political and economical problems2 so that it is no wonder that he should have come1 through the influence of ,f4 ,m4 ,pagano1 to respect ,vico and look askance at the new systems4 ,his fundamental principle was that human reality is historical reality1 that is to say the reality which is not1 but for ever becomes1 and goes on becoming and developing not through extrinsic causes1 but through its own activity1 intrinsic and autonomous2 that such activity transcends the single activities and their historical determination2 its source is identified by him as ,divine ,providence4 ,such was the principle from which moved all ,vico's philosophy1 and though ,cuoco could not even suspect the speculative value of it1 he realised it practically1 and it was to him a luminous beacon1 more than sufficient to enable him to take his bearings in the political world and make out the right way to rid ,italy of her troubles4 ,thus he could not be satisfied with a ,french ,constitution because ,vico had taught that 8governments must be drawn in conformity with the nature of the men who are to be governed44440 ,the ,french ,revolution seemed to him drawn for ideal men who did not exist4 ,according to him a constitution must conform to the nature of the people and be produced by the people1 through the few men who are fit to interpret its historical will and realise its particular requirements4 ,although ,mussolini may not have read ,cuoco's articles it is greatly to his praise that he should so perfectly conform to the ideas of this first follower of ,vico4 ,not that this fact is considered here as a coincidence--if ,mussolini is the genius of ,italy which he is hailed to be1 it is but natural that he should realise in its practical application a theory which is so perfectly ,italian4 ,a constitution cannot be 8good for every nation40 ,if it is supposed to be1 it means it is good for nobody4 ,besides it must not be drawn like an abstract theory established once for all according to a philosophical notion of what is supposed to be the nature of man1 and as such eternal2 it is bound to be always temporary and historically determined1 according to the vices and qualities1 according to the ways and the history of the people4 ,in this brief exposition of what were ,vincenzo ,cuoco's most important ideas on politics1 we meet constantly with sentences that might be met from the pen or on the lips of ,mussolini4 ,censure can do little to reform the moral and political life of man4 ,feasts and premiums are better means2 and it is more likely that governments will improve the country by pulling the people to the good rather than by pushing them away from the bad4 ,this is pure ,fascism4 ,the government must not act as a brake1 but rather as a propeller or a helm4 ,public virtue must be nursed1 not by diminishing the avidity of the lower classes1 but by showing them the way to satisfy it4 ,the love of work is the one means of regenerating the lower classes4 ,a good government must1 therefore1 destroy the callings that are unproductive2 and to accomplish this the best way is to make it impossible for people to get as much money out of them as out of the productive callings4 8,work10 writes ,cuoco1 just as a ,fascist minister might1 8will make us independent of the nations upon which we depend40 ,the ,love of ,man for his country must spring from self respect2 and this1 indeed1 is as far as one could go more than a hundred years ago towards the identification of state and citizen1 which is the basis of ,fascism1 and has been formulated in its speculative form by ,giovanni ,gentile in #aiaf4 ,if a nation was to be created out of the patchwork ,italy presented on the map it could only be through the education of the people1 for the unification could only be attained by awakening national consciousness in the single consciences4 ,cuoco called this the formation of an ,italian public spirit4 ,when this follower of ,vico in #ahjb reached ,milan1 capital of the ,cisalpine ,republic1 ,melzi realised his value and entrusted him with the foundation and direction of the first ,giornale d',italia4 ,four articles written in #ahjd are probably those read and meditated upon by ,mazzini and are of such a quality that they could be written to-day4 ,to the men who did not see the point in so much zeal for the formation of public spirit he answers by a most coherent demonstration that political reality is spiritual reality4 ,the spiritual building up of the citizen is the real conquest of political autonomy4 ,to achieve such a task it was necessary to foster the love of agriculture1 and of the militia--compare ,mussolini--and to replace self-love and personal vanity with the love of the country and national pride4 ,the 8,city0 to ,cuoco is not one thing and the citizens another1 the prosperity of the former depends on the moral and practical efficiency of the latter4 ,he was full of contempt for the dreamers who thought that everything may be expected from the laws4 ,but the men who roused him to real passion were those who argued that the ,army1 the navy1 commerce1 were cares that should be left to the great nations1 to ,england and ,france for instance4 ,to this he objected that those countries had been small1 smaller than the ,italian states1 and had grown through the steadiness and efficiency of their national will4 ,such efficiency and steadiness of national will he called 8public spirit40 ,the regions whose inhabitants did not think of being or becoming a great country1 would never be nations4 ,for the small states there was one law2 either to become great or perish4 ,it may be timely to observe that this dependence of a country's greatness on the conscience and the will of its citizens was asserted by ,mussolini when he was still the head of the ,socialist party in ,forli in #aiaa4 ,again in #ahjd1 reviewing in his ,giornale d',italia a philosophical work1 ,cuoco expresses the desire to see philosophy flourishing in ,italy1 for the development of speculative thought was in close relation with the political state of society1 and it was important that a nation should not be theoretically sterile4 8,it is a long time since we received it10 he writes1 8first from ,france with the works of ,descartes1 then from ,england with those of ,locke4 ,the periods of political greatness of each nation always coincide with those of its philosophical greatness4 ,the first strength is ,mind2 weak is the arm of those who lack it or think they do40 ,doubtless this is pointing the way to ,gentile's affirmation of the impossibility of having the theoretical and practical activities of mind separate from each other just as the last quotation was pointing to ,mussolini's policy of 8heroicising0 the people of his country through giving them an heroic will and a national conscience4 ,no wonder that ,mazzini should have realised what ,rousseau could never see4 ,the ethical nature of what goes under the name of 8,nation0 is a ,mazzinian concept4 ,when ,hegel speculatively proclaimed this it had been already intuitively conceived1 artistically expressed and religiously observed by the men to whom ,mazzini's ardent faith was like an electric current4 ,the ,mazzinian articles of faith were few1 and had never been theoretically worked out4 ,this helped their adoption by people who would never have grasped the import of a huge system4 ,whilst ,rosmini and ,gioberti were read by the few1 ,mazzini was on the lips and throbbed in the hearts of the many1 so that the war he waged against materialism and individualism was effective4 ,his mystic feeling spreads in young hearts as easily now as it did then4 ,lads take to sacrifice far more easily than men of a more mature age and ,mazzini's declarations all proclaimed self-sacrifice1 self-effacement1 even his idea of liberty4 ,at the very time in which the ,anglo-,french idea of political reality was introduced in ,italy1 to rouse the country once more into life with the magic word liberty1 this young man1 a poet1 an inspired prophet1 was ready with a new meaning for that word4 ,according to ,mazzini the individual is merely the representation we have of our own self when we look at it as one amongst many and see it limited to the short span of time between the birth and the death of its body1 whereas the self which can conceive of liberty1 and therefore realise it1 is the self everyone of us feels when in the silent recess of ,mind we have a right to claim1 a feeling to express1 an intuition to cast into sound or colour1 and a faith through which we link ourselves to the political1 family1 artistic and religious reality that has given us the consciousness of such right or aroused in us such family1 artistic1 or religious sense4 ,to him political liberty could only mean for ,italians the liberty of shaking off foreign rule and creating the nation4 ,it was not and could not be the liberty to attend one's private affairs as one wished1 for this last meaning of the word had been elaborated in his country through ,humanism and the ,renaissance1 and it was not only obsolete1 but was the cause of ,italy's corruption and decay4 ,the idea of empirical and transcendental self1 implicit in this conception of liberty1 came to produce the second article of faith in the ,mazzinian doctrine4 ,if man were to try creating a new natural kingdom and add it to the animal1 vegetable and mineral offered to us by ,nature1 his attempt would be a vain endeavour4 ,but political reality does not belong to the world of ,nature but to the world of ,mind1 in which man is a ,creator1 and where nothing is really impossible to him that believeth4 ,this most ,christian view of the point frees the nation from natural contingencies and frees the citizens besides from the lazy excuse that man must accept the political and economic position of his country as determined by ,nature4 ,thereby it forbids any idea of its being static4 ,no one can find at his birth his nation ready-made for him2 everyone must work to the best of his moral1 intellectual1 and bodily power to create it2 since the moment the citizens cease to work at this1 their political task1 the country starts ceasing to be a nation and becomes a region whilst the citizens become inhabitants4 ,the nation is not a geographical unit1 it is not even history empirically understood1 but it is history as far as history is process1 development1 programme1 mission and sacrifice2 in a word1 human life4 ,in ,mazzini's insistency on the point one detects the desire to react against the negative side of the mentality which has been traced as a consequence of ,humanism4 ,the ,italians had identified themselves with ancient ,rome1 and this had brought them to think of their national glory and history as a ready-made affair4 ,in their country they saw the ,temple of the past1 and exploited their ruins morally as well as financially4 ,whilst the other countries of the western world had been fighting and labouring1 for the conquest of their political and financial status1 ,italy had sat on her past glories and proudly wrapping herself in ,cicero's or ,csar's toga had taken tips from the whole world4 ,mazzini had grasped enough of ,vico's notion of man as creator of the historical world to bring to the fore1 in the average man's mind1 the idea that was the import of all the historical philosophy of ,italy and1 therefore1 the positive side of his country's historical mentality4 ,neither ,cuoco nor ,mazzini were philosophers1 their task was1 so to speak1 to realise philosophy1 to introduce other people's theories into life1 and this they did uncommonly well both of them1 although ,mazzini played in the ,risorgimento so eminent a part that his gigantic historical figure overshadows that of ,cuoco4 ,but ,cuoco1 through his ,giornale d',italia and his subsequent writings had the greatest influence on the best poets and writers of the period1 to begin with on ,foscolo and ,manzoni4 ,for the first time since ,savonarola's days intellectual life in ,italy beheld a spontaneous revival of ,catholic thinking1 and this1 strong enough since it counted men as great as ,gioberti1 ,rosmini and ,manzoni1 was not due to the initiative of the ,church4 ,it was spontaneous1 intellectually so1 and ,vico may be considered as its forerunner4 ,what was paramount was perhaps the moral system of ,rosmini4 ,he started out to fight ,kant's moral system as unfit for use on account of the subjective ground of the ,kantian imperative1 and meaning to fight it he developed it and found new ground for it4 ,the moral1 pedagogic and even pedantic spirit which spread in the intellectual classes of ,italy during the last century has indeed a good deal in common with the moral movement which had accompanied in ,germany the development of a national conscience4 ,we have in both cases a reaction against the foreign ways of the aristocracy--but with a great difference since in ,italy the aristocracy had very little of the feudal character and was so open to intellectual life that it responded to the call sooner and better than any other class--preluding a reaction against the atomistic political life of the country4 ,to pass from ,rosmini and ,gioberti to ,croce and ,gentile1 the thinkers who herald the coming of ,italy as a modern nation1 as much was needed as to pass from ,leibniz1 living in the days in which ,german intellectual life and national conscience could be at best the object of a mystical worship1 to ,kant's time1 when ,europe realised that there were actually such things as ,german metaphysics and a ,german nation4 ,in both cases the philosophy has to be1 and is1 synthetic1 for in both cases the exigency that opens life with the pungency of need1 of deficiency1 of negativeness1 is the thirst for national assertion and foreign recognition4 ,obviously in both cases also it is the assimilation of foreign contributions that has enabled the scholars to realise the negative position of their respective countries4 ,after the unfortunate war of '#dh-'di1 ,gioberti went into exile and philosophy was overtaken according to ,prof4 ,g4 de ,ruggiero by an invincible drowsiness4 ,drowsy1 obscure1 unconscious of their own positions1 are epithets which can be justly bestowed on the thinkers of the time1 for eclecticism prevails without the historical culture that alone can make it fertile4 ,and of the most eminent philosopher of the time the best that can be said is that he did his best to lull to sleep his countrymen's newborn consciousness4 ,among the ,positivists1 inferior followers of foreign tendencies1 several remain first-rate historians1 thanks to a few sentences of ,vico kept like the seeds in ,noah's ark1 and sufficient to prevent them from falling into a materialist metaphysic which would have been a sterilising curse to the newborn nation4 ,materialism was far more logical and coherent in ,france when the historians simply excluded the ideologies which were left hovering through the historical works--for instance1 of as good an historian as ,villari2 but this was not unconscious4 ,after the efforts which they had made to get rid of pseudo-idealistic metaphysic they did not want to entangle themselves in another metaphysic1 were it to be materialist4 ,on the other hand1 they did not want1 or were not able1 to make theirs the position of ,english positivists4 ,ardigo1 for instance1 although he is the best ,italian thinker that upheld ,positivism1 cannot be compared to a ,spencer or a ,mill4 ,but speculative voices are never silenced1 although they may be hushed1 and the spiritual exigencies which had produced ,gioberti and ,rosmini were slowly working themselves out in other minds4 ,neo-,kantianism gave birth in ,italy to a series of historical studies in the field of philosophy1 so that it became impossible for any decent professor to misrepresent the development of speculative thought as these two great exponents of ,italy's mind had done4 ,whilst ,neo-,kantians achieve little theoretically1 they do so much historically that one may say that the works of such men as ,fiorentino1 ,tocco1 and others prepared the ground for ,spaventa and de ,sanctis who in their turn have given us ,croce and ,gentile4 ,all read ,german1 ,english and ,french1 besides ,latin and ,greek2 so that we can say that the speculative theories of the whole western world were studied in their schools2 and that1 like the child who becomes self-conscious as he gradually realises the worth and importance of the people surrounding him1 ,italy has grown to speculative self-consciousness through the close study of universal speculation and of the history of her national political life1 national art1 national literature1 national speculative theories1 until her historians came to the idea of history as the co-ordination of all the different branches4 ,bertrando ,spaventa taught in the university of ,napoli1 and1 a staunch ,hegelian1 he criticised ,hegel in the same creative way as ,vico had criticised ,descartes and ,locke4 ,he developed and continued the intuition which is at the basis of all ,hegelian system as ,hegel could not have done1 inasmuch as ,spaventa realises ,hegel's logic in its historical position1 that is to say as the fulfilment of ,descartes' claim4 ,thinking means causing to the ,french mind1 whilst to ,hegel it is not merely causing it is creating4 ,but ,gioberti had not only expressed the ,hegelian intuition2 he had completed it2 thinking is creating1 but to him proving also is creating4 ,and ,spaventa1 rich with all the history of speculative thought1 realised ,hegel's logic and prepared it to enter life1 thanks to ,gioberti's contribution1 although ,gioberti himself had been far from realising it4 ,the speculative possibilities of the ,cartesian ,cogito are exploited to the full2 whereas they had been left aside by ,hegel4 ,vico's factum et verum convertuntur1 pragmatically understood by the ,positivists1 is here realised as a process4 ,but1 as is the wont of ,italian thinkers1 the original part of his intuition remains at an intuitive stage and has to wait for the speculative genius of ,gentile to work it out and modify it into the fieri et verum convertuntur which is the adequate expression of the historical dialectic4 ,hegel's most original and fecund motive was thus nearing its theoretical realisation at the hands of ,spaventa1 whilst ,vico's conception of life was practically illustrated by ,francesco de ,sanctis1 whose important part in the shaping out of ,italy's present mentality cannot be overstated4 ,the process of dissolution of ,hegel's and ,vico's theories was accomplished and the passage from dissolution to re-elaboration was done by de ,sanctis4 ,in his ,storia della letteratura ,italiana the philosophy of mind receives more than a perfect illustration1 an sthetic rendering that makes the most abstruse notion of dialectic a tangible object of meditation to the average reader4 sthetic rendering is here used as excluding anything like theoretic exposition2 and such sthetic quality is insured by the great critic's own gifts as an artist4 ,his reading and philosophic preparation are incredible1 not to be gauged2 they are1 however1 assimilated by him very much in the way in which a great artist assimilates his technique and intellectual experience4 ,doubtless ,michelangelo1 moving to sketch the ceiling of the ,sistine ,chapel or the last panel of it1 is carrying in himself the experience1 the artistic experience of eighteen centuries4 ,yet he must have forgotten it all1 at least as objective knowledge1 to find it in himself flesh of his flesh1 marrow of his bones1 soul of his soul2 so that he could move freely as an artist1 in all the spontaneity and1 therefore1 liberty of creation4 ,the character of his work is personal1 so highly personal that it includes all the determinations which single out ,buonarroti as a man of that land1 of that religion and even of that particular moment of his religion1 of that time1 of such and such temperament and inclination1 and singles out the whole of his production as belonging to that particular moment of the ,italian ,renaissance4 ,the greater is the artist's personality1 the better he discharges his twofold function of microcosm and macrocosm of his world4 ,it is an illusion of the nineteenth century to believe that personality in art makes for atomistic individualism4 ,just as it is an absurd error of the people who judge ,mussolini and ,fascism to believe that they have grown without roots4 ,they would then be superposed to history1 superfluous1 unnecessary2 whereas the great artist and the great politician belong to life1 and in fact are historical life working itself out to expression or political realisation4 ,the ,storia della letteratura ,italiana1 like an immense relief1 unfurls the development of the life of ,mind in ,italy from the dawn of the ,italian mentality right up to the days of the critic4 ,for de ,sanctis1 ,art is ,mind individualising itself through the senses in the transparency of intuition2 ,art in other words1 is life reaching the luminosity of form4 ,this blending1 this perfectly intimate welding of reason and sense1 of universal and particular is ,art4 ,it is1 therefore1 individuality1 not individuality taken as it is too often--as the contrary of universality1 but as its realisation in the particular4 ,for this relation of the universal and particular is constitutive of art1 which is1 therefore1 neither individual arbitrariness1 nor the mere reflection of life in the artist's fancy1 but life itself coming through its own development to intuitive transparency4 ,life cannot be a matter of which art would be the form2 and religion1 politics1 science as elements of life are not alien to art or indifferent to it4 ,none of this element can exist without art1 and history leaves no doubt on the point--each new religion1 new political system1 new scientific progress is not to be parted from the artistic production of the time4 ,de ,sanctis1 like a medical student1 follows step by step the corruption of ,italy1 gradually growing with the decay of religious and political consciousness1 above all when ,humanism1 having reached its climax in the works of ,poliziano1 stopped providing a sincere feeling to the scholars who ceased to worship antiquity some fifty years after him4 ,de ,sanctis was a man of the ,risorgimento he had laboured and suffered for the independence of his country1 hoped and despaired of the future greatness of his countrymen4 ,he was aware that in spite of ,machiavelli1 of ,vico1 of ,alfieri1 of ,cuoco1 of ,mazzini1 the greatest number of his countrymen had1 so to speak1 no souls4 ,knowing as he did that religion was the basis of all relation and the first cause of all real social progress1 seeing in it the keystone of man's recognition of the exterior world1 he refrained in all his books from attacking not only religion1 but the ,church as well2 although he was a staunch anti-clerical in politics until ,rome was taken from the ,pope4 ,he drew such a graph of the development of ,italy's mind that from ,dante's onwards it shows all the forces of corruption preparing the series of invasions that made of his countrymen's shame a byword1 and the forces of reconstruction from ,machiavelli onward4 ,to the reading public he presented it as a mirror1 in the transparency of ,art showing the whole spiritual life of the people with its political consequences4 ,he bade them realise that corruption had been the cause of foreign rule and tyranny1 not foreign rule and tyranny the cause of corruption4 ,this was new indeed1 too new for a generation which had achieved the political independence of the country with the belief that bad government and foreign rule were the cause of the people's corruption4 ,no wonder1 therefore1 that de ,sanctis' masterpiece1 published in #ahga1 should have been practically laid aside for more than twenty-five years awaiting ,croce and ,gentile to take it up4 ,the public that responded to their call when it came was exactly the one which de ,sanctis would have wished to reach4 ,the boys took de ,sanctis up1 and what is more curious they took him as their idea-provider2 inasmuch as the big volumes1 which could not be included in the schools' syllabus1 were turned to in the hour of need1 when they had to write essays and found themselves short of ideas4 ,no method of popularising and assimilation could match this1 for the ideas thus borrowed by the young had to be exposed1 proved and illustrated4 ,the school lads and university men who enlisted as volunteers in the war1 were mostly spiritual sons of de ,sanctis1 one of them being ,mussolini1 who told the author that he was a worshipper of that work4 ,in the same way the idea of ,croce and ,gentile have spread even among people unfit to realise their theoretical import4 ,never1 however1 could they spread like those of de ,sanctis1 but he is so much so completely their spiritual father that most of their speculative notions can be found as intuitions in de ,sanctis' pages4 ,there the boys get so familiar with them that when they come to a ,gentilian theory1 and the teacher takes the trouble to introduce to them the fundamental intuition1 they grasp it at once as a matter of course and wonder why the teacher should think it so difficult to explain1 for instance1 the intimate relation of thought and action1 the necessity of religion and the like4 ,,chapter ,,viii ,,benedetto ,,croce ,benedetto ,croce's opposition to ,mussolini's government is so well known that to include him among the precursors of ,fascism may seem strange4 ,but here ,fascism is considered as the political expression of the intellectual or rather spiritual forces which are bringing ,italy to the fore and determining the growth of the ,italian mind4 ,hence the necessity of including ,croce in this account of the pedigree of the tendencies which have been realised in politics by ,benito ,mussolini4 ,this naturally does not imply that all the ideas acted upon by ,fascists are to be found in the theories of ,croce1 but that certain needs of ,italian minds1 more or less consciously expressed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries1 had been formulated and worked out by ,croce1 who had either found them in de ,sanctis or had developed them on lines suggested to him by that great critic4 ,one of the points on which this penetrating and far seeing man had most emphatically insisted was that the vague idealism which swept over some ,european artistic centres during the last century was alien to the ,italian mind4 ,the assertions that he met with from many quarters as to the impossibility of the artist's realising his ideal was treated by him as exotic nonsense4 ,an ineffable poem is not a poem at all1 a harmony defying expression is not a harmony at all1 a vision transcending colours and lines1 shadow and light is not a vision at all4 ,italians had to be reminded of the necessity of being realistic2 their greatness as well as the greatness of ancient ,rome had always rested upon a sound sense of the relation between means and end4 ,he described the ,italian genius as a disposition rather to identify the end and means than to fit the end to the means4 ,he enforced this claim1 not only for artistic creation1 but for historical researches or theoretical speculation as well4 ,he had evidently realised the short-comings of men such as ,gioberti and ,rosmini4 ,it was much better to start on particular problems with an adequate preparation1 and develop them into speculative theories1 than to start with an indifferent preparation on vital questions and come to inadequate conclusions4 ,now if there could be in history such a thing as good luck1 the friendship of ,croce and ,gentile1 their flourishing at the same time1 could be considered the most wonderful piece of good luck for ,italy4 ,by luck1 however1 we usually mean a certain combination of circumstances escaping our attention4 ,moreover1 their being contemporaries of ,mussolini1 the one man fit to create a political world capable of bringing into living reality their most difficult conceptions--very often1 in fact generally1 without knowing anything of their theories--is a sufficient proof that there is no possibility here of invoking luck as an explanation of the concomitance of ,croce's and ,gentile's activity with that of ,mussolini4 ,it is much nearer to historical truth to state that ,italy has reached one of those stages of her history in which she has always yielded a rich harvest of men of genius1 speculative1 political or artistic4 ,any and every practical activity1 says ,croce1 implies theoretical activity1 since no action can be performed without knowledge4 ,this however is not to be separated from the action2 for the two forms of the spirit are distinct1 not separate4 ,thus in any action1 while the practical activity is explicit1 the theoretical activity which is knowledge is implicit2 in fact they are concomitant4 ,the man of thought can no more think than walk without using his will2 the importance of the will is just as great for the thinker or the artist as it is for the so-called practical man4 ,but it is only through the wearing of the ,pragmatist's blinkers that one can be brought to see in the will the root of truth4 ,a distinction is1 however1 made by ,croce between the knowledge required for a practical act1 such as the disposing of a regiment of infantry for a review1 and that of the philosopher or the artist4 ,the one is an intuition1 the other is a conception1 and to make the ground of a volition you want both1 for the combination is historical knowledge4 ,there1 obviously enough1 ,croce reveals himself a true son of ,machiavelli1 ,vico1 and de ,sanctis4 ,the ,florentine secretary had been hinting as much when he insisted on the necessity of our knowing the actual truth about things 7since human things are always moving71 in order to govern in harmony with the times4 ,this historical knowledge is not an idea that will surprise after all that has been said about the constant tendency of ,italy's best thinkers to test the practicability of any concept on the concrete ground of history4 ,to them1 the natural realm of action being history1 it was manifest that any knowledge or theory is liable to be acted upon only in so far as it is historical2 and such knowledge becomes1 under the name of condition of fact1 the ground of ,croce's conception of the necessity and liberty of man's will4 ,to the generally accepted ideas of means and end ,croce was to bring a most radical change4 ,first he proceeds to prove that what is known as the end1 the purpose1 or the aim is not to be distinguished from the will4 ,when ,i wash my hands my purpose is obviously that ,i should have them clean2 but then it is equally obvious that this means that ,i want them to be clean4 ,turning to the means1 the washing of my hands in order to have them clean1 supposes a condition of fact which means the availableness of soap and water1 for ,i could not will to wash my hands if ,i had neither soap nor water4 ,these material means are known by me to be available when ,i make up my mind to wash my hands in order to get them clean4 ,so that purpose and means are all included in my act of will1 which is nothing more nor less than the actual act of washing my hands4 ,if the situation of fact did not include soap and water ,i could at best wish to wash them1 never will to do so4 ,what is consequently to be rejected once for all is the idea of a definite plan that would not allow the taking into consideration of the continual variation of the means4 ,thus the men of the ,risorgimento had to vary their purpose and to reconsider the means to attain it after and before each campaign1 having to take as their actual will only that the realisation of which was in harmony with the then actual situation of fact4 ,so that we can say that their real will1 the will which created modern ,italy1 was exclusively that general will which was individualised in their many splendid deeds of heroism or renunciations of their former plans or ideals2 these had been formed without the historical knowledge which alone could make them realise what was the situation of fact4 ,now a good deal of admiration is usually bestowed on people of good-will and of pure intentions4 ,here1 however1 the very existence of such good-will1 such pure intentions1 is denied4 ,the longing of the man who wishes he could alter the present state of public affairs in his country is not at all to be considered as a will to do so4 ,for he does not will to do so as long as he thinks it is impossible4 ,a wish of this kind has no value either economically or morally4 ,whatever the circumstances1 if he knows them well1 he will know that there must be at least one thing that he can do instead of deprecatingly shaking his head as he reads the paper by the fire4 ,when ,machiavelli tried to form a ,tuscan ,militia to free ,florence from her trouble1 he did not succeed2 but when he left his boisterous and rustic friends over their wine and retired to the small library of his modest villa1 he did the only civic duty that was left to him to perform2 he plunged his lancet into the corrupted body of his country and prepared the way for the coming centuries4 ,criticism1 that is to say negative criticism1 when the country is in danger1 or suggestion as to the ideal thing to be done1 unless they are part of a plan of reform so in keeping with facts that it can be immediately acted upon1 are merely pretending to be acts of will4 ,i cannot keep by my fireside or lean at my window deploring the things which are going on and pretend that 8,i will to alter them40 ,yet it is often said that we can will the good in the abstract1 while unable to will it in the concrete1 and this means simply that we may have good intentions and yet behave badly4 ,the answer to this has been already given2 it may be well1 however1 to state it once more4 ,willing in the abstract1 willing without acting accordingly1 is equivalent to not-willing1 since1 according to ,croce1 a volition implies a situation historically determined from which it arises as an act equally determined and concrete4 ,the importance assigned in this theory to the knowledge of the actual situation of fact1 and consequently to the historical judgment1 invests with the greatest importance the possibility of error4 ,such possibility is1 however1 excluded by ,croce from the theoretical realm of mind2 for lack of knowledge1 ignorance1 is not error4 ,it belongs to practical activity and we cannot err unwillingly4 ,all errors are due to an interference of the will with our apprehension of reality2 and as any volition is an assertion of our liberty we are responsible for it4 ,everyone knows that immoderate passions or illegitimate interests lead insidiously into error2 that we err in order to be quick and finish1 or to obtain for ourselves undeserved repose--that we err by acquiescence in old ideas1 that is to say1 in order not to allow ourselves to be disturbed in our repose1 and to prolong it unduly1 and so on4 ,the possibility of erring in good faith is disposed of in this way by rejecting the possibility of an error not due to our own will4 ,it thus becomes perfectly legitimate and wise to use practical measures to induce those who err to correct themselves1 punishing them when this can be of any use4 ,croce's defence of the ,holy ,inquisition1 be it of the old ,romans against the ,christians1 of ,catholics against heretics1 or of ,protestants against ,catholics must not be found surprising4 ,it is the logical conclusion of his view on the responsibility for error2 and he is not to be found shirking the consequences of his system any more than the ,fascists4 ,for it is hardly necessary to point out that their abhorrence of all vagueness and indefiniteness is bound to determine responsibilities in practical activity and consequences in theoretical activity4 ,the necessity of having a single man responsible for anyone of the public services has been mostly realised in ,anglo-,saxon countries2 but where bureaucracy flourishes it is usually a ,board1 a ,committee1 in a word an anonymous body which takes decisions and steps for which nobody in particular is responsible4 ,therefore1 to any complaint the answer must be 8we thought2 the committee held2 it was generally supposed2 the majority came to the conclusion 444 that 4440 ,in such case nobody stands responsible2 and each member of the ,committee1 or ,board1 throws on the others all the weight of the unhappy step or decision4 ,with ,croce's theories such vagueness is destroyed at its root4 ,the will of the people who take a step is their taking of the step1 and both action and volition spring from their historical knowledge of the actual situation of fact4 ,such knowledge is therefore part of the action4 ,the responsibility thus includes the assuming of the information necessary to the taking of the decision4 ,naturally this has always been the case1 where man's responsibility is really of importance4 ,on board a ship1 for instance1 the officer in command has always known that his responsibility includes this knowledge4 ,ignorance of fact is the greatest fault whenever a decision has to be taken1 whether the importance of the decision be great or small4 ,this however1 must not be held to imply the judging of an action according to its success4 ,historical judgments are not to be passed on the result of past actions2 historical judgment must be passed on acts1 not on facts4 ,the distinction between action and event is by ,croce emphasised as being grounded on the distinction between the act of one man and the act of the whole2 and one might say that the action depends on the will of man and the event on the will of ,god4 ,according to this theory the action of the man who shoots at ,mussolini is the manifestation of his will1 and his failure is the manifestation of ,god's will2 because the will of the whole1 including the will of the chauffeur1 who is driving ,mussolini's car1 the wills of the people crowding the edge of the street1 the wills of the guards told off to keep the road clear for the car and the wills of the ,fascists thronging to catch a glimpse of their idol1 which are also volition-actions1 determine the event2 and this is usually termed ,providence1 or the rationality of history4 ,thus when foreigners1 even those who do not approve of ,mussolini's government1 and ,italians1 either religiously or coldly1 repeat at each new attempt1 8the hand of ,god is on his head10 the conviction which they express is perfectly in keeping with ,croce's view1 and is by no means equivalent to fatalism4 ,to express this relation of action to event in a less mystical form it ought to be said that the volition-action of any single man is his contribution to the volitions of the whole universe4 ,on this point ,gentile produced another theory some eight or ten years after ,croce had given a systematic form to this doctrine which had been implicit in all his former works4 ,this double contribution of ,italy to the conception of conduct1 if not an entirely new idea of liberty1 provides two very original views on that problem1 one of those which have always tormented humanity4 ,the first great step made by ,croce was the consequences of his having denied any possible distinction between the volition and the action2 for thus he was able to assert the oneness of liberty4 ,we must no longer speak of a liberty of will and a liberty of action4 ,he quotes here as an example the case of a paralytic gentleman carried into the square in his servant's arms during the revolt of #aedb and found after the tumult on the top of a church-tower4 ,the terror had aroused in him such a will that he had climbed there4 ,as a rule the paralytic does not will because he knows he cannot1 what he can do at the most is to wish that he was in a different condition4 ,it is quite inexact to say that he who is threatened and yields to the threat is deprived of his freedom of action4 ,the old formula coacti tamen volunt says as much4 ,whenever people have been clamouring for greater freedom of action1 what they really wanted was to have the conditions of fact altered4 8,everyone knows10 says ,croce1#f 8that no vultus instantis tyranni can extinguish the freedom of the soul2 no ruler1 be he ever so strong and violent1 can prevent a rebellion1 or when all else fails1 a noble death outwardly affirming the freedom within40 ,every step onward in ,croce's theories is admirably consequent upon the statements that have preceded it4 ,as man in his theoretical activity apprehends the world and by knowing it makes it his1 so through practical activity he collaborates in its creation4 ,the second being grounded in the first1 a will independent of knowing is unthinkable4 ,the blind will is not will2 the true will has eyes4#g ,without this it would be difficult to see how actions could be both free and necessary4 ,indeed one can say that up to these ,italian theories all the contentions on liberty were waged between two tendencies1 one leading to the ever-recurrent conclusions of ,determinism1 the other to the assertion of free will4 ,to detect that actions are at once free and determined it was necessary that knowledge of the actual conditions of fact should be considered as the essential ground of any volition4 ,volition thus is not considered as arising in the void1 but in a definite situation1 under definite historical conditions1 in relation to an event which cannot be eliminated4 ,when the situation changes the act of will changes4 ,this amounts to saying that it is necessitated by the situation in which it arises4 ,but it also means that such act of will is free4 ,for it does not make one with the situation1 neither does it produce a duplicate of it4 ,the volition-action produces something different1 that is1 something new2 therefore it is initiative1 creation1 an act of freedom4 ,were it not so1 a volition would not be an act of will and reality would not change through the action of men1 it would not become1 would not grow upon itself4 8,this consciousness of necessity and liberty inseparably united is found in all men of action1 in all political geniuses1 who are never inert or reckless3 they feel themselves at once bound and not bound2 they always conform to facts1 but always rise above them4 ,the fatuous1 on the other hand1 oscillate between the passive acceptance of the given situation and the sterile attempt to overleap it1 that is1 to leap over their own shadow4 ,they are consequently now inert1 now rash4 ,they1 therefore1 do not fix or conclude anything1 they do not act2 or1 if they do1 it is always according to what of the actual situation they have understood1 and what of initiative they have displayed40#h ,if ,benedetto ,croce had been a prophet he could not have better contrasted ,mussolini's way of proceeding1 always surrounded by experts and never the slave of data1 with the way in which former governments proceeded in ,italy1 when ministers thought that by the grace of the people they had received some sort of super-natural light to discharge their duty4 ,no practical activity could have been as vigorous as the theoretical reaction of ,croce and ,gentile against the futility1 the abstractness1 the pessimism1 and above all the materialism that were slowly but surely destroying the third ,italy6 ,but their joint philosophical campaign1 however brilliant it may have been1 could not arouse the working masses to the new gospel of civic life4 ,this had to be undertaken by a man of faith1 endowed with the gifts that make the statesman and the popular leader4 ,but the fact that three such men are contemporaries and that without previous arrangement the theoretical activity of the two former coincide with the practical activity of the third is a good argument on behalf of ,croce's theory of the freedom and necessity of man's action4 ,the situation of fact is the same for all three1 and they therefore arise for the same purpose although they endeavour to realise it through very different means4 ,since man's action1 his volition-action1 is free1 the question whether an individual has or has not been free to do what he has done is equivalent to asking if he has done it or not4 ,thus again the character of responsibility is emphasised in all human actions4 ,croce objects very strongly to the way in which criminal lawyers put a poor madman on a level with the guilty1 for he who is mad is partially dead4 ,practical good and evil can be now identified with will and anti-will1 with freedom and anti-freedom1 with the reality of the will and its unreality4 ,for evil1 when real1 does not exist save in the good1 which opposes and conquers it2 it is1 therefore1 merely the negative of good1 and it would be impossible to find an act of will distinctly willing that which is evil as such4 ,a man may want to intoxicate himself with alcohol1 but in the act of so doing he expects the warmth that will spread in his limbs and the delightful oblivion that will free him from all cares4 ,hence that which he expects from drink is good4 ,such negativity of evil has always been current among theologians even before the days of ,thomas ,aquinas2 but the theory deduced by ,croce from it is quite original4 ,all practical activity is either economic1 or both economic and moral4 ,the economic activity is that which wills and effects only what corresponds to the condition of fact in which a man finds himself2 the ethical activity1 although it corresponds to these conditions1 is that which transcends them4 ,therefore1 any act of the individual's will is economic1 but to be moral it must be an act of the universal will4 ,the former is judged by the greater or less coherence of the action in itself1 the other by its greater or less coherence in respect to the universal end which transcends the individual4 ,no act can be moral without being economic1 for however universal it may be in its meaning my action must be mine in order to be something concrete and individually determined4 ,in practical life we do not meet with morality as a universal1 but always with a determinate moral volition4 ,on the other hand1 it is easy to see that our actions always obey a rational law1 even when moral law is suppressed2 so that1 when every inclination that transcends the individual has been set aside1 it is necessary to will this or that coherently1 not to oscillate between two or more volitions at the same time4 ,and if we succeed in really obtaining our desire1 if1 while the moral consciousness is for the moment suspended within us1 we abandon ourselves to the execution of a project of vengeance and execute a masterpiece of ability1 even when1 in this case1 human society does not approve1 we for our part feel satisfied1 at least so long as the suspension of the moral consciousness lasts2 for we have done what we wanted to do1 we have tasted1 though but for a little while1 the pleasure of the gods4 ,the economic form of activity we easily recognise as individual1 hedonistic1 utilitarian1 and economic2 the moral form is just as easily identified4 ,to be moral1 an action must first satisfy us as individuals occupying a definite point of time and space1 and must also satisfy in us the transcendental being who defies time and space4 ,croce having made this distinction absolutely clear1 could face the question concerning the nature of law4 ,to him law is a volitional act concerning a class of actions4 ,therefore1 where the volitional element or the element of class is wanting1 there cannot be law4 ,obviously1 however1 the law is abstract2 the act of will is1 according to ,croce1 always of the individual1 and the element of class is sufficient to deprive the law of anything like concrete life1 be it an individual law or a social law4 ,since the freedom of human actions is logically bound up with his notion of practical activity1 it is impossible to object that there is an essential difference between the programme of life laid down by any single man for himself1 the programme of action laid down by any association1 and the laws laid down by the state1 the first being merely a matter of acceptance and the last relying on compulsion4 ,indeed1 it is obvious enough that by compulsion one usually means the alternative of complying with the law or facing a penalty4 ,such alternative is the ground of a choice1 and the citizen usually chooses1 but always freely chooses1 to obey the law rather than endure the penalty4 ,the fact that some men do rebel is sufficient to prove that freedom cannot be abolished by compulsion4 ,then what is the essential difference between individual and social law8 ,an attempt is usually made to differentiate them by saying that the latter has emanated from and is sustained by a supreme power4 ,but where is the seat of this supreme power8 ,surely not in anything like a super-individual1 dominating individuals4 ,it is only to be found in the individuals themselves4 ,and in this case its power and value correspond with the power of the individuals who compose it2 it is the law of a circle empirically considered to be larger and stronger1 but whose will is law in so far as the individuals composing it spontaneously conform to such a will1 because they recognise the convenience of doing so4 ,monarchs who believed themselves to be all-powerful1 have realised at certain moments that their power rested in a universal consensus of opinion1 failing which their power vanished1 or was reduced to a gesture of solitary command1 not far from being ridiculous4 ,going back to the definition of laws as volitional acts concerning classes of actions1 ,croce shows that the so-called laws of nature or of grammar are no laws at all1 because the act of will is lacking in them4 ,neither is the jurist1 quietly elaborating rules from cases1 a legislator4 ,his excogitations will have to wait for a man of will1 who alone1 and sword in hand1 will endow them with the character of law4 ,on the other hand the so-called moral law1 economic law1 are no laws at all inasmuch as they lack the element of class6 8,will the good10 8,will the true10 8,will the useful10 are all statements in which a volition is expressed1 but then the object of such will is invariably the universal1 whereas laws have for object something general2 a class1 not a concept4 ,in short moral law1 logical law1 or economic law ought to be called principles instead of laws4 ,the character of laws being general and not universal1 is perfectly in keeping with their mutability2 since actual conditions are constantly changing4 ,it is necessary to add new laws to the old1 to retouch these or to abolish them altogether4 ,philosophically speaking1 there is but one cause of changing the laws1 viz41 the will that in its liberty produces the new law in new conditions of fact4 ,the question whether we should recognise ,conservatism or ,revolution as the fundamental concept of practical life1 does not concern ,croce in the least4 ,for him every ,conservative is also ,revolutionary1 since he is always obliged to adapt to the new facts the law that he wishes to preserve4 ,every ,revolutionary is also a ,conservative1 since he is obliged to start from certain laws that he preserves1 at any rate provisionally1 that he may change others and substitute for them new laws1 which he in his turn intends to preserve4 ,cavour1 to use ,croce's own example1 was a ,conservative in respect of certain problems1 and revolutionary in respect of others1 to such a degree that he seemed to the ,mazzinians to be a ,conservative and to the clericals and legitimists a ,revolutionary4 ,the demand for an eternal code1 a universal1 rational1 or natural justice1 in its claim to fix the transitory1 is in open contradiction with the historical and1 therefore1 contingent character of laws4 ,were ,natural ,law permitted to enforce itself once for all we should witness1 with the formation and application of the eternal code1 the cessation ipso facto of ,development1 the end of ,history1 the death of ,life and the dissolution of ,reality4 ,such an end of the world cannot take place because1 if it is possible to develop theories which are in contradiction to life1 it is quite impossible to make them concrete and actual3 ,god1 that is to say ,reality1 does not allow this to be done4 ,of such theories the best examples are surely ,absolute ,monarchy and ,communism4 ,both as an ideal present themselves as an absolute1 a perfect form of government and1 therefore1 would be1 if realised1 the end of life4 ,anything perfect in the way of political institutions would put a stop to any further progress since the new needs spring from the actual short-comings of present institutions1 and from the new needs the new projects which will bring about new institutions4 ,the most intelligent ,communists know nowadays that the historical necessities which have brought their party to the fore were economic and that that which has been done in passing1 such as the improvement of working-class conditions1 both materially and intellectually1 is indeed what should have been its real aim4 ,but ,providence permits men to act upon their own motives2 and well it may1 since the will of the whole can always have the last word4 ,communists have done all they that have in the belief that it was done only in the process of getting nearer to their ultimate aim1 the abolition of classes4 ,the kings of ,france who1 little by little1 destroyed the ,feudal order1 and by so doing brought about the unification of ,france and the rise of the bourgeoisie1 may have thought that they were merely working for the establishment of an absolute monarchy4 ,their real work1 that is to say the task which was laid out for them by ,providence1 was to create a great nation and destroy ,feudalism in ,france through the necessity in which they found themselves of getting the support of the middle and lower class in order to destroy the petty sovereignties of the great vassals4 ,but when this was achieved the absoluteness in their conception of monarchy was bound to be the cause of its fall4 ,for had it been possible it would have meant the cessation of development4 ,a form of government if it is absolute is perfect1 and it is the imperfection which calls for further development4 ,now ,communism makes the same mistake when aiming at bringing about so perfect a society that it would not even need a government4 ,if this came to be it would be the end of the world4 ,but this is anticipating ,mussolini's realisation of the fact1 and it may be sufficient to state that ,croce's ideas1 stated here together1 were scattered explicitly in several essays published between #ahig and #aijj1 and collected for the first time in #aijg while they were implicitly pervading the whole of his own writings and those of innumerable journalists as well as running on the lips of the ,professors who taught in upper schools and universities4 ,on this point of the essential mutability of laws and institutions1 ,croce lays a great stress4 8,we often meet in history with projects of new laws which are said to be better than the old1 or good by comparison with those judged more or less bad1 the new ones being proposed as natural or rational justice1 whilst the old ones are rejected as unnatural or irrational1 just as passionate erotic temperaments1 uninstructed by the experience of their past1 believe with the utmost seriousness that their new love will be constant and eternal4 ,such #8,natural laws' are historical1 are transitory1 like all others4 ,all men know how1 in certain times1 and places1 religious tolerance1 freedom of trade1 private property1 constitutional monarchy1 have been proclaimed eternal1 and in other times and places the extirpation of unbelievers1 commercial protection1 communism1 the republic and anarchy40#i ,from what has been said it might be taken that ,croce has been merely destroying the religious reverence of his countrymen for the actual apparel of law4 ,nothing can be farther from truth4 ,his contention was that laws being manifestations of man's will must change with the changes in facts4 ,the ideas of the eighteenth or nineteenth century can no longer be a living reality4 ,the reality which he denies to the law itself he recognises as belonging to the single act done under the law1 that is to say to the execution of the law4 ,the indubitable truth1 as to the necessity of acting in each case according to historical necessities1 has induced people at different times and in different places1 to proclaim the sheer uselessness of law4 ,benedetto ,croce is most definitely against such theories4 ,according to him1 the best arguments to be used against them can be drawn from history itself1 and if they do not rigorously demonstrate the necessity of laws they show well enough that such necessity has been generally felt in all lands and in all times4 ,the necessity of laws1 ordinances1 justice1 and the state1 appears at all points of human history4 ,better a bad government than no government at all2 and those who declaim against laws can well do so at their ease1 for the law surrounds1 protects1 and preserves their life for them4 ,,chapter ,,ix ,,giovanni ,,gentile ,the difference between the philosophies of the two greatest thinkers now flourishing in ,italy is due to the natures of their minds4 ,croce always starts from a distinct problem1 from a particular question1 and rises to speculative heights partly through the vigour of his own genius and partly through his constant intercourse with ,gentile1 to whom any particular problem always presents itself from the outset sub quadam specie ternitatis4 ,on the other hand1 ,gentile starting thus1 is led to pursue his researches on the central problem into all its particular and practical applications by a sense of reality so strong that he has been thought to recall ,thomas ,aquinas1 by his vast erudition not only in the history of philosophy1 but in the whole historical world4 ,yet1 even apart from this1 and from his special interest in all the problems of ,law and pedagogy1 the influence of ,benedetto ,croce always compels ,gentile to keep in touch with actual reality4 ,their mutual criticism is perhaps the best example in philosophical history of the creative power of the critic4 ,for except in one instance--where ,croce insists upon seeing in his friend's ,actual ,idealism the latest form of mysticism--the critic is always continuing the work which he is engaged in reviewing and revealing to the author the germs of truth that lie as yet undeveloped in his theory4 ,the import of ,croce's work is certainly more easily grasped than ,gentile's ideas as they present themselves in his theoretical world4 ,many ,italians are acting on these ideas of ,gentile's who would be unable to formulate them2 and that is the most remarkable thing about them4 ,he became a professor at the age of twenty-one1 exactly thirty years ago1 and as ,professor ,wildon ,carr truly says in his introduction to his own translation of ,gentile's ,pure ,act--which will be here constantly quoted--he has become famous not only on account of his historical and philosophical writings1 but also by the number and fervour of the disciples he has attracted4 ,a born teacher1 he loves teaching1 and in teaching has acquired much of his knowledge of mind4 ,he never divorces theory from the concrete ground of life2 and when he addresses people between #ag and #fj years of age he is constantly forcing them to test in their own actual life the truth of what he is saying4 ,he strongly dislikes the taking of notes2 for he does not want the students to repeat his own words on the day of their examination4 ,the lectures are only meant to help them to take their bearings1 to enlighten them2 they must read their set books by themselves and interpret them by their own wits4 ,his words must be taken as an invitation to think out their own problems for themselves2 he wants to spur them on1 not to solve problems for them4 ,thousands of schoolmasters are actually following his pedagogy which so perfectly meets the requirements of the present generation1 that it is admirably acted upon in the remotest villages and by people whose philosophy is that of commonsense and good-will4 ,gentile has produced not only a system of philosophy1 but determined a current of spiritual life which partakes both of theory and practice--blending them perfectly4 ,just as ,bruno1 ,bacon and ,descartes opened the era of subjectivism1 individualism and liberty1 so now ,gentile opens a new era which is a synthesis of law and liberty since he postulates the individual as the relation of the empirical self to the transcendental self1 since his subjectivism becomes concrete and capable of realising the object4 ,this sounds somewhat abstruse and a few illustrations of the point at issue may be useful4 ,fuel is not fire1 and in order to warm myself1 fire is the thing ,i need4 ,but the fuel is necessary to the fire4 ,the fire1 indeed1 is only so far as it consumes the fuel4 ,both are necessary2 yet it is the fire which makes the fuel2 since the coal1 wood1 or charcoal is fuel merely because the fire can destroy it as such4 ,but the fire does not exist before it starts to consume the fuel4 ,now in knowledge the thing man knows is not knowing1 it is known2 therefore1 the principle of knowledge is man4 ,but can man know1 in the absence of that which he knows8 ,obviously not4 ,shall we then go back to the old dualism and take man and the world1 the subject and the object1 as standing in opposition again8 ,no2 a thing is an object of knowledge because the subject postulates it as such and is therefore only in the act by which the subject knows it4 ,the one single source of spiritual reality is man2 but he realises the world only in so far as he realises himself as a knowing subject4 ,and just as fire is fire as long as it destroys the fuel2 so man is really man1 a spiritual being1 a subject as long as he acts as such4 ,the point is often explained by practical illustration to quite tiny children1 to whom no one would try to state it1 as ,i have just done1 theoretically4 ,master3 ,why do you come to school8 ,pupil3 ,because my mother sent me 7--or--to learn to read and write47 ,master3 ,if you come because your mother sent you1 that is quite right2 but until you see for yourself why you should come to school1 you will get very little good out of it4 ,pupil3 ,but since ,i have got to come1 ,i want to learn4 ,master3 ,and what do you suppose all the others come for8 ,pupil3 ,why1 sir1 to learn4 ,master3 ,and tell me1 what must ,i do if you are all to learn8 ,pupil3 ,i suppose you must teach us4 ,master3 ,well now1 what is a school8 ,pupil3 ,this is a school4 ,master3 ,you mean the building8 ,pupil3 ,yes1 of course4 ,master3 ,don't you think ,i could teach and you could learn in a field8 ,pupil3 ,well1 ,i suppose we could4 ,master3 ,would that be a school8 7,no answer74 ,it would4 ,you see the building and the writing over the door have nothing to do with it4 ,we make the school4 ,for if to-morrow the authorities were to send us to a barn and put some poor people here---- ,pupil 7interrupting73 ,sir1 ,i know1 it would be a poorhouse4 ,master3 ,and the barn where we went8 ,pupil3 ,it would be the school4 ,master3 ,right4 ,then who makes the school8 ,pupil3 ,the teacher and the pupils4 ,master3 ,right4 ,but let us go on talking about the same case4 ,the authorities say that this place must be given up to house poor old people4 ,now ,i think that a lot of strong boys like you could carry the benches1 blackboard and so on to the barn4 ,pupil3 ,of course we could4 ,master3 ,and ,i might say to you3 8,come this afternoon1 all of you1 and let us do it40 ,pupil3 ,very well1 we would come1 at least those who live near4 ,master3 ,and we would start teacher and pupils together1 carrying the things4 ,pupil3 ,yes1 sir4 ,master3 ,would that be a school8 ,pupil3 ,of course not1 sir4 ,master3 ,then it is not enough to have pupils and teacher together to make a school4 ,pupil3 ,no1 sir4 ,master3 ,what is missing1 then8 ,pupil3 ,why1 sir1 we carry benches and things1 and that is not a school4 ,master3 ,well1 what exactly is a school8 ,pupil3 444 ,i don't know4 ,master3 ,i'll tell you4 ,it is my teaching and your learning that makes a school4 ,do you see8 ,pupil3 ,oh1 yes4 ,master3 ,but if it is actual teaching and learning that make a school1 what happens if the master is a bad master and does not actually teach anything8 ,pupil3 ,well 444 ,i suppose it is not a real school 444 ,master3 ,it is not a school at all4 ,pupil3 ,i see4 ,master3 ,now if a boy does not want to learn at all---- ,pupil3 ,he is a bad pupil4 ,master3 ,he is not a pupil at all1 as long as he persists in not learning4 ,pupil3 ,of course he is not4 ,master3 ,and if he makes a noise and prevents the others from learning1 what then8 ,pupil3 ,he oughtn't1 sir4 ,master3 ,i know he oughtn't4 ,but if he does not see that he oughtn't1 and goes on doing it1 what happens8 ,pupil3 ,he prevents the others from learning and the master from teaching4 ,master3 ,very good1 and what is the result for the school1 if1 as you see1 it is the actual teaching and learning which makes the school8 ,pupil3 ,it is just as before1 when the ,master was bad1 it stops being a school4 ,master3 ,now supposing you didn't mind being punished rather than keep still1 could you start singing or jumping about just to be funny8 ,pupil3 ,well1 no1 not even if ,i did not mind being sent out1 ,i couldn't4 ,master3 ,do you know why8 ,pupil3 ,because ,i should spoil your teaching and their learning4 ,master3 ,and you would destroy the school4 ,in such a discussion1 which may occupy several days or weeks1 the child has obviously learnt some rules of life derived from highly speculative notions4 ,the reality of any relation depends on two acts directed towards a common aim2 therefore1 the rights of the two parties are dependent upon their actual efficiency in the pursuit of the common aim4 ,a master who does not teach must be dismissed2 a pupil who does not learn loses the right of being a pupil4 ,similarly1 if a landowner allows the ground to lie waste1 he is not discharging his duties as a landowner and his rights to his property are not actual4 ,this stands in complete contrast with the 8,rights of ,man0 which could assert man's liberty to use his property as he chose1 the state only calling upon its citizens to pay taxes--and fight in war1 because the state was understood as something external to the citizens4 ,the relation between employer and employed is clearly parallel to that between master and pupil2 in it the common aim is to realise as much profit as possible out of the enterprise4 ,as soon as one of the parties diminishes the productivity of the enterprise1 he forfeits his right to damage himself1 the other party and the commonwealth4 ,the state1 though having no direct shares in the profit is enriched or impoverished according to the increased or decreased productivity of private enterprises4 ,in this is stated for the first time since ,christ preached and lived the ,gospel1 the true equality of men that had been asserted in it4 ,so thoroughly does ,christianity realise that rights are correlative to duties1 that before spiritual citizenship can be bestowed on a child in most ,christian churches sponsors are required to take a pledge in its name1 and upon its coming to adult state the young ,christian must confirm that pledge and acknowledge the duties on which its rights depend4#aj ,this is the reason why the ,roman ,catholic ,church is at once democratic and hierarchical4 ,a shepherd can become ,pope1 an ,emperor can be deprived of his spiritual citizenship4 ,the view of citizenship as a birthright is a relic of ,paganism when slavery might be the predestined fate of some and citizenship of others4 ,political reality finally becomes spiritual reality2 man is a citizen exactly in so far as he realises the state1 through the act of consciousness by which1 transcending the empirical element in his own will1 he postulates such a will in religious objectivity1 thereby making it law4 ,the little boy1 in realising that his purpose in going to school is to learn1 transcends everything in his will that is merely individual or private4 ,his will ceases to be subjective1 it becomes greater than the little boy1 it becomes school life1 it becomes objective and transcending the little boy1 it is to him ,law in all the majesty and imperativeness of the term4 ,again1 boys become members of a football team because they want to play and eventually win matches4 ,they want this freely and this choice1 together with their individual skill in the game1 produces the team as a unit for the purposes of play4 ,but the team once formed1 the captain chosen for his fitness to command the team in such a way as to increase its efficiency1 and each member called to perform the part in which he can best serve the team's interest1 the act of will by which each member in perfect liberty wants to win a match transcends itself1 become the team's will1 and as such1 objective1 sacred1 inviolable law4 ,the instances in which members of a team1 disregarding the orders of the captain 7in whom the eleven wills in all their liberty fuse into one and become law71 play to show off their personal skill illustrate clearly enough by their effect on the score1 the inviolableness of such collective will4 ,to realise the full force of this relation between liberty and law1 the state and the citizen1 is not easy1 if one looks for it exclusively in ,gentile's philosophy of law2 but his pedagogy makes it far easier and his lectures perfectly easy4 ,there is something religious about it which pervades the whole of his philosophy as it pervades ,fascism4 ,the child is brought to realise what he is by looking at the various societies which co-operate in making him what he is4 ,being asked what he would say1 ,if somebody meeting him in ,america asked him what he was and who he was1 what would he say8 ,he usually answers to such a question that he would say3 8,i am so-and-so10 but he is then asked3 8,what does that mean80 which brings the child to realise that the meaning of his name is that he is the son of his father and mother1 he is what he is first of all as belonging to his particular family4 ,again3 8,i am so-and-so0 conveys but little to a perfect stranger4 ,what would he say next4 8,i am an ,italian40 ,very well1 and 8what kind of man in ,italy80444 ,the child here usually pauses in great perplexity4 ,it takes some time before he comes to speak of a possible profession and of his religion2 and for this last point it is necessary to point out to him that there are several religions4 ,once he has got there1 however1 he realises so fully all that is implied in this kind of definition that one can hardly help being astonished by the readiness with which children or older boys work out ,gentile's ideas4 ,the author has had the opportunity of noting how easily children grasped the true nature of their relation to family1 country1 religion1 and school1 and the fact that what they were depended on their consciousness of being a living member of such societies4 ,the child thus acquires a religious attitude towards them4 ,he realises the sacred character of the family1 as based solely upon his own moral realisation of his relation to the members of his family4 ,the family blood running in his veins1 he is told has nothing to do with that relation4 ,his father is his father in the spiritual way which alone binds them together1 because he calls him his son and acknowledges paternal relationship to him with all the duties and claims that it involves4 ,gradually he comes to realise that he draws all his importance--his reality--from his conscious relation to the societies to which he belongs and which together make up the not-self2 and that such societies are merely the various consciousness of single members transcending their poor1 limited1 empirical little selves and calling into existence their better and greater1 transcendental selves4 ,man as a thing-in-itself is nowhere to be found2 mankind vanishes like a phantom as soon as you try to meet it4 ,if every man and boy in the world discharged his duty as a member of a family1 of a school1 of a club1 of a calling1 and finally of a church and of a state1 mankind would certainly know peace and well-being1 for man then would consider his relations1 school1 club and trade fellows1 religious brethren and fellow citizens as belonging to his own self4 ,but no man can do so perfectly1 and it is as much as can be expected from him if he does what1 in the sincerity of his soul1 he knows to be the very best he can do and loves his neighbour merely so far as he realises him to be part of his greater self4 ,the speculative ground of such a conception of life must be briefly stated before coming to the idea of ,liberty and ,law1 and to that of citizen and state4 ,spiritual reality is not ,mind plus some spiritual fact2 it is purely and simply ,mind as subject1 since any spiritual fact must be resolved in the real activity of the subject1 who knows it4 ,common language expresses this by saying that to know something thoroughly we must make it our own4 ,strictly speaking we know no others4 ,if we know them and speak of them they must be within us4 ,to know is to identify1 to overcome otherness as such4 ,as long as we feel ourselves confronted by the spiritual existence of others as different from ourselves1 something from which we must distinguish ourselves1 something which we presuppose as having been in existence before our birth1 it is merely a sign that we are not yet realising the spirituality of their existence4 ,to us they are still nature4 ,this doctrine would be absurd if it were not considered in the light of ,gentile's notion of the transcendental and empirical selves1 both meeting in man1 as a concrete person in whom the infinity of the transcendental individualises itself through the finiteness of the empirical4 ,the transcendental ego being one and the empirical egos being multiplicity itself1 it is obvious that the differences are as necessary to the identity as the fuel to the fire4 ,it is1 indeed1 through the process of transcending empirical differences that man asserts the transcendental character of mind4 ,obviously all the difficulties of moral problems arise from an empirical conception of man and his relations to others4 ,empirically ,i am an individual1 and as such in opposition not only to all material things1 but equally to all the individuals to whom ,i assign a spiritual value1 since all objects of experience1 whatever their value1 are not only distinct but separate from one another in such a way that each1 by its own particularity absolutely excludes from itself all the rest4 ,all moral problems arise from experience and arise precisely because of the absolute opposition in which the ego1 empirically conceived1 stands to other persons tormented by the supreme moral aspiration of our being that longs for a harmony in which we should become one with all others and with the whole world4 ,this means that moral problems arise in so far as we become aware of the unreality of our being1 as an empirical ego1 opposed to other persons and surrounding things1 and in so far as we come to see that our own life is actualised in the things opposed to it4 ,but though this is the situation in which moral problems arise1 they are solved only when man comes to feel another's needs as his own1 and thereby finds that his own life means that he is not closed within the narrow circle of his empirical personality1 but is ever expanding in the activity of a mind superior to all particular interests and yet immanent in the very core of his personality4 ,it must never be forgotten1 however1 that the reality of the transcendental ego1 far from destroying the empirical ego1 implies it4 ,passing to the essential characteristics of what might be opposed as spiritual to what is natural1 we find ,gentile working out the distinction from the fact that anything natural1 such as a stone1 is whilst anything spiritual1 mind1 a work of mind1 a political constitution becomes4 ,mind and being are opposite terms4 ,a plant is1 an animal is1 in so far as all the determinations of the plant or animal are a necessary and pre-ordained consequence of its nature4 ,all the manifestations by which their nature is expressed are already there1 existing implicitly4 ,the empirical manifestations of their being come to be conceived1 therefore1 as closed within limits already prescribed as impassable boundaries4 ,in the natural world everything is pre-ordained according to the law of ,nature1 or1 to use ,gentile's own words1 everything is by ,nature4 ,in the spiritual world nothing is by ,nature1 but it becomes what it becomes through the activity of mind4 ,nothing is ever ready-made2 nothing can be finished and complete4 ,the social position of a family1 the political system of a country can never be settled once for all2 the members of the former and the citizens of the latter must go on creating it day by day and hour by hour4 ,so is it with moral life4 ,all the noblest achievements of the past do not diminish one whit the sum of duties still to be performed4 ,the minute man stops realising in the inmost recesses of his consciousness what he must do for his family1 for his country1 or even for the firm to which he belongs1 the family will be decadent1 the country will begin to lose what his predecessors had painfully won1 the firm will feel the incipient decay of a credit acquired through work and sacrifice4 ,nothing is ever done once for all2 morally1 intellectually1 politically1 socially1 economically1 everything is always to be done4 ,a hard gospel to preach when man is accustomed as he is now to hear only the proclamation of his rights4 ,sacrifice1 self-denial is here pointed out as the way to greater conquests and to the assertion of a nobler and more powerful self4 ,to find spiritual reality man must seek it and1 seeking it1 create it4 ,this means that it never confronts him as an external reality4 ,if man wants to find it he must work to realise it4 ,so long as it is sought it is found1 so long as it is being conquered or constructed it is to be found1 so long but no longer4 ,empires show signs of incipient decay the moment the ,empire builders stop building them1 stop wanting to build them4 ,yet from this austere conception of life springs a beautiful notion of liberty1 a splendid conception of man's creativity4 ,gentile has had the courage to study closely1 very closely1 the old scholastic ,doctors1 thereby acquiring a deep and almost unerring sense of ,christianity2 whilst his familiarity with the problems of law and the works of the ,humanists and the ,renaissance1 have marked him with characteristics that sometimes cause his hearers to hail in him a ,father of the ,church4 ,all this notwithstanding there are many points of doctrine upon which he stands in contrast with the theologians4 99 99 99 99 99 ,where ,gentile speaks of thinking he invariably refers both to the act of the will and to the act of the intellect2 for he considers their distinction as having been abolished when through the work of modern psychology the very notion of a multiplicity of faculties was rejected4 ,the mind is not now intellect and now will2 but is known now as intellect and now as will4 ,it should be observed1 however1 that the creative will does not create a world that issues from it and exists independently of it2 it is self-creative just as any judgment is first of all self-assertive4 ,no act of man's will is ever directed to something already realised2 man always wants to do an action4 ,for instance1 wanting a new pair of shoes merely means wanting to buy1 to have1 to get1 a new pair of shoes2 and since we have seen that any action is self-assertion1 man in any act of will is wanting to realise his own self4 ,in consequence of the unity existing between him and the world1 man's purpose is never external to him4 ,man realising his own self3 such is the nature of mind1 dynamic and dialectic at once4 ,this notion of dialectic enables us to meet law and liberty on their common ground1 morality2 spiritual reality is endowed with a life that is best called dialectic1 inasmuch as it is never either completely positive or purely negative4 ,anything spiritual from the most intimate religious experience1 down to any political form1 family arrangement1 or business establishment is so long as1 not yet being1 it strives to realise1 to assert1 to establish itself4 ,anything spiritual let us say1 human1 the moment it is1 that is to say the moment it is accomplished1 the moment it ceases to develop or establish itself1 is dead or dying4 ,gentile uses even stronger language3 he says outright1 as a reality it is absolutely annihilated4 ,for him1 as for ,kant1 the law of man's will is the end that determines each act of will2 since to be moral the will must have in itself its own law and its own end4 ,the word moral can here have but one equivalent1 namely1 spiritual1 that is to say possessing value4 ,morality so understood is an attribute of the entire life of mind1 which must have an absolute value--be it truth1 beauty1 or goodness--such value being meaningless if it does not correspond to an ought to be1 imperative hic et nunc as a consequence of liberty4 ,moreover1 this binding imperativeness is universal--for imperative means necessary1 and there can be no necessity without universality4 ,the good is1 in conclusion1 the value of man's spirit in its dialectical actuality2 it may be termed the most concrete form of spiritual reality4 ,any spiritual act is moral in so far as it is mind's realisation2 consequently the negation of morality cannot be understood without understanding this realisation1 which is the spiritual process or development of mind as society4 ,the good is development2 and as such it implies evil as its negativity4#aa ,light and shadow1 good and evil2 in both cases the second term is the negative of the first4 ,and herein lies all the tragedy of mind4 ,spiritual life is a complex of light and shadow1 a constant struggle of the particular with the universal4 ,negativity opposes itself to positivity1 evil to good1 as the particular to the universal4 ,yet it is through their conflict and opposition that spiritual life realises itself1 and this realisation is entrusted to the individual1 who in and through his very particularity is the agent of the universal will4 ,obviously1 if we take man1 the individual man1 in his pure empiricalness1 he can do nothing without superhuman help4 ,but this notion of man1 which is the ground of all the abstract forms of egoism1 individualism and anarchy1 is a mere fancy4 ,no single man can so be deprived of the divine light of intelligence as not to know of his own existence as a person1 as a self1 and in the very act of knowing himself as such to assert what is universal in him4 ,man in short is universal in so far as he does not belong to nature1 a pure object of knowledge1 but is a subject4 ,so that his moral law is nothing superadded to him ab extra1 it is the life granted to him by ,providence realising itself4 ,this is a far cry from ordinary selfishness4 ,from this point of view the bellum omnium contra omnes appears as the materialistic fancy of a man whose idea of the world was inferred from the idea of the body4 ,man's body is in fact one among many4 ,but man's will in his opposition to other wills reveals his universality4 ,that opposition which had been taken as proof of the plurality and radical particularity of subjective will is insisted upon by ,gentile as a proof of the unity and radical universality of such will4 ,men's wills collide with each other1 it is true1 but they do so in the very attempt to enforce the claims of that in them which is universal4 ,for will has not realised itself as long as it stands as one will face to face with another will or so many other wills4 ,in such a position it appears as one among many1 as accidental and particular1 as having a law differing from that of the others2 whereas it always claims to be ,will1 against which there can be no other will--experience shows us daily that nothing can be done when diverging wills are exerting themselves--and such is the characteristic of the moral will4 ,the statement of this problem1 the moral problem1 is very difficult indeed1 and from a misrepresentation of the relations between my will and your will and his will1 arise conflict and war2 but our conception of war is not complete if we consider it apart from the conception of peace4 ,war is nothing but the realisation of peace1 which is the reconciliation of a duality or plurality of wills in the ,will4 ,this is why war exists and why there are private interests conflicting in the plurality of wills4 ,such war and conflict1 however1 are due to the particularity of the wills and last as long as each of these wills insists on realising itself as universal1 ceasing when they compose their differences and accept as the common will that which has manifested its universality through the conflict4 ,a peace without war cannot be conceived1 since peace is the life of will and will cannot live but in a self-assertion which is nothing but the eternal resolution of the conflict through which it comes into being4 ,thus will is1 and ever must be1 concordia discors4 ,whatever the social unit taken as an example--family1 school1 state1 church--the reality of it is always in development and is intelligible only as a process4 ,it never is1 and always is1 but only in so far as it realises itself in perfect liberty4 ,this free realisation does not permit of the separation of its negativity from its positivity4 ,in such a way1 though realising itself as universal1 the family or state can be thought of as a spiritual reality only in so far as it contains the particular element which offers an endless resistance to the process of universalisation4 ,a society that perfectly unifies its spiritual diversity1 abolishing every sign of variety1 has inevitably gone to pieces since it loses all the spiritual forces that made it alive4 ,gentile goes so far as to say that in fact it is already dead4 ,it is the eternally recurring opposition of interests and wills that permits the dialectic and dynamic unity of life to pulsate in any social constitution4 ,consequently the particularity of the will--to be resolved in the universal--consists in its negativity1 without which the assertion of the universal could not exist as an act1 for it would be a mere fact1 not something due to the act of man but just something which is by nature4 ,there is no assertion of will which is not exclusion1 suppression of its own negation4 ,thus society is empirically the agreement of individuals1 and speculatively the realisation of will through an eternal process4 ,universal value is thereby identified as a process realising itself through the suppression of what is particular and negative4 ,society is not inter homines1 but in interiore homine and it can exist between men inasmuch as all men are spiritually one man1 with one single interest3 the eternal increment of the patrimony of mankind4 ,now society implies authority1 a superior will imposed on the associated wills to unite them under a common law4 ,rousseau had conceived the state1 the people as a passive body1 reserving activity for the sovereign4 ,gentile having raised to speculative form the brilliant intuition that lies in the ,contract1 after having fully recognised it as ,rousseau's idea1 now rejects his conception of the distinction between sovereign and subjects4 ,what he actually denies is the passivity ascribed to the people1 and the school is1 as usual1 the experimental ground of his notion4 ,school is a form of spiritual association implying a teacher1 lawgiver to his pupils4 ,it is not the teacher1 however that1 through his authority1 brings the pupils to accept truth2 on the contrary it is truth that confers authority on the teacher4 ,the ,ipse dixit implies a great knowledge of the master's familiarity with science4 ,whatever the ground on which we acknowledge an authority1 the authority is such as a consequence of our acknowledging it2 and all the theories and inquiries concerning the source of a higher authority are to ,gentile vain prattling4 ,for him it is quite obvious that1 however high such an authority may be it will never be higher than the height to which it has been raised by the people subject to it4 ,through this agency and this agency alone authority becomes law4 ,authority is invested in the spiritual self1 the universal person1 ultimately the only sovereign4 ,this transcendental self is the transcendental law of which we have spoken as moral law1 the transcendental sovereign which has brought ,gentile to reject ,rousseau's distinction between passive citizenship and active sovereignty because it throbs in every man's breast and is the one law and sovereign that can impose laws and make them acknowledged4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is now easy to realise that1 although ,gentile was first known as a ,hegelian1 by the time he wrote his philosophy of law he had fully developed the more realistic tendencies of his ,idealism which link him to ,thomas ,aquinas1 ,kant and above all to ,vico4 ,the real difference between ,gentile's notion of political reality and that of ,hegel--the likeness is too obvious to require pointing out--is a consequence of their different ways of working out their respective notions of reality4 ,in spite of his brilliant conception of dialectic ,hegel's intuition of ,reality is not dialectical but intellectualistic1 and therefore static4 ,he realised that we do not conceive reality dialectically unless we conceive it as itself thought4 ,but he distinguished the intellect which conceives things from the reason which conceives mind and his dialectic was in consequence a dialectic of thought1 thought however being understood as the result of the act of thinking4 ,whereas to have a real dialectic1 corresponding to the throbbing reality of life1 what is wanted is a dialectic of thought1 understood as the act of thinking4 ,what has already been thought is as static as a stone4 ,hence the necessity in which ,hegel found himself of separating thought and action1 which led him to declare in the introduction to his philosophy of ,right that ,philosophy was a twilight bird1 whose activity began at dusk when the day's work was done4 ,for ,hegel a law in order to be imperative must be pronounced by something that is already in existence4 ,but ,reality in existence is nature4 ,hegel's state belonging thus to static reality1 being a fact1 not an act1 the citizen is nothing in himself2 all his reality come to him from the state4 ,this does not mean that he is annihilated 7both in ,imperialism and ,communism he is very highly cultivated71 but is as the little wheel of a huge engine which is carefully oiled so that the machine may go the better for it4 ,his end is the state's end4 ,not so with ,gentile4 ,reality1 being really dialectical does not admit of a distinction between will and intellect4 ,you do not act and then think about it4 ,for life1 natural or spiritual1 is the reality3 if theory1 the activity of the intellect1 is merely a contemplation of it1 such theory is not even real4 ,how can one think of something added to the real world8 ,what could such an addition be8 ,there is no way of conceiving knowledge except as a creation of the spiritual reality which is itself knowledge4 ,if ,reality is spiritual1 in realising itself it creates both the will and the intellect4 ,it is only through the empirical consideration of their manifestations that they can be distinguished2 speculatively they are one and the same thing4 ,the difference between the idea of a good action and a good action itself is a difference between two ideas4 ,in the first case we mean the idea which is a content or abstract result of thought1 but not the act by which we think it1 and in which its concrete reality truly lies4 ,and in the second we mean the idea1 not as an object or content of thought1 but as the act which realises a spiritual reality4 ,the state can not be a fact1 something already realised4 ,it is the eternal process1 the instauratio regnum boni always becoming1 and dying to be realised by the consciousness of the individual in its own process of self-realisation4 ,the state is indeed the moral reality of the individual1 who to become a citizen realises himself transcending his empirical subjectivity4 ,the state exists only in the hearts of men2 it is the intellectual and practical activity of men realising themselves as spiritual reality4 ,it is always being altered through the positive and negative manifestation of man's moral will4 ,man is not and cannot be subject to the state1 except in so far and in so far only as he is its creator4 ,and creation means liberty no less than self-realisation means realisation of the not-self and therefore the law4 ,,chapter ,x ,,benito ,,mussolini ,now that we have traced both the political and philosophical antecedents of what is here called ,fascism1 since it expresses itself as such1 but might perhaps as well be termed the political and philosophical coming of age of ,italy as a great nation1 we must turn to the man1 whose lot it has been to embody such historical forces and bring them to actual realisation4 ,it may seem rather rash to compare ,benito ,mussolini with ,dante and some people may think it a profanation4 ,poetry and politics put on the same level2 a man considered by many little better than an adventurer 7and appearing as such in the biography written by a friend of his1 ,miss ,m4 ,sarfatti72 the new constitution far from being complete and1 ,fascist legislation comprising with a very few great laws1 a sequence of decrees suggestive of tyranny6 ,such a comparison must seem to some absurd1 although it is a fact that just as ,dante embodied in the ,divina ,commedia all the philosophy1 all the arts and politics of medival ,italy1 ,mussolini is now embodying in the new rgime all that is great and good in modern ,italy4 ,it may be held1 in fact1 that political deeds do express the life of minds just as forcibly as poetry1 therefore that they do not stand in a position of sthetic inferiority to the compositions of poets1 unless one chooses to compare the politics of a decadent period to the poetry of a great period4 ,it may also be held that 8adventurer0 is an epithet that befits better the ,duce of ,miss ,sarfatti than the ,uomo ,novo of ,antonio ,beltramelli1 in whose book the same ,duce appears as the herald of an entirely new period of the life of ,italy4 ,and the present book is concerned exclusively with what may prove of lasting value in the laws of the government of ,mussolini1 and does not imply an approval of what may be objectionable in the actual methods of government2 it takes the view that tyrannical decrees and the like are inherent in the revolutionary stage of the rgime and temporary measures bound to disappear when that stage has been outgrown4 ,our sensible souls may be shocked when we feel the violence of the hatred with which ,dante pursues his enemies right into ,hell or ,purgatory4 ,mussolini's soul is just as sensible and modern as our own4 ,not only would he forbear from hating his dead adversaries1 but he does not hate his enemies even during their life4 ,he can speak of them with the greatest serenity and recall the time when they were his friends without losing his sense of fair appreciation4 ,he can compare with ,dante for the violence of his hostility only when hostile attacks are directed against his task and are an impediment to him and his men in what he considers the work laid down for them by ,providence4 ,but this is stretching too far a comparison which has been made merely to explain the impossibility of giving good grounds for the fact that ,mussolini was the one man fit to realise in politics all the theoretical ideas and practical tendencies that have been traced in this work4 ,such facts are as mysterious as the nature of genius4 ,yet it may not be out of place to note that both ,dante and ,mussolini have the same love of learning and just too much intuition to contribute to the theoretical life of mind2 and that the contrast which exists between some inferior passages of the ,divina ,commedia and those that make it an immortal poem is not greater than that which exists between what is objectionable in ,mussolini's way of ruling and that which is likely to be of eternal value in the ideals that underlie the whole of his political thought of action4 ,through the political realisation of what was potentially included in their political theories ,france and ,england have shared1 as we have seen1 the honour of being the champions of ,liberalism and ,radical ,democracy1 just as through the political elaboration of the theories of ,kant1 ,fichte and ,hegel1 ,germany has developed ,imperialism and ,communism4 ,now that such political institutions and systems of philosophy have given all that could be had out of them1 ,italy comes forward and opposes1 to what her thinkers consider as being henceforth at best abstract subjectivism1 another subjectivism which--being freed from the materialism1 mechanism and naturalism1 that persisted in thought and life of former generations1 being freed also from the practical reasons which compelled the thinkers of those days to oppose religion on account of the ,church's impediments to free researches--can identify itself with ,mind1 and more specially with the activity of ,mind4 ,the individual1 the subject to assert itself in the activity of mind must have an object4 ,self implies ,not-self4 ,therefore1 liberty implies law4 ,the citizen implies the state4 ,the employer1 or the employed1 implies the enterprise for the productivity of which one employs and the other is employed4 ,in short1 after the objectivism of the late ,middle ,ages and ,renaissance1 after the subjectivism of the modern world1 ,fascism is the synthesis of both in politics1 just as well as in philosophy1 since1 after the 8everything through the force of privilege0 of the former and the 8everything through the force of numbers0 of the latter1 it comes and says 8everything for everyone that shall deserve it through moral sacrifice and productive activity40 ,it tries to bring forward the ,christian equality of men since it meets everyone on the basis of actual value4 ,it tries to realise fraternity by getting men to feel that their real value is based on their realising as perfectly as possible the intimate relation of self and ,not-self which brings each man to see himself in his neighbour1 and his neighbour as himself4 ,mussolini1 to whom we must always turn as the living expression of ,fascism1 firmly believes that men may be called upon to sacrifice some of their most selfish claims and he hopes to make them realise that they must renounce their empirical selves to create thereby the ,state as their transcendental self4 ,fascism does not want men to look upon law--in the broadest sense of the word--as a sort of starry reality inalterable and indifferent to men2 it hopes that they may realise how intimately it is related to every citizen1 and from the very first year of their school life little children are mentally trained to see it as their own will transcending itself and becoming law in a kind of religious objectivity4 99 99 99 99 99 ,mussolini1 when he was still in his teens1 used to sit up late in the inn kept by his father in ,forli1 and according to a man who used to meet him there1 he was even then wont to distress himself at the materialistic form which ,socialism had taken in ,italy4 ,day after day he would make the same objection1 8,it is all right10 he would say1 8to better the economic conditions of the people1 and you do better them4 ,but ,i cannot help realising that they are losing more and more the spiritual life which was for them religion and tradition1 without taking anything of the higher and nobler side of ,socialism40 ,he had read ,andrea ,costa's writings and was devouring the international classics of ,socialism1 besides his ,mazzini1 so often quoted by his own father and the ,republicans of ,forli1 who had never read a page of the great idealist4 ,the thought that people were getting more and more indifferent to everything but food or rest1 was a nightmare to him4 ,when some twelve years later he became the leader of the ,socialist ,party in the same town he took up the official attitude of his party against religion4 ,this may be noted in the articles he wrote as the editor of ,la ,lotta di classe during the years #aiaj-aiaa4 ,he is an orthodox ,socialist1 and pours out a lot of anti-religious and even anti-patriotic stuff in a style and with a choice of vocabulary that might befit indifferently an ,english1 a ,french1 or a ,german ,socialist leader of the same period4 ,here and there1 however1 a single sentence attracts the careful ,italian reader1 or the foreigner familiar with all the shades of the language4 ,a personal accent is felt2 there is an original idea in an original wording2 and it is either a request that the party leaders should be experts and the members qualified artisans2 or an appeal highly spiritual1 and in a way deeply religious4 ,there are witnesses to the fact that when he had been in the morning issuing an official prohibition of all religious practises he often met in the evening with a theologian to see if there could be a way of re-introducing religion without detriment to ,socialism4 8,for this people10 he would say1 8above all the women1 have no conception of life at all1 since we have deprived them of religion40 ,it would be1 therefore1 a profound mistake to see in ,mussolini's attitude towards the ,church1 and in the action of his government to reinstate religion all through life1 a political move1 intended to secure the support of the clergy4 ,religion is not a useful string on which he plays as the great artist he is1 either to secure the support of the ,catholics and their clergy1 or to keep people quiet and insure their moral education4 ,what he realised between #aijj and #aiab1 through an intuition of genius1 is that the people had no general notion whatever1 no concept of what is life1 never even realised that they could ask themselves such a question as3 ,what is life1 what is the world8 and that religion was necessary to them4 ,mussolini firmly believes in the necessity of arousing strong religious conviction in the people of every class4 ,he does so on ground provided to him by the example of his mother1 by the result of his own observation and experience as a leader1 and last1 but not least by his reading of de ,sanctis's principal work4 ,that great critic is1 indeed1 the one link between ,vico1 ,croce1 ,gentile and ,mussolini1 whose genius was to create the political system in which their ideas receive practical realisation4 ,fascism rejects the very notion of theory as distinct from action and is a constant expression in action of ideas far more easily acted upon than formulated1 so that its most ignorant followers go as far as to reject the possibility of anything like an intellectual movement paving the way for them through the preceding generations1 whilst they act all along in keeping with the spiritual atmosphere which that intellectual movement has developed and the ideas it has put in circulation4 ,the reason of this lies in the sthetic genius of ,mussolini4 ,like the greatest artists produced by ,italy1 he is at once macrocosm and microcosm4 ,the whole of ,italy's past1 as in another ,dante1 converges in him4 ,his avid personality takes it all in1 to put it out again with such an indelible stamp upon it that what might be termed its ,fascist-ness is the only character left to it4 ,now what ,mussolini hopes to obtain from the recrudescence of religious life is that the people should get a wider outlook upon ,life in the highest sense of the word4 ,he never uses philosophical terms to express it2 yet so highly speculative is the notion that ,giovanni ,gentile is probably the only philosopher to have worked it out1 and whosoever did not believe in ,providence could be convinced that ,providence exists just by studying ,croce1 ,gentile1 and the way their work attains realisation at the hands of ,mussolini without any previous arrangement4 ,by getting people to have a deeper understanding of life ,mussolini means to make them realise that man's individual life is not by a long way the supreme value1 that man's individual will is not by a long way the supreme law1 that man's individual circumstances are not in themselves by a long way constitutive of ,life4 ,all these aims he hopes to reach through religion4 ,when he was a ,socialist ,leader he was struck by the immorality of women and by the cowardice of men4 ,these would lay traps in which other people might lose their lives1 as when they unscrewed the rails of the railway in the province of ,forli1 but they would not risk their own lives4 ,being at that time1 a most orthodox ,socialist he could not think3 8let us stop this demoralising propaganda40 ,he believed that it would be all right in the end1 when the end1 with a capital ,e1 should have come for this capitalist society based as it was on selfishness4 ,he wanted a religion1 and having then a mentality quite anti-historical1 he really believed that he could give them a new religion if he could but find it4 ,for this would make them realise1 so he thought1 that they did not count in themselves but only through their relations to others2 and that to realise their better self1 they must always look at the whole1 which is nothing so long as single men are not conscious of belonging to it1 but without which they can do nothing to assert their claims as rights and out of which indeed no claim of theirs can really be a right4 ,obviously1 this is man transcending his own self to assert it through the very negation of its empirical nature4 ,it is impossible to insist too much on this point for the new conception of life that was reaching speculative expression in the works of ,gentile was here1 in this intuitive mind of quite a young man1 who knew nothing of ,gentilian theories1 working its way towards practical realisation4 ,before the way in which he was to proceed from this to the economic theories that may rid the western world of strikes and lock-outs one fact must be put in evidence4 ,from what has been said above1 it is clear that his appreciation of the strength of any collectivity must be based on the degree of consciousness with which the single members realise such collectivity4 ,he had at first not made out the import and the consequences of such a view4 ,but the necessity of pleading his own cause1 when he was tried in #aiaa by the ,tribunal of ,forli1 for having ordered a strike of protest against the ,tripoli war1 put on his lips a declaration that must be taken into consideration whenever ,mussolini's 8,imperialism0 is in question4 ,in the records of the tribunal he is stated to have pleaded his case1 saying that he did not love his country less than the ,nationalists did2 the difference was between his idea of a country's greatness and theirs4 ,he thought that such greatness depended far more on the spiritual and economic level reached by the people of a country1 than on its territorial extension1 the number of its inhabitants1 or the importance of its colonies4 ,to argue that he has changed his mind on this as on other points would not be consistent with facts4 ,since his advent to power the efficiency of the army and navy has been brought to a higher standard1 but their effective numbers have not been increased at all2 whilst the greatest care and expense have been dedicated to the reform of education1 nothing being spared that can promote a deeper consciousness of the individual1 and an immense scheme is a foot to improve the intellectual and spiritual conditions of adults1 involving huge expense by the government and great personal sacrifice by the intellectual and artistic classes4 ,when ,mussolini was in ,forli he could not satisfy any of his realistic or idealistic exigencies4 ,his intellectual position as a ,socialist made him long for a paradise to come1 a dream at best2 his nature1 like that of many in his province1 made him long for actual facts4 ,the position proved a difficult one and he was only kept going by the strength of his convictions which were most sincere4 ,the man who was on his staff in the ,lotta di ,classe is still a workman and a ,socialist2 and speaks with as much regret for that time as with bitterness for ,mussolini's 8desertion from the party10 a 8desertion0 which nothing will make him see as a consequence of the very sincerity to which he ascribes ,mussolini's power of fascination4 ,it is this man who has furnished the author of this present book with the clue that made it possible to trace back the way through which ,mussolini came to realise how unhistorical and1 therefore1 false was his position4 ,the adversaries of the ,socialists were continually reproaching them for having invented the class struggle4 ,just because he was absolutely sincere ,mussolini minded the accusation very much4 ,for if that was so the responsibility was indeed a heavy one4 ,he started1 therefore1 looking in history for the origin of that struggle4 ,and it was inevitable that his ,italian mentality should1 through the process of his researches1 emerge in all its national and personal definiteness2 that he should reject1 more or less consciously1 all that is not concrete and actual4 ,the ,italians usually call 8historical0 a true knowledge or realisation of a given situation of fact1 whether past or present2 again they call 8historical0 the vision of life as the eternal alteration of such situations through a process which knows no regress4 ,to his relief ,mussolini soon found out that the class struggle had existed always and everywhere1 and that it was due to social and financial differences3 and this cheered the convinced ,socialist in him4 ,his next step was to realise that not only had such a struggle existed in ,rome1 in ,athens1 and elsewhere1 but that it was actually the main cause of social progress4 ,and with this the ,socialist triumphantly exulted4 ,the triumph was a short one1 however1 and the cause of this exultation was to prove a mortal blow to his ,socialist faith4 ,if class struggle was the main agent of progress and class differences the cause of such struggle1 there could be no progress1 no movement1 when class differences had been abolished4 ,so painful was the conclusion that he must have tried to reject it4 ,when classes should be abolished1 every thing would be for the best1 granted that it could come to be4 ,his incursion into the history of the past had given him the one chance his realistic mind had been waiting for to realise that perfection does not exist1 that perfection cannot exist1 since it is only from the deficiencies of a form of society that the idea of what is to be the next form of society can arise4 ,obviously1 it is by the inconvenience of an actual law that the next law is called into being4 ,life would have1 therefore1 to be static when the actual state of society would be perfect4 ,a question remained and indeed was of moment4 ,could life be static8 ,the answer could not have waited long for so sharp an observer of life4 ,life is dialectic4 ,the nature of life was manifest to him in the arts4 ,de ,sanctis had taught him to see that1 whilst the very power of his own individuality was compelling him to realise that nothing is done but by single men acting1 acting however as members of the various collectivities which determined their personalities4 ,he could no longer think of choosing a religion and imposing it on his followers2 they had one at hand which had been prepared for them by history4 ,little by little the truth came4 ,men did not act for mankind1 they acted for their family1 for their religion1 for their country2 they acted to better their conditions or to prevent them from getting worse4 ,to release ,man from his traditions was equivalent to taking the roots of a tree from the ground1 and condemning it to dry1 moulder and rot4 ,was1 then1 ,socialism a drug of such a kind that it could only do harm8 ,surely it had done wonders for the wretched lower classes of ,italy6 ,then the outbreak of the ,european ,war spurred him to take the step which had become inevitable4 ,his mind was ready2 his genius had reached maturity2 circumstances would do the rest4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is necessary to realise the man and his ,dantesque gift for looking at the idea and grasping facts all along1 for discharging with personal passion a most impersonal task4 ,it is equally necessary to realise why the people should have wanted him to succeed and give him that support without which his genius would have aborted as a sterile longing for action4 ,according to ,croce the act of will of any single man becomes an event and is granted success according to the way in which it stands to the will of the whole1 and to the actual situation of fact4 ,macchiavelli1 it must be borne in mind1 tried to do with his ,tuscan militia what ,mussolini has achieved1 and he only succeeded in realising how out of keeping with the times his scheme had been4 ,sadly1 this forerunner of ,mussolini1 not inferior to him in genius or reading1 had to sit down and write what the regenerator of ,italy would have to do1 the necessity of governing in harmony with the times and according to the actual truth of circumstances being one of the principles ever recurring under his pen4 8,everyone knows10 says ,benedetto ,croce1 who is by no means a ,fascist1 in the ,philosophy of the ,practical1 printed for the first time in #aijh1 8that no vultus instantis tyranni can extinguish the freedom of the soul2 no ruler1 be he ever so strong and violent1 can prevent a rebellion40 ,if people choose to use the word tyrant in the ,greek sense of the word they may call ,mussolini a tyrant1 for he is and will be an unconstitutional ruler until the new institutions are so framed1 that the new rgime can function normally4 ,but if it is implied by that1 as the modern sense of the word allows1 that he rules against the people's will it is merely absurd1 and one single fact could prove the contrary4 ,when two years ago he asked that a certain sum should be subscribed in dollars towards the paying to the ,united ,states ,war ,debt1 the issue was many times what he had asked4 ,it would not be true to facts to omit that although it was not compulsory1 there was a good deal of moral pressure made to get the people to subscribe4 ,but surely they did not need to cover it so many times and the excess was indeed most spontaneously subscribed4 ,the people of ,italy do grumble at many things which are done by the ,fascists1 and anybody would do so4 ,it is mainly1 however1 individual actions which are the object of complaint and not laws or public services4 ,for it must be kept in mind that the actual form of ,mussolini's government has been called into being by the misgovernment or rather non-government of the people who preceded him in power1 and the country felt the need of being governed in one way or another4 ,it has been shown in the first part of this book why ,italy was not governed at all1 why no public service could work effectively1 why foreign policy had to be so inferior to the real position of the country1 why the beautiful peninsula had fallen into a state bordering on anarchy4 ,it is difficult for an ,englishman to realise how a country could fall into such conditions4 ,england has five or six centuries of political experience1 a length of time more than sufficient to produce electors and representatives able to realise what are the duties of the executive as well as those of the legislature4 ,everybody in ,england is familiar with the process through which political forms come into being4 ,people struggle to reach a certain form of government and that moment of dialectic ends when the form is reached2 they then apply it more and more fully and during its application discover its limitations2 this second movement ends in criticism of the whole thing2 finally1 people set themselves to remedy its shortcomings4 ,this last moment coincides in the people with the full consciousness of dissatisfaction1 and in the leaders with a clear understanding of the new tendencies to be satisfied4 ,thus the people learn to use a new form whilst they are using1 then discarding1 the one that came before it4 ,in ,italy nothing of the sort happened4 ,the political leaders would have been ashamed to be behindhand in what was considered 8social progress40 ,the immediate aftermath of the war in ,italy was as we have seen morally a tragedy4 ,it seemed as if something had died1 something spiritual4 ,everything seemed to be going to pieces4 ,nobody seemed to think1 nobody seemed to realise that moral forces1 a national consciousness had been produced by the general sacrifice4 ,a few heroes were watching over the flame lit up in the young souls who had learned truth in the bitter experience of war4 ,they were very few indeed1 and they could only get a hearing through the actual violence with which they fell on the old political classes1 who were intent on convincing the people that the war had to be forgotten as a nightmare1 that man must forget it as soon as possible to throw himself again into his pursuit of material well-being4 ,whatever the smallness of their number--when ,mussolini founded the first ,fascio in #aiai they were #aej--they were enough to arouse a deep echo in the youth of ,italy1 which was beginning both for spiritual and practical reasons to conceive life as an energy1 a force1 a consciousness transcending the limits set by the interests of the individual1 bound to upset violently the quiet and selfish life of the man intent on the satisfaction of his most empirical desires4 99 99 99 99 99 ,mussolini's belief was that you could make man realise that1 if he is the centre of the universe1 he is so through his relation to the universe1 but that you could not do this by words4 ,the only way to make men realise that selfishness1 when it becomes absolute is bound to reduce society to atomistic irrelativeness and thereby to anarchy1 was1 according to him1 action4 ,if a body of men were ready to do1 through coherent action and sacrifice of their individual wills1 what the government ought to have done1 then the people would know that they could cease from being bullied by the ,bolshevist ,socialists and followers of ,don ,sturzo1 provided they were willing to sacrifice their individual wills1 as the men of a team of football do when they want to win a match4 ,he felt sure that he could call his countrymen to the sacrifice of life and to the acceptance of the harshest discipline if they could but be induced to cease centring their whole mind upon their precious selves4 ,there was1 however1 no time to organise a religious revival2 and his knowledge of men provided him with the one intuition that could be acted upon at the time4 ,he called on them to defend the value of their own sacrifice in the trenches and in the field4 ,now that was not cold and distant as the idea of the nation might have proved2 it was quite real to them and moved them consequently as nothing else could4 ,through the action of a few hundreds several hundreds of thousands were induced to fight for the defence of what had been their former action4 ,the fighting however was only on a very small scale and mostly in the provinces where the tyranny of the ,reds and ,whites had to be broken2 the breaking up of that tyranny made the people look upon the ,black ,shirts as their liberators4 ,peasant women and children were once more free to go to ,church1 officers and wounded men were once more free to go about in their uniforms without being attacked or insulted1 workmen were once more free to attend their daily work and earn their money as they liked4 ,the ,fascists did not have to fight their way to power4 ,they merely took it and were cheered on to taking it4 99 99 99 99 99 ,as soon as ,mussolini was in power he was asked by his ministers what his programme was4 ,he curtly answered 8that it was to realise the full value of ,italy's sacrifice in the war40 ,he had no political programme and was so indifferent to party distinctions that he took ministers from every party1 choosing them only according to their qualification as experts4 ,what he required from them was the maximum of efficiency1 and the maximum also of personal responsibility4 ,his first great move was the reform of education4 ,for him the greatness of a country depended on the consciousness of its citizens4 ,the work was naturally entrusted to ,giovanni ,gentile1 who was the greatest authority on pedagogy4 ,he had to face immense difficulty and he did it with such energy and indomitable will that the educational reform became law and was being applied eleven months after the march on ,rome4 ,the main features of it are the re-introduction of religious and moral1 sthetic and practical education in the schools where rational instruction had been paramount for twenty years4 ,this was in accord with modern philosophy1 reinstating in their lawful places along with imagination and intuition1 all the activities of ,mind which had not been duly recognised nor sufficiently developed in the last generations4 ,religion is understood as the one thing capable of providing man with a reasonable outlook upon life as a whole1 with a deep consciousness of his own importance as a factor in the world1 and with an equally deep consciousness of his nonentity as soon as he ceases to be part of a whole1 and considers himself apart from his relations to his family1 to his church1 to his school1 to his country4 sthetic education is meant to develop the faculty of realising with great definiteness4 ,the child must not describe in his small essays of ten lines or less something that he cannot draw1 and he must not draw something different from that which he describes4 8,practical0 is a very bad term for the development of judgment in children yet it is the latest word of philosophy which is introduced here4 ,a good deal of the new education in ,italy is done through the teaching of history4 ,it may be pointed out1 for instance1 by the teachers1 that ,russia has had less importance in the development of civilisation than ,england or ,france1 though they are so much smaller4 ,this is pointed out as being a proof that the importance of a country has nothing to do either with the area it occupies on the map or with the number of its inhabitants4 ,athens and ,persia may be opposed in the same way4 ,the child is thus gradually brought to realise the creative power of man's will when it is the 8good-will0 of the ,scriptures4 ,such will is presented to him as the individual will with a plus4 ,that is to say that the man who realises his duty towards his family1 his school1 country and so on1 creates something and thereby is really the collaborator of ,god4 ,another side of this education is the highly ideal notion of actual reality which is enforced4 ,the child is taught that school is not a particular building1 but any place where there is a master to teach and pupils to learn4 ,the character of such a place is bound to the two acts of teaching and learning1 therefore1 their liberty is a sacred thing4 ,he who prevents the master from being heard1 the pupils from hearing him and learning what he says1 destroys such liberty4 ,ceasing himself to listen and to learn1 he loses his quality as a pupil1 therefore1 if his schoolfellows kick him out or the master1 to protect their liberty and their right to learn1 sends him away he has nothing to say1 for he has forfeited his rights by ceasing to learn4 ,he is a pupil in as far as he is learning4 ,it is needless to point out that in consequence of this a workman is entitled to his rights as such1 only so long as he is a contributor to the productivity of the enterprise in which he is working2 that a landowner is the owner of his land as far as he discharges his duty as such1 which is of making such land produce as much as possible for himself1 for his tenants and for the country2 that a man has the rights of a citizen as long as he is conscious of his being one and discharges all the duties correlative to his rights4 ,the ,gentilian reform with ,mussolini's authority has been able to infuse a new life into the teachers of the elementary schools4 ,they have taken their work up as an apostolate4 ,boys and girls know now that manual work is as dignified as any1 and that it has the merit of being always in demand and being more productive than shop and office work4 ,they are taught that they must think1 when they choose a calling1 of their old people whom they may have to help and of the family which they are going to create4 ,on this particular point the success is wonderful and the author has had several opportunities of realising it4 ,in ,rome she was met by the request of a widow1 the mother of four children1 to recommend her eldest son #ae years old1 to a senator to see if he could not find him a job as callboy4 ,objection was made to the choice of the job1 so badly paid and so tedious1 good at most for a weak or less clever lad2 the recommendation1 however1 was promised out of respect for the mother's choice4 ,but the morning after the boy appeared1 rather shy1 and full of apologies4 ,he had understood that the choice of the job had not been approved4 ,might he say what he felt about it8 ,then he began to unburden himself4 8,you know1 miss1 ,i cannot stand the notion of opening doors1 answering bells and carrying trays4444 ,i want to have a real calling4444 ,if ,i am a trained workman ,i can go all over the world1 or stay here and marry1 helping my mother all along1 because ,i can get #ce lire a day and even more4 ,if ,i am a real workman 4440 ,he made up his mind to be a printer and was introduced to a publisher4 ,religious and patriotic as it is1 education in ,italy is1 moreover1 grounded on a deep sense of what are the family duties of man1 and on a few sound ideas of what is economic in every man's life4 ,economy is by ,mussolini transformed into a moral value4 ,in this again we see his political genius going to meet ,croce's theories without knowing anything about them4 ,for ,croce1 an action is economic when it is due to the will of a well-informed individual1 it becomes moral when the individual's act of will is consonant with the will of the whole4 ,the most typical example is that known under the name of ,campagna del ,grano1 which is meant to induce the landowner and his tenants to use the most scientific means of increasing the production of the soil1 in order that the country should be either freed from the enormous expenditure of wheat importation or have it balanced by the silk1 wine1 fruit and oil which should be exported in greater quantities4 ,travelling teachers go from village to village and are met willingly by the peasants whom they address in the most homely way4 ,first technical suggestions are made with statistics of results obtained in the nearest fields of experiment4 ,then they are discussed with the men4 ,finally1 these are told that the result will be good for them as they will get more out of their land without their work being much increased1 but that they must above all1 remember that they will discharge the first of their civic duty2 their productive activity is as constructive as that of the great scientist and as noble as their own life in the trenches during the war4 ,you must no longer plough1 sow1 reap for your own self1 that is to say exclusively for your material self1 but for the state1 which is that same empirical self plus its transcendental complement4 ,thereby ploughing1 sowing and reaping are no longer the work of ,man1 slave of his material needs1 but of ,man transcending them1 without disregarding them1 however1 and lifting his daily occupation to the dignity of a moral realisation of his own economic value4 ,the state must1 indeed1 according to such ideas1 be universally present as a moral factor in every branch of its citizen's activity4 ,it is1 in fact1 the all-pervading consciousness that man must have of his citizenship which expresses itself as government4 ,such an assertion is believed by ,fascists to be quite acceptable to the people and where the author has had the possibility of testing the truth of it she had the impression that in a little less than a year the peasants were generally getting used to it1 and many acting upon it although they could not have explained it at all4 ,this moral share of the state in every economic interest is that which has made it possible for the government to work out the scheme of the ,national ,syndicates4 ,this has nothing to do with the ,fascist ,syndicates which were until recently opposed to the ,socialist trade unions as one political organisation to another4 ,the new ,syndicates are to be of no political colour at all2 their action is to be purely economic and they are nearly compulsory4#ab ,every man must belong to one of them either as a labourer1 a capitalist or an intellectual1 the last category containing most professional men4 ,when any economic conflict arises--causes of conflict have been reduced to the lowest possible number--the ,syndicate of employers sends its delegates to meet the delegate of the ,syndicate of employed4 ,such delegates are mostly the secretaries of the ,syndicates and must belong to the calling of the men whose interests are entrusted to them2 then they must have qualified and hold a diploma testifying to their technical and economic knowledge of the problems that they may have to treat4 ,the fact that they must belong to the trade they exercise and actually exercise it1 sweeps away all the professional secretaries of trade unions1 who1 living out of their leadership of the workmen1 are ready to do anything to retain their posts4 ,no less important is the necessity of their technical and economical qualification4 ,yet as for the moment there are no such qualified people to be had and the people are not yet used to choose their representative according to their value in the trade and common-sense they are appointed by the government4 ,and this is one weak point of the organisation1 although it is obviously a temporary one4 ,for the rest it is simply wonderful4 ,the delegates of the two syndicates--employed and employers--meet1 and they discuss the point at issue4 ,usually they come to an agreement because the greatest consideration is taken of the economic facts1 local conditions of life1 supply and demand of work and so on4 ,failing agreement1 the syndicates themselves meet and discuss the matter4 ,if the agreement is not possible the delegates meet again1 but in the presence of a special magistrate1 who studies the case and whose conclusions are enforced by law4 ,no lock-out or strike is even contemplated2 they have become an offence against the community1 and as such liable to various penalties4 ,men are free to produce1 but not to destroy4 ,this brings our study to a conclusion1 since to deal with any one point of those which have been merely sketched here would require a whole volume4 ,the people's will is free so long as what they wish is for the common good and their own good1 but it is not free to want anything that is either not for the common good or against it4 ,football is still the best example4 ,the men of a team freely want to win the match and freely do what they are ordered to do by their captain1 but they are not free to show off or to spoil the game1 to spite the captain or any one of the men4 ,mussolini makes no mystery about it2 his party has come into the world as the negation of the ,rights of ,man as they were formulated in the eighteenth century2 as the negation of ,liberty as it has been understood1 that is to say abstracting it from its correlative term ,law2 as the negation of democracy as far as democracy is understood1 through a wrong interpretation of its ,greek root taking people as equivalent to lower class1 is quantity opposed to quality--whereas it is equivalent to the nation as a whole2 as the negation of the equality of #aghi which was materially and mechanically conceived4 ,yet such negations are the preliminary stage to affirmations--the affirmation of the rights of man arising from his consciousness of duty2 of liberty as the positive term of ,law1 yet as inseparable from it as light from shadow2 of democracy understood as the impossibility of any class willing to rule by force over other classes1 be it by the force of wealth1 arms1 or numbers2 finally1 the equality of men1 both moral and legal1 according to which every man's rights must be proportioned to what he does for the community4 ,the great new feature of it is the idea of state and citizen upon which the whole ,mussolinian legislation and government is based although it seems never to mention it4 ,whilst in the ,anglo-,saxon and ,french views of political reality the ,state is a function of the citizen2 whilst in the ,german view1 whether in its ,imperialistic or ,communistic form1 the citizen is a function of the state1 for modern ,italy the state is the consciousness of the citizen transcending itself and postulating itself in religious objectivity4 ,no class differences1 no financial differences may therefore be rendered permanent by the ,state4 ,no care must be spared that may ensure their eternal mutability4 ,differences are necessary to permit moral1 social1 and economic progress2 but their fertility lies in their elasticity4 ,if 8,avanti0 was not the motto of ,socialism the ,fascists could make it theirs2 as it is1 reintroducing faith and belief at the basis of man's life they seem to point to higher moral1 political and economical conquests4 ,the only motto that can befit the black shirts movement is therefore ,sursum corda4 ,,footnotes #a ,the author wishes to state that being a ,nationalist herself she has been unable to assume towards ,nationalism the purely critical attitude that she has kept towards ,socialism4 #b ,just as the idea of family in any one individual makes him feel that the rest of the people are to him not his family1 are to him objective reality1 whilst his people are to him ,,the ,,family1 and part of his subjective reality4 #c ,the author has lived in ,italy as a student since ,may1 #aiac1 in constant contact with people of all classes4 #d ,to refer to one single district and to facts directly known by the author1 it may be stated that in ,may1 #aibj1 most of the province of ,udine having been organised under ,don ,sturzo's white banner1 the peasants had their minds perverted by the very priests to whom they had looked hitherto for moral guidance1 to the extent of starving their own cattle1 of ceasing to milk their cows1 leaving hundreds of beasts howling day and night for a week4 7,some of the land-owners1 above all those who were sportsmen1 did their best1 at the risk of their life1 to relieve the poor animals1 but could not manage to go round the stables every day47 ,the present writer is a ,roman ,catholic1 a friend of peasants wherever she goes and an animal lover2 she could not therefore speak with equanimity of a party who used the priests of her own church to speak words of violence on the steps of the altar or in the parsonage-houses1 making bullies of country folk she has known for thirteen years as excellent people1 looking after their cattle with so much humanity that they never sit down to a meal before their beasts are fed4 ,it is therefore better to state a few facts with names and dates4 ,in ,may1 #aibj1 in ,san ,martino al ,tagliamento1 ,count ,francesco di ,prampero was sequestered in his house with four men of the white legion mounting guard on his doors1 to compel him to yield to the will of the priests and their followers4 ,the same might be said of all the land-owners of the villages where ,don ,sturzism flourished4 ,but ,count ,francesco di ,prampero is selected here as being such a friend of peasants1 that he never lived with his family1 since he was in his teens preferring the company of his tenants1 although he belongs to the most ancient aristocracy4 ,in the same year groups of followers of ,don ,sturzo and some ,arditi ,bianchi went about with their white flag compelling people to kiss the hem of it and caning those who would not1 the ,arditi ,bianchi1 who were the armed legion of the party1 being ready to shoot the obdurate men or women4 ,as a matter of fact1 the most terrible harm was that of the sacraments1 in a province as religious as that of ,udine1 so that it is no wonder that ,benedict ,,xv1 asked by the present writer if he could approve such things1 was absolutely shocked and let her understand that since the war it was his greatest torment4 ,space compels to bring this note to a conclusion1 and it may be said that one of the foremost lieutenants of ,don ,sturzo1 in that ,province1 was ,monsignor ,gori1 a canon of the cathedral of ,udine1 a man who rejoiced over the defeat of his country at ,caporetto1 befriended the invaders1 and betrayed two women who had said to him that they were praying for the victory of the allies1 so that on his denunciation they were condemned by the ,austrians4 ,this may give a fair idea of what was a party that took such a man not only in its ranks1 but as a main agent1 knowing him to be even then1 before the advent of ,fascism1 in antagonism with his ,archbishop1 whose patriotism has since brought upon him the underhand persecution of the clergy that had been contaminated by ,don ,sturzism even in its ecclesiastical discipline4 #e ,see ,francisco de ,sancti's ,storia della ,letteratura ,italiana1 ,lateza1 ,bari1 vol4 ii1 chap4 i4 #f ,philosophy of the ,practical4 #aiab4 ,macmillan1 ,london4 #g ,quoted by ,wildon ,carr's ,the ,philosophy of ,mind of ,benedetto ,croce4 #h ,op4 cit4 #i ,op4 cit41 page #dia4 #aj ,the same can be said of the ,israelite community4 #aa ,negativity does not imply unreality4 #ab ,the way in which they are compulsory is not quite simple2 but the fact is that when the new institutions are framed men will perhaps get their political rights as members of the corporations4 ,,index ,alberti1 ,leone ,battista1 #hg ,alfieri1 #afh ,ardigo1 #afd ,aretino1 #aja ,ariosto1 #aja ,aristotle1 #fe1 #ff1 #fg1 #id1 #ajg1 #ajh1 #agb1 #baf ,bacon1 ,francis1 #fd1 #fe1 #ff1 #fg1 #fh1 #ib1 #ic1 #abj1 #adf1 #aia ,bacon1 ,roger1 #fd ,bainville1 #aad1 #aae ,bayle1 #adf1 #adg ,beltramelli1 #bab ,berkeley1 #adi ,bodin1 #id ,boccacio1 #ha ,bassuet1 #hb ,bismarck1 #be1 #bf ,cairoli1 #ba1 #bb ,campanella1 #ajj1 #aja1 #aje ,carducci1 #dc ,carlo1 ,alberto1 #ad ,cavour1 #aj1 #ad1 #cc1 #ahe ,cherbury1 ,herbert of1 #adb ,corneille1 #aaf ,cola di ,rienzo1 #ha ,costa1 ,andria1 #bg1 #bh1 #ij1 #bae ,carradini1 #cj1 #cb1 #cc1 #dj ,crispi1 #bj1 #bd ,croce1 #hh1 #hi1 #abe1 #acj1 #agj-ahh1 #ahi1 #baf1 #bbb ,cromwell1 #if1 #ii1 #ajj ,cumberland1 #ada ,cuoco1 ,vincenzo1 #abb1 #aee1 #aef1 #aeg1 #aeh1 #afa1 #afb1 #afh ,dante1 #gh1 #gi1 #hj1 #ha1 #afh1 #bab1 #bac ,d',annunzio1 #dh1 #eb ,d',azeglio ,massimo1 #aa ,depretis1 #be ,de ,ruggiero1 ,g41 #afc ,de ,sanctis1 #af1 #gg1 #hc1 #aja1 #ajd1 #afd1 #afe1 #afg1 #afh1 #afi1 #agj1 #aga1 #agb1 #baf ,descartes1 #fd1 #ff1 #fg1 #fh1 #aaj1 #aad-abd1 #abf1 #adf1 #aia ,ercole1 #hi ,federzoni1 #cj1 #cb1 #cc1 #dj ,ficino ,marsilio1 #hg ,fiorentino1 #afd ,frederick ,,ii1 #gg1 #hg ,fichte1 #bac ,garibaldi1 #aj1 #aa1 #bj1 #bd1 #cc ,gentile1 #ce1 #ei1 #fj1 #gf1 #abe1 #acj1 #acb1 #aga1 #ahh-baj ,gioberti1 #af1 #aei1 #afb1 #afc1 #afd1 #afe1 #aga ,ghibellines1 #gh1 #gi1 #hc ,giolitti1 #cg1 #eb ,grotius1 #ic1 #id1 #ie1 #abg ,guarini1 #aje ,guicciardini1 #ajc1 #ajd1 #aaa1 #aab ,guelphs1 #gh1 #gi1 #hc ,hegel1 #fb1 #gf1 #ih1 #aed1 #aei1 #afe1 #bjh1 #bji1 #bac ,hobbes1 #ic1 #ie1 #if1 #ig1 #ih1 #ii1 #ajj1 #aji1 #aaa1 #abb1 #abg1 #abi1 #adf ,hume1 #ih1 #adf ,johnson1 #hb ,kant1 #adj1 #adi1 #aed1 #afb1 #afd1 #bjc1 #bjh ,louis ,,xiv1 #aad1 #aae1 #aaf1 #abd ,landino1 #hg ,lvy ,bruhl1 #fb ,leibniz1 #abd1 #afc ,locke1 #ajj1 #abe1 #acb1 #ach1 #ahi ,machiavelli1 #dj1 #da1 #db1 #hf1 #hh1 #hi1 #ij1 #aja1 #ajb1 #ajc1 #aaj1 #aab1 #afh1 #agb1 #agd ,mle1 #fi1 #gb ,mazzini1 #aa1 #ad1 #bj1 #cc1 #aee1 #aei1 #afj1 #afa1 #afh1 #ahe1 #bae ,malespini1 ,a41 #gg ,maritain1 #aag ,marx1 #fb ,monnier1 ,ph41 #hg ,melzi1 #aeg ,mill1 #afd ,michelangelo1 #aff ,minghetti1 #bd ,montaigne1 #adf ,montesquieu1 #adg1 #adi ,mussolini1 #bi1 #ce1 #cg1 #dc1 #gf1 #gg1 #hh1 #ajc1 #aef1 #aeg1 #aeh1 #aei1 #agj1 #aga1 #agg1 #ahj1 #ahf ,nitti1 #eb ,newton1 #adf ,orange1 ,william1 #ajj1 #ach ,pascal1 #adf ,pagano1 #aee ,plato1 #ace ,plutarch1 #acc ,poliziano1 #afg ,petrarch1 #hj1 #ha1 #hc ,piccolomini1 #hb ,pisano ,nicolo1 #gf ,rosmini1 #af1 #aei1 #afb1 #afd1 #aga ,reggio1 ,e41 #ge ,rousseau1 #ajg1 #abf1 #abh1 #ach1 #ade1 #adh1 #adi1 #aej1 #aea1 #aeb1 #aee1 #bjg ,salandra1 #cg1 #db ,saitta1 #adi ,san ,giuliano1 #cg ,sarfatti1 #bab ,savonarola1 #afb ,scholasticism1 #fc1 #fd1 #ajh1 #aaa1 #aai1 #abh ,shaftesbury1 #ada1 #adb ,sonnino1 #cg1 #db ,solmi1 #gf ,spaventa1 #afd1 #afe ,spinoza1 #hi1 #abi ,sturzo1 and his party1 #dg1 #dh1 #di1 #eb1 #ec1 #bbe ,st4 ,anselm1 #fd ,st4 ,augustin1 #aai1 #aba ,st4 ,thomas1 #fd1 #id1 #ajh1 #abi1 #bjh ,tasso1 #aje ,toland1 #adb1 #adc ,tocco1 #afd ,vico1 #fe1 #hj1 #ih1 #aaa1 #abd-acf1 #adi1 #aed1 #afc1 #afe1 #afh1 #agb1 #baf ,villari1 #afc ,vittorio1 ,emmanuele1 #ad ,wildon ,carr1 #aij ,,made ,,and ,,printed ,,in ,,great ,,britain ,,by ,,the ,,garden ,,city ,,press ,,limited1 ,,letchworth1 ,,herts ,transcriber's notes ,no attempt has been made to correct or normalize the spelling of proper names or non-,english text4 ,the index is in original order4 ,footnotes have been gathered at the end of the text1 before the index4 ,the included cover is a modified version of the book's title page and is placed in the public domain4